Hanna Pfeifer: Die Verantwortung der Wissenschaft [The responsibility of science], Der Wiarda-Blog, October 4, 2025.
Hanna Pfeifer’s guest contribution on the question of how political science is and should be is a response to the FAZ article “Role reversal of activists and anti-academics” by Austrian sociologist Alexander Bogner and Swiss historian Caspar Hirschi, who advocate for a strict separation of roles between science and political activism. Their intervention was prompted by the International Sociological Association’s decision to suspend the institutional membership of the Israeli Sociological Association for failing to distance itself from the Israeli military’s crimes against Palestinians in Gaza. Pfeifer counters the authors’ demand for a separation of roles between science and activism by arguing that “science must ensure the preservation of its own creative conditions” and must therefore advocate “for democratic institutions, the preservation of fundamental rights and freedoms, and the protection of equal human dignity.” She adds that, in any case, science cannot be expected to “stand idly by and watch its own existence being undermined.”
↗ https://www.jmwiarda.de/index.php/blog/2025/10/04/die-verantwortung-der-wissenschaft