Love-hate: long-running professional ban | nd-aktuell.de

While in some federal states Nazis could soon become the strongest force in parliament, Bavarian universities are reflecting on another long-standing German tradition: the professional ban. The Verdi operations group at the Technical University of Munich provides information about exactly what this is about: »A professor at the Technical University of Munich wanted to hire a geoscientist as a research assistant at her chair. However, the TUM human resources department forbade him to take up the position. She argued that his criticism of social conditions and the use of classic terms such as fascism, racism and capitalism indicated his anti-constitutional attitude.” This might not have been conceivable a few years ago. Quite logically, in Bavaria’s ongoing shift to the right, the Munich University is, according to Verdi, adopting “the argument of the Bavarian Office for the Protection of the Constitution: ‘Anyone who criticizes social conditions is not allowed to work, research or teach at TUM.'”

The historic radical decree, Also known as the extremist resolution, it celebrated its 50th anniversary just last year. In 1972, the federal and state governments agreed to check applicants for public service for their constitutionality. The governing party at the time was the SPD, which could raise questions about the following decision by today’s TU unionists: »The main speaker and expert of the evening is Prof. Dr. Herta Däubler-Gmelin, former Federal Minister of Justice. D. Verdi Legal Protection supports a lawsuit against the Free State of Bavaria before the Munich Labor Court. The plaintiff is represented by Prof. Dr. Däubler-Gmelin represented.« Däubler-Gmelin had already sat in the Bundestag for the SPD in 1972. She had apparently already been against the decision back then, but she still couldn’t get the 3.5 million people affected to leave this terrible party – any more than any other social democratic crime. (Whether a bad conscience drives the former Federal Minister of Justice to represent supposed enemies of the constitution?)

Whatever! In any case, the state does not always have to resort to such authoritarian means; in certain historical moments, critical teachers have had more room to breathe. Nevertheless, a general principle is true: the starting point for any persecution is critical, that is partisan thinking, is the objectivity ideology of bourgeois science itself. She claims that “value-free” research is not only possible, but desirable – both lies, by the way. While it must be a matter of supporting teachers threatened by repression as much as possible, the fight for a science that deserves the name is only not a fight against windmills if it also involves overcoming civil society.

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