Editor’s Note: The following is an excerpt of an article originally published by The James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal on August 22, 2025. It is cross-posted here with permission.

Much has been reported lately on the influence of foreign actors such as Qatar, Iran, and China on American campuses. What seems to slip under the radar in this debate, however, is the influence of ostensibly friendly actors such as Germany.

Through the quasi-governmental agency German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), “German studies professors” are placed at universities across America to teach courses on politics, history, anthropology, and philosophy. They are paid in part by DAAD and supervised with a clearly defined mandate to represent German national interests.

While they teach at places such as Georgetown, Cornell, Berkeley, UNC-Chapel Hill, and other host universities of “strategic importance,” they report to the DAAD headquarters in Bonn. In DAAD’s own words, the goal of German studies professors is “the transmission of a contemporary image of Germany abroad.” The program aims to project a particular, curated, and state-approved understanding of Germany in accordance with its international reputation strategies. This amounts to a foreign soft-power deployment within an American academic environment.

Unlike Fulbright exchanges for “mutual understanding,” DAAD professorships are long-term positions (2-5 years) of lasting institutional influence, especially since recipients are integrated into their departments and are most often renewed. DAAD professors are embedded in curriculum design and teaching and hence influence what gets taught and researched about Germany: which authors are emphasized, how political and cultural controversies are framed, and what guest speakers are invited.

DAAD’s 2024 evaluation acknowledges that the professorships are explicitly designed to serve foreign-cultural policy objectives (außenkulturpolitische Ziele). Consequently, while expecting to receive a critical academic education about Germany, students at host universities in America may receive a state-curated image instead.

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All DAAD professors must apply through a German selection process before they are recommended to their host universities. DAAD considers whether candidates have lived in Germany at least in the past two years, as well as their ability to represent Germany in accordance with the mission. Actual teaching ability also plays a role, but at times can be skipped over. The overall emphasis in the selection process is less on academic merit than on the ability to promote Germany as a “desirable place to study and do research” (Deutschland als attraktiven Studien- und Forschungsstandort). With these non-academic criteria in mind, DAAD professors effectively become instruments of foreign public diplomacy, while the American host universities effectively outsource part of their curriculum and student engagement to a foreign government.

Due to financial difficulties, DAAD recently had to cut 13 of its scholarship and university internationalization programs that allow German and foreign students to study and conduct research. Yet, German studies professorships were not among the eliminated programs despite a declining number of applicants, which speaks to their importance.

DAAD is funded by the German Foreign Office, and the German constitution guarantees freedom of research and teaching as a fundamental right. But even without censorship or direct state pressure, DAAD’s structural incentives encourage a sanitized version of Germany to be taught at American universities. Germany’s failure in combating anti-Semitism, for instance, does not fit well with Germany’s new self-perception. A concept such as historischen Aufarbeitung (historical reappraisal) could, therefore, be framed positively, such that the professor emphasizes Germany’s morality and global leadership during Holocaust education.

I am not sure how much is left of that narrative of national virtue, given that the German government funds through another organization projects such as this one: “Jewish Pimps, Prostitutes and Campaigners in a Transnational German and British Context, 1875–1940.” Is the Germany that produces such anti-Semitic tropes a “desirable place to do research,” one that DAAD professors should promote, or is that to be ignored?

Read the remainder of the article here. 

Image: “DAAD” by Mkill on Wikimedia Commons