This article provides a critical intervention into the crisis of academic freedom within contemporary German higher education. Employing a conceptual framework of memory–morality–power informed by Frankfurt School Critical Theory, the study deconstructs how Holocaust remembrance and ethical imperatives are instrumentally translated into administrative and legislative mechanisms of institutional control. Through a rigorous analysis of three interrelated phenomena—the securitization of student activism in Berlin, the disciplinary governance of scholars in elite institutions like the Max Planck Society, and the federal embedding of Staatsräson via the IHRA framework—the article reveals a systemic transition toward a “repressive tolerance.” The analysis argues that contemporary German higher education enforces a regime of conditional academic freedom, driven by anticipatory compliance and reputational risk. It demonstrates how these dynamics are sustained by a structural ‘Hyper-Zionism’ elevated to a civil religion, which systematically marginalizes decolonial inquiry and dissenting scholarly perspectives regarding Palestine. By repositioning ‘genocide’ as a contested analytical category, this research unmasks the fragile boundaries of permissible knowledge production in a landscape where historical memory is weaponized to enforce geopolitical alignment.
Taqadum Al-Khatib (Fri,) studied this question.