Letter of Solidarity

 

As students and scholars at the Uni Bayreuth, we are writing to thank you for your valuable work in establishing Intersectionality Studies, Gender Studies, Childhood Studies, and Critical Race Studies and to pay tribute to your work.

Your theoretical contributions to these fields have been as seminal to our work as your sound analyses. Your studies on adultism and discrimination-sensitive education have an impact far beyond Germany. We know that you have made these fields of research strong despite fierce headwinds that are repeatedly ignited, especially by racist parties and their representatives.

We observe that these racists and sexists do not stand up to scientific dialogue and therefore avoid it through populist interventions. We think that it contradicts all scientific ethics to compensate for the inability for a sincere scientific discourse by public-political hate speech and racist attacks on representatives of disagreeable discourse positions and to use extremely reductionist and populist means.

However, we know that this cannot stop you and your visionary scholarship, and we would like to express our attachment to you herewith.

We read your articles and essays and we are also very grateful that you have repeatedly enriched – and will enrich – the University of Bayreuth through lectures and workshops. Intersectionality studies in Bayreuth and especially also the work of the Bayreuth Network Gender Queer Intersectionality and Diversity Studies (GeQuInDi), the Model African Union Bayreuth e.V. (MAU) and the Student Parliament of the University of Bayreuth are based on positions that your work has made possible.

We would like to thank you and once again recall excerpts of your work on our website. Furthermore, we look forward to working with you in the near future. In particular, we look forward to your lecture on 2/18/2021 as part of the lecture series on Intersectionality Studies.

Please remain as inspiring and visionary as we know you to be.

Solidarity greetings