Despite her controversial likes for anti-Semitic posts on the Internet, the Board of Trustees of the Technical University of Berlin (TU) stands behind university president Geraldine Rauch.
“Although the president has caused a lot of damage to TU Berlin through her misconduct, she should nevertheless be given the chance to successfully implement the program she offered to strengthen trust in TU Berlin and to preserve its tradition as a cosmopolitan, tolerant and anti-racist university,” the TU’s supervisory board announced on Monday.
The committee has therefore refrained from demanding the resignation or recommending that the president be voted out of office. The council met digitally on Monday morning, behind closed doors. The Tagesspiegel newspaper reported earlier.
The board of trustees said that Rauch had made a mistake out of “negligence”. Rauch’s remorse convinced the board of trustees, who wanted to support the president “in a constructive and critical way in her announced new beginning”.
Among other things, Rauch had “liked” a post on the X platform with a picture in which Turkish demonstrators had painted swastikas on the chest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. After heavy criticism from her own university and from Senator Czyborra, the 41-year-old apologized and spoke of “deep remorse.”
Last Thursday, she announced that she wanted to stay in office, even though a narrow majority of the Academic Senate had voted in favor of her resignation. However, a resolution requiring a two-thirds majority would have been necessary for her to be voted out of office.