To combat fascism and preserve the achievements of progressive politics, we need strong institutions. These institutions are essential for protecting fundamental rights and ensuring access to basic necessities, such as housing, food, and education. The university is one such institution. Here, knowledge is preserved and constantly questioned. However, as Laura Katharina Mücke explains in her end-of-semester report, this democratic space within the university is currently in grave danger.
*
Concerns about the situation at universities are evident in two key issues. First, the utterly hopeless situation that university work represents for the vast majority of scholars in Germany due to the restrictive Academic Fixed-Term Contract Act (#ichbinreyhan, #ichbinhanna) and the neoliberal competition-and-excellence paradigm. And second, the impossibility of critically addressing the (shared) responsibility of German universities for global human rights violations and neocolonial structures.
Compounding this situation is the pre-fascist erosion of democratic structures through bureaucracy, evident, for example, in (albeit perhaps not always intentional but) structurally effective budget cuts, as well as in overt right-wing attacks on teaching staff at schools and universities, who are then left to deal with the attackers on their own. This multifaceted hopelessness of the university as an institution hits hardest those who already have the worst chances for education, participation, and earning a living – people with a migrant background, people raising children, people who depend on medical care. But this situation also threatens the university itself – as a mediating, not a neutral, institution.
Who are we talking about?
In this article, I would like to argue that the university as an institution is in danger unless its approach to at least these two core issues changes quickly. I am not referring here to the position of tenured professors, who – scarred by the ordeal of the sole path to tenure in the outdated chair system – often, though rarely discussed, suffer from overwork and isolation themselves, while at events they sometimes have to fear being attacked for their critical and analytical stance.
I am speaking of my own position as part of the mid-level academic staff – who, at nearly 40 years old and having completed a doctoral dissertation with honors, continues to ‘contribute to research’ as a ‘junior scholar’ without budgetary responsibility – and who, with a fixed-term position in fields such as Gender Studies, Critical Theory, and Postcolonial Studies, must expect to fall victim to elitist willful blindness as a sacrificial pawn in the coming years. But this is not about me; it’s about the bigger picture.
Anti-democratic attacks
As the summer semester draws to a close, universities in Germany are facing a devastating record of anti-democratic attacks. They are also facing a dismal showing in international education rankings. The blame for this dire situation, however, does not lie with ‘leftist,’ ‘critical,’ or ‘queer’ discourse, as is sometimes claimed, because – rightly – it questions positivism and objectivity, challenging who is allowed to call themselves an ‘expert’ and on what grounds, and what pillars the university system is actually built upon.
Rather, the blame lies with those reactionary voices that accuse research sensitive to power and discrimination – such as that in gender studies and postcolonial studies, but also in political theory, sociology, history of science, anthropology, contemporary history, and so on – of precisely its critique of power, while brandishing the buzzword ‘academic freedom’ in a way that empties it of meaning.
The summer semester that is now drawing to a close has demonstrated this: there was the absurd, awkwardly silent tolerance of physical assaults against activists and abuse of power by male professors, which came to light prominently at the University of Leipzig, for example, at the end of last year and continue to have repercussions to this day.
So-called academic freedom
There were the numerous venue bans on Palestine-solidarity or Israel-critical events, which can be seen as a bitter continuation of the expulsion of the philosopher Jason Stanley from the synagogue in Frankfurt, where he was prohibited from referring in his academic lecture to the different stances of his two Jewish parents regarding the founding of the Zionist state. There was the tacit acceptance of the phasing out of professorships in gender studies (such as at the Berlin University of the Arts) and the dismissal of equal opportunity officers (such as at the Catholic University of Applied Sciences Berlin), even though gender studies is basic research.
In the Bundestag, there were the same old pleas to continue working on ‘reforms,’ while a position paper from the German Science Council has long advised abolishing chairs that reinforce hierarchy. There is the fact – one hardly dares to say it out loud – that Germany, through research and weapons and invoking the absolute primacy of protecting Jewish life in Germany (as important as this is in principle, but certainly not exclusively!), is supporting the genocide – in violation of international law – of a nation that distinguishes itself by normalizing the maxims of openly far-right, violence-prone politicians.
