Column: Tonie Mudde
'Ir.' Title
« former article | content | next article »
Category: Column
» article in pdf
“Where can I find out whether anyone rightly uses the title ‘ir’?” This question was asked on the LinkedIn forum for TU Delft alumni last year, but for some reason it keeps crossing my mind.
I once lived in the same student house as P., an eccentric character who had fooled everyone into believing that he had just graduated and was looking for a home of his own. That shouldn’t have been a problem, as he was newly employed by TNO and earning a good salary working on wind tunnel research. He left for work every morning, in a smart suit and carrying his laptop bag. Nobody suspected a thing until a bailiff appeared. P. was found the same day, crying in his car in a remote car park. In his smart suit with his laptop bag. He had failed a couple of subjects but failed to tell anyone; hence, he became entangled in an everincreasing web of lies.
What I mean is: some Ps live the lie for a lot longer, maybe even for their entire careers.... On LinkedIn, alumni have suggested various ways of unmasking these frauds. Simply ask to see their diplomas, someone commented, a suggestion which reminds me of the ‘authenticity documents’ that accompany Old Master paintings. If anyone is able to forge a Vermeer, complete with 17th century craquelure, then surely he could also manage to forge an A4 document with a few stamps on it. I had another look at my own diploma: easy enough to photoshop into a fake that any unsuspecting employer would accept. A digital archive perhaps? A public website with the names of all Dutch ‘ingenieurs’? Hardly seems watertight, either. Look at Wikileaks, and the recently hacked DigiD site: the power of a nerd with a laptop knows no bounds. He can erase your title at the push of a button. Or worse still: change the ‘ir.’ in front of your name to ‘drs.’.
I’m afraid we’ll just have to accept the situation. Unless you have an army of detectives to verify every CV, you’ll never know for sure whether or not an applicant is telling the truth, although my advice would be: if in doubt, trust your intuition. I mean, suppose someone claims to have a degree in aerospace engineering, but the most he can do is to type frivolous columns. Now that would set off my warning bells.
