Thierry Henri Philippe Baudet (born 28 January 1983) is a Dutch politician, academic and author. He is the founder and leader of Forum for Democracy (FVD), and has been a member of the House of Representatives since 2017. He also serves as the party’s parliamentary leader.
Baudet was born in Heemstede into a family of partial Walloon ancestry. His forefather Pierre Joseph Baudet immigrated to the Batavian Republic in 1795 when his home in Hainaut was annexed by the French Republic, fleeing from conscription into the French Army. Baudet’s great-great-grandmother Ernestine van Heemskerck was born in the Dutch East Indies and was of partly Indonesian parentage. Baudet attended the Haarlem gymnasium, i.e. a high school with compulsory Latin and Ancient Greek. His first degree, from the University of Amsterdam, was in history, and from 2007 to 2012 he was a lecturer at Leiden University, where in 2012 he graduated as a Doctor of Philosophy with a thesis on national identity, European identity, and multiculturalism. This was co-directed by the philosopher Roger Scruton and was published in Dutch as The Assault on the Nation-State. An English translation was also published, called The Significance of Borders.