The Institute for Social Cohesion, a €37-million initiative being pushed by Germany’s conservative CDU party, has no clear research concept and stands accused of being a right-wing think tank with public funding, according to media reports.
The institute, which is set to be based at the Technical University of Dresden in Saxony, was given start-up money of €1m in November’s research and education budget, with a further €36m committed up to 2022. Its main support came from the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, a conservative group with close ties to chancellor Angela Merkel’s CDU party.
Yet according to an article published by the news website Spiegel Online on 29 April, the education ministry recently admitted in the Bundestag—Germany’s lower house of parliament—that there was no clear research concept for the institute and that its scientific necessity had not been examined by experts.
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