Right-wing Influences: Challenges for Social Work in East Germany

Social Work is committed to social justice and human rights. Ideologies of inequality of people, combined with the justification of exclusion and oppression are incompatible with this claim. De facto, however, professionals, students, teachers and researchers in the professional practice of Social Work, at universities and in their private everyday life are confronted with everyday discrimination, openly expressed extreme right-wing attitudes and positions, and even violent people organized in right-wing structures. This is by no means unique to East Germany, but it is particularly true in the strength of its parliamentary expression and its interwoven nature in everyday life.

Against this background, university members from all East German states founded the "Network of East German Universities of Social Work against the Right" at the Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus-Senftenberg in June 2023. The lecture series organized by this network for the winter semester 2023/24 focuses on various facets of (extreme) right-wing attempts to exert influence that are relevant for Social Work in teaching, practice cooperation/support, research and everyday professional life. The aim of the offer is to better understand thematically relevant phenomena and to enter into a discussion about suitable ways of primary and secondary prevention, not only in Eastern Germany, in order to work out potentials for the professionalization of Social Work in the confrontation with right-wing extremism. The spectrum of topics ranges from looking back to the 1990s to an East German university foundation and its handling of right-wing attacks, to the (then) practice of youth work, to child education in right-wing extremist projects, the significance of anti-feminism as well as masculinity stagings as a hinge function for right-wing ideology, to attitudes of social work students and parliamentary influence of the AfD. The perspective of victims of right-wing violence and experiences with the consequences of the shift to the right for Social Work from Hungary broaden the view.

The lecture series begins on October 17, 2023 and ends with a lecture on January 16, 2024. The individual dates can be found in the program.

The lecture series is aimed at all interested parties, especially practitioners and students of Social Work. The individual lectures will take place in a hybrid format, alternating between the Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus-Senftenberg, the Magdeburg University of Applied Sciences and the Neubrandenburg University of Applied Sciences. All interested parties are invited to attend together in presence in the specified rooms!

Registration is possible via https://www.hs-nb.de/ringvorlesung-rechte-einflussnahmen or directly via registrierung(at)hs-nb.de. One registration for the entire lecture series is sufficient. The link for the online registration will be sent to the participants before each event.

The organizers reserve the right to make use of their domiciliary rights, also in the digital space, and to deny access to the event to persons who belong to right-wing extremist parties or organizations, who are associated with the right-wing extremist scene, or who have already come to light in the past through racist, nationalist, anti-Semitic or inhuman statements, or to exclude them from the event.