Arresting thinking

German sociologist Andrej Holm has just been released on bail by German federal police. After his arrest under paragraph 129 of the German Penal Code on suspicion of “membership of a terrorist organisation”, he was held in solitary confinement for a week, only being allowed out of his cell for one hour a day. His home and office were searched, his mail intercepted, and his defence lawyers still don’t have access to the evidence being used against him. What was Holm’s crime? Apparently, he used the word “gentrification”.

In what has to be one of the most absurdly Orwellian attacks on academic freedom this year, Holm and another academic were apparently targeted on the basis of the police’s amateur discourse analysis that found “key words and phrases” in common between their academic work and the leaflets of a radical group opposed to gentrification, militante gruppe (mg). Apparently, they both use such seditious terms as “gentrification”, “inequality” and “imperialism”, and according to American professor Peter Marcuse the police’s 80,000-page dossier (so far not shared with the defence) also compares the use of punctuation and abbreviation. The evidence presented so far really is as thin as whether Holm uses “G8” or “G-8”. Apparently the similarities are “striking, and not to be explained through a coincidence”.

The police have been sure to pepper these pathetic accusations with accusations of “comprehensive conspiratorial contacts and meetings” with “Florian L.”, another arrestee, but these are equally fatuous. The fact that Holm didn’t take his mobile phone to meetings supposedly adds to their “conspiratorial” nature, and he is also accused of attending the protests against the 2007 G8 Summit in Heiligendamm – along with about 25,000 others. The most striking charges, though, relate directly to the academic qualifications of the accused. Dr “B”, the academic arrested alongside Holm who isn’t even accused of writing anything inflammatory – it’s simply that he is “intellectually in a position to compile the sophisticated texts of the militante gruppe” and “as [an] employee in a research institute has access to libraries which he can use inconspicuously in order to do the research necessary to the drafting of texts”. If the capacity to write a document and access a library is now grounds for arrest, then millions are potentially at risk of such treatment, and academics are signing an open letter demanding their colleagues’ release.

Many academics choose to devote their energies to assisting the state, developing problem-solving analyses to combat “extremism” and “terrorism” and other government objectives. These individuals are left alone while those more sceptical academics whose work openly criticises the status quo - while never advocating violence- are subject to criminal prosecution. The heavily politicised nature of this assault on academic freedom is clear. Academic freedom means academics must be at liberty to study what they please and publish what they think after following a rigorous process of research and peer review by which the academic community regulates itself. It also means a certain distancing from the possible consequences of the research. Academics can’t legitimately be held responsible for what’s done with their work in the public, political sphere, since this would stifle their pursuit of knowledge and truth. However unpalatable the truth might be, its pursuit is the specialised role of the academic and its value to society is recognised in the very idea of academic freedom.

Academic freedom doesn’t shield academics from the consequences of the actions they undertake outside the profession, such as engaging in political or criminal activity – in these spheres they’re subject to the same rough-and-tumble debate or judicial sanctions as anyone else. But it does mean that even if Holm’s work is being used by mg, and even if he knows it, he can still publish and not be damned. It does mean that neither Dr “B” nor anyone else can legitimately be harrassed for having a PhD and access to a library, just in case he provides some intellectual grounding for a radical group, or anyone else. To hold Holm or “B” responsible for what mg do makes no more sense than holding Karl Marx responsible for Josef Stalin’s brutal inversion of the emancipatory promise of Marx’s analysis of capitalism, or holding the moral philosopher Adam Smith responsible for Margaret Thatcher’s economic policies. The capacity to think should never be criminalised.

Lee Jones