Chat histories surrounding funding scandal raise questions


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Status: 14.09.2024 17:19

Education Minister Stark-Watzinger has insisted that only private exchanges took place via the messenger “Wire”. Some of the chats are now available to ARD – and shows: The private nature is doubtful.

Kilian Pfeffer

It is an explosive email that arrived at the Federal Ministry of Education on Thursday morning at 10:39 a.m. It is in the possession of the ARD-Capital Studio. They have learned from a reliable source that the letter is genuine. The Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) does not deny this.

In the email, the ousted State Secretary Sabine Döring, professor of philosophy, demands that processes relevant to the decision be documented. This refers to internal ministry messages that were sent via “Wire”. Döring sent these chats via email.

The former State Secretary refers to a statement made by Federal Education Minister Bettina Stark-Watzinger (FDP) in a special meeting of the Education Committee last Tuesday. The minister was questioned about the so-called funding scandal and the internal communication “Wire”.

Stark-Watzinger said on the one hand that every official has the right to private communication. But she also said: “If something official comes out of it, then it will be put on record. What is put on record is what is relevant to decisions in a ministry.” Döring is now asking for this to be put on record and argues that the “Wire” communication is relevant to her own case. So far, the ministry has refused to release the “Wire” chats on the grounds that they are not official, but private and informal communication.

The “Grant scandal”

As a reminder of what this is actually about: After a pro-Palestinian protest camp was cleared by the police at the Free University of Berlin in early May, teachers criticized this action in an open letter. The ministry was then supposed to investigate who signed the letter, who received funding from the ministry – and whether it was legally possible to withdraw this money (“funding law review”). A highly problematic process with regard to academic freedom.

For months now, the Union has been trying to push Minister Stark-Watzinger ahead of itself. In June, she was questioned about the affair by members of the Education Committee and the Bundestag, and on Tuesday of this week she had to face the questions again.

The news raises questions

Attached to Sabine Döring’s email are chat messages that were sent between May 9 and June 14, 2024. If you take a closer look at the messages, the history and the contents, at least three questions arise.

Firstly: are the messages really of a private nature? Secondly: did the minister really only know about the commissioned funding law review on June 11th? And thirdly: the theory that Döring was a “pawn sacrifice” seems to be confirmed by how closely and in detail her apology email was coordinated within the ministry – to put it bluntly, one could say “prescribed”. Döring was held responsible for having commissioned the funding law review and wrote in an email to the employees of the Ministry of Education that she had “expressed herself in a misleading way.”

Private or not private, that is the question

One topic discussed in the chats was the open letter signed by teachers at Berlin universities. The head of communications at the Ministry of Education wrote that “they are not concerned with ‘academic freedom’, but with a politically radical attitude that we are fighting against.” His recommendation was to take a more “offensive” approach. “There is a misalignment that should be addressed.” The minister had previously made statements, including the sentence: “You can’t expect to be able to say everything and then not tolerate any opposition.”

Whereupon Roland Philippi, Döring’s current successor, wrote the problematic sentences that have already been published in Der Spiegel: “Personal opinion: If this leads to a kind of informal, ‘voluntary’ and self-imposed anti-Semitism clause for our funding being established among some confused characters (for example, simply not signing such an appeal because of concerns about the funding), then I would have nothing against it ad hoc…”

Döring speaks out

Sabine Döring wrote the following, and this can be understood as an audit, but not in the sense of an audit under funding law: “My guess is that there is a legal gap with regard to academic freedom. I’ll look into it.”

A discussion with Döring also took place on May 13. Minister Stark-Watzinger addressed the open letter again and wrote that there were sentences that went too far for her. State Secretary Jens Brandenburg asked whether he should ask the parliamentary group to oppose this. Minister Stark-Watzinger responded to the suggestion: “Yes, I think that would be a good idea.”

Sabine Döring said that these sentences went “objectively too far.” This was currently being investigated. In her own memorandum of findings, which Döring also sent in the email, she pointed out what this statement was meant to mean: the open letter from the teachers implicitly treated the universities as a lawless area and questioned the state’s monopoly on violence, which was now being investigated and classified legally. When a department head spoke on the phone of an audit of funding law, as Sabine Döring explained in her memorandum of findings, she ordered the immediate cessation of the audit.

When did the minister know something?

Minister Stark-Watzinger has repeatedly stressed that she only found out about the email on June 11th, in which the funding-related consequences were formulated as an audit order. However, the minister was present in the above conversation, in which Döring announced that “sentences in the declaration objectively go too far.” Was this audit order and what exactly it should look like no longer discussed? That seems at least doubtful in view of the wave that this process triggered in the ministry back in May.

A spokeswoman for the Ministry of Education rejects this: There is “no minimum amount of evidence” for this suspicion. The expression of suspicion is “inadmissible”. Elsewhere, the spokeswoman points out that “there is no chat communication before June 11, 2024 regarding an order to examine the consequences under funding law in which the minister was involved”.

Dismissal email is “voted”

Finally, in June, after panorama had reported on the email in which the funding audit was mentioned, the focus was on the email that Sabine Döring is supposed to write to the employees in order to take responsibility for this audit.

The chat history shows that the content of this “apology email” was coordinated quite closely with Döring – or rather, key passages were formulated as the head of communications suggested. First there was a draft for Döring, then two suggested changes and finally “a final consideration.” The minister also spoke up and wanted to make sure that the email was “in the employees’ inbox by 11 a.m., before they go into the weekend feeling worried.”

The ministry writes about this passage that it is incorrect that this email from June 14, 2024 was formulated and imposed on the crucial point by the head of sub-department L2. A spokeswoman also refers to the Minden Administrative Court, before which the former State Secretary Döring wanted to enforce that she be allowed to testify in the so-called subsidy affair. This also involved the “apology email”. In its decision of September 6, 2024, the court found that the applicant – i.e. Döring – had a “corresponding influence on the design of the email”. This is made clear by the chat communication between Döring and the head of sub-department 2.

However, this does not mean that the ministry did not enforce crucial wording. For example, the head of Sub-Department 2 suggested in his draft email that Döring should write that she had “commissioned the legal review of the open letter by telephone”. The state secretary, who was later fired, changed this in her version to “constitutional review”. However, the head of Sub-Department 2 then revised this back to “legal review”.

Döring has also announced that he will appeal against the decision of the Minden Administrative Court.

Chat members are from the BMBF or the FDP

These messages were exchanged in two different chat groups: “BMBF Communication” and “F-Round BMBF.” Members are ministry employees, apparently only topics that are of a certain professional relevance are discussed, and “private” topics, if any, appear to be of secondary importance. This makes it difficult for the ministry to maintain the theory that this is exclusively “private” communication.

But that is exactly what the ministry spokeswoman does in her statement: “Officials also have the opportunity to exchange information about official matters in person outside of administrative action or an administrative procedure. This can take place in conversations, by telephone or, in a digitalized communication world, also via SMS/chats. Such communication does not become an official matter because it typically concerns internal ministry matters. We do not comment on specific alleged personal communication. Furthermore, we would like to point out that it would not contradict the previous presentation of the facts.”

So far, Minister Stark-Watzinger has not managed to clear up the ambiguities in this case. On the contrary: after each public appearance, further questions arose, although Stark-Watzinger herself repeatedly insisted that she had created transparency and clarity. Her fate could depend on what she does now.

Editor’s note: The article has been updated because a spokesperson for the ministry responded with a statement; her responses have been incorporated in the relevant sections.

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