Left-Wing Activists Stifling Free Speech on German Campuses, Says Leading Professors Association

Left-Wing Activists Stifling Free Speech on German Campuses, Says Leading Professors Association

Free speech is under attack on German university campuses, the leading association of Germany’s professors and lecturers warned. A small minority of left-wing activists has succeeded in stifling freedom of expression in universities, German Association of University Professors and Lecturers (DHV) said on Friday.

“In the name of political correctness, an attack is being waged on the essence of the university: the freedom to do research, to thinking and to debate,” DHV president Bernhard Kempen told German newspaper Die Welt. A radical minority was trying to silence dissent on campus “through threats, shitstroms, blockades and sometimes physical violence,” he added.

University research projects that go against the leftist ideology were being abandoned, speakers disinvited, and professors shouted down by angry students, said the head of the DHV, a university body that represents around 30,000 professors and lecturers across Germany.

The attempts to shut down free speech were exclusively coming from left-wing student groups, an article published by Die Welt on Friday confirmed. The target of the leftist agitators included those affiliated with the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party as well as Christian and conservative groups on campuses.

Die Welt reported the comments made by the head of Germany’s university professors association:

The freedom of speech is increasingly been restricted in nation’s universities, the German Association of University Professors and Lecturers (DHV) warns. The reason behind this is a small radical minority (…)

Professors have documented many cases where research projects have been abandoned due to rowdy groups, or discussions that can only take place under police protection, or speakers who have been shouted down in the name of anti-Fascism. The state government [of North Rhine-Westphalia]  has now responded to this. It has added a paragraph in the Higher Education Act that will come into effect in the winter semester starting tomorrow [September 22] and makes provisions for disciplinary steps [that include] ending students’ enrollment if they restricts free speech in colleges. It is doubtful whether the problem can be solved by this, considering that many of the restrictions do not happen by blockades or threats that are punishable by law, but legally — for instance, through constant public pressure.

The DHV president [Bernhard] Kempen is therefore calling for “above all for one virtue: the liberal courage.” After all only a small minority tries to restrict the freedom of speech. “The large majority, also in the university administration, must give up its comfort and cowardice, the Cologne-based jurist [Kempen] demands. (…)

Politicians of the Linke party [successor of the East German Communist party] that are being monitory by the domestic Intelligence agency [BfV] can campaign freely in the universities. The Left-wing extremists who profess violence, such as the Interventionist Left, was able to organize event at the University of Cologne. This, however, is impossible for those belonging to the AfD. Most of the AfD students groups have been driven out of the campuses. (…)

It is interesting how the rioters justify themselves. In summer of 2019, a strongly conservative student group invited a speaker to the University of Bonn to talk about the conservative initiative “Demo für all” [pro-life March for All]. Around 200 troublemakers shouted “keep your mouth shut” and “f*** you,” till the event was cancelled. The AStA [university’s general student body] praised the students, who de-platformed the “group-based misanthropy,” as the “core of the democratic university.” [Translated by the author]

One of the incidents cited by Die Welt was that of a student named Mario S. from the Cologne University. The student was thrown out of a course for daring to talk about the nationality of the culprits involved in the mass sexual assaults that took place on the New Year’s Eve in the city three years ago. “The origin of the attackers is irrelevant. The only important [thing] is that they were men,” he was told. He was accused of “cultural racism.” He was bullied by other students, and the teacher told him to leave the course and not to make such “cultural racist” remarks in the future, the newspaper reported.

Many of these left-wing groups, including the notorious Antifa, were being funded by German government, local media reports show. “[U]nder the auspices of the federally-funded program called “Live the Democracy” (Demokratie leben) various “Antifa” groups were apparently promoted by the Ministry of Family Affairs,” German weekly Tichys Einblick reported in June 2018. “We are financing thug squads with our tax money. [Squads] similar to the ones that rampaged through the city during the G20 summit in Hamburg and did everything to possibly kill police officers,” the weekly added.

The campaign against the free speech on German and European campuses is part of a larger project of the socially engineering Western civilization from within. Any dissent, especially criticism of the open border immigration policy, is labelled as racist and far-right.

[Cover image via YouTube]

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