The crisis meeting on the TU Delft campus has not even started for fifteen minutes when an employee of the Innovation & Impact Center can no longer contain himself. “I think it’s scandalous. How do you get it in your head? Where is your moral compass?”
On Thursday afternoon, March 21, his anger was directed at Tim van der Hagen, chairman of the board and rector magnificus of Delft University of Technology. Van der Hagen, as employees of the Innovaton & Impact Center discovered by chance, has imposed a duty of silence on the eight-member management team on his own, with a threat attached: anyone who opens his mouth can count on “employment law measures”.
The subject of this omerta is the director of the innovation center – or rather: his long absence. He hasn’t been to the office for 104 days. The situation has become untenable for employees of this department. The task of the Innovation & Impact Center is to sell Delft research to the outside world: setting up start-ups and forging partnerships with companies. The director is indispensable for contract negotiations with external parties. But he’s been absent for months. No one knows why – except the members of the management team. And the chairman of the board does not allow them to say anything about it.
According to fifteen reporters, the director of the Innovation & Impact Center has been guilty of inappropriate behavior. Managerial bullyingaccording to some of the reporters, or bullying behavior by a manager.
The fact that the TU Delft board is trying to cover up the issue and silence those involved is not an isolated incident. Three weeks before the meeting, the Education Inspectorate established in a report that care for social safety at the university has been “seriously neglected”. According to the inspectorate, there is “a lot of information at the top of TU Delft about what is going on in the field of social safety”, but the Executive Board often “fails” to respond appropriately.
Out of office
The eight management members of the Innovation & Impact Center have been urging Executive Board President Van der Hagen for six months to provide their employees with clarity about the state of affairs. A confidential report from the external confidential counselor, describing the experiences of the fifteen reporters, has been on Van der Hagen’s desk since October 2023. Shortly afterwards, a second opinion, also carried out by external researchers, confirmed the image of transgressive behavior by the director of the innovation center.
The director then turned on the out-of-office reply to his email and has not been seen in the office since. The longer it goes on, the more often employees ask management members for explanations. What is going on? Is their director sick? What should I say to the company that asks to speak to the director? And to the municipality, which wonders why a meeting has suddenly been cancelled?
The managers, who are not allowed to answer their employees, see the unrest in the organization increasing week after week. They always take their concerns to Executive Board President Van der Hagen and the director of human resources at TU Delft. And every time they get the same message: say nothing.
When the management team asks for advice for the umpteenth time in December 2023 on how to deal with the situation, the chairman of the board has had enough. He no longer wants to receive emails about the matter. Shortly afterwards the message comes: talking leads to “labor law measures”. According to him, secrecy about the matter is “essential”.
On February 28, employees will receive an email from the Executive Board. The absent director has decided to resign his position “and take a new path in his career,” it says. Van der Hagen says he “regrets” his departure. The director will remain employed by the TU until June. Several employees are stunned: first they didn’t hear anything for months, and now this?
More than a week later, the critical report from the Education Inspectorate has now been published, the management team calls together the 170 employees of the innovation center to explain the director’s departure. Difficult, because they are still not allowed to say anything about what really happened. The management team’s evasive answers lead to great annoyance among the employees present. Until a colleague stands up and tells them that Tim van der Hagen is not allowed to say anything. The pressure from colleagues and the pent-up tension from months of silence becomes too much for some members of the management team, and tears are shed.
Employees email from a general email address, they are afraid of reprisals
In the days that followed, the management team focused on Van der Hagen. Let him explain what is going on and why he has left the managers of the Innovation Center so out in the cold. He is invited on behalf of “87 concerned employees” to “answer our questions and address our concerns.” The employees email from a general email address, they are afraid of reprisals.
During the lunch meeting on March 21, Van der Hagen and his personnel director will provide explanations. For many employees it turns out to be an unsatisfactory meeting. It is “horrible what you experienced,” says the chairman of the board, audible on a recording of the meeting. The email with which he imposed a duty of silence on the management team was also “a horrible email,” Van der Hagen acknowledges. “And yet it was necessary and it accelerated the process, and that’s all I can say about it. He worked. You have to make do with that, sorry.”
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University magazine Delta publishes an article on April 15 about what happened behind the scenes at the innovation center in the months before: the reports against the director, the duty of silence for the management team and the internal unrest. The story is only online for eight hours. That same evening, the editor-in-chief of Delta reported on her own site that the legal department of TU Delft “ordered” her to take the article offline and stated that if she refused, she would be held personally liable for any damage the university would suffer.
The next day, Van der Hagen apologized, but the article remained offline. According to Delta, Van der Hagen informed the editor-in-chief in an email “that he still believes that TU employees, and therefore also Delta journalists, are not allowed to quote from confidential documents.”
Counterattack
The handling of this case is exemplary of how the Executive Board has countered criticism since the publication of the inspection report. The supervisory board and the executive board will immediately counterattack at the beginning of March. The research is “defective” and contains “incorrect, incomplete and unsubstantiated or poorly substantiated accusations”.
To substantiate this statement, the board publishes a 172-page response with the main conclusion: “There is no mismanagement, intimidation and threats […] TU Delft’s approach to promoting the social safety of its staff is sound.”
The board also hints that it doubts the sincerity of the reporters. “Are the reporters actually victims or were they themselves the perpetrators of a socially unsafe situation for others, as a result of which other people were victims of that social unsafe situation?” The board “intends” to challenge the investigation in court, according to a press release.
The storm that subsequently arose within the TU community caused the Executive Board to abandon that intention. In an interview with Delta, Van der Hagen explains that his critics are wrong: “We have actually embraced the recommendations of the inspection. I think it is a shame if people see the intention to start a lawsuit as criticism of the inspection.”
Half of the innovation center’s management team is leaving, or has already left
University magazine Delta, which intensively covers the aftermath of the inspection report, notices that messengers of bad news are not always welcome. No Delta reporter may be present at the first meeting between the board and the works council about the inspection report, on March 28. Normally that meeting is public.
A week later, Delta reported on the composition of the project team that must draw up a plan for improving social safety at the university. This includes Van der Hagen and the personnel director, the head of communications and two deans. On LinkedIn, the article led to public bickering between members of the project team and university employees, who believed that the team included many administrators who, according to the inspectorate, were responsible for “mismanagement” in the field of social safety.
The head of communications is also involved in the discussion on LinkedIn. She is “relatively new” at TU, having only started in the summer of 2023. “So a fresh look.” Several employees then approach NRC to say that she has been in the cover band Make my Day with Executive Board President Van der Hagen since at least 2011. What do you mean, a ‘fresh look’ from the outside?
Tim van der Hagen attributes the criticism of the composition of the project team in a meeting with the works council to an incorrect name in Delta: there was only a “guidance committee”. Later in the meeting, Van der Hagen has to admit that the term ‘project team’ comes from the university itself. A day later, the university removes the message about a project team from its own site.
Panic football
A few days after the Delta article about the innovation center was taken offline, it turned out that board member Marien van der Meer had dismissed a Delta reporter from a public consultation with the unions that same day. The university board has played a “full league of panic football,” writes associate professor Dap Hartmann in a column in Delta.
The university has been given three months by the inspectorate to come up with a plan to improve social safety. Outgoing Minister Robbert Dijkgraaf (Education, D66) believes it is “of the utmost importance that TU Delft carries out this assignment very seriously.” An anonymous group of employees is now demanding the resignation of the Executive Board; some Delta columnists have assigned themselves the hashtag nietmijnCVB .
Others have already given up hope of improvement. Half of the innovation center’s management team will leave or has already left.
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