In Memoriam Meindert Fennema

Outside the academia, Meindert was best known as a public intellectual who often voiced controversial opinions. Inside academia, Meindert was an inspiring lecturer who always managed to challenge students and was an internationally renowned scholar in a wide range of areas within the discipline of Political Science. He was a true representative of the 'broad political science approach'. Meindert was humorous, energetic and almost always in a good mood. These were only some of the traits that made it a pleasure to work with him.

Meindert Fennema was born to a partly anarchist family from Friesland. He grew up in Zeist, where the family had moved when he was young. He was afflicted by cerebral palsy and learned from his mother how to deal with this: 'You can do everything the others do, only you have to try harder.' Having obtained his gymnasium diploma at the age of 18, he found a job on a cruise ship and visited several continents. Following his retirement, he published two compulsively readable, partly autobiographical novels about these early years. After working on the cruise ship, he went to university, first joining the highly conservative Utrecht Student Corps and later the Communist Party of the Netherlands (CPN). He wrote a book about this as well, Goed Fout, in which he reflected very critically upon his 'pre-democratic period', as he himself called it. His experiences in these circles were an important breeding ground for his later radical-democratic beliefs and actions.

Meindert's research focused partly on the quality of the political and economic elite. Both his inaugural lecture in 2002 and his valedictory speech in 2012 dealt with this subject. Meindert himself had a complicated relationship with the Dutch elite. After falling in love with Caroline van Dullemen, he moved to her thatched villa in Aerdenhout, where he found himself in 'old money' circles, where he seemed to feel very much at easeand well-adapted. He would talk about it with much enthusiasm ('the higher the fences, the newer the money'). At the same time, Meindert never shied away from publicly criticising, provoking and sometimes ridiculing members of that same elite. This left him, in a sense, an outsider.

The same thing was true of his position in GreenLeft, the party he joined when it absorbed the CPN. In the 1990s, he strongly criticised efforts to combat far right-wing Hans Janmaat by legal means. Later, he continued to speak firmly in favour of freedom of expression and against the use of the courts to constrain the freedom of speech. More recently, he spoke out firmly against the ban of Vereniging Martijn, an association that aimed to promote compassion for people with paedophile feelings. He was also deeply concerned about the 'woke' movement in universities, especially those within the movement that want to protect students from being confronted by 'offensive views'. All of this ran counter to the opinions of some of the very people he otherwise sympathised with politically.

In his student days, Meindert was active in the protests for more student participation in decision-making at the UvA, which eventually gave rise to the 'Daudt affair'. Characteristic of the discipline of political science as taught at the UvA following the Daudt affair is what we know today as the 'broad political science approach'. This involves not only studying the actions of traditional political actors, the state, government, political parties and parliament, but also trying to understand their actions and political developments within the broader social, cultural and historical context in which they take place. Meindert was a pre-eminent representative of this broad approach to political science.

Meindert obtained his PhD in 1981, being supervised by the mathematician Rob Mokken, professor of Political Science and Research Methodology. Meindert was deeply impressed by Mokken's willingness to act as his supervisor, despite the fact that Meindert was a convinced Marxist at the time, while Mokken was a rational scholar who did not mix science and politics. His thesis, which combined innovative network analysis of large-scale data on the one hand and a critical-theoretical reflection on the power of the business community in society on the other, was far ahead of its time. Partly through his political-theoretical studies of the works of French Enlightenment thinkers, Meindert increasingly shifted his views towards radical democracy. Above all, he felt that academia and society should foster an environment in which a diversity of views critically question each other.

In his academic work, as in his personal life, Meindert was dismissive of compartmentalised thinking. He kept an open mind and delved into those parts of different theoretical perspectives and approaches that interested him. Accordingly, his publications were highly diverse in both substance and methodology, covering historical work, history of political thought (especially Saint-Simonianism), conceptual-theoretical analyses, quantitative electoral research and network analyses. Meindert published studies on a wide range of topics, including social capital, ethnic relations, support for anti-immigration parties and the political power of the business community. Much of his work proved innovative, precisely because of his ability to combine different theoretical approaches and methods.

Meindert was also a tremendously inspirational lecturer. His way of inspiring students consisted in part of challenging them with views they disagreed with. Moreover, Meindert was extremely sharp analytically. He did not accept superficial small talk. He had a keen sense of humour and could approach serious issues with a kind of vicious ridicule and irony. Many students appreciated this, though there were some who took offence, often to Meindert's great delight. This was equally true of his exchanges on Twitter.

We will miss Meindert greatly, for his humour, his critical views, his friendship and for always being a great colleague.

- Wouter van der Brug and Eelke Heemskerk

Some colleagues about Meindert Fennema

'Meindert's scholarly work was characterised by the unique combination of empirical work and applied political theory. In this way, he kept surprising or confronting people across the political spectrum with their own inconsistencies. That made him a truly independent scholar.' - Jean Tillie, professor of Political Science and frequent co-author

'Meindert was a committed supervisor who challenged his students, including his PhD candidates, to develop their own perspective and articulate it as clearly and simply as possible. The phrases "Keep it simple!" and "What is it that you are trying to argue?" were a regular part of his repertoire during discussions. Drafts of papers and chapters that flaunted complicated terms and mainly reproduced what happened to be in vogue were met with scepticism: "Wake me up when it's over." His sense of hospitality, his ability to connect with people and his ability to respond to the unique needs of individual students and PhD candidates made him an inspiring teacher to many.' - Marcel Maussen, associate professor and former PhD candidate of Meindert

'"So, did you/are you…?" Since the moment we first met and despite Meindert's own recent battle with a terrible disease, he always had time for a personal follow-up and for solicited and unsolicited advice. Meindert, you were special. I already miss you terribly.' - Leila Abouyaala, operational management coordinator for Political Science

'Meindert was a Socratic hornet who could both sting considerably and write with flair. His autobiography, Goed Fout, is an enduring political-theoretical treatise on hangers-on: an important political phenomenon, often overlooked, which he analysed relentlessly and with some degree of self-mockery. If it's the nature of civilisation, especially Calvinist civilisation, to let vanity be useful, then Goed Fout deserves to be treated as a classic.' - Eric Schliesser, professor of Political Theory

More about Meindert Fennema

Marcel Maussen and Floris Vermeulen, along with other former PhD candidates of Meindert, wrote a volume in his honour on the occasion of his academic retirement. Those wishing to find out more about Meindert's work at the University of Amsterdam can read that volume here (in Dutch).

In 2012, Eelke Heemskerk wrote this contribution on the academic significance of Meindert Fennema's network research.