No. 112/2021

is still steered by a planned economy.” As a professor in Ger- many she was free to recruit her own staff. “In China, on the other hand, professors are not allowed to appoint more than one doctoral student per year,” explains Meng, who has been an expert on the Humboldt Foundation’s Interna- tional Advisory Board for many years. In order to achieve greater diversity in China, these self-contained schools of thought would, first of all, have to be opened up. That was why top universities had gradually stopped employing their own graduates: doctoral students now had to change uni- versity for their postdoc positions and even Bachelor’s grad- uates had to do their Master’s elsewhere. URBANITES HAVE AN EASIER TIME AT AFRICAN UNIS Universities in Africa face different issues when it comes to academic diversity. “Here the urban-rural gap is a major topic,” says Romain Glèlè Kakai. The professor of biom- etrics from Benin is a Humboldt Foundation commit- tee member and chair of the African German Network of Excellence in Science. He is very familiar with the sit- uation in West African countries. “Someone who comes from a city here has better access to education and usu- ally comes from a more affluent family,” he says. Conse- quently: “just ten years ago, students from rural areas, which are also often difficult to reach, were not well › JAN-MARTIN WIARDA is a journalist, political scientist and economist. He was editor at the weekly newspaper DIE ZEIT and subsequently head of communications at the Helm- holtz Association. Since 2015, he has been a freelance author, journalist and moderator. corporate and organisational research, they reveal, above all, that diversity is not a sure-fire success. “It’s not enough to sit old and young, men and women, next to each other round the same table, perhaps with the odd token foreign woman for good measure and expect the creative ideas to flow. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a company or a univer- sity, you need an organisational culture that is based on mutual esteem and promotes innovations.” DON’T WAIT FOR THE STUDIES You will certainly not achieve a culture of this kind, how- ever, if you do not believe that diversity can mean more to an academic institution than just a benefit on the human level. Moreover, to expect studies to first of all demon- strate – above all for Germany – that diversity leads to greater excellence does not seem to hold water in my opin- ion: Are there then genuinely serious scientific studies the other way round, proving that white men with compara- ble career credentials and without the traditional social bias to their advantage are demonstrably better scientists? Yes, it is a normative statement to say that diversity makes science better. But the current science system shaped by unequal opportunities is also highly normative. It pre- vents many from following their aspirations and devel- opment opportunities and impedes new approaches and unusual ideas. Perhaps it is not necessary to realise that nearly all the world’s leading universities are in countries that have made diversity a core principle of science. Perhaps a little healthy common sense and personal experience are enough to comprehend that, always and everywhere, knowledge and progress derive from productive opposites and intel- lectual tension. Photo: Boris Streubel / actionpress IN CHINA, THE SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT NEED OPENING UP.” “ 17 HUMBOLDT KOSMOS 112/2021