Challenged and prevailed: living in the Netherlands #decolonize

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image credit: Rosa Parks

I must have a privileged life being a scientist in the Netherlands and have never been confronted by any verbal harassment related to my ethnicity, origin and/or belief. Only just recently I learned to know what my daughter has been through during her secondary school and university stage. The kind of experiences that I never had because (a) I grew up in Indonesia in a homogeneous system of norms and values, and (b) in the Netherlands I live my daily life in a highly educated community that highly upholds professional ethics and collegiality, pretty much a filtered society. I feel now guilty that I did not recognize her experiences. I simply thought that everything was fine and smooth. Apparently, she dealt with it all along independently, overcoming the emotional burden without bothering her dad. However with such a challenge, her academic achievement and her thought for the society make her dad very proud of:

Karina's theses @ Universiteit Leiden

Clinical evaluation of ultra-high-field MRI for three-dimensional visualisation of tumour size in uveal melanoma patients, with direct relevance to treatment planning - PubMed (nih.gov)

Rootd. - The Platform for Muslim Professionals in The Netherlands and Europe (please support this initiative, e.g. by following in the LinkedIn )

Some of her adverse experiences have been disclosed to me below in the form of her private instagram posts following George Floyd incident in 2020:














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