GEWIS wouldn’t be GEWIS if it hadn’t neatly stored all these quotes in a database for everyone to search. I too appeared in the section several times over the last couple of years. An example of a quote that could appear as strange without any context, is: “If you Google XES, probably you will get back ‘did you mean SEX,’ because Google knows what you usually look for.” I spoke these words during a lecture on the IEEE Standard for eXtensible Event Stream: XES. In that context, it led to some laughter in the hall.

According to that same database, I supposedly once said: “Danish people are even weirder than Dutch people.” I have to say that I have no idea why I would ever say such a thing, but this too was probably intended as a joke within the context of a lecture.

Taking out of context utterances and quotes can also end badly, as we saw recently (article in Dutch) at The Hague University of Applied Sciences. Words spoken by a teacher during a lecture about ethics and faulty reasoning were completely taken out of context. These words, however, did not end up as a quote in the Infima section, but as a video fragment on social media, with all the resulting consequences.

The Hague University of Applied Sciences had to explain that these words were taken out of context, the politician who was the subject immediately used it for publicity, and the teacher was accused of all kinds of things. It’s a very unfortunate incident, especially for her. She is probably forced, like most of us, to broadcast her lectures live without any training and then to record these lectures as well, and she’ll be much more careful now during future lectures - in all probability at the expense of her enthusiasm.

I, therefore, do not record my lectures. I teach, due to the circumstances, in Teams and it suits me well. Students participate actively and they ask me more questions in the chat than in an actual hall. I know that some students record their own screens. A kind of taking notes 2.0. That’s allowed, as long as they don’t share or publicize those recordings and I don’t find myself on YouTube, with an angry Danish ambassador as a consequence.