The president of Freie Universität Berlin, Prof. Dr. Peter-André Alt, described Professor Kunig as a great asset to the CIC, one of the three strategic centers that are at the core of the “International Network University” development strategy awarded funding in the German Excellence Initiative in 2007. Alt furthermore stated that Kunig has excellent international network experience due to his numerous contacts and cooperation projects worldwide. Alt also thanked the founding director of the Center for International Cooperation, Dr. Dorothea Rüland, for the successful launch and development of the fledgling strategic center. In a short time she succeeded in expanding the university’s international visibility, which has played a significant role since its founding in 1948.

Philip Kunig, who was born in 1951, studied law and sinology in Hamburg. He passed his state law exams in 1976 and 1980. He was a graduate research assistant and subsequently a research fellow at the Institute of International Affairs in Hamburg, where he received his doctorate in 1980 and attained his habilitation in 1985, supervised by Professor Dr. Ingo von Münch. Kunig held chairs in law at the universities of Hamburg and Heidelberg, and in 1988 he became professor of public law, public international law, and environmental law at Freie Universität Berlin. From 1992 to 2000, he served as a judge at the Constitutional Court of Berlin. From 1992 to 2004, he was an elected member of the board of reviewers of the German Research Foundation (DFG). From 2001 to 2002 Kunig was deputy dean and from 2002 to 2004 dean of the Department of Law of Freie Universität Berlin. Since 2004 he has been a member of the Academic Senate of the university. He was the coordinator for the relations of Freie Universität with the Center for German Studies at Peking University and is a vice president of the German university consortium that was formed to establish a German-Turkish university in Istanbul.