Im März habe ich mit Kai Hafez, @reinemann.bsky.social und @mandytroeger.bsky.social über das Schweigen der deutschen Kommunikationswissenschaft zum Gaza-Krieg gesprochen. Das Global Media Journal hat nun eine Dokumentation dieses Gesprächs veröffentlicht: globalmediajournal.de/index.php/gm...
Peter Neumann: „Man muss es klar sagen: Der Vorwurf, Omri Boehm relativiere oder instrumentalisiere den Holocaust, ist absurd.“ www.zeit.de/kultur/2025-...
We are privileged to teach and learn the law with you. We write to you today—in our individual capacities—because we believe that American legal precepts and the institutions designed to uphold them are being severely tested, and many of you have expressed to us your concerns and fears about the present moment. Each of us brings different, sometimes irreconcilable, perspectives to what the law is and should be. Diverse viewpoints are a credit to our school. But we share, and take seriously, a commitment to the rule of law: for people to be equal before it, and for its administration to be impartial. That commitment is foundational to the whole legal profession, and to the special role that lawyers play in our society. As the Model Rules of Professional Conduct provide: "A lawyer is ... an officer of the legal system and a public citizen having special responsibility for the quality of justice." The rule of law is imperiled when government leaders: • single out lawyers and law firms for retribution based on their lawful and ethical representation of clients disfavored by the government, undermining the Sixth Amendment; • threaten law firms and legal clinics for their lawyers' pro bono work or prior government service; • relent on those arbitrary threats based on public acts of submission and outlays of funds for favored causes; and • punish people for lawfully speaking out on matters of public concern. While reasonable people can disagree about the characterization of particular incidents, we are all acutely concerned that severe challenges to the rule of law are taking place, and we strongly condemn any effort to undermine the basic norms we have described. On our own campus and at many other universities, international students have reported fear of imprisonment or deportation for lawful speech and political activism. Whatever we might each think about particular conduct under particular facts, we share a conviction that our Constitution, including its First Amend…
Shocked, but gratified to see that 90 law professors at Harvard signed this letter denouncing the lawlessness of Trump’s attacks on equal protection and freedom of speech and affirming commitment to the rule of law (especially after its dean did not join in the prior letter stating similar things)
“It really is quite chilling,” one of the scientists said. “They are controlling information, causing chaos, disrupting everyone, keeping us off-balance.”
“Whatever people are reading in newspapers, it’s 10 times worse,” the scientist added. www.nytimes.com/2025/03/24/h...
“There are 13 million legal foreign residents (green card holders) in the US. If the administration can deport Khalil, it means those 13 million people must live in fear if they dare speak up or publish something that runs afoul of government views.” journalism.columbia.edu/news/cjs-fac...
The New York Times is the first to put out comprehensive estimates on the cost of a year without U.S.A.I.D. and they’re higher than I thought:
- 1.65 million deaths from AIDS
- 500,000 from lack of vaccines
- 550,000 from lack of food aid
- 290,000 from malaria
- 310,000 from TB
Former President of my current University. I’ve never felt so much fear in University spaces in my 25 year career. As an 80s kid, it feels at least a little bit like how I imagined people might feel (and behave) in Soviet Russia.
„Der Abstieg Deutschlands hänge u.a. mit der Fördergeldaffäre im Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung zusammen […] Zudem sei »sehr kontrovers« über den Umgang »mit propalästinensischen Protesten an den Universitäten diskutiert worden« […] Das habe möglicherweise zu Verunsicherungen geführt.“
“American universities did not cause the onslaught that the second Trump administration is unleashing upon them,” Nicholas B. Dirks writes. But they'd “be in a much stronger position today if they had made a proactive case to the public for their own importance.”
"This attempt to restrict #AcademicFreedom and #FreedomofSpeech has now reached Finland. The University of Helsinki has already been issued demands to remove terms like ‘climate change’ and ‘egalitarian society’ from Fulbright scholarship announcements"
www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?sto...
“This is the greatest pressure put on intellectual life since the McCarthy era. And I think it’ll be seen in the future, as that time was seen, as a time when people either stood up for their values or ran in fear of the federal government.”
As President Trump seeks to purge the federal government of “woke” initiatives, agencies have flagged hundreds of words to limit or avoid. An analysis by The New York Times reveals how these words are being removed from government websites. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...
BREAKING: The Trump administration announced it's immediately pulling about $400 million in federal grants and contracts from Columbia University.
Unimaginable a few weeks ago. But here we are. French university offering refuge to US scholars.
“It targets, but is not limited to, climate and environment, health, and human and social sciences.”
www.404media.co/french-unive...
Am Sonntag, 2. März, um 14 Uhr auf dem Münchner Marienplatz Spontandemo
„Europa steht zusammen - Stärke zeigen für Frieden und Freiheit“.
#StandWithUkraine 🇺🇦
Ukraine is Europe!
We stand by Ukraine.
We will step up our support to Ukraine so that they can continue to fight back the agressor.
Today, it became clear that the free world needs a new leader. It’s up to us, Europeans, to take this challenge.
Dear Volodymyr Zelenskyy, dear Ukrainian friends, you are not alone.
Zelensky is a wartime leader watching his people suffer and die under Russian attacks every day. To be lectured and lied to by Trump and Vance, as they defend the war criminal dictator committing these atrocities, is unimaginable agony. An everlasting shame for America.
Trump berates Zelensky, the leader of a democratic country courageously fighting Russian imperialism, while he allies himself with Putin, a dictator who started the bloodiest European war in 80 years.
Sorry, President Trump. We believe in democracy, not authoritarianism.
Trump and Vance are part of the tiny percentage of Americans who sympathize more with Russia (4%) than Ukraine (62%) and who view Putin more favorably (75% unfavorable) than Zelensky (28% unfavorable) today.yougov.com/politics/art...
The European Federation of Academies of Sciences has issued a statement in response to developments in 🇺🇸
"Censorship and political suppression of language, research topics, and methodologies— fundamentally compromise the integrity of scientific and scholarly endeavours"
allea.org/wp-content/u...
Over 650 political scientists who have dedicated our lives to the study of democracy & government, have signed this letter enumerating our deep concerns about this administration’s actions that undermine the Constitution and the rule of law. Please share.
urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=htt...
Shameless.
The National Science Foundation fired nearly 170 workers in a Zoom call on Tuesday morning, @kimzetter.bsky.social reports. The terminated workers were told their employment would end at 5 pm EST today 👇
www.wired.com/story/nation... @wired.com
So much for the facts. Of course, European democracies do have issues with the quality of their discourse and subjective (felt) freedom of speech. But no need for #vance to lecture the #EU on these issues.
... and on par as far as #freedomofexpression is concerned.
...or the @vdeminstitute.bsky.social report which places the US behind many #EU countries as far a the liberal democracy index in concerned v-dem.net/documents/43... ...
