Repression Against Pro-Palestine Students is Reshaping Germany’s Society

It is easy to forget that Trump’s recent onslaught against civil liberties began with the repression of pro-Palestine students. This was, and continues to be, coordinated along with university administrators. And it is even easier to forget that this repression began not with Trump, but under the liberal eye of Joe Biden. 

Much like the United States, Germany is also dealing with its own drift toward authoritarianism, and it too is being enabled by establishment politicians all too eager to prioritize Israel over the rights of their citizenry. Pro-Palestine students are the canary in the proverbial coal mine, and the world should take heed before the far right consolidates power amid the self-imposed implosion of liberal institutions like centrist parties and universities. In both countries, students continue to resist, and we will need the rest of society to join us.

Although the far right, represented by the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), is rhetorically isolated by the liberal mainstream, Germany’s political class—from conservatives to liberals and even the so-called “Left” Party—has found consensus on one issue: Palestine.

The anti-Palestinian sentiment is not new: it is best encapsulated in the doctrine of Staatsräson, coined by former chancellor Angela Merkel, which asserts that Germany’s commitment to Israel’s security is a non-negotiable pillar of state policy. Since October 7, however, these policies have intensified dramatically, with backing from every major party across the political spectrum.

This pro-Israel unity not only enables the violent enforcement of Staatsräson against a public that is largely critical of it; it also normalizes cooperation between liberal actors and the far right in the suppression of political dissent. It is therefore not surprising that international observers have raised alarm: UN Special Rapporteur Irene Khan warned of increasing restrictions on political expression targeting the Palestine solidarity movement, while the global human rights organization CIVICUS has downgraded Germany to an obstructed democracy, citing the repression of Palestine solidarity.

“Bastions of academic freedom”

As in the United States’ rightward, anti-democratic shift, universities in Germany have become a central arena of conflict.

German universities understand themselves as bastions of academic freedom. Although most of them are state-funded, they claim formal autonomy, legally protected under Germany’s constitution. Regarding Palestine, this principle has—at the latest since October 7 and the rise of the Palestine solidarity movement—effectively collapsed. The freedom to challenge state and federal policy no longer meaningfully exists. Our university, the University of Bremen, is no exception. The rectorate, a term for administrative leadership, and especially the university’s president, Jutta Günther, has been trying to shut down discourse on Palestine among students since the beginning of the genocide—thus becoming part of the broader German-wide push to roll back liberal freedoms, and thereby strengthening the rise of the authoritarian right.

The latest example: In response to a parliamentary inquiry by the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the university administration announced that students can be expelled for pro-Palestine activism—even in absence of any criminal offense. Under Günther, the university has embraced an increasingly authoritarian posture: intimidation, criminalization, and administrative control aimed at delegitimizing dissent. All in the name of German Staatsräson.

The anti-Palestinian crackdown began with the eviction of our peaceful protest camp in May 2024. We established the camp in response to Israel’s ground offensive in Rafah and the university’s continued silence in the face of scholasticide in Gaza—the deliberate and systematic destruction of the Palestinian education system. Within hours, the rectorate called the police and had the peaceful student protest cleared, citing vague security concerns.

The contrast with earlier protests is striking: when predominantly white climate activists occupied a university building in 2023, their protest was rightfully tolerated. But when student demonstrators gathered for Palestine, hundreds of officers, including dozens of police dogs, were deployed. Security concerns served as a pretext to suppress unwanted political speech. Following the eviction, the rectorate filed criminal charges against all protesters—later dismissed by the courts due to their minor nature—and imposed a multi-day campus ban. In a subsequent meeting of the Academic Senate, the university’s highest governing body, the administration defended its actions and indicated that it would respond the same way in the future, despite widespread criticism. 

This escalation was the starting point of a continuous wave of increasingly severe repressions. Since summer 2024, our requests to book university rooms for Palestine-related events have gone unanswered. We were told that the rectorate had instructed staff not to allocate rooms for events concerning Israel/Palestine. This policy was used to block, among other events, a screening of the documentary Where Olive Trees Weep and a talk by James Kleinfeld, an Al Jazeera journalist. Both events ultimately could take place with support from the AStA, the democratically elected student government, which holds privileged access to university facilities. In response to the AStA’s support for student rights, the rectorate threatened further criminal charges.

