Professor Morag Goodwin: ‘I said to prince Charles: ‘Why would I go back to Britain?’’

As the first in her family to go to university, Morag Goodwin (47) found her academic home in the Netherlands, becoming a professor in global law at the age of 38. Today, Tilburg Law School is more diverse and international than it was twenty years ago, when she moved here from Britain, by way of Florence. But when it comes to equality, Goodwin finds there is still work to be done.

Lees dit interview in het Nederlands.

At a long wooden table, next to a wall of books, filled to the brim with everything from Russian philosophers to British poetry and feminist literature, professor Morag Goodwin serves home baked cookies. It is a nod to her British roots, although one wonders how she finds the time these days, often travelling to Romania or Rwanda for research, while holding the Chair of Global Law and Development, and being the director of EDOLAD, the European Joint Doctorate in Law and Development.

We meet in the first week of May, a few months after the new Dutch government coalition has announced they want to curb the influx of international students, and to reduce the so-called ‘Anglicization’ of higher education. When we arranged this interview, Goodwin wrote she was ‘a little wary of becoming a poster girl for international staff in the current political climate. However, perhaps that climate is also a good reason to do the interview.’

Goodwin herself first came to The Netherlands in 2004, as a newly minted lecturer at Maastricht University. How welcome did she feel back then, as an international?

‘My first day at Maastricht University was quite funny,’ says Morag Goodwin, carefully spooning up the foam of her cappuccino. ‘I remember sitting in the old faculty lounge waiting to be picked up by somebody from hr. It was my first day in the country. A guy came in to get coffee, looked at me and said: ‘Oh you’re English? I’ve always thought English women are very ugly!’ Later I learned he was one of the professors in the law school where I would be teaching.’

Four years later you moved to Tilburg, to become an assistant professor. What was the atmosphere back then?

‘Tilburg was a bit of a shock, as I felt like the only international there. 15 years ago, there wasn’t much empathy from Dutch colleagues for foreign arrivals. In Britain you leave home at 18. When I started university, I went to all the way up to Scotland, eight hours away, and rebuilt my life there. But in Tilburg, many of my then-colleagues had only studied here and hadn’t travelled much, and so they had a sense of, why are you here?

‘Tilburg was setting up a new tenure track, where you could get a full chair within five years. They headhunted me and a Greek guy. I came into this very Dutch group and the faculty line was: these two foreign people are the future of the faculty. We are going to internationalise the faculty through them.

‘People felt understandably threatened. Why are they promoted over us? They don’t even speak Dutch! On my very first day in Tilburg a senior actually said to me: ‘What’s so special about you anyway?’ She was part of the group that I was meant to be integrating into.’

Back then you said Tilburg University was very white and very male.

‘Well, it still is, as in most senior positions people are almost entirely white. And when I became a full chair, only two or three women in the faculty had full chairs. I started organising a monthly lunch for female academics, because networking and politics in a faculty is important if you want to climb the tree. Today more women are coming through as full professors. But we’ve all come up in a system that’s dominated by men.’

When did you really become aware of this?

‘When I started thinking about what it means to be a good leader. There’s still very much this one captain on a ship mentality, which socially, is quite a male approach, and not very collaborative. If you disagree with decisions taken in this way, there is a risk that you’re somehow placed outside the group. That can be a lonely and dangerous place to be. Sometimes people react just by ignoring you, or they start yelling, to force you into compliance.

‘We’ve seen all of this in the last 10 years. All faculties go through it. If you’re a tenured full chair, they can’t really harm you, but if you’re more junior, it is more threatening. That style of leadership is still quite predominant, although it’s now changing. My faculty has a lot of good heads of department.’

Has the attitude towards internationals changed as well?

‘Maybe I’m being naive, but today, the campus is very much one community. It’s mostly outside where people are asking: what are you doing here? In the 20 years I’ve been here, I feel that the Netherlands has become less friendly to foreigners, and more inward looking. I hear from some of our Indian colleagues that they get shouted at on the street. They feel less safe or certainly less welcome.’

What did you do to feel at home here?

‘Well, speaking Dutch obviously helps. And the Dutch love clubs, so I joined a running club and co-started a reading club. Clubs are my top tip for integrating into the Netherlands.’

In the faculty, she is known as ‘a bit of a trouble maker,’ says Goodwin. ‘This is partly why I was appointed on the faculty’s appointments and promotions committee, and the other part is because I care about diversity and inclusion.’ Today, universities are adapting and internationalizing and becoming a more welcoming place for international staff, she finds.

