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02.04.2026
Institutskolloquium IfP (22.04.26) – Gaza and the Securitization of Higher Education in Germany
Speaker: Dr. Jannis Julien Grimm (FU Berlin)
Wednesday, April 22, 2026, 16:00 c.t. / Room 124, Institut für Politikwissenschaft or online via Zoom
About the lecture
This talk examines how the Gaza war has catalyzed a transformation of higher education governance in Germany, marked by the increasing securitization of academic life. Focusing on the case of Freie Universität Berlin and other universities in Berlin, it traces how Palestine-related speech, teaching, and protest have been reframed as matters of risk management, resulting in event cancellations, intensified surveillance, police interventions, and the routinization of coercive governance on campus. Institutional responses increasingly invoke concerns about “security” and “polarization,” while reinterpreting academic freedom through the lens of controlled and “objective” exchange.
Drawing on original event data, interviews, and survey evidence, the talk shows how these dynamics have produced a climate of self-censorship, social sanctioning, and administrative restriction, disproportionately affecting scholars and students working on Palestine. It argues that this shift is embedded in Germany’s broader political commitment to Israel as Staatsräson, which has facilitated the recoding of dissent as a security concern and the institutionalization of carceral logics within the university.
At the same time, the talk highlights how students and faculty have actively resisted these developments, defending spaces of critical inquiry and rearticulating academic freedom as a practice rather than a protected norm. Campus struggles thus emerge as both a site and an early warning signal of wider authoritarian tendencies, where the normalization of surveillance and curtailed dissent within universities foreshadows democratic erosion beyond them.
About Dr. Jannis Julien Grimm
Jannis Julien Grimm is an interdisciplinary conflict researcher and the director of the research unit “Radical Spaces” at the Center for Interdisciplinary Peace and Conflict Research at Freie Universität Berlin. He holds a PhD in political science from the Berlin Graduate School Muslim Cultures and Societies on the interrelation between social mobilisation, political violence, and state repression. His current work explores the contested meanings of civil disobedience and (non)violent resistance in Sudan, Lebanon, and Palestine, and the conditions of transnational solidarity in the context of mass violence. His most recent publications include an exploration of the drivers of solidarity protests with Palestine (Grimm, J.J., Mauthofer, L., Sixta, T. (2026) ‘If Gaza Burns, Berlin Burns’ - Transregional Solidarity between Appeal, Accountability and Belonging. Middle East Critique (online first), 1–22.), an exploration of the narrowing of speech to address the violence in Gaza (Grimm, J. J., & Mauthofer, L. (2025) Multi-Perspectivity & Ethical Representation in the Context of Gaza & October 7: Addressing the Semantic Void. Daedalus 154(2), 169–88.), as well as survey of censorship and self-censorship experiences among Middle East scholars in Germany (Grimm, J.J., Chojnacki, S., Moya Schreieder, N., El Ghoubashy, S. & Sixta, T. (2025) German Academia after October 7: Self-Censorship and Restrictions of Academic Freedom among MENA Scholars. Working Papers in Peace & Conflict Research.)
The lecture will be held in English
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