Berlin – The Humboldt University (HU) in Berlin has a new President. On Tuesday, the 51-year-old political scientist Julia von Blumenthal was elected by the 61-strong HU Council with 44 yes votes. 58 votes were cast. Blumenthal was the only candidate after her competitor Joybrato Mukherjee, University President from Giessen, withdrew his candidacy.
United women’s power for Berlin
Julia von Blumenthal is the third woman to head the University of Unter den Linden in central Berlin. And one of the first congratulations came from Charlottenburg: “My congratulations and I’m looking forward to a good cooperation with a new united women’s power. Together we will achieve a lot in and for Berlin,” writes Geraldine Rauch, who was recently elected the new President of the TU Berlin.
The new election at the HU became necessary because the previous President Sabine Kunst had resigned in the fall in protest against the new Berlin Higher Education Act. Since then, the psychologist Peter Frensch has acted as interim president. After the election of Julia von Blumenthal, Berlin’s Senator for Science, Ulrike Gote, congratulated her by saying that she was very pleased “that it was possible in such a short time to find such an excellent person for this position, which is central to Berlin as a science location”.
Return to the Humboldt University
Julia von Blumenthal was born in Marburg in 1970 and is a political scientist. She was already a professor and dean at the HU before she became President of the European University Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder) in 2018. So she has experience in university politics. After the election, she said: “Creating good framework conditions for all members of the HU and advancing the university on the way to climate neutrality will be important tasks of my term of office.” The beginning of the winter semester 2022/23 was mentioned as a possible date of her assumption of office.