‘But in Tilburg our diversity comes from international students, not from within the Netherlands, and that is a real issue. We have staff from outside Europe with different skin colours and different backgrounds. But why does nobody make it to the top? We’re very good at diversity among doctoral students. We’re getting a little better at assistant professors, but there’s little diversity in the senior ranks.

‘This is something that the institution doesn’t seem to be interested in investigating, despite a number of us pointing this out. Why can’t we keep people from diverse backgrounds? We are not always able to create a situation in which people feel they can thrive and have a future here. There is a sense of: if you get with the system, you can thrive here.

‘It took me a long time to work out how to relate to other people’

‘The Dutch don’t like talking about structural racism or structural discrimination, or about their colonial past. These topics are much more discussable in Britain. But here, if you come in as a junior, and you start talking about these things straight away, you will put backs up, people feel like you’re attacking them.’

In the following hours, Goodwin will talk frankly about campus culture, cultural differences and climbing the academic tree as a woman. But first we delve into her own trajectory as a student, coming from a small village in Wiltshire, in the South of England.

‘It was a very rural 10th century village, of about 130 people and about 5.000 cows,’ Goodwin tells. ‘There’s one bus a day, so it’s really isolated. It’s that sort of idyllic old England that Dutch people imagine when they go to England. But as a teenager, you just think, I want out of this place.’

What type of person were you growing up?

‘I was quite an awkward kid. When I was four, I had a reading, writing and arithmetic age of 11. But it took me a long time to work out how to relate to other people.’

That sounds like a good recipe for being bullied.

‘Yes, smart girls get bullied, that’s the way of the world. And this is where my father was wonderful, he said: ‘Never hide that you’re smart.’ Which was great advice, but not when you’re seven and trying to fit in. Nobody likes a smart ass, and kids are mean. I didn’t have the coolest clothes either.’

What did your parents do?

‘My father was an IT logistics director and my mother was a midwife, up until the point that my brother was born. They both come from the poor working-class. My mother’s mother left school at 12 to be a bus conductor. My dad’s father died in the Second World War, so for the first few years they didn’t have a roof over their heads.

‘My father didn’t finish school and he was driving a bread lorry, until he met my mother, somewhere on holiday. She was like: I’m a trained nurse, but you are driving a bread lorry! So he went to night school. I’m the first person in our family to graduate from university.’

How did that feel?

‘I’ve always known that I wanted to study history, but my parents said: ‘Why aren’t you doing medicine or science?’ I did not have a game plan. I just applied to the top eight universities for history and then I picked Edinburgh because it is an amazing city and the university has a great history department.

‘My parents drove me up and said: ’Bye, we will see you at Christmas.’ It was the era before mobile phones and email. The scarier thing was going to Tübingen in Germany at 19, in my second year. I flew with my rucksack and my ghetto blaster. I didn’t speak a word of German.’

Were there any social codes you needed to adopt, coming from a lower middle-class background?

‘Entering an elite university, I struggled at first to fit in, although that is relative, of course. Everyone was from public school and trust funded, and I came from a state school comprehensive. I had a South West accent, people laughed at me. Without really thinking about it, my accent became posher.

‘I remember at 18 I was dating a guy who was the son of a count and lived in Richmond Park in London. I had saved up to go to the theatre and I put on my best clothes, because that’s what you do if you’re lower middle class. He was in ripped designer jeans and a jumper, because in the upper class, one can afford to do that. He just looked at me and said: ‘Oh no, we’re not going out with you dressed like that, that is so gauche.’

‘When I got to Florence for my PhD, I needed to read the novels that everybody else was reading, in order to be able to join those conversations. There were always books at home, but I wasn’t brought up with classical music, art or theatre. I self-taught because in the educated upper middle classes, one is expected to know something about art.

‘And I grew to love it. I am still amazed by the richness of cultural life here. In Britain, you have to visit London if you want to see a good exhibition. Here, every provincial town seems to have a quality museum.’

What kind of worldview were you brought up with?

‘We were a leftist and very European catholic household. My father and I talked a lot about things like apartheid, colonialism. He was a socialist when he was younger and did the anti-apartheid marches in the seventies in London. I sort of took that on in the 1980 and joined the African National Congress as a child.’

