No. 116/2024

33 HUMBOLDT KOSMOS 116/2024 REMNANTS of the Wall at the Potsdamer Platz in Berlin Photos: F. Anthea Schaap/ Imago, Christian Hüller /Universität Leipzig/SUK The political scientist PROFESSOR DR ASTRID LORENZ is a professor of German and European Politics at Leipzig University. Together with re­ searchers from Friedrich Schiller Uni- versity Jena and Zittau Görlitz University of Applied Sciences, she is one of the authors of the Elite Monitor which is funded by the Fed- eral Government’s Commissioner for East German Affairs. She is one of the Humboldt Foundation’s acade­ mics hosts. German population such as educational climbers or migrant communities: diverging socialisation and a different habitus; lower income and assets, which influence the options for relocation and periods spent abroad; less of the support and insider knowledge that comes from knowing people who already have a career in academia. This imbalance has consequences: surveys reveal that in many sectors, East Germans are highly aware of being underrepresented. People who feel like this tend to be less satisfied with the workings of democracy. And in social science studies, background knowledge on the East German part of society and important processes is often not included. This leads to a selective recording of reality and distorted, one-sided interpretations of the data. So, we should be more sensitive to the mechanisms that affect equal opportunities on career paths – even if they are not the result of colonisation. The figures indicate that we are at least actually capable of learning: in 2022, 8.1 percent of the top positions in academia were held by East Germans and 3.2 percent by East German women.