Marion Detjen: „Diese Resolution zerstört den freien Diskursraum an Unis“ [“This resolution destroys free discourse at universities.”], Neues Deutschland, January 30, 2025.
The resolution is self-contradictory, above all because it makes scientific excellence the sole criterion for determining whether research projects are worthy of funding, while at the same time seeking to prescribe a single definition of anti-Semitism for science: the IHRA definition, which, because of its vagueness, allows for an arbitrary interpretation of so-called Israel-related anti-Semitism. Politically prescribed definitions are an absurdity in science. But the resolution does not bode well in other respects either: it wants “reporting offices” that are supposed to cooperate with the security authorities; teachers are to be indoctrinated in special seminars and themselves forced to indoctrinate; knowledge of the complex circumstances in the Middle East will therefore not increase, but decrease. The promise given in the title of the resolution, “to ensure freedom of discourse,” is being turned into its opposite.