Besides my philosophical endeavors, I have at times tried to help improve the precarious working conditions for people like me at German universities. Around 2011, I joined various political grassroot groups of PhD students and postdocs in Halle (and helped found one). We wrote policy papers and stirred up some dust, but I can't say we achieved a single thing.
In June 2021, the twitter movement #IchbinHanna rekindled my hope that certain very unhealthy developments of the past 30 years in German academia might catch the attention of a wider public. Like many others, I posted for several years with a special focus on a German labor law (WissZeitVG) designed to retain a very large number of scholars and scientists in academia until the age of 40-45, at which point almost all of them get laid off. Although our collective effort did draw a decent amount of public attention and even left a mark in the coalition agreement of Germany's 2021-24 federal government, actual reform was stalled, distorted and eventually prevented by the ministry in charge.
I still hope to see the day science politicians of all democratic parties in our parliament come to understand that the current extent of personnel turnover in science exploits people, harms science itself and wastes taxpayer money. For the time being, however, I have decided to retreat entirely from social media (both Twitter/X and BlueSky), simply because I have come to feel that for someone with a professional commitment to intellectual fairness, truthfulness and soundness of argument, the daily intake of personal attacks, blunt partisanship and outright extremism on these platforms (especially on X, but not just there) has reached a level I am no longer willing to put up with.
Webpages
- The official #IchbinHanna Blog. Operated by my cherished colleagues Amrei Bahr, Kristin Eichhorn and Sebastian Kubon. Describes what this movement was all about. Perhaps an instructive starting point for future attempts.
- Policy paper on Universities and Research. Parliamentary Faction of Germany's Social Democratic Party (SPD), June 22, 2021. In my eyes the best proposals yet.
- PhD Student Initiative Halle. Co-founded this. Still seems to exist.
Downloads
- Policy Paper concerning PhD Students and Postdocs in Saxony-Anhalt (.pdf). My colleagues and I authored this historical document back in 2011. Still a good paper. Germany's national science council ("Wissenschaftsrat") saw merit in its proposals (see here in fn. 234). Needless to say that the state government ignored them.