After studying history, you went to Nottingham Law School. How did that come about?

‘Edinburgh had offered me a PhD place, but I said no, I’m going to save the world, I want to become a human rights worker. After my one-year master at Nottingham I went off to start working at the European Roma Rights Center in Budapest. But soon I was beginning to have doubts about human rights work.

‘I did fieldwork with communities in Romania and Transcarpathia, and people were very much like: you’re making money from our suffering. Also, in academia you have freedom of thought. But in an NGO, it’s always about scrabbling for the next grant, so they very carefully and cautiously choose a line and you can’t question that line as a junior in the organization.’

What was that line exactly?

‘Roma and Sinti are the most discriminated group in Europe, but there was quite some violence against women within the community. We couldn’t talk about that, because you just muddy the waters, which makes it harder to get grants. I went in as a human rights person, and I came out as a critical legal scholar.’

You did a PhD in Florence, at the European University Institute. Sounds cushy.

‘Yes, my then-boyfriend came up with that idea. It is an elite academy for the European Union, where you get a full scholarship for four years to sit in Florence and do nothing but read and write a PhD. It was amazing. All these top academics rock up there, because they want to hang out in the Medici Villas in the hills above Florence. It’s an international bubble, with Italy as the backdrop.’

Was your move abroad in any way a criticism of the UK?

‘No, although Prince Charles certainly interpreted it that way. I managed to offend him when he came to the Institute and I had to give a speech. I talked about how wonderful it was to spend every day among the Cyprus trees. Afterwards he said, this is all very interesting, but when are you coming back to Britain?

‘And in total honesty I replied: ‘Why would I go back to Britain?’ Which was totally the wrong answer, of course.’ Goodwin chuckles. ‘Immediately I was de-invited from the tea afterwards.

‘But do I think moving away is a criticism? Not in the beginning, but going back to Britain seems hard now. I have lupus, which is an autoimmune disease, and I have brilliant treatment here, that is not possible in today’s Britain, where the health system is broken.

‘The other side is the culture. I’ve become more direct, and used to talking about emotions. I found that very difficult in joining a Dutch family, that everybody wants to talk about everything all the time. In my family, we don’t talk about things. If you’re upset, you just go outdoors. You take your upset somewhere else. You certainly don’t sit around the table discussing it.’

You never talk about how you feel?

‘Yes, no personal stuff. No emotional stuff. When my father was dying, he did not want to talk about his funeral, and I’ve never had a conversation with my mother and my brother about how they feel about his death.’

You became more aware of this when you moved to the Netherlands with your Dutch husband.

‘Yes, I met him in Italy, where he was a visiting professor. He had three teenage daughters, and for them it was a huge change. Their parents are getting divorced and then someone new shows up and she’s doesn’t speak Dutch and she’s 20 years younger. What the heck is going on? It was all very tense.

‘But people did not shout in my house when I was growing up. If you’re going to cry, you’re going to a room and shut the door and keep it private. So whenever my Dutch family started talking and dissecting, I was like, ‘Oh, I’ll just go make some more tea. Does anyone want a biscuit?’

Also in Britain, one was brought up to be ashamed of one’s body. I have never seen my parents in a swimsuit, let alone naked. I remember one time with my family in law, where someone said, why don’t we all go to the sauna? And I was like, jeez, that would entail years of therapy. I mean, naked in a sauna with my husband, I can deal with that. But his parents and his daughters and their boyfriends?!’

Goodwin springs up to make more coffee. These are great times to be teaching global law, she enthuses. ‘Law is by definition transnational now. We’re seeing transnational lawsuits, where Peruvian farmers are suing German companies in German courts for things they have done in Peru.

‘And courts are deciding to hear the cases, they’re giving standing to actors far beyond the traditional range of actors who could access the courts. Shell in Nigeria, for example, becomes subject to transnational litigation. This is super exciting, because it’s opening up accountability, where before, these corporations were completely untouchable.’

Meanwhile, the creating of law is no longer a mere state affair, Goodwin explains. ‘We used to have the idea that law was public and it was done by public bodies. Nowadays, you have all these non-state bodies who regulate and they are a mixture of public and private or they are private actors doing so, whether that’s regarding human rights or business. Of course, this also raises questions of legitimacy and democratic input.’

‘Students are more cynical and a bit more resigned to the way of the world’

600 to 650 students are studying Global Law now at Tilburg Law School, of which two-thirds are non-Dutch, Goodwin estimates. Does she think every international group feels equally comfortable on campus?

