Against Cancel Culture (English)
Statement by Michael Grünstäudl, PhD — February 23, 2022
A Squirrel with a Blast Detonator as Its Emblem – ‘Cancel Culture’ as a Strategy of the General Student Committee at the Freie Universität Berlin?
Recent events raise serious doubts about whether the General Students’ Committee of the Freie Universität Berlin (hereafter “AStA” for its German abbreviation) — i.e., a small group of students — is abiding by its legal constraints. Among the legal responsibilities of the AStA as a body of student representation is its responsibility to “promote its members’ commitment to active tolerance and advocate for fundamental and human rights” (§18 para. 2 no. 4 of the Berlin Higher Education Act; translation mine). So what happened?
Without ever having spoken to me, the AStA published a statement on January 26, 2022, containing false claims about me as a lecturer at the Freie Universität Berlin and demanded in an almost executioner-like style that my “habilitation process be stopped” and that I “be prevented from continuing to work in academia in the future”. A look into the background of the AStA and a visit to its official website reveal a striking set of self-proclaimed symbols1: the AStA logo features the five-pointed red Communist star and its homepage prominently displays a large red squirrel operating what looks like a blast detonator, with the AStA having named that squirrel “Sprenghorn” (“blast squirrel”)2. Very similar insignia are also used in the AStA’s statement against me.
The AStA’s accusations against me are equally bizarre. They claim that I hold right-wing political views, even though I do not belong to any political party or organization and have never been active in one. I have also never expressed any political opinions in my research or teaching. In short: I am an apolitical person who does not align with either the left or the right politically.
Nevertheless, the AStA attempts to portray me as holding right-wing views. First, they point to a list of podcasts contained within one of hundreds of folders on my GitHub account, with a number of the podcasts in that list being ones they consider “right-wing”. That folder, intended purely for entertainment rather than teaching or research, was aptly titled ‘FunScripts’. The fact that this podcast list cannot be attributed to me alone since student assistants also had write access to the account was conveniently ignored; I personally never stored any links to political commentary on GitHub. Even more importantly, the AStA conveniently overlooked that the most criticized podcast link literally leads nowhere — the YouTube link in question is nonfunctional and may never have been active3. To assign political views to someone based on a nonfunctional YouTube link is absurd, to say the least.
Second, the AStA tries to assign me a right-wing worldview because I signed the “Gemeinsame Erklärung 2018” as a private citizen. This declaration, consisting of only two sentences and easily accessible online4, is a general call to uphold the rule of law and, in my view, not political but a truism. To accuse someone of a right-wing attitude based on his support for the rule of law is absurd and tells more about the accuser than the accused. Thousands of academics from various fields and over 165,000 supporters from across Germany endorsed this declaration. Even the Petitions Committee of the German Bundestag deliberated on it. Such a large number of signatories naturally represents a wide range of motives and worldviews. Does the AStA really claim that all 165,000 supporters of this declaration share a right-wing political view? It goes without saying, but is worth remembering: signing a public declaration signifies support for its content, not for any of its signatories.
What is this case really about? Isn’t the AStA’s approach an attempt to establish Cancel Culture at the Freie Universität Berlin? ‘Cancel Culture’ in academia involves attempts to attribute a discrediting political stance to specific faculty or staff through insinuations, often accompanied by demands to revoke their right to speak or to ban them from campus entirely5. Guided by their political objectives, cancel culture activists typically claim the authority to determine which questions, topics, and arguments are acceptable and which are reprehensible. In doing so, these activists seek to ideologically control research and teaching and to exploit them for political purposes. Any faculty or staff who do not comply with their demands can expect to be discredited6. The Netzwerk Wissenschaftsfreiheit e.V., an academic network of hundreds of faculty members across Germany, documents the growing number of attacks on academic freedom at German-speaking universities and has already highlighted the AStA of the Freie Universität Berlin as an aggressive actor in this context5.
Whether an activist student group that characterizes itself with a blast detonator can succeed in restricting academic freedoms at a university and imposing ideological tests on its members depends largely on the response of the university’s decision-makers. At the Freie Universität Berlin, the conduct and outcome of my recently initiated habilitation process will certainly serve as an indicator and benchmark for future developments.
However, I would be remiss not to highlight the many positive student initiatives at the Freie Universität Berlin. In 2017, I received the Award for Teaching Excellence from the Biology Student Club, and in the commendation, I was described as a caring and straightforward lecturer. Indeed, I have always identified with the guiding principles of the Freie Universität Berlin — Veritas, Iustitia, and Libertas.
Sincerely, Michael Grünstäudl, PhD
Berlin, February 23, 2022
Sources (as of February 23, 2022):
1 https://web.archive.org/web/20220223153411/https://astafu.de/
2 https://web.archive.org/web/20220223153406im_/https://astafu.de/themes/astafu/images/sprenghorn.png
3 https://web.archive.org/web/20220223155431/https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UCZ8uFo1RKSgEg-od3Yu10Pw
4 https://web.archive.org/web/20220223155231/https://www.erklaerung2018.de/
5 https://web.archive.org/web/20220223154827/https://www.netzwerk-wissenschaftsfreiheit.de/dokumentation/
6 https://web.archive.org/web/20220223154755/https://www.netzwerk-wissenschaftsfreiheit.de/ueber-uns/manifest/
Cancel culture in Maoist China (Image source: https://www.quora.com/What-is-a-Maoist-struggle-session)
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