Support letter from the Georg-August University of Göttingen
Announcements
"The University of Göttingen wholeheartedly supports the joint Statement of the Conference of Rectors of Academic Schools in Poland, the German Rectors' Conference, the Österreichische Fachhochschulkonferenz, Österreichische Universitätenkonferenz and the Slovak Rectors' Conference.
The Statement, titled "Safeguarding university autonomy and academic freedom in Georgia", voices concern that the National Concept for the Reform of the Higher Education System in Georgia, which was published by the Georgian government on 16th October2025, "threatens to eliminate university autonomy and academic freedom in Georgia". This would not only undo the reforms the Georgian higher education system has undergone in recent years -it would be detrimental to the successful, third-party funded research collaboration between German and Georgian universities like ours.
llia State University (ISU) is a Strategic regional partner of the University of Göttingen. Our partnership began in the framework of capacity building projects in 2010. This collaboration quickly expanded in terms of its scope and funding, which is a tribute to ISU's research excellence, Strategic management, international orientation and strong dedication to the freedom of research. The pinnade of our cooperation was the project „Structured Education - Quality Assurance - Freedom to Think", funded by the Volkswagen Foundation and the National Science Foundation of Georgia from 2018 to 2023. In this project, twelve PhD students from nine disciplines were jointly supervised by researchers from Göttingen and Tbilisi. As a result, our partnership includes intensive research co-Operation in several fields with great potential for the future acquisition of third-party funding.
Any threats to the autonomy of and academic freedom at ISU would jeopardize the future potential of our well-established cooperation. As a result, we follow the developments in Georgia's university landscape with great concern.
You and many of your university members are doing your utmost to bring such concerns to your government's attention in order to ensure that Georgian scientists remain embedded in their research communities across the globe. We hope that your efforts to protect academic freedom in Georgia will be successful so that our collaboration can continue to flourish".
The statement published by the University of Göttingen on Facebook https://shorturl.at/VY8oV
2026