Amid ‘reforms’ and ‘special regulations,’ the message that really matters gets lost: The safeguarding (not: securitization) of the university fails due to the hypocritical upholding of its own “phantasm of sovereignty,” to use Kim Posster’s term, at the expense of others. What is referred to as a ‘need for reform,’ however, has already degenerated at much deeper levels: While demands for the rule of law, humanism, sustainability, and a critique of capitalism may take center stage (here I can recommend the book “Universal gescheitert” by Lisa Niendorf (@frauforschung)), in the background even the university’s most basic protective function is already losing its footing.
What will be needed in the coming years
In the coming years, the focus will have to be on defending scholars against overt attacks. It will have to be about allowing for a heterogeneous culture of remembrance (and thus: identity formation). Celebrating post-migrant diversity, for example, would mean accepting that the long-awaited shared ‘values’ cannot be enforced through ‘reasons of state.’ It will be necessary to update the much-vaunted ‘German sense of shame’ in the face of its ‘own’ Nazi past to make it sensitive to anti-Muslim racism.
We need a university as an institution where value is defined by people and humanity, not by output. And it is not the (easily justifiable) platitudes like “peace,” “equality,” or “charity” that will help us move forward. Rather, we need university-based care work – work that must be confrontational, uncomfortable, and self-critical. The AfD’s lead in the polls (which we’re all against, aren’t we?) shows: We don’t have time to convince even the last skeptics of power-critical research that these are self-evident truths. We don’t have time to use terms like “patriarchy” and “neocolonialism” only with constant caution out of deference to individualistic sensitivities – the shame must shift to the other side.
Challenges for ‘the next generation’
For young people (or ‘the next generation’), it must feel as though feudalism is being reintroduced beneath the seven seals of democratic erosion and economic growth. However, as Jodi Dean writes, this feeling is not solely related to technological advancement and algorithmization. On the contrary: the semester scenario I’ve outlined here is also one that correlates with a broader political situation that is being decided over the heads of the thousands upon thousands of people demonstrating against the far right.
For young (and also for older) people, precariousness is currently multiplying: militarization is simply rubber-stamped under the banner of ‘internal defense’ rather than external solidarity; conscription for young men is not only accepted but will also result in them being monitored during future trips abroad. The so-called pension reform normalizes the re-individualization of care work (the nuclear family, as capitalism’s invisibilized buffer, sends its regards!) and, in the name of population growth, further entrenches exploitative conditions for women’s bodies.
Erosion of institutional protection
The government is cutting the salaries of psychotherapists – whom students (and faculty!) so desperately need – on the grounds that it must save money, while civil servants and the wealthy remain completely untouched. Democracy programs are being scrapped and support centers for victims of violence are threatened with closure, while behind the scenes, the revocation of citizenship without due process – for example, for social media posts deemed anti-democratic – has long since begun, reintroducing ‘biological German-ness’ and indifferent obedience as the norm without any consequences. And then, a few days ago, came the news about the planned restriction of the Freedom of Information Act, which in the future will make it more difficult for critical oversight bodies such as Frag den Staat and Verfassungsblog to obtain any information at all about proceedings within government agencies.
The much-vaunted security is crumbling for everyone, because institutional protection hardly exists anymore – as demonstrated not only 17 years ago by the trial surrounding the Islamophobic attack against Marwa El-Sherbini, but also currently by the cases against Maja T., against activists from the Global Sumud Flotilla, and against climate activists.
No perspectives for education?
For life at universities, this will literally mean the everything: While in some places people rail that one should surely expect scholars to sacrifice their lives for science, the only response – viewed with resignation from the precarious perspective of those on the inside – is: Today’s students, even those interested in academia, have long since turned away from the university, regretfully, because they have the interest but simply lack the money to bridge periods of unemployment and self-funded research trips.
They turn away because they do not see their perspectives or their voices represented, or worse, out of fear that they might no longer be allowed to express solidarity with the powerless at all. The obligation to engage in political, critical, and confrontational care work (= education) at universities is enshrined in the Basic Law. But will it still be possible to carry it out in a few years?
Editor’s note: The author would like to thank everyone who supported her in examining the cases discussed in this article.