Over recent months, more and more decisions have been taken top-down, without meaningful involvement of those responsible for research and education at the University of Twente. This forces a simple but fundamental question: do decision-makers really understand what we do as scientific staff, and how the university actually functions? The recent announcement, about earlier developments around LISA, and the outsourcing of services to companies such as ARGO360 have sharpened this concern. Each step seems to move further away from the reality of academic work and closer to a one-size-fits-all administrative model suited to a corporation, not to a research university.
Autonomy is not a luxury, it is a precondition for excellence
As my colleague Professor Antonio Franchi recently argued, for scientific staff a laptop is not a generic office tool but an extension of our professional mind: a portable laboratory and a carefully curated research instrument. Policies that treat it as a centrally managed commodity miss the essence of how research work is actually done. For many years I have invested enormous time and energy in acquiring external funding for UT. I did so because I had both the authority and the trust to decide how to plan my work and what infrastructure I needed.
If I can no longer decide what computer to buy, how to configure it, and how to manage it securely, a very uncomfortable question arises: why should I still invest effort in acquiring external funding at all? Why fight for competitive grants, work evenings and weekends on proposals, and bring in millions of euros for the university, only to be told afterwards that others will decide what equipment I get and how I am allowed to use it? Under such conditions, motivation collapses. And I am not alone.
Do we really need a company to wipe Professors’ laptops?
The idea that professors at a technical university need an external company ‘specialised in secure data wiping and processing’ is hard to take seriously. Most scientific staff have spent their careers working with computers, writing software, building networks, and handling sensitive data. Many of us teach precisely these topics. To suggest that we now require external firms to perform basic digital hygiene feels unnecessary and quietly insulting. If instead the idea is to recycle equipment responsibly and recover some residual value, that is a different story—but that has nothing to do with how we use our machines.
Two types of staff, two types of roles
A crucial conceptual distinction is missing from recent policy discussions. UT has two broad categories of employees: scientific staff, who carry the primary processes of teaching, research, and acquiring external funding, and support staff, whose role is to facilitate and enable those processes. These roles are complementary but not identical, and they should not be treated as if they were. Furthermore second and third money streams are acquired by scientific staff only and create additional infrastructure, partially pay scientific salaries, enable new research lines, and strengthen UT’s international position. In practice, they subsidize much of the university’s growth and reputation. The university’s financial reality is that first money budget are out of our control, but the possibly positive financial situation of the university is due to external funding acquired by the scientific staff.
Security matters, but expertise matters too
Here again I agree with the concerns raised by Professor Antonio Franchi. We support baseline security measures such as full-disk encryption, strong authentication, and timely updates; our concern is not security itself, but the bureaucratic seizure of a research instrument under the banner of security. Most scientific staff understand security issues well and are perfectly capable of keeping their systems secure and up to date. It is worth recalling that scientific staff repeatedly warned LISA about the risks of Microsoft Safe Links, which were nevertheless forced on everyone. These warnings were later confirmed: such links are now widely recognized as problematic for both security and privacy. Treating all staff as if they have the same level of technical competence - from professors in engineering to purely administrative users - is a category error.
The ownership argument misses the point
One of the most remarkable claims by the UT is ‘ownership’. Of course anything bought via UT is formally UT property. But that is not the real issue. The real issue is where the money comes from. If a laptop is bought from the first money stream, paid for by collective funds, central policies are reasonable. But if a laptop is bought from external funding that scientific staff acquired for UT, is it reasonable that others decide what scientific staff gets and how is allowed to use it? I do not think so. Once again, under such conditions, I see no rational reason why scientific staff which could do good theoretical research would invest effort in acquiring money that will be fully controlled by others, while their salary is already paid regardless.
A question of trust, respect and institutional logic
UT exists because of its research and education. These depend critically on autonomy, trust, professional judgment, and mutual respect between scientific and support staff. When policies are imposed without serious consultation, without conceptual clarity about funding streams, and without respect for professional expertise, something essential is eroded. This is not just about laptops. It is about whether UT still understands its own institutional logic and still trusts the people who make the university what it is. I write this not in anger, but in deep concern. Because once motivation and trust is lost, it is very hard to recover.
A final appeal
Taken together, Antonio Franchi’s article and my own reflections express a single message: the University of Twente is not a corporation executing a top-down business strategy. It is a community of experts - from PhD researchers and technicians to assistant, associate, and full professors - whose work depends on trust, autonomy, and professional judgment. In such an environment, debates and democratic values are fundamental. If UT wants to remain a high-tech university with international impact, with a motivated scientific staff, it must align its internal governance and IT policies with the epistemic and operational reality of research. This is not about resisting change. It is about preserving the conditions under which excellence is still possible.
