Civil Clause
“The Faculty of Mathematics, Informatics and Natural Sciences (MIN) only contributes to peaceful goals and civil purposes. Therefore, its members direct their research and development, teaching, and learning to civil matters and applications.” (from the preamble of the Faculty of Mathematics, Informatics and Natural Sciences bylaws).
The civil clause represents the faculty’s commitment to managing the tension between freedom of research and scientific responsibility in accordance with the recommendations for dealing with security-relevant research of the DFG and Leopoldina. The MIN faculty holds that honesty in research and teaching requires that significant and useful research results that may also be used for harmful purposes be explicitly named as potentially subject to the dilemma of dual use. This is a part of the ethical basis guiding the members of the MIN faculty in their research and teaching.
In applying for and conducting their research and teaching, all MIN faculty members should:
• autonomously consider the civil clause• make their research results and financing as open and transparent as possible• openly integrate the potential dual-use dilemma in the teaching and discussion of their research results, rather than seeking to obscure it.
Regardless of this individual responsibility, the office of the dean reserves the right to request information from MIN faculty members on compliance with the civil clause, dual use for research results, and the financing of research projects and to comment on the implementation of the civil clause in the annual statement of accounts.
The Technical University of Darmstadt has developed a checklist for the implementation of their civil clause for researchers to use for their own planning purposes when designing their projects. We recommend you read through this checklist and the explanatory notes prior to submitting research proposals. Both documents are available for download here.