The political scientist Werner Patzelt will not get a senior professorship at the TU Dresden. The dean of the university had informed him not to support a corresponding request, reports the editorial network Germany (RND). The 65-year-old had applied for a senior professorship because his previous professorship ends regularly at the end of March.
Patzelt was accused in the past of a lack of distance to the xenophobic Pegida alliance. Saxony's prime minister Michael Kretschmer had surprised him in January to the vice-chairman of the program commission for the upcoming election campaign.
Critics see this as a signal that the already conservative-oriented Saxony-CDU orients itself further to the right (Read more here). There is great concern that the AFD could become the strongest party before the CDU in the election on 1 September. In the general election, the AfD in Saxony was with 27 percent of the second votes just ahead of the Union (26.9 percent).
Patzelt has been a professor of politics at the Technical University of Dresden since 1991 and a member of the CDU. Among other things, he explores the Pegida movement, which has been calling for demonstration marches in Dresden since autumn 2014. To this end, Patzelt and his team have already published several studies. Other lecturers and students had criticized him for his comments.
Coalition with the AfD?
Patzelt had inter alia after the rejection of a Pegida demonstration due to a threat of implosion in January 2015 by an enemy Bildpflege the counter-demonstrators. His colleagues accused Patzelt of having a negative impact on the reputation of the counter-demonstrators with his statements.
In addition, Patzelt had recommended the CDU in the past via "Bild" newspaper, at least to consider a coalition with the AfD, "in order not to be blackmailed by the parties to the left of the CDU." Kretschmer, on the other hand, excluded such an alliance.
The TU Dresden justified the decision by saying that Patzelt "improperly disseminates the scientific and the political role". He rejected this reproach against the RND. "I have not mixed roles, I've always been committed only to the liberal-democratic order - even to its enemies and opponents."