Scientists Responsibility Summit - Position Paper

DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17699305 1 Scientists Responsibility Summit Position Paper The aim of this paper is to articulate how the current threats to academic freedom and the social and political challenges of the ecological crisis are intrinsically intertwined. Therefore, we argue, academics and academic institutions need to act with both dimensions of the crisis of democracy in mind. We propose a list of demands to that end. It is not exhaustive but illustrates guiding principles permeating academic research, teaching and outreach. The defense of democratic values is at their core and should steer their interpretation and application. In the face of attacks on university autonomy, academic freedom and students’ rights, as well as a global trend of democratic backsliding and the climate emergency, institutional silence is complicity. Academic freedom, understood as the freedom of university staff to express ideas without risking repression, and university autonomy are not luxuries—they are core pillars of open and democratic societies. Under international human rights law, states are obligated to ensure academic freedom and university autonomy, both of which are also protected by the German constitution. They are essential conditions for scientific inquiry, the free pursuit of knowledge and thereby central to societal progress and transformation. Yet while academic freedom and university autonomy are more essential than ever, they are increasingly threatened. Academia is not a very agile apparatus. An overly rigid understanding of neutrality in education and research hinders cohesion and the important work of institutional positioning. While right-wing actors along with neofascist parties and movements are working to undermine public institutions and the law, universities must defend these decisively. In particular, the connection between fossil industries, digital fascism and right-wing politics and their impact on the climate crisis are not acknowledged and countered as they should, even within academic institutions. All higher education institutions need to thoroughly investigate and end their complicity in ecological destruction and human rights violations, including the genocide, ecocide and scholasticide in Gaza. Universities have strongly adopted the rhetoric of individual responsibility in the climate crisis and pay too little attention to their own furthering of the climate catastrophe. Cooperation with companies that are involved in ecological crimes and human rights violations encourages blatant avoidance of responsibility. The importance of climate and environmental education along with media education should be amplified and included in educational frameworks based on critical pedagogy and the advancement of practical skills. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17699305 2 By acknowledging their fundamental role as pillars of democratic societies, academic institutions recognize their ability to shift narratives, responsibility to facilitate alliances between scholarship and the civil societies, and capacity to ultimately create other new spaces. We demand that democratic structures be clearly defended in and by academic institutions: • Institutionalize academic freedom as a core governing principle: Embed academic freedom and university autonomy in statutes, funding criteria, and international partnerships. Support scholars and students at risk. • Refuse complicity with authoritarian regimes: Conduct thorough risk assessments and reject international research or teaching partnerships that potentially compromise academic freedom, university autonomy or students’ rights. • Refuse complicity with extractive, fossil and armaments industries as well as information technology monopolies. • Academics and scientists who take a stand are publicly attacked. There needs to be more awareness of this and a call to address the university’s role in the current rise of authoritarianism. • Push back against political interference in student and scholarly activism that uses the narrative of “security concerns” or misuses security apparatuses. Resist the normalization of police presence, surveillance, and university-backed disciplinary measures against student and scholarly activism. Do not cooperate with security services and law enforcement when they target students or scholars for their democratic political stance. • Speak out on human rights abuses, attacks on academic freedom and university autonomy, and democratic erosion. Coordinate with academic associations, unions as well as with local, national and European representatives. • University leadership platforms (HRK and LRKs), academies of sciences (Leopoldina) and research institute networks (Helmholtz, Leibniz, Max-Planck) need to step up their efforts to defend and protect academic freedom, university autonomy and democracy. We demand that academic structures be strengthened and transformed to address current challenges: • Safeguard the integrity of research funding: Defend funding decisions that undergo a peerreview process and fight back against the increasing role of third-party research funding. Resist the forced economization of research by advocating for adequate, stable and longterm basic funding of universities. • Push back against attacks targeting particularly vulnerable disciplines and scholars: gender studies, postcolonial studies, sociology, political science, regional studies, climate research and more. Universities should resist calls to cancel study programs in these fields, strongly defend these disciplines and explicitly, publicly stand in solidarity with all institutions that are under pressure. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17699305 3 • Increase recognition of public outreach in academic careers, create structures of support and dissemination that encourage public scholarship (writing op-eds, giving interviews, joining public debates). • Build discourse coalitions with representatives of social movements, unions, and representatives of marginalized and vulnerable communities. Coordinate with them and join them in efforts to fight misrepresentations of activism and advocacy. • Foster a culture of fact-checking. Collectivize the knowledge on ecological decline and alternative development paths in social spaces where the public and academics can meet. • Fight censorship and self-censorship: Oppose political, peer or administrative interference in research agendas, teaching and events organized by students and scholars. Instead encourage research staff and students to organize debates and events on contentious issues and especially on topics of academic freedom and university autonomy. • Resist data colonialism and data extractivism. Build independent and communitarian infrastructures and media environments beyond the tech-oligarchy. • Nourish an open research environment with open source, open data and open access as key principles. Safeguard an open publishing ecosystem that relies on research quality and not vested interests of academic publishers; guarantee the best possible access to the best possible research. • Stop normalizing unsustainable lifestyles, work practices and harmful assumptions of domination, rationality and instrumentality. Emphasize well-being and needs in social imagination. Stop side-lining Traditional Ecological Knowledge. • Adjust curricula to account for our current state of ecological knowledge and ecological emergency: Emphasize climate science, climate justice, human rights and the ecological and material interweavings in all disciplines. We demand concrete measures to support student initiatives: • Support student activism through educational engagement: Organize teach-ins at student protests to provide context and foster informed dialogue. Defend students’ right to protest and to critique government and university policies. • Center teaching and learning around students’ needs and autonomy, rather than labor markets and academic competition. • Co-convene events between student initiatives and faculty. • Provide legal protections for student protest and expression. • Encourage students to demand observable responses from their teachers and departments on the issues presented in this paper; support initiatives to implement climate-related courses in all disciplines. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17699305 4 Initial Signatories Prof. Dr. Anne Baillot Dr. Stefan Bäumli Dr. Gudula Frieling Prof. Dr. Niko Froitzheim Jun.-Prof. Dr. Matthias Grotkopp Prof. Dr. Rasmus Hoffmann Dr. Leonardo Jost Prof. Dr. Max Koch Joachim Mietusch Prof. Dr. Ilona Otto Luis Pauly, M.Sc Dr. Nicolas Roy Dr. Ilyas Saliba Laura Stalenhoef, M.Sc. Dr. Fabian J.E. Telschow Dr. Rowena Verst