Germany’s largest research funding organisation has issued a warning to scientists and research institutions about growing threats to academic freedom. In a new report, the German Research Foundation (DFG) outlines how independent research is increasingly vulnerable to political interference, and urges the research community to take action to become more resilient to such attacks.
A working group composed of members of the DFG senate was established last year and has since consulted with experts across academia, business and industry to identify vulnerabilities within the international research ecosystem.
The report highlights specific threats to academic freedom both within Germany and elsewhere. For example, the DFG points to proposals from the far-right political party Alternative for Germany (AfD) to discontinue public funding to a climate change research facility. It also cites draft plans from the AfD to ‘abolish’ particular fields of study while establishing new professorships in ‘politically directed’ areas.
The DFG also warns about increasingly frequent attacks in the press on individual researchers’ reputations that ‘create a climate in which researchers become reluctant to participate in public debate’. As evidence of this, the report’s authors cite one case in which a German newspaper blamed three researchers for one of the country’s Covid-19 lockdowns.
Beyond Germany, the DFG highlighted cuts enacted under Donald Trump’s second presidency to the budgets of the US National Science Foundation (NSF) and National Institutes of Health (NIH). The group argues that these measures are designed to weaken publicly funded independent research while empowering activities pursued by major corporations.
The group also points to the targeting of research infrastructure during conflict as another increasing threat for academics. The report notes that more than 1400 research buildings in Ukraine have been damaged during the ongoing conflict with Russia, raising the question of whether this is coincidental or a deliberate attack on Ukrainian research.
‘An important strength of the report is that it clearly distinguishes academic freedom from freedom of opinion,’ says Angelo Panaro, a political scientist at the Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen–Nuremberg in Germany. Panaro collaborates on the Academic Freedom Index, which tracks data on the autonomy of research across 179 territories. He adds that the DFG report frames academic freedom resilience ‘not as protection from legitimate criticism or scrutiny, but as the capacity of researchers and institutions to resist inappropriate interference while remaining open to academic debate, criticisms and constructive public engagement’.
Building resilience
To help make the academic community more resilient, the DFG report also suggests several strategies to combat against attacks. For example, fostering closer relationships between researchers, industry, politicians and wider society, aided by stronger communication of research to the public, could help to build trust and better showcase the importance of independent research. Lowering the personal risk for researchers to speak out by improving working conditions and making careers paths in research more predictable would also help, the group says.
The DFG also points out that as Germany’s constitution protects academic freedom, equipping researchers and research institutions with the knowledge needed to take legal action against attacks could also be beneficial.
However, Panaro thinks that there still needs to be more work to ‘translate the report’s recommendations into concrete implementation strategies’. This could include, for example, practical guidance for institutions and mechanisms to monitor progress, he says.
‘[The report] is a signal of alert in times when there is an increase of skepticism and the rise of post-truth narratives surrounding science,’ says computational chemist Matthias Stein at the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics of Complex Technical Systems in Germany. ‘Fear is not a good advisor, but we as scientists must be aware of the high value of academic freedom, must be willing to reaffirm it again and again, and be able to explain to politicians and our neighbours why every Euro spent [on science] is worth it,’ he says.
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