The Professors Strike Back

In the classes of Economics Professor Bernhard Bellinger, they blew their noses in sequence, interrupted lectures to demand that he "stop babbling," and taunted their highbrowed teacher by chanting, "Partially bald men are impotent." Organized into "red cells" in many parts of the school, radical students at West Berlin's Free University have been disrupting classes since October to challenge the total classroom authority that full professors enjoy in Germany. Last week the professors answered the attack with their own disruption. In support of Bellinger, 28 of the 30 members of the economics faculty went out on a week-long strike.

Purpose of the strike, said Bellinger, is "to call public attention to the fact that we have no legal protection, that the president refuses to take disciplinary action, that we are confronted with a situation devoid of law." Particularly galling to the strikers is the fact that the president, Rolf Kreibich, 31, is not a full professor, has not even completed his doctorate, and was elected despite the opposition of most professors.

The angry students argue that Bellinger and other professors present conservative views of their subjects, rarely permit questions and allow no class discussion. They are pressing for more flexible tutors and lecturers. The professors retort that the university is already close to anarchy and insist that establishing order is the first priority. What is ultimately at issue is the direction of German university reform.

Experiment and Protest. Since its founding in 1948 as an alternative to Communist-controlled Humboldt University in East Berlin, Free University has led West Germany in both academic experiment and student protest. Last year, in the wake of student disorders, West Berlin's parliament reorganized the administration of the school. The position of rector--a full professor elected to govern the university for two years by his fellow professors--was replaced with a more powerful president elected for seven years by a council of 33 professors, 33 lecturers, 33 students and 15 university employees. Kreibich, who is thought to be a leftist by the professors, an opportunist by the red cells, and has the confidence of neither, must make his office work. After two months as president, he is looking toward next month's spring vacations to ease tensions. If he is forced to call police, he will win support from the professors and please the radicals by driving angry students into their camp. What he may lose is the university, a loss that would cast a pall on the immediate future of higher education in West Germany.

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