Open letter & petition: Call for digital autonomy UU
In an open letter to the Executive University Board of Utrecht University, Prof. dr. Albert Meijer (Professor of Public Innovation, UU) & Prof. dr. José van Dijck (Professor of Media and Digital Society, UU) are calling for a transformation to digital autonomy. They express their “concern about Utrecht University’s increasing reliance on services from Big Tech companies (particularly Microsoft, Google, Amazon) for our research, teaching and administrative activities”.
If you support this call, you can contribute by signing the local petition (also possible anonymously), preferably before 16 April.
With this open letter we call upon you to change course, thereby freeing our university from this heavy reliance on services from these companies and contributing to greater technological self-determination, resilience and public innovation for and with universities across Europe.”
Albert Meijer & José van Dijck
More info
Prof. dr. José van Dijck is a member of the CDH Advisory board. She has been interviewed on this topic by the Dutch newspaper NRC (Onderzoekers kiezen voor een alternatieve cloud: ‘Ik wil zelf kunnen kiezen met wie ik mijn bestanden deel’, 31 December 2024). For Dutch newspaper Trouw, she wrote an opinion article together with Prof. dr. Albert Meijer: Opinie: Universiteit, maak je los van Big Tech (23 February 2025).
CDH affiliate dr. Fabian Ferrari will be one of the speakers at Studium Generale’s hybrid event Can we stop the techbro’s takeover? on 17 April 2025. His postdoctoral research on AI governance (2022-2024) was supported by a Spinoza-funded project led by Prof. dr. José van Dijck.