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Summer 2015. The Humboldt Foundation and the Federal Foreign Office launch the Philipp Schwartz Initiative to enable researchers at risk to continue their research in Germany. The response is overwhelming: from universities that host researchers, from academics who offer to become mentors and, last but not least, from funders who are willing to provide additional fellowships.
Fast forward ten years. Support for the Philipp Schwartz Initiative is unchanged – as is the need to protect people who are persecuted for their research. Nevertheless, the world often feels quite different: Whilst we in Germany take academic freedom for granted and consider the ideal of knowledge-driven research to be more-or-less sacrosanct, such certainties are crumbling elsewhere.
Even former fellow-campaigners and pioneers like the United States are increasingly turning away from them. The consequences for our democracies, global cooperation in science and our ability to tackle the major issues of the future are difficult to predict.
Against this backdrop, we consider it all the more important to make a clear commitment to academic freedom, somethingfor which the Philipp Schwartz Initiative is a byword in Germany. What exactly this involves, you can read in this issue.
What are the experiences of those sponsored under the initiative?
What impact does the programme have on Germany as a research location and on the world?
And what does all this tell us about the state of academic freedom globally?
We wish you an interesting read!
Your editorial team