Universities’ body brings military faculty into the fold

The granting of network membership to the Faculty of Military Sciences by the peak university body, Universities Netherlands (UNL), has highlighted the role of military-relevant sciences at universities in a time of increased global tensions.

The Faculty of Military Sciences (FMW), part of the Netherlands Defence Academy (NLDA), became a network member of UNL on 1 March 2026. Through this membership, the FMW gains access to knowledge and expertise within the UNL networks.

The faculty also stays informed of relevant developments and can participate in UNL meetings, UNL said in a press release on 19 March.

UNL President Professor Caspar van den Berg welcomed the FMW as a new network member and said he looks forward to further collaboration.

“With this network membership, FMW and the Dutch universities are strengthening their cooperation in the field of education and research, with a particular focus on societal issues related to resilience and security. With current international developments, intensive cooperation on these themes is of great importance,” he said.

Professor Bas Rietjens, vice-dean of research at the Faculty of Sciences at FMW, said: “A safe, resilient society is a joint task. Security issues are becoming increasingly complex and cross borders; they affect not only the Armed Forces, but also other parts of society.

“By working together with universities, knowledge partners and other civil society organisations, we can develop knowledge faster, share expertise and create solutions for the challenges of today and tomorrow.”

The FMW is responsible for the accredited bachelor and masters programmes for (prospective) officers of the Dutch armed forces and the underlying scientific research. It specialises in military subjects such as strategy, operations, defence economics, leadership and ethics.

The faculty also focuses on civil-military cooperation and logistics and technical issues in the military field. It works in collaboration with civilian universities and knowledge institutes, such as the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research.

The NLDA provides military training, personal development and academic education for the Ministry of Defence.

The courses given at the NLDA can be compared with courses given at civilian universities. In addition, the NLDA is the only military-scientific knowledge and research institute in the Netherlands. The NLDA’s scientific research is mainly defence-orientated, with scores of scientific experts in the area of defence contributing to improvements in military operations.

UNL network membership

Until 2023, UNL offered only regular membership. In that year, two additional forms of membership were introduced: the associate membership and the network membership.

Associate members participate in administrative consultations in the field of education and research but do not have the right to vote. Currently, the University of Humanistic Studies is an associate member of UNL.

The FMW joins the University of Aruba and the University of Curaçao Dr Moises da Costa Gomez as network members, the UNL press release said.

Meanwhile, Tilburg University recently announced it had appointed an expert in military organisation and collaboration, Dr Paul C van Fenema, as an endowed professor to the Adaptive Behavior of Military Organizations chair within the Department of Organization Studies at the Tilburg School of Social and Behavioral Sciences.

Van Fenema has been Professor of Military Logistics at the Netherlands Defence Academy (NLDA) since 2012. The chair at Tilburg was established by the Faculty of Military Sciences of the Netherlands Defence Academy and will run for a period of five years.

It focuses on the adaptive capacity of military organisations and their collaboration within complex (inter)organisational networks. “Key themes include digital transformation, logistics, governance, and cooperation between defence, government, knowledge institutions, and industry, the press release said.

The appointment underscores the long-standing collaboration between Tilburg University and the NLDA and strengthens the connection between academia and practice in the field of security, organisation, and collaboration in (international) interorganisational networks,” the university said.

‘Money for the war machine’

Meanwhile, the perceived militarisation of Dutch universities was addressed as part of the “Re-Imagining the University” series, hosted by the Contesting Governance platform at Utrecht University on 22 April.

An announcement of a roundtable discussion, "Knowledge for the War Machine?", noted that while money for independent research and higher education was being cut, "money for the war machine is not".

“The AWTI [Advisory Council for Science, Technology and Innovation] has recommended that Dutch universities collaborate more closely with the Ministry of Defence. The new coalition government wants to channel up to €2 billion (US$2.35 billion) of the defence budget into universities.

“Militarisation doesn’t arrive through tanks. It enters through funding opportunities, research projects, presentations and the language of ‘resilience’, ‘security’, and ‘innovation’,” the announcement said.

“How are Dutch universities becoming militarised? How do we make sense of the current political moment without falling into the logics of the war machine?

“How does military logic enter our everyday language? How is our academic freedom being influenced? Where does Utrecht University stand in all of this? Who makes the decisions? And what can we, as students and staff, do about it?” the announcement noted.

Via Tim de Winkel, a representative of the Algemene Onderwijsbond (teacher union), union network VSMP (Union Solidarity with Palestine) and academic action group 0.7, an action group focused on fighting the casualisation of university labour and improving conditions for employees on temporary contracts, gave University World News the following comment:

“Many within the unions and higher education are very concerned with the militarisation of our universities. These ties are made without any consultation of scholars, students, or workers, nor their representational bodies. Employers and management smell funding, and professors with ties to the ministry of defence do some very aggressive PR.

“Those with doubts want to know: ‘How do we ensure our independence? Are we still allowed to criticise the hand that feeds us? And how do we avoid being complicit in war crimes, while our governments pay homage to Trump and Netanyahu?’”

‘Total sense’

Speaking in his personal capacity about the FMW’s status as a network member of UNL, Dr Ingmar Visser, director of the College of Psychology, Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences at the University of Amsterdam, told University World News: “Assuming they [FMW] are an academic institution with academic-level teaching and learning programmes, it makes sense for [them] to be a network member. It should not distract from other sciences that are engaged with more peaceful and diplomatic means of solving geopolitical conflict.”

Independent higher education strategist Peter van der Hijden agreed, telling University World News that FMW’s network membership of UNL “makes total sense”.

“All military academies in Europe are ‘embedded’ in their national academic system, with varying intensity. I would plead for full membership, as is the case in Germany and France. That would keep military training ‘civil’, [enable] smooth research cooperation and make influence more transparent.

“The 60 or so military academies in Europe form an informal ‘European University’ avant la lettre with an EQF-compatible qualifications framework (SQF-MILOF), joint modules and joint semesters, backed up by the European Security and Defence College (ESDC) associated with the European External Action Service (EEAS).

“If Europe would go for Thematic European Universities, the military academies would come out with flying colours.”