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Public Awareness Campaign 'Zusammenhalt'

2025/02/18

Join us in our Zusammenhalt campaign! Together with cooperating departments and central units, we aim to foster a sense of bond within the university and encourage people to demonstrate a democratic stance: Against polarization and discrimination – for plurality and solidarity within TU Darmstadt campus and beyond.

The immediate occasion for this campaign is the recent increase in acts of vandalism featuring discriminatory content. Beyond this, both domestically and internationally, we observe a growing polarization which also affects our daily university life.

However, TU Darmstadt stands for a learning and working environment where diversity is valued. Regardless of gender, ethnic or national origin, religious affiliation, disability or health impairment, age, sexual identity, social background, or family caregiving responsibilities, our goal is to ensure equal participation and opportunities for everyone. Through its diversity strategy and anti-discrimination guidelines, the university actively addresses these challenges and works towards a culture of mutual respect.

Yet, the university community is defined not just by its policies and strategies but by the people within it – and by how they communicate and interact in its spaces and structures.

We would therefore be delighted if you join us, display the posters, and—most importantly—engage in conversations about their messages.

Find further Information about the terms of the campaign below:

Antisemitism refers to hostility towards people and institutions who are Jewish or to whom Jewishness is ascribed. Since Antisemitism is not based on knowledge about Jews or 'Judaism', the actual diversity of Jewish self-conceptions does not play a role in it. Rather, antisemitism is accompanied by centuries-old conspiracy theories that still have a strong impact today. On the one hand, people affected by antisemitism are constructed as alien and inferior, as in racism. At the same time, however, they are also imagined as overpowering, as can be seen, among other things, in the idea of a press controlled by Jews. The persecution of Jews has shaped the history of Germany and Europe. In the Shoah, 6 million Jews were murdered. Today, this history of persecution continues to have an effect in anti-Semitic formulations such as 'Schuldkult'.

This refers to a reluctance to deal with the horrors of National Socialism and is referred to as secondary antisemitism. Equally topical is Israel-related antisemitism, whose 3 characteristics are demonization, delegitimization and/or double standards and which can be easily identified by them.

Racism can be described as a pattern of discrimination and an expression of social power relations. In it, supposed differences between groups of humans based on their actual or ascribed geographical origin are argued as 'natural' and thus unchangeable via biologizing understandings. In recent debates, the argumentation has partly shifted towards a 'culturalism', which essentializes the characteristics of groups of people on the basis of their 'cultural origin'. In both cases, the idea of the supposed differences among groups of people is accompanied by a hierarchization of them: on the basis of collective attributions in terms of intelligence, sexuality, performance, ethical or aesthetic sensibilities, and much more, comprehensive and effective upgrades and devaluations take place.

These attributions to the respective groups are then transferred to individuals on the basis of markers such as names, national or ethnic origin or phenotypic characteristics.

Racism affects entire groups as well as individuals either in the form of privilege or in the form of disadvantage and discrimination.

Racism was an important instrument of legitimation in the history of both colonialism and modern slavery. An estimated 12 million people were forcibly shipped in the course of the transatlantic slave trade and forced to work in the Americas. What this number does not reflect is that countless people died during the violent kidnappings, while waiting in the dungeons before the start of the crossing, and especially during this crossing itself.

Recent effects of racist discrimination are, for example, everyday exclusion, structural discrimination, such as through certain practices in the school system or in the police, up to physical attacks and terror attacks with fatalities.

According to the division of humans into different groups, different racisms must be differentiated: anti-black racism, gadje racism, Migratism, anti-Slavic racism and also antisemitism and anti-muslim racism.

Sexism is a form of discrimination based on an ascribed or actual gender, to which in turn fixed characteristics, roles and patterns of behaviour are ascribed and furthermore are associated with revaluation or devaluation or devaluation. Accordingly, sexism represents a social system that hierarchizes genders. For example, men and characteristics with male connotations are usually privileged whereas women and characteristics with female connotations tend to be undervalued/disadvantaged. Non-binary persons are particularly affected by this system, which is strongly based on a 'normality' of two genders, as they are disproportionately affected by discrimination and violence. Despite recent social and legal developments comprehensive recognition must continue to be aimed for.

The effects of sexism are commonplace and comprehensive: from various forms of everyday sexism, such as sexualized advertising or jokes that reproduce stereotypes; on gender-specific division of tasks in regarding care work or unequal pay for equal work; to unequal freedom of movement due to limited safety for women and non-binary or trans* people in public spaces and psychological and physical violence against women and non-binary people.

The term ableism, derived from the English word 'able' = capable, criticizes the setting of norms and the often unaware expectations of the mental and physical ability of people. These give rise to comprehensive ideas of how people act, communicate and perceive'normally'. These ideas concern physical as well as mental/psychological and social forms of human articulation and interaction.

On the one hand, other forms of communication, interaction or perception are quickly perceived as irritating, perhaps even threatening. On the other hand, they are also devalued, judged and condemned. In the context of the university, ableism can also lead to the needs of students or employees being misunderstood as a lack of willingness to learn or work or even refusal or to a lack of competence.

On the one hand, the term 'queer' is a umbrella term for all people who do not feel they belong to the norm of heterosexual masculinity or femininity regarding their gender or sexual identity: gay, lesbian, bisexual, asexual people as well as, for example, trans or non-binary people. The diversity of gender and sexual identity is much greater.

Queerphobia means the non-recognition of these identities and, beyond that, the idea that the legal and social recognition of queer people would destabilize society as a whole. Queerphobia is a core issue of right-wing populist positions.

The term classism includes a critical perspective on the comprehensive social and societal effects of unequal financial realities. It also addresses the various forms of discrimination, devaluation or disadvantage of people with few financial resources due to this very life situation, such as the assumption that poor people are little or not at all willing to perform and/or less intelligent than wealthier people.

This means that classism is mostly directed against low-income, unemployed and homeless people. Classism has an impact on life expectancy and limits access to housing, educational qualifications, health care, power, networks, participation, recognition and money.

In the context of the university, classism as discrimination is rarely addressed, although educational justice is significantly impaired by classist structures.

#gemeinsamTuDa

Vielen Dank an unsere Kooperationspartner*innen vom SCC, Gleichstellungsbüro, Ingenium, der HDA, dem DEO, der ZSB, den ISS in Dezernat VIII und den vielen anderen Kolleg*innen, die aus praktikablen Gründen nicht mit Logo aufgeführt sind, aber die Kampagne unterstützt haben (Projekt Better Together! (FB03), der Personalrat, die Servicestelle Familie, das Sprachenzentrum und einige andere...)