German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/165, pp. 21235-21237.
Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen.
The Bologna process is, in the essentials, the attempt of an all-European unification, standardization and bureaucratization of higher education, thus the exact opposite of the variety and freedom which you always carry before you like a monstrance.
Kai Gehring (Greens): You’ve already said that a thousand times!
Ria Schröder
(FDP): That is nonsense!
In the past 25 years the variety of the European education traditions was ever further leveled. The Humboldt-type university, with the unity of teaching and research, the ideal of humanist education,
Kai Gehring (Greens): And you learn
nothing of that! Humboldt would turn over in his grave at your speech! Who was
so very open-minded! An authentic cosmopolite!
was replaced by the guiding form of a tutelary, technocratic knowledge factory [das Leitbild einer verschulten, technokratischen Wissenfabrik], Herr Gehring.
Kai Gehring
(Greens): Humboldt was a cosmopolite!
The essence of European higher education is endangered by the Bologna process. – That is written by no less than Julian Nida-Rümeln. And you all, as rotating governing parties up to now, are responsible for that.
Kai Gehring
(Greens): And may you never come into government!
It was desired to achieve comparability of conclusion of studies and a higher mobility between European universities. Neither has been made by Bologna, and the improvements were at most alloted. And at what price? The abolition of the internationally honored German Diploma-Ingenieurs, the Meisters – completely without necessity – instead, the introduction of bachelor and masters courses of study, the modulization of studies, and the fixation on the ECTS [European Transfer and Accumulation System] performance points have trained the students in a tutelary gathering of points. Independent [eigenständige] search for truth is penalized rather than rewarded. The conformity pressure today is enormous in German universities. The “freedom” science year cannot divert from that.
Kai Gehring
(Greens): Says a Herr Doktor!
And this pressure to conform is thoroughly reinforced in that 80 percent of scholars [Wissenschaftler] in Germany are employed per term. They are dependent on external funds which the universities, since Bologna, need to additionally raise because their basic financing was reduced.
Laura Kraft (Greens): Since when did that interest the AfD?
Kai Gehring (Greens): Yet you
always put budget motions which place entire courses of study at zero! Ever the
same nonsense!
And who pays, purchases, ladies and gentlemen. For a great part, that is the state with its lead ideologies: Man-made climate change, diversity, gender, etc.
Ria Schröder (FDP): The only ones who
ever again want to limit scholarly freedom are you!
Young scholars who, for example, want to research the natural factors of climate change, or who do not salute the Gessler’s cap of gender dogma, can similarly bend their careers; simply no corresponding research proposals will be presented.
Kai Gehring
(Greens): That appears to be a therapeutic problem!
The result is the policy of a compliant supply system of knowledge, as we needed to bitterly experience in the Corona times, and as was brought to light, at the latest, in the RKI files. Under political pressure, the Robert Koch Institute largely neglected data and facts, and furnished the absurd and harmful Corona preventive measures with the blessings of science.
Johannes Fechner (SPD): Such nonsense! That’s just not right! Such rubbish!
Kai Gehring (Greens): Did China write
the speech for you? Does the speech come from Russia Today or from Chinese
spies?
This may not remain without consequences. We will in that connection still debate. Our alarm clocks sound
Kai Gehring (Greens): With your
speeches, our alarm clocks sound! China and Russia propaganda!
when in the Federal government’s report there is talk of “common values” which should form the “foundation of cooperation” in the area of European universities, and which now shall be increasingly examined in the universities.
Kai Gehring
(Greens): Your doctorate should be examined!
I recall that a young researcher was not allowed to make an address on the biological duality of the sexes at the Berlin Humboldt University because this allegedly contradicted the values of the university.
Ria Schröder (FDP): What exactly has that to do with Bologna? I still do not understand that!
Kai Gehring
(Greens): Who actually? When and where?
The orientation of values begets attitude [Gesinnung] instead of knowledge, because cannot be what is not allowed to be [weil nicht sein kann, was nicht sein darf]. That is highly dangerous, valued colleagues.
Alexander Föhr (CDU/CSU): What now has that to do with the Bologna process?
Read Professor Nida-Rümelin:
Kai Gehring (Greens): Do you still speak of Europe?
“The instrumentalization of academia by state, clerical and business purposes has continually blocked the innovation potential of science.”
That exactly so applies for supposed values of democracy. The fight against the right in the name of science, which the president of the Berlin Technical University now calls for, while there the lecture halls decay and the level ever further sinks, undermines science as a supra-party resort [überparteiliche Instanz].
Kai Gehring (Greens): That you cite the NZZ [Neue Zürcher Zeitung] is clear!
Lukas
Köhler (FDP): Lack of theme!
I come to conclusion. What we need is a reform of the Bologna reform: Away from the tutelage and bureaucracy and EU control; instead, a Humboldt for the 21st Century!
Many thanks!
Holger Mann
(SPD): What rubbish!
[trans: tem]
