By Professor Oliver Günther, President of University of Potsdam
Elections recently took place in the federal state of Brandenburg, where our university is located. The results follow trends we are observing in many countries of our YERUN universities. Even though we as universities are committed to non-partisanship for good reason, the results affect us at our core. And I am not primarily referring to the question of how the new state government will deal with its universities from a financial and regulatory perspective. It is about so much more. This concerns issues like political discourse, how we treat each other, the culture of discussion, and ultimately the question of what kind of society we want to live in going forward.
Open democracy has proved to be a successful form of government. We also have no reason to complain from an economic point of view, least of all in Brandenburg, because we have seen an upward trend here in recent years. Innovative SMEs are enjoying a massive boom in Brandenburg across the board. With their excellent performance in transfer, Brandenburg’s institutions of higher education also play an important role in this as incubators for numerous start-up companies and training centres for young innovators.
The high voter turnout in Brandenburg showed that democracy works. 72.9 percent is by far the highest voter turnout in the history of our federal state. Almost 43 percent of voters voted for populist parties. It does not help to label these Brandenburgers as radical. Nor does it help to treat the parties in question as one and the same and make them a taboo subject. Instead, pragmatism and flexibility were necessary for the current negotiations on a future governing coalition. Ideologically motivated demands with seemingly little consideration given to their consequences can only impede this process.
Recently, demands for less diversity have been circulating. Demands that are anything but well thought out, as Brandenburg, Germany, and Europe urgently need diversity. In other words, the inclusion of people of different skin color, gender, religion, sexual orientation, etc. Otherwise, our positive economic development will soon be reversed. The innovators and workers who will be a driving force in Germany in the coming years will not necessarily originate from the respective regions of our universities. They come from many different places – from India, China, Africa, South America, and many other regions of the world. That is why we need skilled immigration, and that is why we want to continue to welcome people with proven qualifications at our universities – as bachelor’s and master’s students, as doctoral candidates, as colleagues.
Communication is particularly important in difficult times like these, and we as higher education institutions have an important role to play here as well. It is extremely important to me to keep our campuses open for controversial and political exchange. And it is essential for higher education institutions to emphasise the relevance of scientific evidence for political action even more clearly. This is not only relevant in research and public discourse, but also in our other core task – academic teaching. We cannot and do not want to tell our students which party they should vote for. But through our teaching, we want to educate them to become responsible citizens and enable them to understand the complexity of the world, manage controversies, weigh up alternatives, and ultimately cast an evidence-based vote on the available alternatives. Knowledge is power – this conclusion by Francis Bacon (1561-1626) still holds true today.
I look forward to continuing this discussion with our colleagues in the YERUN network in 2025!
