We sent the following letter today to the President of Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Prof. Dr. Julia von Blumenthal.Dear President Prof. von Blumenthal,
the escalation of antisemitic protests and disruptive actions at German universities has created a climate of antisemitic violence which has now led to a violent assault by an FU student on his Jewish fellow student. The only right answer to this violence is the implementation of concrete measures which turn the universities back into places of scholarship and discourse and rule out violence preventively.
In the course of this, the Berlin Higher Education Act is now to be reformed and the possibility of expelling perpetrators of violence is to be created. We would like to thank you for your clear stance and your support for this legislative reform and to encourage you in your position.
At the end of February, the Referent_innenrat (RefRat) of Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin voiced criticism of the reform project and spoke of concern about political repression.
“Expulsion can mean the loss of BAföG and of accommodation in student halls of residence. For students whose residence status depends on their student status, forced expulsion can mean the loss of any basis of existence, up to and including deportation“[1], the RefRat’s statement says.
It is difficult to comprehend how a body which demands officer posts for those affected by violence at the university can at the same time campaign for the protection of perpetrators instead of victims. As a reminder: the disciplinary law which applied in Berlin until 2021 on the basis of the Higher Education Framework Act regulated how to deal with students who, through the use of violence, through calls for violence or through threats of violence, impaired, prevented or attempted to prevent the operation of a higher education institution, the activity of a university body, the holding of a university event or the running of studies in any other way.[2]
That correspondingly violence-prone behaviour must not be tolerated ought to be self-evident and beyond debate. Victims of this violence must not be expected to have to sit on in seminars with their attacker, or to remain exposed to this threat on the university campus. The
reintroduction of disciplinary law, supplemented by the possible expulsion of perpetrators of violence, is therefore only logical.
While the RefRat claims that this is not an effective solution for dealing with antisemitism, we would like to emphasise that this measure can offer protection to all victims of verbal and physical violence – whether queer, PoC, Muslim, Jewish or affected by multiple discrimination. The accusation put forward by the RefRat in this context, that the protection of marginalised groups is being used as a pretext for right-wing politics, “in order to push through authoritarian measures, while otherwise a great deal of agitation is stirred up and little attention is paid to the concerns of those affected”[3], is therefore a populist smokescreen by which one must not allow oneself to be misled.
Since the RefRat points to uncertainties in the definition of antisemitism, we would like to remind you of the resolution against antisemitism at universities adopted by the HRK in 2019, which endorses the IHRA working definition of antisemitism.[4] For Humboldt-Universität, as for other universities and higher education institutions, this should clearly define where the limit of freedom of expression lies and where antisemitism begins.
We thank you for your clear stance against inhumane ideology at the HU and for your condemnation of antisemitism.
We politely point out that we will communicate this letter and your reply publicly – unless you instruct us otherwise. Personal contact details and signatures would be redacted in the process.
I am happy to be available for a conversation or for any queries.
Yours sincerely
Elio Adler
Chairman
[1] https://www.refrat.de/article/PMOrdnungrecht.html.
[2] § 28 HRG (old version) (BGBl I 1987, 1178 of 23.04.1987).
[3] https://www.refrat.de/article/PMOrdnungrecht.html.
[4] https://www.hrk.de/positionen/beschluss/detail/kein-platz-fuer-antisemitismus/.President von Blumenthal replied to our open letter today. You can read her reply here.Reply to the open letter from Werteinitiative e.V. jüdisch-deutsche Positionen of 18.03.2024
Dear Mr Adler,
I would hereby like to reply to your open letter. We are united by great concern in the face of the growing antisemitism in Germany. I am therefore pleased about your positive appreciation of my position. At the same time, I would nevertheless like to clarify a few points.
You write correctly that I support the reintroduction of a disciplinary law into the Berlin Higher Education Act. This gives the higher education institutions once again the equivalent of employment law and disciplinary law for the large group of students. The comparison with employment law for salaried staff and with disciplinary law for civil servants shows at the same time that, in my view, the expectations currently associated with disciplinary law go far beyond its future effect and relevance. The application of disciplinary law is strictly bound to the constitutional principle of proportionality and requires the higher education institutions to establish the facts of each case carefully. Expulsions will therefore only take place in particularly serious individual cases; even milder sanctions will only be imposed where the situation can be clearly established and a sanction is justified at all.
Against this background I can also well understand the concerns of the organised student body. It will be very demanding for the higher education institutions to compose the disciplinary committee in such a way that it can perform its task in a legally correct manner and while upholding constitutional standards. The offences on which sanctions can be based must be described with sufficient precision in order to avoid abuse of disciplinary law.
Even so, I am in favour of the reintroduction of disciplinary law. Disciplinary law for civil servants, too, is applied in the form of the harshest sanction, removal from service, only extremely rarely, and is then always subject to judicial review. It is similar in employment law. Dismissals on conduct grounds are a rare exceptional case and are open to judicial review. Even so, it is necessary to have these instruments available for serious extreme cases.
It is with a certain concern that I note that disciplinary law is credited with having a great effect on combating antisemitism. I do not share this expectation. Antisemitism is a social phenomenon. As the current study1 “Studentisches Meinungsklima zur Gewalteskalation in Israel und Gaza und Antisemitismus an deutschen Hochschulen” by Thomas Hinz, Anna Marczuk and Frank Multurs shows, antisemitism is not more deeply entrenched at higher education institutions than in society as a whole. While general antisemitism is in fact considerably less widespread at higher education institutions (8% compared with 18%), Israel-related antisemitism is observed to a similar extent as in society (8% entrenched in each case and 12% and 9% respectively as a tendency, p. 23). When naming the spaces in which antisemitism is experienced, higher education institutions, at 11%, come far behind the internet, the media and the political sphere (p. 20). Even so, higher education institutions have an important task in combating antisemitism, for the study also shows that almost 30% of Jewish students have themselves experienced discrimination (p. 30). This comes overwhelmingly from fellow students. This finding is an admonition for us as a university and an occasion for very concrete measures to support Jewish students and all students who experience discrimination.
Universities are taking on the task of combating antisemitism comprehensively. They increasingly do so by appointing commissioners against antisemitism, who complement the established structures and procedures against all forms of discrimination. Universities do educational work for society as a whole by offering research and teaching on Jewish history, on Jewish culture and Jewish thought. They are engaged in research and teaching on the history of the State of Israel as well as on the Middle East conflict. In research and teaching they keep alive the memory of the Shoah and provide prevention through research and teaching on forms of antisemitism in history and the present. It is a personal concern of mine that the whole breadth of the task of combating antisemitism should remain visible in public debate.
At the same time, universities are spaces of debate and of scholarly engagement. In this, we universities repeatedly face the demanding task of offering space for academic freedom without calling fundamental values into question. Definitions can help in this, but they themselves always remain the subject of controversy and of further scholarly discussion.
Yours sincerely
Prof. Julia von Blumenthal
