VUB awards honorary doctorate to Nobel laureate J.M. Coetzee

On Monday, October 13, 2025, at De Munt/La Monnaie, the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) awarded an honorary doctorate to South African-Australian writer, translator, and Nobel Prize winner John Maxwell Coetzee. With this distinction—the first he has received from a Dutch-language university—the VUB honors one of the most celebrated authors of our time: a thinker who uses literature as a tool for critical insight and moral imagination.

Coetzee is regarded as one of the most influential and innovative voices in modern world literature. His work poses sharp moral questions about power, violence, language, and responsibility, shaping generations of readers and thinkers.

Novels such as Disgrace, Waiting for the Barbarians, and Life & Times of Michael K confront readers with the limits of empathy and the complexity of human dignity. Throughout his career, Coetzee has exposed the power dynamics hidden in choices surrounding language, publishers, and platforms. His thematically and stylistically innovative body of work resonates deeply with the VUB’s humanist and multilingual mission.

​“The work and engagement of J.M. Coetzee reflect the values of the VUB: free thinking, moral courage, and intellectual responsibility,” said VUB Rector Jan Danckaert during his laudatio. “He stands among the great moral witnesses of our time. His oeuvre is dedicated to human dignity, justice, and freedom of expression—principles that also form the core of our humanist vision. For his exceptional literary achievements, academic contributions, and ethical commitment, it is a great honor for our university to confer upon him the title of Doctor Honoris Causa.”
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During the special evening, Coetzee himself gave a lecture and reading, accompanied by music from Belgian composer Nicholas Lens, inspired by his work. In his acceptance speech, Coetzee addressed the challenges facing science today.
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​“This university was founded as a free university, precisely to keep it free from dogma. I now see how science is being attacked in ways we could never have foreseen,” Coetzee said. “The attack is strongest in the U.S., a state once founded on Enlightenment principles, but where an anti-scientific, anti-progressive, anti-Enlightenment movement has arisen—suspicious of many assumptions of scientific knowledge and hostile to the idea of free inquiry that the university embodies. We see this hostility most dramatically in climate science and medical science. Climate science is dismissed as a hoax, while established practices and preventive medicine, such as vaccination, are treated as conspiracies to weaken others.
​I cannot let this occasion pass without offering a word of advice. My counsel is this: the anti-scientific movement is not composed solely of ignorant people who have fallen prey to nonsensical conspiracy theories. It also includes intelligent people who find the self-assurance and lack of humility typical of scientific thinking disturbing. They have particular difficulty understanding scientific statements expressed in the language of probability. We use the word ‘probable’ casually—it’s part of our everyday speech—but probability is, in fact, a difficult concept, even for philosophers. They should reflect deeply on what probability means in their practice and find ways to explain their work so that ordinary people can understand it. Much is at stake in today’s intellectual and political climate—not least the public’s understanding of science and the reputation of the modern university.”
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Pauwels Academy of Critical Thinking

The evening also marked the opening of the new PACT season at the VUB. With PACT – the Pauwels Academy of Critical Thinking, the VUB actively promotes critical thinking as a method. By organizing evenings with passionate thinkers and engaged scientists from Belgium and abroad, the university aims to show as wide an audience as possible that critical doubt, uncertainty, and evolving insights are not weaknesses but the driving forces behind real scientific and social progress. The ambition is that every participant goes home with a new idea or a new question. Only by consistently embracing this attitude can we find answers to the growing challenges facing our university, our society, and the world.

​VUB Professor Koert Debeuf serves as Academic Curator.

“I am honored to have been appointed Academic Curator of PACT, the Caroline Pauwels Academy of Critical Thinking at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB). The goal of PACT is to foster critical thinking by inviting speakers, organizing dialogues, and much more. We want everyone to leave our events with at least one new idea or one extra question mark. We are proud that our first speaker is J.M. Coetzee.”

​On the occasion of Coetzee’s visit to Brussels, his Dutch publisher Cossee is releasing Wereld en wandel van Elizabeth Costello (The World and Journey of Elizabeth Costello), a collection of new and reworked stories centered on his emblematic character. Coetzee is also working on a new opera project based on these texts.

About John Maxwell Coetzee

A life between languages, continents, and systems of knowledge

John Maxwell Coetzee (b. Cape Town, 1940) is a novelist, translator, essayist, and literary scholar. He studied English literature, mathematics, and linguistics, and earned his PhD at the University of Texas at Austin in 1968 with a dissertation on Samuel Beckett. He taught at universities in the United States and South Africa before settling in Australia in 2002, where he became an honorary research fellow at the University of Adelaide.

A Boundless Body of Work

Coetzee has written fifteen novels, as well as autobiographical narratives, essays, and critical studies. His novels Life and Times of Michael K (1983) and Disgrace (1999) each won the Booker Prize—a unique achievement in the literary world.

In 2003, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, confirming his status as one of the most important literary voices of our time.

His work explores themes such as apartheid, censorship, the position of the outsider, the relationship between human and non-human beings, and the ethical responsibility of literature.

Read the VUB interview with J.M. Coetzee here: https://www.vub.be/nl/nieuws/vub-reikt-eredoctoraat-uit-aan-jm-coetzee