Publication: Cape Argus
Issued:
Date: 2008-03-19
Reporter: Cameron Abadi
Ian Baldwin is the director of a research institute at Germany's prestigious Max
Planck Society and has a PhD in ecology from Cornell University.
If anybody deserves to bandy about the title "doctor" it might be him.
But the scholar recently received a letter from German police notifying him that
he has been charged with the crime of "Missbrauch des Titelns," or misuse of a
title - a Nazi-era law passed in 1939 that was apparently designed to keep out
foreign influence in German academia.
The law dictates that anybody with a doctorate from a foreign university must
get approval from the Education Ministry before using the title. Violators face
fines and up to a year in prison.
"It's pretty absurd," Baldwin said. "I mean, it was hard to take it seriously.
But I have to."
At least two other directors of Max Planck Institutes in the eastern German city
of Jena face similar charges - David Heckel, who has earned a PhD from Stanford
University and Jonathan Geshenzon who has a doctorate from the University of
Texas.
Titles are not to be taken lightly in the strict formality of Germany, where
neighbours or colleagues who have known each other for decades still call each
other by their last names and where titles are considered part of an
individual's legal name.
"The law also prohibits masquerading as a police officer, medical doctor or
professor," said Erik Kraatz, an assistant professor of criminal law at the Free
University of Berlin.
Since the law didn't include any specifically xenophobic language, it cleared
the vetting process of the German legal system carried out by the occupying
forces - the US, Britain and France - after World War Two.
"What counts is the letter of the law, not the motives behind it," said Michael
Stolleis, a professor of law at the University of Frankfurt.
Germany is not the only European country to enforce the use of academic titles.
Spain and Switzerland also require PhD holders to furnish proof of their degree.
But in the event of a conviction, those countries only impose fines and not
prison sentences.
So far, though, nobody in post-war Germany has ever been put behind bars for
breaking the law.
Baer Detlef, a spokesperson for the Thuringia state education ministry, said the
cases against Baldwin and Gershenzon have already been dismissed, and he expects
a suspension of the case against Heckel will follow shortly.
"Their stories checked out," Detlef said. "They simply did not know about the
law."
A federal commission of education ministers from Germany's 16 states agreed last
week to change the law to recognise doctoral degrees granted by American
universities on an elite list of graduate programmes.
The group also agreed to draw up lists of recognised graduate programs in other
non-European countries, too, but formal changes must be approved by state
parliaments.
Baldwin laughed off any notion he was trying to commit fraud.
"First off, I don't even refer to myself as a doctor in my private life,"
Baldwin said. "If anything, it's my colleagues at the Max Planck Institute that
refer to me as Dr Baldwin."
But after he was charged in January, he did have his business cards changed to
the legally acceptable designation under German law: "Professor Ian T Baldwin,
Ph.D., Cornell University (Ithaca, New York)."
Baldwin was baffled by the fact that his academic status somehow managed to
appear on the radar of the state police.
"I assume someone tipped the state police off," he
said. "But, I have no idea who would do that." -
Sapa-AP
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With acknowledgement to Cameron Abadi and Cape Argus.