In the midst of the heated debate, a man called the principal: Hurry home, there's something dangerous in your mailbox.

Henrik Vestergaard Stokholm did not recognize the voice on the phone, and the man did not identify himself. Instead, he said that Henrik Vestergaard Stokholm should hurry home.

There is something in your mailbox, the man on the phone said. Something dangerous. Something you don't want your children to find.

At the time, Henrik Vestergaard Stokholm was the principal of Nyborg Gymnasium, and his children were two, six, and nine years old.

There was nothing in the mailbox, but the threat shook him, he says.

"I lost my illusions about what kind of society we live in. I am proud to be Danish. I am proud of our welfare society. But for the first time, I met people who wanted to do me harm," says Henrik Vestergaard Stokholm.

In a series of months in 2018, he received hateful messages and explicit threats in his mailbox and in physical letters. One of the letters, an envelope with a return address, still stands today in a frame on his office.

"Death over Islam. Traitor," it says on the envelope.

Behind the many angry messages was a long process involving two students at Nyborg Gymnasium.

Two Somali girls had their residency permits revoked and were supposed to be expelled from the 10th grade they were in and instead move to a detention center. Their mother had had her residency permit application rejected by the Immigration Service in October.

The mother had fled Somalia with the children in 2015 to avoid female genital mutilation. She had since remarried her husband, who had allegedly been tortured by the militant Islamic group al-Shabaab.

However, the Immigration Service did not believe her story, and they also suspected holes in her explanation. As a result, the entire family had their residency permits revoked.

Henrik Vestergaard Stokholm refused to expel the girls from school. Instead, he contacted a human rights lawyer and had them take up the case.

The principal also took the lead in a fundraising effort for the family, who had lost their benefits as a result of the decision, and he spoke out in numerous debates and interviews.

As a result, Henrik Vestergaard Stokholm – without fully understanding the consequences – had placed himself in the middle of the most heated and emotional debate of them all.

The immigration debate.

And just before a parliamentary election, when Social Democrats were expected to lose voters to the Danish People's Party. The waves could not get any higher, and that made the principal feel it.

Today, Denmark has nearly reached one million immigrants and their descendants. The low fertility rate in recent years means that most of the growth in the Danish population is due to immigration.

Immigration has significance for the Danish economy, culture, and politics, and the debate about immigration has been one of the most prominent issues in the public debate for the past 25 years.

In particular, the role of schools and gyms in integration has been debated. In 2019, when the case was ongoing, the discussion about so-called brown gyms – schools with a very high proportion of students with a non-Western background – was at its peak.

Henrik Vestergaard Stokholm was one of the leading voices in the heated debate as a gymnasium principal. That is why Berlingske has asked him to tell about the storm of 2019 and his view of gyms' role then and now.

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"A self-righteous and self-righteous Pharisee"

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In the course of the process, Henrik Vestergaard Stokholm received a great deal of criticism from politicians who believed that he had gone too far, given his mandate as principal.

On the parliamentary podium, Alex Ahrendtsen from the Danish People's Party asked a so-called §20 question of the then education minister Merete Riisager, asking:

"Does the minister believe that a principal can look at the Immigration Service's decision, and what consequences does the minister believe this should have for his employment?"

Later, the same Alex Ahrendtsen also wrote in an article that Henrik Vestergaard Stokholm was "a self-righteous and self-righteous Pharisee from Nyborg, who lives in his own little protected world with a relatively secure income on a gymnasium in a quiet neighborhood in Nyborg."

"I debated on P1 with Martin Henriksen. I debated on DR2 with Morten Messerschmidt and Inger Støjberg. And I got a lambasting. That wasn't what I had imagined when I said the girls could stay in school," says Henrik Vestergaard Stokholm.

There was also a complaint to the Board of Education and Quality, which launched an investigation into whether Henrik Vestergaard Stokholm had broken the law.

And in the end, the Immigration Service found that the girls' residency permits had been revoked unlawfully, and that they should be allowed to stay in Denmark.

"I was then completely worried. I was looking at what would happen to me and my family if I lost my job. I was pretty sure I hadn't broken the law, but what if I had?" says Henrik Vestergaard Stokholm.

The Board of Education and Quality did not express criticism, and the Ministry of Education concluded that the school had acted correctly and in accordance with the Constitution, as it did not expel the girls.

But there were also politicians who supported Henrik Vestergaard Stokholm. Among others, the then political leader of the Radical Left, Morten Østergaard, visited the school, where he stayed overnight.

Looking back, Henrik Vestergaard Stokholm regrets that he allowed it.

"I was very grateful for his help, and that meant something. But it's clear that I should have thought a little more about it. There was a long period where people called me the radical principal. And I'm not. I don't express my political views," he says.

Did you go too far in your role as principal when you threw yourself into this?

"I don't think so. But it's clear that there is a gray zone. But as principal, I am put in the world to take care of children and young people, and if there is something unjust, something that affects my students, then I speak up," he says.

Did you shut down the system? If everyone had acted like you when someone lost their residency permit, we would never be able to deport anyone?

"I see myself as one who exposed some flaws in the system. There were flaws in their cases, so I don't think I shut down anything," he says.

What if there had been no flaws, would you still have acted as you did?

"Yes. A society should be known for how it treats its weakest. And kicking people when they are down, I don't care about that, it's not Danish. Neighborly love should not end at the garden gate."

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Mixed students

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Today, Henrik Vestergaard Stokholm is principal of Niels Steensens Gymnasium on Østerbro, a smaller, Catholic school. Since the case of the two Somali students, he has become a well-known voice in the public debate, and he has written a book about children and young people.

He has also expressed his views on what he believes is the school's role in relation to integration on several occasions.

"The school should be such an empathy generator, where one learns that there are people in other life situations. We should dress the young people up to accept each other, we should teach them to be tolerant, and that's what they are. The young people are fantastic," he says.

At the same time as the debate about the two Somali students was raging, there was a heated debate in the media and the Folketing about so-called brown gyms with a high proportion of students with a non-Western background.

The debate culminated in a proposal from the Social Democratic government to introduce a new system for distributing students. Officially, the proposal concerned distributing students based on socio-economic conditions, but in reality, the goal was to distribute based on ethnicity to ensure a roughly equal distribution and avoid brown gyms.

The proposal was, however, buried, as Social Democrats went into government with Venstre and Liberals. And that is what Henrik Vestergaard Stokholm considers a shame.

"I sympathize very much with the idea that students should be mixed. And it's not about ethnicity, but we can see now that echo chambers are being created, both wealthy echo chambers and echo chambers with a different ethnic background, because they are looking for certain gyms. I think it is the school's responsibility to mix students," says Henrik Vestergaard Stokholm.

He does not believe, however, that it should be done exclusively with the intention of spreading students with a different Western background.

"All the problems that politicians stand and shout about on the podium, they don't really exist out on the schools. It's clear that there are some individual cases that are highlighted in the media. Fundamentally, children are fantastic at being together and accepting each other," he says.

Is it not just easy to say when you sit on a Catholic school on Østerbro, compared to if you had sat on a school in Høje Taastrup with a very high proportion of non-Western students?

"Agreed, but now I have had the good fortune to spend the last nine years on a multicultural school and know the competent people from Høje Taastrup, and they would say the same. They are so happy with their students. There are fantastic students," he says.

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