Proposed Tuition Sparks Marathon Physics Lecture

Across Europe, student strikes over the past few months have disrupted university classes. In Berlin, Germany, they also led to a new world record for the longest-ever physics lecture.

The strikes are to protest budget cuts and the introduction or raising of tuition fees. In the case of Berlin, the local government wants to cut its universities’ budgets by a total of €75 million ($100 million) over five years, slash 200 academic posts, and, for the first time, charge students—between €400 and €2000 per semester. Besides fighting tuition fees—which are currently banned by German federal law—the city’s students are demanding an increase from 85 000 to 135 000 undergraduate slots.

In addition to standard forms of protest such as making barricades, storming city hall, and marching, students and professors drew attention to their plight by staging a 72-hour physics lecture last December on Potsdamer Platz, one of the busiest public squares in central Berlin. In two-hour shifts, they spoke on everything from buckyballs to the theory of relativity. “When I lectured on laser optics at 3 AM, all seats were taken, with dozens of students listening from outside even though it was freezing,” says Paul Fumagalli, chair of the physics department at Berlin’s Free University. Berlin students are planning other public physics lectures as the strike continues.