News
16.07.2020

A statement from President Enderlein

Addressing a recent op-ed publication and reiterating our commitment to combat racism.

The Hertie School has recently republished an opinion piece by one of our Professors, Alina Mungiu-Pippidi. The op-ed was originally published on the website openDemocracy, and was re-posted on the Hertie School website and shared on our social media channels. We republish and share op-eds of our faculty, as a rule, as a service to our community. Republishing content does not amount to any endorsement of such content by the Hertie School, but reflects our role as an institution which encourages public debate and engagement.

The re-published piece has attracted strong disagreement and reactions from members of our community in online debates and in other forms of exchange with respect to its position and wording, in particular, in the light of the systemic and penetrating racism that the Black Lives Matter movement around the globe is seeking to expose and address. Members of our community have also indicated that republishing the op-ed via the Hertie School website creates the impression that the School endorses the opinion piece and fails in its promises of diversity and inclusion, of which combatting racism and racial discrimination in all its forms are central tenets.

In the light of this, and in order to avoid any kind of misunderstanding that re-publishing this piece is an endorsement of content, we have decided to no longer keep the op-ed by Professor Alina Mungiu-Pippidi on the Hertie School website. The piece is still available in the public domain on the website of openDemocracy.

I would like to reiterate our strong commitment to addressing and combatting racism, including systemic and institutional racism, together with our community at the Hertie School. We stand ready to listen and learn from members of our community with the view of taking immediate and positive measures to combat racism and racial discrimination. This includes public debate that amplifies lived experiences of racism and to interrogate broad and structural implications of language for sustaining racism.

The start of the Academic Year in September will allow us to come together as a community to continue our discussions about racism in all its forms. We have work to do. And we commit to doing this work. Above all, as a community, we stand against racism and will always fight against it.

Henrik Enderlein, President