As Germany ramps up spending on its military, a clash is brewing around what some politicians and defense executives say is one of the nation’s biggest untapped resources: public universities.
The debate centers on so-called civil clauses — widely used policies at major research institutions that restrict collaboration with the defense industry. They date back to the Cold War, and now some academics want to get rid of them.
“At a time when security is more important than ever, we consider the civil clause to be a relic of the past,” said Klaus Kappen, chief technology officer of Rheinmetall AG, Germany’s biggest defense contractor.
“Every university that gets rid of it is keeping with the times and sending a valuable signal for the joint protection of our society’s values,” he added.
The drive to end civil clauses — and the backlash it’s causing among some researchers and activists — offers a window into the social tensions playing out in Germany as the country reevaluates its role in the region following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
The war not only raised the risk that Germany could be pulled into a direct conflict on European soil, but also laid bare decades of neglect that left the military ill-equipped to aid an ally, let alone engage in combat.
The merit of civil clauses has been questioned for years, but after being derided for only offering Ukraine 5,000 helmets in the lead-up to Russia’s invasion, political will to expand the military has grown. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in 2022 pushed through a 100 billion euros (US$102 billion) spending plan to modernize the military and declared a “Zeitenwende,” a historical turning point, that would make national defense a central priority.
Now, with snap elections planned for later this month, Germany’s political leaders have been picking up the rhetoric once again. Friedrich Merz, the center-right CDU’s chancellor candidate and current frontrunner, is calling for the military to reclaim its place at the “center of society” and wants to scrap civil clauses.
Meanwhile, warfare technology is advancing rapidly, and opponents of the clauses say Germany’s military lacks access to critical cutting-edge research on topics including artificial intelligence, information security, sensor technology and materials science.
Helmut Dosch, physicist and director of the Hamburg-based German Electron Synchrotron, or DESY, said his institute’s powerful X-ray machines could help optimize materials for armor plating, develop anti-corrosion coatings for ships and planes, recognize dangerous substances in transport containers and detect spyware in microchips. He is working on a proposal to open the center’s facilities to external partners for military research.
“Freedom of research is one of the greatest democratic privileges, it comes with the responsibility to protect liberal society when it’s being attacked,” Dosch said.
Nearly all of the funds approved under Scholz have been spent or allocated to orders of warships, air-defense systems, Lockheed Martin F-35 jets and more than a hundred German-made Leopard 2 tanks.
While the federal budget for this year has not yet been approved, Germany is under growing pressure from US President Donald Trump to further raise its defense spending.
In a defense strategy published in December last year, the German government said the strict separation between civilian and military research is holding back security-related advancements. That followed a position paper last year from the German Ministry for Education and Research that called for taking another look at the barriers to cooperation with the military.
Some German states have already taken action. In July last year, Bavaria’s parliament passed a bill that effectively outlawed civil clauses.
For some, politicians are moving too fast and risk breaking down the separation between military and civilian life that has been a pillar of post-war Germany.
“The development is alarming — that everything should be subordinated to the military and now even the universities,” said Michael Schulze von Glaser, political director of the German Peace Society. “Research and teaching should serve humanity and not its destruction.”
The idea for civil clauses originated in post-World War II Japan, when the country’s science council said its members would refuse to take part in military-related research. The practice gained traction in Germany during the height of the Cold War, when the University of Bremen in 1986 said it would reject research projects and funding that could serve weapons technology. Since then, more than 60 German universities and major research hubs have put civil clauses in place.
The clauses are “extremely rare internationally,” said Christian E. Rieck, associate professor of War Studies at the University of Potsdam, adding that Germany and Japan are the only two examples where they are widespread.
In contrast, universities in countries including the UK and the US are deeply linked to the defense industry and government. For example, Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, has a program that connects more than 200 faculty members with defense companies to explore the military application of their research. In 2022, the US Department of Defense contributed almost US$8 billion to university research, making it the second-biggest funder after the US Department of Health and Human Services.
Lockheed Martin, the world’s biggest defense company, routinely hosts corporate events on US campuses with student challenges, job interviews and weapons displays.
However, in Germany, radar maker Hensoldt has complained it is not even allowed to attend recruiting events at universities that have civil clauses, and Rheinmetall said it struggles to recruit lecturers from such institutions to teach continuing-education courses for its engineers.
The biggest manufacturers, like Rheinmetall, have enough capital for their own in-house research, partially compensating for the lack of connection with universities, but small and medium-sized producers — the backbone of Germany’s economy — generally cannot support a robust research program, Rieck said.
“I can understand anyone who doesn’t want to do this, but taking the decision away from many people is a restriction of research and teaching,” said Marc Eichhorn, professor of optronics at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and head of the defense division at the Fraunhofer Institute of Optronics, System Technologies and Image Exploitation. KIT and Fraunhofer do not have civil clauses, and Eichhorn receives research funding from the German army and cooperates with defense companies.
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