Germany: Have the Adults Finally Entered the Room? (Well, at Least at the Universities)
By Lisa Müller
As political tensions grow in Germany, Lisa Müller describes a recent case in which academic freedom has triumphed over cancel culture
(Read this article in the original German here)
The attempt by trans activist students to “cancel” developmental psychologist Professor Dr. Ute Johanna Bayen at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf culminated last week in a show of support from the university’s leadership. It was also met with a strongly worded public statement defending academic freedom from the Fakultätentag Psychologie, the association representing 66 psychology institutes at German universities.
Professor Bayen became the target of a broad coalition of activist students. Even the RCDS (Ring Christlich-Demokratischer Studenten), a student organization aligned with the governing Christian Democrats, joined the campaign. The trigger was that students had obtained a copy of an email in which Professor Bayen announced her regular undergraduate lecture and used the term “trans ideology”(Trans-Ideologie).
The German Situation
Germany passed a gender self-ID law in November 2024. Under this law, adults can change their officially registered sex at will once every year. No psychological or other assessment is required. Minors over the age of 14 can change their registered sex with the consent of a legal representative or, if their parents disagree, the family court. Parents may apply for the registered sex of children under the age of 14 to be changed from male to female or vice versa. The self-ID law does not govern medical procedures. However, Germany’s medical guidelines overwhelmingly endorse the gender-identity affirmation approach, with the swift prescription of puberty blockers, followed closely by cross-sex hormones and surgery.
Germany’s Supreme Court has anchored the concept of the sex spectrum in the country’s constitution, and Germany’s president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, has identified belief in the sex binary as an anti-democratic relic of the reactionary past. Critique of trans ideology and its integration into ever more areas of German law is still muted.
Feminists and parents’ groups are leading the fight against sex-denying policies. However, the right-wing Alternativ für Deutschland party is also vocal in its opposition, and this has meant that the political firewall (no debate, no participation) erected to exclude the AfD from power has also all but silenced discussion of healthy, evidence-based approaches to sex and gender. Cancel culture is stifling debate of all kinds. It is therefore all the more remarkable that leading academics have finally come out to defend free debate at Germany’s universities.
The attempt by trans activist students to “cancel” developmental psychologist Professor Dr. Ute Johanna Bayen at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf culminated last week in a show of support from the university’s leadership. It was also met with a strongly worded public statement defending academic freedom from the Fakultätentag Psychologie, the association representing 66 psychology institutes at German universities.
Professor Bayen became the target of a broad coalition of activist students. Even the RCDS (Ring Christlich-Demokratischer Studenten), a student organization aligned with the governing Christian Democrats, joined the campaign. The trigger was that students had obtained a copy of an email in which Professor Bayen announced her regular undergraduate lecture and used the term “trans ideology”(Trans-Ideologie).
The student groups demanded the immediate dismissal of the professor, who has held a tenured civil service appointment since 2007, and that she be banned from entering the university campus. They also called for all of her previous academic publications to be reviewed. The fact that Professor Bayen, like all other researchers, has already subjected her work to scrutiny through the peer-review process appears either to have escaped them, or they believed their own judgment carried greater weight than that of the relevant academic discipline.
However, the appeal had a very different effect from what the students had expected. The university’s rector, Anja Steinbeck, and the university administration ensured that the lecture proceeded as scheduled on Tuesday, 21 July 2026, by arranging police protection and moving it to a larger lecture hall.
News of the attempted cancellation spread rapidly on social media through the Network for Academic Freedom (Netzwerk Wissenschaftsfreiheit) and was subsequently picked up by several conservative media outlets. The case evoked memories of the Berlin biologist Marie-Luise Vollbrecht, who, in 2022, had been due to give a popular science lecture on biological sex differences as part of Berlin’s Long Night of the Sciences at Humboldt University of Berlin. Because Vollbrecht was already known to trans activists through her radical feminist presence on Twitter, they attempted to prevent the lecture from taking place—and succeeded. The university cancelled the event, citing security concerns. This marked the beginning of a years-long activist campaign of harassment against the doctoral researcher, who was employed on a fixed-term contract.
The rector of Düsseldorf took a different approach from her counterparts in Berlin. Professor Steinbeck was quoted in the magazine Cicero as saying, “It is not acceptable to silence someone before they have even spoken.”Scientific arguments, she said, must be met with scientific arguments, “not by preventing the debate from taking place altogether.”
