Prof. Armin Bernhard
Germany
Public universities were established after World War II as civilian institutions dedicated to scientific research with the aim of contributing to the establishment of a peaceful social structure and peaceful international relations. This clearly defined civil-scientific domain is under threat. Militaristic and warmon gering thinking has infiltrated every day and civil life in an alarming way in recent years. Images of former enemies are used to legitimize massive rearma ment and extraordinary arms exports. Germany, one of the main culprits of World War I and the main culprit of World War II, shamelessly assumes a leading role in Europe. Young people are once again being recruited to be sacrificed in war. The concept of war preparedness, discredited by German fascism, reveals a dangerous cultural backwardness that runs counter to the results of peace research conducted by the Federal Republic of Germany. It is time for the sciences to remember their civil scientific mission in a democratic society.
The science of education, which de fines itself as critical pedagogy, has been linked since the early 1970s to critical peace research. It is considered a civil and anti-militarist scientific discipline, diametrically opposed to any form of militarization. As a civilian and anti-militarist discipline, it is, of course, possible to base it on a normative foundation. According to positivism, any science that considers itself capable of excluding the ethical dimension of scientific research from its reflective scope, by remaining indifferent to the use given to research results, only serves to maintain the stability of the dominant social trends at that time. Therefore, it is extremely vulnerable to the misuse of its research by economic and military interest groups. On the contrary, pedagogical maturity compels the science of education to devote itself to research aimed at peaceful co existence both within society and internationally. In this sense, educational research that criticizes society is, at the same time, research on the science of peace from apedagogical perspective. The general pedagogical task of equipping people with maturity, freedom, and the capacity for judgment is fundamentally opposed to all forms of necrophilic military propaganda and socialization, and conflicts with perverse attempts to prepare people for war.
Research in educational sciences, which is part of the social and critical tradition, also radically opposes all forms of social conflict that manifest themselves symptomatically in the growing militarization of society. This ethical principle normatively establishes the limits of the principle of freedom of research: No research projects may be developed that in any way serve to perpetuate social instability, deterrence, armament, and preparations for war. This not only means prohibiting the educational sciences from collaborating in research with arms companies and military organizations, but also consistently rejecting participation in civil-military cooperation, as required by the 2025 Green Paper Civil-Military Cooperation 4.0 (Public Security justifyForum 2025).
This negative assessment has the following consequences for the educational sciences: All research that serves to involve people in these belligerent structures, to mobilize the “collective spirit” in favor of armament and wars (Senghaas 1981, p. 261), must be categorically rejected as a civilian scientific discipline. In other words: This is incompatible with research approaches and studies that aim to:
• strengthen society’s social and mental resilience in terms of military capability;
• Test cognitive warfare strategies;
• Create trends of military socialization even in kindergarten;
• Prepare for armed service;
• Create, disseminate, and deepen images of the enemy;
• Develop militaristic thinking and a war mentality in society.
As a critical and civil discipline, the science of education investigates under what conditions and circumstances the potentials of maturity can be realized, cultural dependency relationships can be eliminated, liberation processes can be initiated, and reasoning abilities can be developed. In this way, it does not only provide pedagogical professional groups with “simply” information that they can use for the emancipation of people, but also ensures that pedagogical practices oppose manipulative tendencies and political disinformation that seek to bind people to the system of social unrest and militaristic positions. Pedagogy promotes the general skills necessary for liberating and mature behavior, while also enabling people to critically examine and reject patterns of justification for social instability, such as enemy images.
The science of education must always determine with certainty what interests influence its research and what political consequences may arise from it. This is because it inevitably operates in a politically contentious field. It has to face the following fundamental uncertainty in research: The fact that all research results can also be used by the “opposing” side. The problem of dual-use research results also arises in educational science from two perspectives. Thus, it can critically examine the results of research obtained in the field of war and military research and use them for its own purposes: For example, issues related to military sociology or military psychology, such as ways of turning civilians into soldiers (see Pelt, 2023), can be reversed by applying them to the question of how to prevent children from being socialized as individuals with a militaristic mindset, using findings from peace research in the fields of education, military sociology, and military psychology. Military research, as impressively demonstrated by NATO’s research on “cognitive war fare,” can be used for non-military pur poses, contrary to its objectives (Tögel 2023).
The other side of the duality is more complex, as the results of civilian-focused scientific research are also not immune to being instrumentalized for military purposes. The educational content of the universities of the Federal Armed Forces clearly shows that the military uses civilian-focused approaches and liberating content to expand its hegemony in society. In order to avoid this danger, it is not enough to clearly and unequivocally highlight the conceptual interest itself. On the contrary, educational science has an obligation to convey the civil content of its research to society, through intermediaries and in popular scientific language, rather than keeping it within the academic sphere. While it is not possible to guarantee 100% protection, this type of dissemination strategy can at least minimize the risk of misuse by the military-industrial complex.
he military-industrial complex. As a civilian scientific discipline, educational science demonstrates a commitment to internationalism and understanding between peoples from a critical perspective. Its political counterpart is the pacifist movement. This fundamental orientation also implies that it must oppose political restrictions that eliminate these principles. The ban on scientific and cultural contacts with the Russian Federation, imposed by university administrations in 2022 in response to the war in Ukraine, not only revealed a dangerous weakness in educational science that must be overcome by all means. The scientific disciplines accepted this directive without resistance. However, a civil and anti-militarist pedagogy has an obligation to maintain dialogue and cooperation in times of crisis and war, especially when politics focuses solely on conflict, without any effort to reduce tensions. In this way, pedagogy contributes to the systematic elimination of enemy images and to a change of perspective that attempts to view an existing conflict also from the perspective of the “rival,” which is a necessary condition for confidence-building efforts and understanding between societies.
Bibliography
Apelt, M. (2023): Militärische Sozialisation. In: Leon hard, N./Werkner, I.-J. (Hrsg.): Militärsoziologie – Eine Einführung. 3. Auflage. Wiesbaden: Springer Senghaas, D. (1981): Abschreckung und Frieden. Studien zur Kritik organisierter Friedlosigkeit. Frankfurt a. M.
Tögel, J. (2023). Kognitive Kriegsführung. Neueste Manipulationstechniken als Waffengattung der NATO. Frankfurt am Main: Westend
Zukunftsforum Öffentliche Sicherheit (Hrsg.) (2025): Grünbuch 2025. Zivil-militärische Zusammenarbeit im militärischen Krisenfall. 4.0. Berlin
