Science has known since these days that it cannot take the example of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research when it is once again asked to communicate with society.
The ministry was silent for weeks and months when scientists wanted to know when and if the money for verbally promised research projects would come.
When the minister now says that it is not a question of stopping research because the approval was only promised verbally, then one wonders what she thinks of verbal assurances from her ministry and what science can actually rely on.
Thomas Thiel
Editor in the Feuilleton.
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Some of the projects are now supposed to continue, sometimes in a slimmed-down form, such as those on the social consequences of the corona pandemic (eighteen of thirty-two projects) or on right-wing extremism and racism, which the minister said are very important to her personally.
In science, however, it is not about what is personally important to a minister and coincidentally also has its finger on the socio-political pulse, but about a funding policy that also promotes things whose sense and benefits are not immediately understandable to the layperson, but which are exist, such as the National Infrastructure for Research Data, which is currently being set up and is intended to ensure that research data are available and exchangeable according to general standards.
Big goals, small steps
The problem with all of this is not that the ministry has to make cuts, but that it doesn't show any clear direction.
The formula of the "rapid impact" that it supposedly expects from science was only able to spread so widely because the ministry was shrinking it to the party-political brand essence: marketable research, typically FDP.
Even in her subsequent statements, the minister was unable to explain what her political goals were apart from innovation and sustainability.
The "hydrogen republic" that she announced wanted to set up her predecessor, which she reproaches in the "Tagesspiegel" for having financed some projects uncertainly.
The same can be said of the highly ambitious coalition agreement, which bears the minister's signature: on financing talent schools,
So far, the minister has only succeeded in making a small step towards reforming student loans.
Meanwhile, the universities are very skeptical about the concept for the innovation agency, which does not speak the language of science but of business and would probably be in better hands with the Ministry of Economic Affairs, where very similar programs already exist.
Little or nothing has been heard about the planned reform of capacity law, which is actually a good idea.
In addition, with the reform of the science contract law, the ministry inherited a topic that cannot be excelled at.
The misery of the academic mid-level faculty cannot be eliminated with this, and one does not want to abolish it completely.
So what is the minister's topic?
In any case, it is not the debate about academic freedom.
She only commented on this after pressure from outside, when the Humboldt University canceled the lecture by the biologist Marie-Luise Vollbrecht.
In addition, she got caught up in contradictions.
At one point, she felt that Vollbrecht had the right, denied by activists, to express her opinion that gender and body are related at Humboldt University, under police protection if necessary;
At the same time, she described herself as a happy supporter of the self-determination law planned by the traffic light coalition, with which Vollbrecht would be deprived of this right again if she referred it to a specific person,
The minister can't think of much about education either.
For them, it is a resource for social advancement, i.e. nothing more than a skills transfer machine.
With a future strategy for research and innovation, the ministry wants to clarify its goals in the near future.
Hopefully that future is coming very soon.