Goodwin: ‘I can’t really speak for, say, our African students. There are issues within the community, but it’s not necessarily to do with country of origin or skin colour. All the students are in these WhatsApp groups and there were a couple of incidents a few years ago about religion, that escalated into tensions between students.

‘Our students think that they’re incredibly diverse and in many ways from country of origin they are, but if you’re the kind of person at 18 who moves to a different country or who chooses a subject like global law, your parents are probably part of the diplomatic corps or working for the European Central Bank. These students tend to be very secular, yet they see themselves as very diverse and open-minded, but on religion they are not.

‘A Turkish student had written something fairly innocuous, like ‘Praise be to Allah’, in the WhatsApp group as a way of saying thank you to someone, and people went crazy. There were women coming to me saying we don’t want to work with this guy in a team anymore because we feel unsafe.

‘So, I got them around the table, trying to get them to see that simply because somebody follows Islam, doesn’t mean they’re necessarily going to think that you’re stupid because you’re a woman. There were a number of different incidents like that, where people said I don’t want to work with this person, because they are practicing Muslims.’

In your first year at Maastricht University, you got criticized for not speaking English properly.

‘On an evaluation form I got marked a three out of five for my language. I thought it was funny. But I had an Indian colleague who got similar comments in Tilburg and she was devastated by it. She’s not wrong to say that this was discriminatory on racial grounds, that they assumed India is not a native speaking country.

‘About eight years ago, we had complaints about English-speaking teachers. It was simply because students mainly learn their English from watching American television. So, if they listened to a Kenyan colleague or an Indian colleague speaking English, they would say, well, they don’t speak proper English. But they do speak native English, just with a different accent. It’s a question of the students learning to get their ear in.’

You said earlier that in some ways, the Dutch have become more inward looking. Do you see that happening with your students as well?

‘Yes, data show that law students in general have moved further into the conservative camp, so the nature of conversations in class is changing. I have a student who said in class: ‘It’s a well-known fact that women tend to make false rape claims.’

‘I said okay, let’s break this down. Known according to whom, and based on what statistics? Previously, no male student would have said that in a class on feminism and the law. Students are less human rightsy, they’re more cynical and a bit more resigned to the way of the world than perhaps we were when we were young.

‘We thought the world was getting better, and we wanted to be part of that. I think students today feel overwhelmed by the problems they face. My feeling is that they’ve become much more focused on their own lives, like what kind of job will I have afterwards?’

Knowing this, you teach classes which invites students to ponder questions about law and race and feminism.

‘Yes, and we have introduced classes on Anthropocene in the law, about the laws relation to climate change. I’m trying to show them how law is deeply implicated in global injustices. It can protect the weak but it is more likely to protect the powerful.

‘Students find it confrontational to think that law isn’t neutral, but you have to acknowledge the way in which law functions, to try and do good things with it. And then it becomes personal. You have to critically interrogate your own opinions. And ask yourself: why am I doing law? Of course, some students do law because they want to make a lot of money.’

How many percent of your students feel that way?

‘Probably about half. No, it’s probably a bit better. My course is designed to make them feel uncomfortable. Some students love it, some hate it. Some students don’t want to be made to feel uncomfortable. They say why the hell am I studying this? How am I going to use this to make money?

‘And I’m like, well, probably not, but it’s going to make you a better lawyer. And they’re like, um, no, thank you. I can’t make them care about law and feminism and law and race if they don’t want to. But I want to give them the opportunity to think in a more complex way about the law.

‘I think where you end up in life is chance, and that’s something I also tried to say in my inaugural speech, which a number of my colleagues were not hugely positive about. We always like to think success is about hard work and because we’re brilliant, obviously. And sure, you have to work hard, but there are a lot of people who work hard who don’t make it.

‘A lot of it is luck. Some people find that difficult to acknowledge. Afterwards some colleagues said, that was a strange thing to say, or: ‘It isn’t all about luck, is it?’ Well, I didn’t say it was all about luck. But becoming a professor at 38, there’s so much luck involved, right? Getting to the top in a system that’s not your own, you’re so dependent on other people’s goodwill, the luck of getting funding grants.’

Basically, it comes down to privilege?

‘Yes, that’s a good point. You can call it luck, or you can call it privilege. It’s both, obviously.’

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