Technically, Al-Daffaie was already a professor when he came to TU/e from Germany as a guest. “In Germany, there is a different system in which you are immediately called a professor,” he explains. When he made the actual move to Eindhoven, however, he automatically fell under the Dutch system and ‘lost’ his title: he became an assistant professor. “That was a weird feeling,” Al-Daffaie recalls.

It felt even stranger when he attended his first PhD defense in the Netherlands. “Almost everyone around me was wearing a gown. Everything looked very official. And then there’s this man with a staff who walks in (the beadle, ed.). I thought: where have I ended up? In Germany, everyone just wears a suit.” He also noticed something else: one of his colleagues wasn’t wearing a gown. “He wasn’t allowed to, because he wasn’t a full professor.”

Recognition

That experience made wearing a gown into a goal for Al-Daffaie. “As a symbol of what you’ve achieved.” Being allowed to wear the robe now, and to call himself professor, doesn’t change his core ambition: to be promoted and eventually become a full professor. He sees the gown and title more as recognition for the work he is already doing—work that is far from minor. 

For Al-Daffaie, the fact that assistant and associate professors can now also obtain ius promovendi—the right to supervise PhD students as the first promoter—may be even more important than the recognition that comes with the gown. He is still in the process of obtaining this right but is already supervising four PhD candidates, with a fifth on the way. In his view, it is precisely assistant and associate professors who do most of the supervision work, and they deserve the right to hand over the degree and give the accompanying speech. “That task shouldn’t fall to someone who may have only met my PhD candidate twice.”

Hesitant

Al-Daffaie hopes more of his colleagues will embrace their new title. For now, he notices that many of them remain hesitant. “They think it doesn’t apply to them, or they don’t believe it’s real.” MomenTUm, he believes, is the perfect occasion to show that it is indeed real and that they have just as much right to walk in the cortège as full professors.

Room for improvement

Al-Daffaie is pleased with the “everyone professor” policy but believes the title should then be used consistently. He sees that colleagues don’t always do so, and even on the TU/e website, only “dr.” is listed next to his name, not “prof. dr.” The reason for this, explains Julma Braat, policy advisor for Recognition and Rewards at Human Resources Management, is that TU/e continues to adhere to the official Dutch system of titles. 

“The address title professor is meant to give recognition and highlight people’s expertise, but at the university, we still distinguish between the different positions (assistant/associate professors and full professors, ed.), each with their different tasks. In the PhD committee and on the thesis, the official titles are also used. That is why it made sense for the university to keep them”, she says. Al-Daffaire doesn’t see the sense in it and is still hoping that the university will take a second look from a different perspective.

This article was translated using AI-assisted tools and reviewed by an editor.