“Bild” and “BZ” accuse university lecturers of solidarity with an alleged “Jew-hating mob”. The Federal Minister of Education is boosting this smear campaign.
The series of articles in Springer media about university lecturers who have signed an open letter against police action at universities is causing controversy on social media. Many users approve of the reporting in “Bild” and “BZ”, while numerous others take offence at the headline “Universitäter” and the full-page layout. Postings are also shared that distance themselves from the content of the open letter, but describe the tabloid newspapers’ approach as “pranger”.
Around 120 researchers and lecturers at Berlin universities published a statement following the brutal eviction of a protest camp against the Gaza war at Freie Universität (FU) last week. It criticises the management for “handing the students over to police violence”. On Monday, 370 people were counted as signatories and 900 were named as supporters.
On Wednesday, the newspapers accused the signatories in an article of backing a “Jew-hating mob” at the FU, whose slogans were reminiscent of the National Socialists’ “Final Solution to the Jewish Question” (the so-called “Endlösung”). Federal Education Minister Bettina Stark-Watzinger (Liberal Democratic Party) quoted this article on X and wrote that university occupiers were being “victimised and violence trivialised”.
Naika Foroutan, head of the German Centre for Integration and Migration Research and one of the original signatories, also commented on the article on X, albeit critically: “Bild” will soon also attribute the cry “Viva Viva Palestine” to National Socialism, wrote Foroutan. The tabloid’s head of politics responded with another article and the misleading headline “Professor disturbs with Hitler slogan”.
On 10 May, the day commemorating the burning of Nazi books in 1933, the third article on the matter finally followed in “Bild” and “BZ”, portraying some of the signatories and listing all of them – but without reproducing the statement that ultimately calls for reflection and calm.
One of the better-known signatories of the open letter is professor and concertmaster Michael Barenboim. “Freedom of expression applies to everyone, except when they want to speak out in favour of Palestine,” he stated in an interview with broadcaster RBB. The anti-Semitism researcher Peter Ullrich expressed a similar view: “The lecturers have spoken out in favour of the fundamental right to freedom of expression and assembly and for universities as spaces for discourse without police, for the right to articulate protest on the occasion of the Gaza war – without adopting the aims of this protest as their own,” says Ullrich to “nd”.
In the meantime, the management of the FU has also reacted to the media coverage. “We strongly condemn the defamation of individual academics at our university by the Bild newspaper. We are considering taking steps under media law,” it says in a two-sentences press release published on Sunday.
Published in German in „nd“.
Image: The last of a serial of articles in the German tabloid “Bild” (screenshot).
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