Can an employee who is critical of corona measures be terminated? A verdict has now been reached in the case of the political scientist Ulrike Guérot.
Ulrike Guérot became known as a critic of the Corona protective measures. In 2023 she was terminated from the University of Bonn. Now a court has decided whether this was legal.
The dismissal of the controversial political scientist Ulrike Guérot (Corona criticism book: “Those who are silent, agree”) by the University of Bonn was legal according to a court ruling. The 60-year-old scientist had sued against the dismissal, but the Bonn labor court dismissed the lawsuit. Guérot then told the German Press Agency that she would appeal the verdict.
It wasn’t about criticism of corona measures at all
The university justified the termination with allegations of plagiarism. The court also saw this and found that a “breach of duty by the plaintiff through deception” justified termination. Guérot’s book: “Why Europe must become a republic” was crucial.
The court ruled that she had quoted other people’s statements in several places in this book and had not properly identified this, which amounted to scientific misconduct and also plagiarism. Guérot used the book to apply for the professorship in Bonn. The court viewed this as an attempt at deception. What makes matters worse is that Guérot is not a scientific beginner. Termination without prior warning is therefore justified.
Guérot said after the judge’s verdict that she was “surprised by the verdict.” She doesn’t think the reasoning is conclusive and will go to the second instance. She applied with far more books and articles and no one found any errors. She had publicly admitted individual problematic passages from the Europe book years before. “The university could have known that.”
Controversial statements
Guérot drew attention to himself during the corona pandemic with sharp criticism of the state protective measures. She called the protective measures “semi-authoritarian” and in May 2021 joined an initiative of scientists who supported the #allesdichtmachen campaign, which was critical of the measures. As an interview partner, she spread false information and, according to the FAZ, became an icon of the “lateral thinker scene”.
She is also controversial because of her statements about the war in Ukraine. Since the beginning of the Russian attack, she has been calling for immediate peace negotiations. Critics accuse her of partially reversing the relationship between attacker and victim. In February 2023, Guérot was one of the first signatories of the “Manifesto for Peace” initiated by Sahra Wagenknecht and Alice Schwarzer, which called for diplomacy and negotiations and against further “escalating arms deliveries” to Ukraine.
The court hearing on Wednesday attracted dozens of supporters of the author. They called for academic freedom on banners.
