No. 112/2021

S omething is happening in German science. “Diversity and excellence – for me, these two concepts are inseparable,” said Katja Becker, the new president of the German Research Founda- tion (DFG), at the beginning of 2020. And she did not just mention this casually but made it a core message upon taking office. It was just the same in nature, she continued. “The rainforest develops more dynamically than agricul- tural monoculture.”The more multidimensional diversity in science became – not just amongst scientists themselves but also with regard to funding formats, topics and inter­ national collaborations – “the more exciting new combi- nations and research results we shall see.” The DFG is the largest funding organisation in Ger- man research. It seldom takes the lead, but when it comes to standards and scientific procedures universities and sci- entific institutions usually follow its course. Which means that when a DFG president makes a statement, it is not just an empty phrase. It will have consequences. Another example: The minute she took office, the new rector of TU Dresden, Ursula Staudinger, who had just returned from the United States, immediately empha- sised that diversity and inclusion in every guise should “not only somehow be tolerated but utilised for the contin- ued development of our university”. The great leaps in sci- ence happened, above all, at the boundaries and intersec- tions “between the disciplines, between the subject-specific perspectives and between the different people who express them and listen to each other”. And then Staudinger also drew a comparison with nature or, rather, agriculture: “When you have a monoculture, productivity drops.” Two new women bosses at the head of leading German science institutions, the one at the largest research funder, the other at the only East German university of excellence outside of Berlin. Two institutions that are renowned for outstanding science. And they both say, right, the way we have been doing things in Germany so far is no longer fit for purpose. That is remarkable. The fact that they both refer to monoculture as the obverse of their ideal is no coincidence either. Anyone looking at the German science systemwith its professors of whom under ten percent have a foreign passport, of whom three-quarters are men who largely come from academic families, with hardly a single one from an immigrant fam- ily, anyone looking from the perspective of more diverse systems like the one in the US is amazed that the German higher education landscape could have worked so mod- erately well for such a long time. But they also know that given the extent to which the societies and science systems around Germany are changing, this will not continue for very much longer. MANY WORDS, FEW ACTIONS Moreover, you cannot help getting the feeling that whilst many people talk about and invoke diversity, when it comes to appointments, to drawing up new funding lines or research projects, they sometimes ignore it altogether and almost never act strategically and systematically. Per- haps they have only learned to say the “right” thing but are still basically unconvinced that more diversity would make science not only morally better but qualitatively better, too. Indeed, you do not have to search far amongst profes- sors in this country to hear voices claiming diversity is just an adjunct of social policy: well-meant, but largely delete- rious to research quality. Excellence, they say, is only gen- erated by hard, competitive science – not by thoughts of offsetting disadvantages and special support programmes. They like to point out that there are hardly any scientific studies that conclusively prove the added value of diver- sity for scientific productivity – a claim, by the way, that the Dresden TU rector Ursula Staudinger would hardly contest. Whilst studies have been conducted, especially in OPINION ON NO ACCOUNT A MONOCULTURE In the German science system, opportunities are not fairly distributed. It is time for change. by JAN-MARTIN WIARDA FOCUS 16 HUMBOLDT KOSMOS 112/2021