The transparency platform “Frag den Staat” published further emails from the Ministry of Education led by the liberal FDP. The ministry took offence at the criticism of “police violence”.
Following an open letter on the eviction of a pro-Palestinian university occupation at the beginning of May, the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) even compiled a list of colleagues of some of the signatories who had read their work as reviewers. Consequences under funding law were to be examined for this extended group of people. This emerges from emails published by the transparency platform Frag den Staat (Ask the State) on Tuesday. According to this, a total of “15 current funding recipients” were discovered.
Until now, it was only known that the ministry under Bettina Stark-Watzinger (Liberal Democratic Party, FDP) wanted to determine which signatories of the letter received funding from the ministry. The ARD TV magazine “Panorama” had reported on this, sparking debate about the state of freedom of science and freedom of opinion in Germany.
The open letter was first signed by almost 400 lecturers from Berlin universities, with over 1000 supporters joining in. They criticised a brutal police operation at the Free University (FU) Berlin. Springer media then launched a campaign against the critical academics. Stark-Watzinger took part in this with a quote suggesting that the signatories were not “standing on the ground of the Basic Law”.
The ministry was already suspicious of the academics because of their critical stance towards the police: “The use of the term ‘police violence’ speaks for itself,” one of the emails stated. The Federal Ministry of Justice should therefore examine whether the open letter is constitutionally objectionable.
It is not clear from the emails who issued the instruction to create the list – the ministry blacked out the sender and addressees in its reply to “Frag den Staat”. These presumably came from the former State Secretary Sabine Döring, who was sent into early retirement by Stark-Watzinger – apparently to limit the damage caused by her affair.
The head of the ministry was apparently aware that the withdrawal of funding could not be justified under criminal or disciplinary law. It was considered a “political decision”, according to one of the emails. This met with resistance within the ministerial bureaucracy. One addressee replied to the instruction: “Is this really necessary? I don’t want to hide the fact that marking names in lists has caused great discomfort among colleagues.”
Contrary to the ministry’s previous assertion that the review of the consequences under funding law had been withdrawn, there is no evidence of this in the emails. However, these suggest that Stark-Watzinger herself was informed about the events – which she also claims is not the case.
The opposition in the Bundestag wants to raise the issue in parliament; the minister is expected to do so at a meeting of the Education Committee on Wednesday.
Published in German in „nd“.
Image: The Stark-Watzinger ministry even had colleagues of some of the signatories who had read their work as reviewers collected on a blacklist (Frank Gaeth, Bettina Stark-Watzinger 2023, CC BY-SA 4.0).
Leave a Reply