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Recruitment

The role of secretary to the committee has now been filled by Andrea Kis. Profiles for the committee members have been drafted and recruitment is underway. The chair will be recruited first, so that together with them the other members can be selected. Unfortunately, attracting a suitable chair is progressing less smoothly than expected, which has caused some delay in the process. The aim now is to recruit a committee chair before the end of the academic year and the other members as soon as possible after that.

In addition, recruitment and training will soon begin for the pool of people who will be available for the Moral Deliberations, which are an important element in the procedure. This will ultimately involve around one hundred people, but we will start with a pilot group of ten to fifteen.  Committee secretary Kis is currently translating the advice report into the process, tools and documentation needed for the smooth implementation of the advice. All in all the aim is to have the whole system operational before the end of this year.

The procedure

Quartermaster and emeritus professor Niek Lopes Cardozo, who drafted the procedure together with a working group, worked from the principles that the assessment process must be careful, yet also efficient and simple from the researcher鈥檚 perspective. As such it should save time for researchers as they don't have to individually invest into researching compliance and morality.

The procedure primarily addresses the following questions: are there national or international restrictions, for example in the area of knowledge security; can the collaboration be linked to systemic human rights violations; is it sustainable and does the collaboration conflict with the 黑料福利网 CORe values? The procedure is to be used for all collaborations of the university, but the main focus at the start is on research collaborations.

Individual researcher

The procedure places the responsibility for assessment as low as possible in the organization (see the flow chart below). It always begins with the individual researcher who wishes to initiate a collaboration. The reesearcher completes a short online assessment of just a few minutes, which is signed off by the responsible supervisor.

An important goal here is to raise awareness among researchers that, when deciding whether to start a project, they also need to consider potential sensitivities relating to the topic, the project partners, or the combination thereof.

This process will be embedded with all other and already existing mandatory project initiation processes, so that researchers will not need to familiarize themselves with an additional system.

The vast majority of proposals will receive the green light at this level. However, if a risk is identified or if the collaboration involves a formal agreement, the assessment is escalated to the department board (see flow chart).

Department Board

The department board may requests a risk assessment from the Expert Team (ET) at General Affairs, which already exists. If the risk is low, the project can proceed. If the risk is medium, the principal investigator (PI) decides for individual collaborations, and the department board decides in the case of agreement based collaborations (ABCs). For high鈥憆isk individual collaborations, the PI and department board jointly reach a decision. ABC's with a high risk are escalated to the Committee for Responsible Collaborations.

Committee for Responsible Collaborations and Moral Deliberation

The Committee has several means to work towards an advice on the collaboration. The committee may ask expert teams, it may organize community dialogues, and it can put the case before a Moral Deliberation. This deliberation is conducted by a representative group of 10鈥�15 people from the 黑料福利网 community, selected from a larger pool that has undergone basic training and is knowledgeable on the subject. The Moral Deliberation examines the moral dimension of the collaboration, taking into account the interests of the various stakeholders, using frameworks provided by the Committee 鈥� such as the CORe values, general academic values, human rights, etc.

The Committee uses the outcomes to formulate its advice to the Executive Board, including an impact analysis. The Executive Board then makes the final decision on the collaboration.

Defense鈥憆elated projects

Defense鈥憆elated collaborations will in principle always be submitted to the Committee for Responsible Collaborations. The procedure will differ somewhat here, as this concerns a large volume of often small projects, making individual submission to the Committee and the Moral Deliberation impractical. The final approach is still to be determined.

Broader mandate

In addition to assessing collaborations, the Committee for Responsible Collaborations can also provide broad advice to the Executive Board regarding how the university positions itself in relation to societal issues and developments. After all, the societal role of the university extends far beyond its set of collaborations: the university has an important voice in the public debate, without this implying political positioning.

鈥淎n excellent foundation for the Committee鈥�

鈥淚t is important that we scrutinize our collaborations more thoroughly, but at the same time we must keep in mind that collaborations are vital to the university,鈥� says Koen Janssen, president of the Executive Board. 鈥淲e highly appreciate the extremely thorough approach taken by Niek and his team, who consulted widely both internally and externally. The result is a very balanced, well-considered, and at the same time 鈥榣ean鈥� approach that provides an excellent foundation for the Committee鈥檚 work, without placing excessive burden on the organization.鈥�

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