Ulrike guérot’s case: public execution attempts

The case of Ulrike Guérot, which has become an administrative case, which highlights the problematic nature of current university policy in Germany and beyond (the policy of direct and indirect restrictions and sanctions imposed on manifestations of free, non-standard thinking in the public space of a modern democratic society), is described by the author in its unique facticity for Germany — correlated except with the wave of prohibitions on the profession and the expulsion of dissidents in 1977 (the case of Peter Bruckner, etc.). The essay sets itself and tries to answer the following structurally significant and rooted in the specifics of the analyzed case: (1) How, when and why is Professor (political scientist Ulrike Guérot) labeled “controversial” (#umstritten)? (2) What impact does public pressure have on the decision of the (Bonn) University to dismiss? (3) What happens to a democratic society in which scientists and intellectuals are no longer free and cannot participate in public discussions without self-censorship?

In search of answers to these questions, the author comes to a statement of a characteristic and symptomatic circumstance for the current moment: through a media campaign promoting his case professionally (but laterally, divergently) analyzing the current political realities (Germany, Europe, etc.) the political scientist is being pushed out by both the mainstream media and the university community “into that segment of society whose representatives began to be called ‘outside the box’ in a negative and exclusive way [from ‘normality’] even during the polarized discussion about coronavirus…” As a result: “Alliances and communities that previously seemed unthinkable suddenly arose, The classic political categories of the ‘right’ and ‘left’ are mixed up… Which once again underlines the complexity of the social dynamics that have arisen: which side is ‘wrong’ in a democracy?”