My 5ct on Military Research in Public Universities

Following the war in ukraine, a new debate around military research in german public universities was started. Over the past decades, roughly 70 german universities have enacted statutes, that prohibit doing military research within their campuses. These self-given rules are called "Zivilklauseln" ("civil clauses") and are now being challenged as wars are being waged in europe and elswhere.

In germany, the right-wing conservative government of bavaria passed a law that forced universities to cooperate with the military. In other words: it prohibited universities to have so called "civil clauses". Two weeks ago, the bavarian constitutional court nullified the new law, by ruling that it is unconstitutional.

On the surface, this conflict seems to evolve around the use of research results to help the military wage wars. I think that civil clauses are being attacked not (just) about the knowledge universities produce and the utility of that knowledge to build weapons and excert military power. The civil clauses are also important because universities are central places of interaction between science/technology and society. One of the key mantras of STS is: technoscience and society mutually shape each other - and this can be seen in that debate. Both the government trying to push military research as well as the court ruling are interactions in one direction: the governmenet and the courtsas a part of or as a representation of societies democratic will shape the realities in research. The legislative / legal descision they make directly impact what research gets done.

Interactions in the other direction are also important: establishing military research on universities makes the military seem normal and legitimate. It makes building weapons an optimization problem. Knowledge workers spend their days thinking about how to build machines that kill. These same people teach the next generation of students. Their involvement in millitary research shapes the view of the students perception of war. If the military is something their professors are involved with and if arms manufacturers are just another entity that gives out research grants, tt transforms the war from something "they" do to something "we" do. Noone can sustain the cognitive dissonance of being opposed to warof course everyone is opposed to war when, but who is ready to cut losses for peace? and doing military research for long.

Finally, there is no denying that that military research does shape the knowledge being produced in universities. It makes a difference if a computerscience department is thinking about passenger trains or about weapons systems when they discuss safety critical design. It makes a difference if a physics department gets funding to do research on nuclear weapons or on the right philosophical interpretation of quantum mechanics. I deeply believe that if universities are funded by the military, they will not produce knowledge that is required to live in a peacfull world. If universities are busy optimizing missiles, they cant do research on the peacful circular-economy solar-powered utopia. And if we as a society invest our intellectual resources into building weapons, waging a ware becomes a nescessity to justify that expenditure.me, thinking about no specific country

I am convinced, that the time of civil clauses at universities is not over, but that it has only just really come. In a world with ever more wars and military agression, it is important for science to not let the military enrol it for its projects and wars. I wish for a world in which scienceand technology, but this seams to be a far fetched dream uses its potential to influence society towards a future without wars.