Germany: Growing support for campaign at Bremen University against right-wing professor Jörg Baberowski

On February 2, about one hundred students at the University of Bremen attended a meeting in support of the General Student Committee (Asta), which is the target of legal action from Jörg Baberowski. Baberowski, the right-wing professor of Eastern European history at the Humboldt University in Berlin, has sued the Bremen student committee after it criticized his denunciation of refugees and his theory of violence.

“This was one of the biggest meetings in the past few years, despite the fact that we were only able to do relatively little work to promote it,” said Irina Kyburz from Asta. “Those in attendance reacted with indignation to the reports detailing Baberowski’s activities and his political positions.” At the end of the meeting, a vote was held in which all those present unanimously expressed their solidarity with Asta.

At the start of the meeting, Kyburz and Jan-Eric Hahn explained what had taken place. Baberowski has filed an interim injunction with the Cologne District Court against Asta. According to the terms of the injunction, leaflets drawn up by Asta, which criticise Baberowski’s statements on refugees, could no longer be circulated or reproduced.

“We are outraged by the fact that the Cologne District Court has described our criticisms of Baberowski as vile slander which are to be banned, and has failed to defend our constitutional right to free expression,” Kyburz said. All of the critical comments made in the banned Asta leaflet cited Baberowski’s own statements to the press.

The Bremen Asta invited two representatives of the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) from Berlin to report on their own research and experiences with Baberowski. Sven Wurm, spokesman for the IYSSE at Humboldt University, began by reading a declaration of solidarity for the Bremen Asta from the student parliament of Berlin’s Free University, adopted on the morning of the same day. ...