The rectorate not only bans our events but also collaborates with the Islamism unit of Bremen’s state security to monitor Palestinian students and their allies. Those who refuse to distance themselves from Palestine solidarity, such as the AStA, face threats of sanctions. The rectorate could not be clearer: opposition to the anti-Palestinian Staatsräson will be sanctioned.

The spirit of ’68?

This development is particularly striking given the university’s history. The University of Bremen was once left-wing and rebellious, in complete contrast to its current obedient posture. Founded in the spirit of the ’68-student movement, it became in 1986 the first university in Germany to adopt a civil clause—a legally binding commitment to only research and teach for peaceful purposes. The civil clause was a landmark achievement of the anti-war movement, grounded in the belief that science must be guided by ethical principles. Today, it exists largely on paper only.

Why this shift? Certainly, Zionist pressure to uphold the norms of Staatsräson plays a role. Another factor may be the university’s entanglement with the defense sector and its complicity in Israel’s ongoing genocide.

The aerospace and defense company OHB funds a professorship, effectively financing research aligned with its corporate interests. These interests are far from peaceful: in 2024, roughly one-third of OHB’s contracts were of military nature. Among its clients is Israel’s second-largest defense company, Israeli Aerospace Industries (IAI), notorious for producing Heron killer drones, which the company’s CEO has described as central for the Israeli invasion of Gaza. In other words, the University of Bremen conducts research for OHB, whose client produces weapons that directly kill Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

The university administration claims that its research for defense companies serves exclusively civilian purposes. But this distinction is untenable: when developed by a defense company, every technology will be adapted for military use.

Dozens of other connections exist. They illustrate a broader pattern: students are, often unknowingly, placed into close professional contact with defense companies that are, in some cases, directly involved in the genocide in Gaza. Behind this is an attempt to gradually normalize collaboration with defense companies, precisely what the civil clause was designed to forbid. While Israel systematically mass murders Palestinians using German weapons, the University of Bremen steadily erodes its own commitment to peaceful research.

The normalization is noticeable in everyday campus life: the Bundeswehr, the German military, distributes recruitment flyers in the cafeteria, and last year, the defense giant SAAB held a prominent spot at the university career day. Even the institution’s official VPN client is provided by Cisco—a company whose long-term partnership with the Israeli military involves supplying technologies linked to documented human rights violations and war crimes. Taken together, these practices signal a broader shift: the normalization of militarization and imperial violence within institutions that once defined themselves in opposition to it.

A trial balloon for the Israel-aligned West

What is unfolding in Bremen is a fundamental conflict: between the autonomy of education and political control, between freedom of expression and Staatsräson, between a pacifist tradition and an increasingly militarized reality. While the University of Bremen no longer lives up to its own claims of civil rights and peacefulness, it cracks down on those who draw attention to the institution’s obligations. This complicity is not a passive failure but a political decision: in favor of the authoritarian drift towards fascism, in favor of anti-Palestinian racism, in favor of the current militaristic and reactionary restructuring of the German state.

Fueled by anti-Palestinian racism, liberal institutions are enabling the far-right to erode core democratic values, aligning with the political forces they claim to oppose. The repression of Palestine solidarity serves as a trial balloon for an increasingly authoritarian state—not only in Bremen, not only in Germany but across the whole Israel-aligned West. The University of Bremen’s administration is actively driving this development—to cower from the dictum of state politics and to silence criticism of the university’s complicity.

We are countering their complicity by building political pressure on the university administration, step by step. As part of the nationwide Academic Boycott Campaign, operating under BDS guidelines, we have joined a growing network of German university groups committed to breaking the complicity of German universities.

The Academic Boycott Campaign has been joined not only by us, but by a number of other organized university groups as well. Among them are the student parties making up the AStA: they are represented in the Academic Senate, have access to university funding, and take on an official representative role toward the broader public on behalf of the student body. Their participation in the academic boycott campaign signals a broader shift in the political climate at German universities: While two years ago most students were still afraid to express any form of solidarity with Palestine, it has now become mainstream to support, not merely symbolically, but materially, the isolation of complicit Israeli academic institutions, and with it, the liberation of Palestine.

Our demands are met with broad support, the public opinion in Germany is shifting. A large portion of the student body stands behind Palestine. We will continue to resist.