Pro-Gaza academic blacklist: Calls for minister to resign

Calls for German Federal Education and Research Minister Bettina Stark-Watzinger to resign are mounting as more indications surface that she was informed about plans in her ministry to discipline academics supporting protests against Israel’s Gaza campaign.

Pressure on Stark-Watzinger has been building up since it was revealed that senior officials at the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) had started blacklisting academics who signed an open letter backing students’ right to peaceful protest and stressing fears of Israel commencing its bombardment of Rafah in the South of Gaza.

The “Statement by Teachers at Berlin Universities” was initially signed early last May by around 400 Berlin lecturers, although more than a thousand staff throughout Germany subsequently added their signatures.

Stark-Watzinger said that she was “appalled by the letter”.

Senior officials at the BMBF were instructed to assess possible service law and criminal law sanctions against the letter’s signatories. In addition, the option of withdrawing support from those among the signatories funded by the BMBF was to be reviewed.

A second open letter

A television report revealing these steps in mid-June sparked further protest and another open letter, an “Open Statement on the Federal Education Minister’s Action concerning the Open Letter by Berlin University Teachers”.

This letter, now signed by more than 3,000 academics throughout Germany, states that Stark-Watzinger “is no longer tenable” as minister of education and research, pointing out that imposing service law sanctions on university teachers is up to the state governments, as their employers, that criminal law is not within the remit of the BMBF, and that withdrawing funding approvals “clashes with all principles of constitutionally guaranteed academic freedom”.

The letter goes on to state that giving internal instructions to nevertheless instigate such measures “is a sign of being ignorant of constitutional law and amounts to political abuse of power”, and that it reflects “an increasing rift between decision-makers at the BMBF and those maintaining the higher education and research system through their research and teaching”.

The letter adds that “repressive examination of academics going public with their critical opinions on political decisions is a familiar phenomenon of authoritarian regimes, which also systematically curb free discussion at universities.

“Even the appearance of free debate in society, possibly being restricted, does damage to our democratic society and Germany’s worldwide reputation as a higher education and research location.”

Axing of state secretary

Stark-Watzinger responded to this letter by sacking her state secretary for research, Sabine Döring, blaming her for initiating plans to earmark signatories of the first letter for the cancellation of ministry funding. The minister insisted that she herself had only learnt of the blacklisting measure through the television programme on 11 June.

However, according to Germany’s leading news magazine Der Spiegel, two of the ministry’s departments had already been instructed to draw up a list of those signatories receiving funding via the BMBF on 10 May.

And, Der Spiegel maintains, only two days later, the ministry’s press office began to announce the names of signatories receiving BMBF funding.

Germany’s TV channel Norddeutscher Rundfunk showed its viewers internal ministry email communiqués with requests to assess the option of withdrawing BMBF funding as a disciplinary measure.

Responding to an inquiry via an instalment of this channel’s Panorama programme on 11 June, with reference to the first open letter, the ministry stated: “The BMBF has undertaken a legal classification of the Open Letter.

“It can be said that the Open Letter is still covered by what is constitutionally guaranteed as freedom of opinion, which is why the Letter has no further consequences. Any further speculation is therefore unwarranted.”

Calls for minister’s resignation

Schleswig-Holstein’s State Minister of Education, Science and Culture Karin Prien, of the Christian Democratic Union, the major opposition party at federal level, claims that state secretary Döring has merely been used as a sacrificial pawn.

Thomas Jarzombek, the party’s education policy spokesman, recommended that Stark-Watzinger resign, whereas the Green Party’s Kai Gehring, who heads the Federal Parliament Committee on Education, Research and Technology Assessment, defended the minister, stating that Stark-Watzinger has “demonstrated her unwavering support of academic freedom”.

Michael Gardner can be contacted at michael.gardner@uw-news.com