Certain Ideas Are Considered Beyond Criticism
Even so, it was far from an ordinary lecture. In addition to the 200 demonstrators gathered outside the lecture hall, activists also made themselves heard inside the auditorium, repeatedly booing and shouting throughout the entire 90-minute lecture. According to Cicero, the activists were triggered by statements such as:
- “There are two biological sexes.”
- “There is low-quality evidence that puberty blockers improve mental health.”
- “These operations on the sex organs are interventions on healthy bodies.”
According to Cicero, the mention of Lisa Littman’s study on rapid-onset gender dysphoria (ROGD) and the hypothesis of social contagion as one possible explanation for the rise in case numbers also prompted protests and accusations of “being unscientific,” even though Professor Bayen also presented the alternative explanation of destigmatization. It was at this point, Cicero reported, that Professor Bayen did in fact use the term “ideology,” explaining that this was precisely what ideological thinking meant—that certain ideas are considered beyond criticism and that some things are not permitted to be said because a particular theory is to be shielded from scrutiny.
Whether tempers in Düsseldorf will cool during the upcoming examination period and semester break remains to be seen. One person likely to have been particularly disillusioned by the events is Max Fockenberg, chair of the Düsseldorf branch of the RCDS. His decision to join what the article characterizes as a left-wing identity politics campaign appears to have resulted in a steep learning curve. During the course of the week, he resigned from his position on the executive board of the RCDS in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia.
That the student activists appear unfamiliar with how scientific debate and political discourse are ordinarily conducted in Germany, and with the constitutional status afforded to academic freedom, is perhaps still excusable.
Grounds for Optimism Despite Entrenched Political Divisions
More striking, however, is that two members of the German parliament—the trans-identified MP Nyke Slawik of the Green Party and the non-binary identifying Lizzy Schubert of the far-left Die Linke party—as well as the Düsseldorf chair of the SPD (Social Democratic Party), echoed the students’ criticisms on social media. As is common within these parties, they accused Professor Bayen of presenting an unbalanced account and argued that the university’s alleged “transphobia” shared responsibility for what they described as increasing hostility toward “queer” people in Germany. This line of argument is aimed at countering the growing electoral success of the Alternative for Germany (AfD), the only party represented in parliament that has consistently opposed trans activism and questioned gender-affirming treatment. The political divisions have long been entrenched, with neither side showing any sign of shifting its position.
Nevertheless, the Bayen case offers grounds for optimism. Few would have expected such a robust response from the academic discipline of psychology after observing the conduct of psychotherapists in the field of transgender care over the past decade. In its statement, the Faculty Council of Psychology (Fakultätentag Psychologie) wrote, among other things:
“The leadership of the Faculty Council of Psychology has learned with great concern that several student organizations at the University of Düsseldorf have called for Professor Dr. Ute Johanna Bayen’s lecture to be prohibited and for our colleague to be dismissed from her university position. Such demands and methods are incompatible with academic freedom in a democratic society.
Everyone is free to comment on a scientist’s lecture after hearing it. Everyone is free to discuss its contents with the scientist concerned, as Professor Bayen herself offered to do. Those who object to her statements are also free to exercise their democratic rights to express their views publicly or to demonstrate. Our system of science and our democratic state provide established and civilised avenues for discussion, disagreement, and criticism. Anyone who abandons these avenues thereby demonstrates that they are not genuinely interested in engaging with the substance of the debate. […]
Sources
- Network for Academic Freedom: Network Wissenschaftsfreiheit on X – “Network for Academic Freedom condemns attacks on psychology professor at HHU Düsseldorf. Press release of 20 July 2026. The demands by the AStA and other students at HHU Düsseldorf to cancel the developmental psychology lecture by Professor Dr. Bayen…”
https://x.com/Netzwerk_WF - WELT Online: Düsseldorf: Professor Gives Lecture on “Trans Identities” – Students Demand Dismissal and Ban from Campus
https://www.welt.de/ - Cicero article:
https://archive.ph/ZKAGk - Faculty Council of Psychology (Fakultätentag Psychologie):
https://www.fakultaetentag-psychologie.de/empfehlungen-und-stellungnahmen/details/wissenschaftsfreiheit/ - Greens, Die Linke, SPD: R. Eder-Kirsch on X – “With ‘Nyke’ Slawik and Lisa ‘Lizzy’ Schubert, two members of the Bundestag have now also criticized the lecture at HHU. Schubert (23) is herself still enrolled as a student at HHU (Social Sciences). She identifies as non-binary.”https://x.com/
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