Stultiens directed the parliamentary questions at outgoing Minister of Education Robbert Dijkgraaf. The MP wanted to know if Dijkgraaf agrees with the Dutch Association of Journalists (NVJ) that the independence of university media has been under pressure ‘for some time’. In so doing, Stultiens also referred to the situation at Cursor, which experienced pressure from the university not to publish critical articles as well. After the then editor-in-chief was relieved of his duties, the platform blacked out in October 2023.

At the time, the Minister of Education said he didn’t see any reason for a broad investigation into the restriction of freedom of press at higher education media. Stultiens gave the following explanation of his position: “I hope that this time around, Dijkgraaf will see the merits of launching a wider investigation into the journalistic freedom at higher education media platforms. At the time of the incident at Cursor, Kwint (SP party) and Westerveld (GroenLinks-PvdA) already asked for this. This recent case at Delta shows there’s still a lot to do.”

Restricted freedom of press

Faced with legal pressure, Delta decided to take down a critical article on the culture of fear at the Innovations & Impact Centre and the duty of confidentiality that was imposed on the department’s management team related to its dysfunctional director.

After publication, Delta was first instructed to take the article offline by a legal firm, on behalf of the aforementioned director. Shortly after that, TU Delft’s legal department also got involved. The article was to be taken down, or all individual editors and the editor-in-chief would be held liable for any damage incurred by the university of technology.

Since the incident, the Executive Board of TU Delft apologized for the course of events, but the article hasn’t reappeared on Delta’s website.