Responsible openness

F.A.Z.: Professor Huber, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich (LMU) has consistently been one of the Universities of Excellence since the start of the Excellence Initiative. How did you achieve this competitive success?

Bernd Huber: It was the university as a whole that achieved it. We initiated various strategy processes to consolidate LMU’s position. The decisive factor is the excellence of the scholars — obviously we have also pursued a very successful appointment policy.

Not all disciplines have participated in the Excellence Strategy, so does the comprehensive research-intensive university still have an advantage?

The comprehensive research-intensive university is a successful model. The question of what it is that actually makes a comprehensive research-intensive university successful is a very interesting one. However, Germany’s comprehensive research-intensive universities are not really universities of that type, because they do not have any engineering sciences. Given the developments in artificial intelligence and quantum sciences, I think it is appropriate for a comprehensive research-intensive university to also get involved in some areas of engineering.

Heidelberg has decided to do that. With the exception of one, all of your Clusters of Excellence have been achieved together with the Technical University of Munich (TUM).

With seven Clusters of Excellence, we have been very successful. I am particularly pleased that the number now includes a Cluster of Excellence in the humanities.

What has the Excellence Competition achieved from the perspective of the president of a large university?

It is a great success story because it has put German universities back on the international map. When I visited the then-president of Harvard, it became clear to me that people in America were taking a really close look at who had done well in the Excellence Initiative competition and how.

But twenty years in, Germany must now think about how the competition should continue. We could consider having the clusters awarded not just every seven years but in the same way as the Collaborative Research Centers. We also need to make sure that the university is not too narrowly focused on the Excellence Competition. After all, there are other funding formats — especially in the humanities.

A Vision for the future of LMU

Even though, as outgoing president, you will not be responsible for it, what is your vision for the future of LMU?

LMU should retain its status as a comprehensive research-intensive university, it should continue to push ahead with the development of the university campus in the city center, and it should manage the upcoming generational change by making outstanding appointments. About 30 percent of professors will be retiring in the next few years.

A university also needs additional funding to make outstanding new appointments — does LMU have it?

The last 15 years have been a very good time for science and academia. When I started in the role of President 23 years ago, we had around 600 professorships; now we have a good 800. Part of our success is down to the fact that we have repeatedly reorganized our structure, which has enabled us to release funds to finance new projects. The principle that education and science are among the key factors for the success of the economy and society has now been accepted by all, so I am optimistic about the future overall.

Could LMU, with its city-center campus, also be a place for social discourse?

This may sound old-fashioned, but the university is primarily a place for academic exchange. We do have broad-ranging debate on many topics, but it must always be science-led. I was always against allowing purely political events at the university. You can very quickly end up in the kind of situation we see in America, where universities are accused of being politically biased.

You know that Berlin universities are seeing often violent pro-Palestinian demonstrations take place. What is the situation like at LMU?

Of course there have been demonstrations in Munich too. But LMU has stuck to its policy of not allowing any political activities at the university. This has significantly defused the situation here compared to other universities. But it is important to say that, with 70,000 people — including the university hospital — at LMU, I can’t see inside everyone. And I can’t rule out the possibility that there are isolated anti-Semitic tendencies, just like in the rest of society. I don’t see a particular problem with anti-Semitism at universities in Germany.

So, what are the core functions of the universities of tomorrow?

The functions of a university cannot simply be increased at will. The university is not a supermarket — if it were treated as such, it would suffocate under the weight of function inflation. Research and teaching are the top priorities. Taking innovation and knowledge transfer — not just in a technical sense — into society and promoting early-career researchers are core functions, alongside doing science.

What is your view of the erosion of academic freedom in the United States?

A significant part of American society is extremely critical of universities. The situation is currently different here in Germany, but that may change — and that worries me. Incidentally, it will hurt us too if the scientific landscape in the United States is damaged permanently.

In contrast to the United States, academic freedom is guaranteed here under constitutional law.

This constitutional safeguard places an obligation on society and policymakers, but it also places an obligation on science and academia to handle this freedom with care. Scholars must make a clear distinction between what is science and what is the personal opinion of a researcher.

Academic careers

You yourself come from the field of economics, an over-frequented discipline. Are there too many students doing doctorates?

I don’t think so. The real difficulty begins with the postdocs, i.e. after the doctorate. An academic career is associated with risk. We must do everything we can to support early-career researchers in their career paths. We provide targeted career counselling, for example. We offer exit opportunities, but as a university we certainly need to do more. Sometimes you also have to tell academics that a career is not particularly promising.

One of the constant complaints one hears from university presidents is that the basic funding from the federal states is too low and that they are heavily dependent on third-party funding.

Of course I would like to see more basic funding, but the reality of funding also reflects the nature of federalism, because basic funding is provided by the federal states and research funding is also supported by the federal government via the German Research Foundation (DFG) and other institutions. On the one hand, we are dependent on third-party funding, but on the other hand, funding is diversified as a result, which certainly has its advantages.

Internationalization – still a recipe for success?

For a while, internationalization was a recipe for success — as if science had not always been international. In the meantime, however, there are concerns about research security. What are you doing to advise individual researchers on whom to work with?

We must strive for responsible openness. On the one hand, we want to be an open institution, but on the other hand we have to take security concerns into account. The kind of completely unrestrained internationalization that was long demanded was in some cases somewhat naive.

That being said, now there are European universities, such as in the Netherlands, that will only collaborate with German universities if they have a sophisticated security concept in place. Are we heading towards provincialization now?

Indeed, the pendulum is now at risk of swinging back the other way. But LMU and many other universities want to maintain their international collaborations; we have to find the difficult balance between carefully protecting data, for example, and engaging in essential exchange and sharing with international partners.

When you look back on your time at the head of the university after 23 years, which topics have moved you the most and where do you see shortcomings?

The topic of excellence has occupied me very intensely. There have been many changes we’ve had to react to — the double Abitur cohort, for example, the switch to Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees, and much more besides. We managed this quite well. However, one of the success factors for a university is development of its physical infrastructure and I would have liked us to have made a little more progress here. But building in Germany has become a test of patience — and that is the same for all locations. It’s not just about funding issues, but about the processes themselves.

Will you still be there when your university is inspected for the Excellence Strategy?

I will be happy to be there if requested.

(Source: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, July 3, 2025. The interview was conducted by Heike Schmoll.)