Freie Universität Berlin is part of the Berlin University Alliance (BUA), which also contributes to outstanding scholarship and networking. This year the president of Freie Universität Berlin, Professor Günter M. Ziegler, is the spokesperson for the BUA.

The Diversity and Antidiscrimination Office took up its work this year. Its staff members are working to achieve greater equity within the university as well as to counteract discriminatory structures and mechanisms.

Jaco Cilliers heads the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Ukraine. In June he visited Berlin as a delegate at the Third Ukraine Recovery Conference. At Freie Universität he reported on how the UNDP continues to function, even as the war continues.

Gretchen Dutschke is an alumna of Freie Universität Berlin and an important figure in contemporary history. She was the wife and comrade-in-arms of Rudi Dutschke, an icon of the German student revolt of 1968. Gretchen Dutschke studied theology at Freie Universität. She accepted an invitation to speak at the event series “Von Alumni für Alumni.”

Edzard Reuter died at the age of 96. A lawyer, he was one of the first students to enroll at Freie Universität when it was founded in 1948. His father, Ernst Reuter, was a mayor in West Berlin at the time of the university’s founding, and in 1950 he became the Governing Mayor of West Berlin. Ernst Reuter provided significant support for the founding of a new university in the western part of the city, thus enabling the founding of Freie Universität Berlin.

Paul Dösch was on the German national men’s hockey team when they won the European indoor hockey championship. Dösch studies media and communication studies at Freie Universität and is one of 226 students at the university receiving a Deutschlandstipendium during the 2023/2024 academic year. This is the highest number of Deutschlandstipendium scholarship recipients at Freie Universität to date.