Last Friday, ‘Follow the Money’ revealed that a number of corporations not only sponsor, but also appoint professors at the UvA. Though the funding of chairs by private actors is not uncommon, the appointment of Tax Law professor Daniël Smit rings a number of alarm bells.

Tax advisory company ‘Ernst & Young Belastingadviseurs’ not only pays the salary of the occupant of this chair, they annually pay the UvA an extra 25 grant to do so, they forwarded him as a candidate, and their employees occupy multiple seats on the Appointment Advisory Committee (BAC) of this chair, according to Follow the Money.

This last point undermines the scientific integrity of the UvA, according to an expert Follow the Money source who wishes to remain anonymous. “The selection and appointment of candidates for such a chair should solely be done on academic grounds.”

On top of that, this calls into question the impartiality of the research by professor Smit. ‘Follow the Money’ spoke to tax law professor Jan van de Streek, who found himself in a similar position when he still worked for the UvA. He found that the tax advisory company that sponsored his chair – ‘Loyens & Loeff’ – did want to influence his work, so he severed ties with them. In a response to ‘Follow the Money’, however, professor Smit denies such allegations.

One of the authors of the article, Henk Willem Smits, told us that he is concerned with what this might mean for students: “If he teaches, students could get educated by someone that is there to serve the interests of Ernst and Young. This is especially important when looking at internship and career advice. When I asked the UvA if they clearly communicate such a potential conflict of interests to their students, they declined to comment.” When we asked the UvA about the lack of mention of Ernst and Young’s sponsorship, they admit that “it should have been there.”

Why the UvA accepted such an offer, Henk Willem Smits said that “attracting external funds is often expected from universities, it is almost a form of policy – though they might not need this as much if they were better funded. More important is that the universities have to be transparent about such appointments.”

Why did the UvA fail to be transparent about this appointment? In his article, Smits notes that by buying this chair and having a professor work for them, Ernst and Young buy prestige. “The advice of a professor has a higher market value”, notes an anonymous professor to Follow the Money.

Indeed, what makes for this to be prestigious is the idea that such a professor possesses extraordinarily valuable skills. Normally, there is an open competition for such a position, meaning that whoever becomes professor earned that function, which shows that they are someone special.

However, if this position had been ‘bought’, that would take away the prestige, since it would not have been this person’s special skills that made the professorship happen, but a bag of money. While it is up in the air if this is the case for Smits – UvA denies this – our university’s lack of transparency is quite unsettling by itself. This might suggest that it is in Ernst and Young’s interest that no one knows that Daniël Smits’ professorship at the UvA could have actually been ‘bought’. Otherwise Ernst and Young would lose the prestige of their professor. This potentially explains why the UvA failed to be transparent on this appointment. Smits agrees.

In a response to our inquiry, UvA denies that it had multiple Ernst and Young Employees on the BAC. The documents that FTM obtained oppose this.

This article is edited. We have softened our previously firm claim of ‘buying’ prestige in a response to comments made by the UvA. The UvA failed to provide an answer regarding the communication of possible conflicts of interests of professors towards students.