Warning as Germany urged to revisit military research bar

German universities could face “severe” conflicts among academics and students if the country’s stringent division between military and civilian research is eroded, it has been warned, as politicians and advisory bodies call for a reassessment, motivated in large part by Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine.

Scores of German universities have signed up to what is known as the “civil clause”, a commitment not to do research that could be used for military purposes, and five of the country’s 16 states have embedded this principle in law.

But the 2024 annual report from the Commission of Experts for Research and Innovation (EFI), which advises the German government, calls for “synergies between military and civilian research [to] be made possible”, stating that “the strict separation that has been customary in Germany for decades needs to be fundamentally reconsidered and abolished where appropriate”, citing “increasing global threats”.

The EFI named the United States and Israel as examples of countries where “spillovers and dual use are deliberately promoted as they lead to increases in performance and efficiency in both the military and civilian sectors”.

Responding to the EFI report, research minister Bettina Stark-Watzinger pointed to the recommendation regarding military and civilian research, stating: “I would specifically like to have this discussion.”

Gerald Kirchner, head of the University of Hamburg’s Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker Centre for Science and Peace Research, told THE that universities “could run into severe inner conflicts and debates among professors and students” if they were to conduct dual-use research. More than 70 universities adhere to the civil clause, adopted after the Second World War in order to reckon with the role of German science during the Nazi regime.

The division between military and civilian research means German universities largely lack “competence for military research”, Professor Kirchner added. “They’re not attractive for military-based research funding.”

Michal Kucera, vice-president for research and transfer at the University of Bremen, said that, if the division were to be dissolved, universities would probably carry out “research that is motivated by military needs or applications” but is not “directly related to warfare”, such as work on secure communications or digital security.

“There is no research that you can name to me that is not potentially dual use,” Professor Kucera said. “Universities are already doing dual-use research.”

A similar debate is taking place at the European level, Professor Kucera noted. In a white paper released in January, the European Commission set out a range of options for boosting “research and development into technologies with dual-use potential”, suggesting that the successor to Horizon Europe could permit the funding of dual-use research.

A spokesperson for the German Rectors’ Conference (HRK) told Times Higher Education that it was “difficult to predict the extent to which the expected effects of a rapprochement between military and civilian research and development will actually materialise”, noting that the difference between “the civilian and military utilisation of research findings is generally not clear cut”.

“In the interests of academic freedom, it will be important that possible changes, particularly in the funding architecture, do not result in a kind of obligation for academic institutions to conduct military research,” the spokesperson continued, stressing that greater investment in military research “must not result in any impairment of civilian research or research that is still undefined in terms of purpose”.

emily.dixon@timeshighereducation.com