Mr. Victor van der Chijs, FFNT 10th year anniversary conference opening address
In his opening address, Mr. van der Chijs, president of the UT Board, started with music and the photo of a closed curtain and asked the audience to guess whether it was a man or a woman playing. Via the story of an orchestra who started doing auditions behind a curtain to exclude gender bias, resulting in an increase of the number of female musicians, he made the analogy with the university: men chose men, but also women chose men, for example a job related to mathematics, because it fits better with the set of expectations. This influence of the expectations on selection of staff is not only influenced by gender, but also by cultural diversity and hence has a link to internationalization. At the UT, we need diversity, not only in gender but also in culture, to become an inclusive university. He further stressed the importance of role models like Kitty Nijmeier and Vanessa Evers. With the example of a gorilla disturbing a basketball game unnoticed because it is unexpected (see www.theinvisiblegorilla.com), he illustrated that one has to be aware to notice things/phenomena (reference to a famous quote by Johan Cruijff). For this reason Mr. van der Chijs and other high level UT staff will undergo a ‘Mind bugs’ training. Van der Chijs closed by congratulating FFNT on its 10th anniversary with the anniversary gift of 5000 euros for the FFNT activities