Statement - Maisha Maureen Auma
On December 18, 2020, Prof. Maisha Maureen Auma rightly criticized the lack of diversity at German universities and the underrepresentation of People of Color in an interview (Tagesspiegel, 18.12.2020 - https://www.tagesspiegel.de/wissen/struktureller-rassismus-an-deutschen-hochschulen-nur-tagsueber-sind-universitaeten-weisse-institutionen/26730214.html) as part of the Science Day #4genderstudies. Since then, she has been subjected to racist attacks, including by the AfD parliamentary group of Saxony-Anhalt. We vehemently condemn these attacks.
From 2014 to 2019, Prof. Auma was a visiting professor at the Center for Transdisciplinary Gender Studies (ZtG) and the Department of Education Studies at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Here, she made significant contributions to both diversity and intersectionality studies as well as to critical race studies. She also advocated for critical knowledge production and reflection in teaching. Thereby, she has tremendously advanced both the joint work on the academic critique of racism, sexism, as well as other forms of discrimination and the self-conception of the ZtG as a space critical of discrimination.
We thank her for her multifaceted commitment and express our collegial solidarity with Prof. Auma.
These current events once again show that there is a need for concrete higher education policy measures: both for the academic support of racially marginalized scholars and for their protection against racist attacks.