Nordrhein-Westfalen Landtag, Plenarprotokoll 17/149, pp. 37-38.
Right honorable Frau President. Right honorable colleagues.
The major inquiry is praiseworthy. It after all shows that even the colleagues of the Bundnis90/Die Grünen delegation are concerned about scholarly freedom [Wissenschaftsfreiheit].
The State government’s answers nevertheless provide little information on the real influence of Chinese authorities over the Confucius Institute in the German universities.
Yet the government is not to be unconditionally blamed that these answers are so little evidentiary. The universities are plainly autonomous. On that account, the State government cannot answer questions on the intermediary contacts between them and the Confucius Institute, on scholarly exchange and, in that regard, to what extent open or subtle influence will be acquired.
We need now leave it to the scholarly personnel as to what extent an unfavorable influencing and inadmissible direction are resisted and a restraint imposed. Such prominent occurences as at the University Duisburg-Essen now only make clear that there obviously are such influences.
To that extent, right honorable colleagues, this major inquiry could provide no real information on inadmissible manipulations on the part of the Confucius Institute. Thence, one can only proceed on the basis that official representatives of a country like China, in which intellectual life is strongly directed and controlled, self-evidently need to carry out the agenda of their homeland. For him who still doubts this, there is no help. Details are plainly not to be exposed in all exactness because mental influencing generally occurs unnoticed and is not measurable.
If however you are concerned about freedom of opinion – and that is certainly to be praised – then you could perhaps just for once begin here in Germany. Since numerous scholars in German universities have wanted to speak and quite concretely complain of the curtailments of freedom of opinion in the German universities and colleges.
Meanwhile, the pressure on many scholars in German colleges and universities has obviously become so great that now 200 of them trusted in openness and with the establishment of the Scholarly Freedom Network [Netzwerks Wissenschaftsfreiheit] have founded an organization which is opposed to the further narrowing of scholarly freedom.
In its manifesto, the Network states – I may cite with permission of the President –
We observe that the constitutionally sheltered freedom of research and teaching shall be increasingly placed under moral and political reservation [Vorbehalt]. We must take cognizance of increased attempts to set boundaries, alien to scholarship, on the freedom of research and teaching, even approaching the restraint of applicable rights [schon im Vorfeld der Schranken des geltenden Rechts]. Before the background of their worldview and their political aims, individuals claim to determine which inquiries, themes and arguments are objectionable. Thereby is the attempt undertaken to standardize according to worldview and politically instrumentalize research and teaching. Who does not play along must then figure on being discredited. In this way, a conformity pressure is generated which ever more frequently leads to nipping in the bud scholarly debates.
If one thus reads this and calls to mind that you in your inquiry occupy yourselves with China, then one could get the impression that you want to distract from abuses here in this country. Scholarly freedom – a higher value – is of course also obviously nipped in the bud, as the colleagues in the universities write. Perhaps you may for once put a major inquiry as to how freedom of opinion and scholarly freedom are disposed in German universities.
Freedom of thought these days again experiences, as a direct result of an arbitrary drawing of boundaries, such a narrowing that entire areas of reality will be excluded from dialectical thought processes and be measured by dogmas.
We see this, ja, also outside the universities when the pandemic is discussed, and in regards vaccination and all these events, how quickly people are brought into ill repute who simply express themselves critically.
We of the AfD delegation already in November 2019 had submitted a motion which referred to the restriction of freedom of opinion in the universities and had demanded of the government to do everything to support university administrations in regards the maintenance of the freedom of teaching and scholarship. The motion bore the tile “ ‘The spirits which I summon…’ [‘Die Geister, die ich rief…’] The ‘Generation Antifa’ must be stopped!” With this title, the actors were alike named who contest freedom of opinion in the universities and even threaten with violence scholars not in favor. There were then already various attacks on scholars in the press.
You responded to this motion with mockery and scorn. To that extent, I ask myself: With what effect shall this major inquiry clarify that Chinese officials influence scholarly freedom in Germany? I will probably require longer than the weekend to answer this question.
You then – as is your mode – had reacted only with appeasement and, ja, in part with scorn. To that extent, I doubt the earnestness of your motions to guarantee freedom of opinion and scholarship in German universities and colleges. I hope that this may yet change.
Many thanks.
[trans: tem]
AfD in English 