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Are universities special organizations?

Because they manage the work of scientists and not that of postal workers or magistrates?

Organizations such as directorships of opera houses, architectural offices or divisional headquarters, who cannot meticulously dictate to their soldiers how to optimally solve tactical tasks in combat, are also faced with the challenge of creating creative freedom in themselves.

The description of the university as an institutionalized conflict of bureaucracy versus genius or even of order versus chaos has its charm, but does not do justice to reality. The scientists themselves have long been applicants for research projects and have to be familiar with position plans, milestones and submission deadlines. The complaint about not being able to do research at all, i.e. practically only managing it, has long been part of the daily lament of university staff. But how does the administration complain? What if they complain at all instead of doing their service to science quietly and without public attention?

As with all other administrations, little is heard from the science administration.

If a university can call itself excellent again, celebrates a Leibniz Prize winner or even celebrates a Nobel Prize, one could ask with Brecht: Wasn't the administration excellent too?

Did the scientist fight for his award on his own, or did not someone at least help him from the responsible department at the DFG?

Yes, yes, but not as an individual, but at best as an office, as a functionary or even as a structure!

After all, an efficient administration is characterized by its impersonality, the replaceability or even interchangeability of its job holders.

The human factor is therefore not only of interest here, it can even be completely eliminated.

Bankruptcies, bad luck and mishaps

You can now read that this is nonsense in a book published by Webler University Press in Bielefeld. A certain Stefan von Strahlow wrote the “42 stories from the inner workings of the Berlin universities and their environment” under the title “Science and madness”. That sounds sensational and does not do justice to the subject of the book. Rather, the author shows how much a sense of reality you need to oversee the city's universities for thirty years as the responsible speaker in the Berlin Senate for Science. Fortunately, it didn't turn out to be one of the usual Berlin bashings. Rather, the “responsible speaker”, as who the author legitimizes himself in his stories, tells of “comedy, tragedy, crime and slapstick” because this or something similar happens everywhere at universities.

All over? Perhaps not exactly the story of how the responsible speaker felt compelled to recommend a scientist with a clear Stasi past for employment in the now reunified capital after the fall of the Wall, because the said was able to prove an equally flawless BND past. Or the question of whether the Berlin Science Administration Dr. Motte, the organizer of the Love Parade, had to forbid the unauthorized use of a doctorate. Or that in the nineties, as part of massive austerity measures, an entire institute at a Berlin university was closed, but only because the person taking the minutes had pressed the wrong key on his computer at the decisive meeting of the ministerial administration. The protests of the university concerned were thrown off with the notice thatBecause of a protocol error, the politically painstakingly achieved savings package could in no case be untied again. It stayed with the closure.

The responsible speaker also stoically endures the all too human demands of university operations. The top priority is always: Nothing may leak outside. Science and universities have to shine, after all, not much else shines in Berlin. Can you fire an employee who has caused a loss of 200,000 euros by downloading pornographic material onto a university computer? In principle, yes, but not if you forget to miss the deadline for the statutory participation of the staff council. Is it possible to have a sheep beheaded publicly as an artistic happening at a university of the arts? In principle, no, because the Animal Welfare Act overturns the fundamental right to freedom of science. A look into the law can help, but sometimes alsoto find gaps in it. Chair occupations are a recurring example here. So the speaker came up with the still legal idea of ​​accelerating the appointment of an absolutely preferred luminary from abroad by secretly posting his position in a Berlin daily newspaper under the heading "Personals". Since only the said preferred candidate was specifically informed about this, the legal challenges of disadvantaged applicants dragged through the courts for years.Since only the said preferred candidate was specifically informed about this, the legal challenges of disadvantaged applicants dragged through the courts for years.Since only the said preferred candidate was specifically informed about this, the legal challenges of disadvantaged applicants dragged through the courts for years.

So are universities special organizations?

The responsible speaker would say yes, but only in the sense that all organizations then have something special: their "dark side", that is, "the missteps, the failure, the aberrations, the scandals and embarrassments", as von Strahlow writes.

In the hundreds of speeches, greetings and self-portraits that he wrote for the Berlin Senators for Science, none of this naturally occurred.