You are a part of our academic community. Here at Leiden University, we pride ourselves on our motto Praesidium Libertatis – bastion of freedom – and cherish the tradition of academic freedom.

What does academic freedom mean? And how do we give shape to it in Leiden? The Academic Freedom Core Team considered these questions and presented its final report on 17 June.

On 5 May we celebrate freedom, a basic human right that should not be taken for granted. We asked international students and staff what it means to them.

Antoaneta Dimitrova, Professor Comparative Governance, presented the Cleveringa Lecture at the Vaclav Havel Library in Prague last week. We spoke to her about her experience.

It doesn't happen every day that the research project of a first-year bachelor’s student results in a scientific publication. And not only that, but as first author and on the cover of a leading physics journal. ‘We have given our lab education a thorough overhaul and it is paying off.’

Wouter Veenendaal, a political scientist at Leiden University, is an analyst for the Freedom House report. Freedom House is an American non-profit organisation dedicated to democracy, political freedom and human rights. In short, the report describes the degree of freedom and the state of democracy…

Research

Prof. Mark Leiser and a team of thirteen law students from Leiden University’s Advanced LLM programmes in European and International Human Rights Law as well as in Law and Digital Technologies together drafted a report for the UN Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of the Right to Freedom…

Is the right to choose your healthcare provider protected in the Dutch Constitution? What are the consequences then for the Dutch healthcare system? PhD defence on 5 July 2022.

Now that war is once again raging in Europe, the question of when you need to stand up against injustice has become more relevant than ever. In his Cleveringa lecture on 24 November historian Gert Oostindie will discuss why colonial domination was not regarded as an issue in Leiden for a long time.

Leiden University has had a turbulent week. There have been protests inside and outside our buildings that have evoked reactions, and students and staff have felt unsafe. We want with this message to look back at the past week and look forward to the future. What happened and how do we now want to move…

Conference, Webinar

Presentation

Welcome to Leiden University

In Nieuwsuur ging Michael Klos, docent/onderzoeker bij de Universiteit Leiden, ging bij Nieuwsuur in op ‘de Twitterfiles’.

Lecture, LUCIS Keynotes

LeidenGlobal Workshop

Lecture, Austrian Studies Fund / CEES Centre Evening Lecture

Debate

Lecture

Angry politicians, angry journalists: the initiative of Forum for Democracy politician Gideon van Meijeren during which he secretly filmed a reporter portraying them as a ‘sewer rat’, caused a lot of anger. Where does all this commotion come from? Wouter Hins: ‘Calling a journalist a "sewer rat" is…

Lecture

Lecture

Security seems to most people a basic necessity of life, a prerequisite for a good life. But if you think about it a little longer and deeper, as political philosopher Josette Daemen has done, you realise that security sometimes comes at the expense of other important goods, such as freedom and equality.…

Few people would associate the name Anton de Kom with Leiden. Yet the Surinamese freedom fighter is the subject of an exhibition at Museum De Lakenhal.

Students for Palestine – a group of students from Leiden and The Hague – are holding a panel discussion in the Leiden University in The Hague Wijnhaven building on Tuesday 24 May entitled ‘Silencing Palestine’.

Het voorstel van D66 om een wetsartikel zo te veranderen dat een politieke partij kan worden verboden, is onverstandig, zegt rechtsfilosoof Bastiaan Rijpkema. Hij spreekt er uitgebreid over tijdens een interview met de Volkskrant. ‘Het is overduidelijk bedoeld om één specifieke partij aan te pakken:…

When deciding what to study you undoubtedly read a lot of information about your study programme. Leiden University employs various systems to provide information about programmes and courses and to facilitate communication between lecturers and students.

Some study programmes help you monitor your own academic progress by assisting you in drawing up a study plan at the end of your first year.

In addition to compulsory elements, most degree programmes also have elective credits. These are credits you can earn in a variety of ways, for example by taking elective courses, studying abroad or doing a minor.

Willemijn de Best’s career path led her to the media sector. Besides the more obvious legal professions, a degree in law actually offers many other possibilities: film and television production with celebrities as clients, for example.

International Day of Education 2024 is dedicated to the role of education in countering hate speech. Assistant Professor Michael Klos says, 'When people are constantly derided online and that goes unpunished, they may start to withdraw from public discourse.'

The “tobacco playbook” is a term used for a set of misinformation, lobbying and propaganda tactics employed by the tobacco industry to safeguard its business model following the discovery of the link between smoking and lung cancer. Universities and medical research were pivotal to these tactics, and…

Aske Plaat is the scientific director of LIACS, the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Systems. He is also an ambassador for Leiden University's LGBT+ Network. His enthusiasm shines through when he explains why.