Dear Students, dear Members of the Barenboim-Said Akademie,

We welcome you warmly to the new academic year at the Barenboim-Said Akademie. We are thrilled that you are here and admire the talent and courage that has brought you to this community. 2024 marks the ninth anniversary of the Akademie, and the twenty-fifth anniversary of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra from which this institution developed, in the spirit of Daniel Barenboim and Edward Said’s friendship and their shared convictions.

As delighted as we are to welcome you, we cannot ignore that we once again begin the academic year under the pall of unrelenting, brutal violence in the Middle East––the devastation of lives and the levelling of communities. Today, as we still mourn more than a thousand killed on 7 October 2023 in Israel and fear for those still in captivity, tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed, over one million people still face starvation and displacement in Gaza, as the conflict expands to Lebanon and elsewhere. Our thoughts are with all those directly affected, many of whom are family and friends of Akademie members, and we fervently hope for their safety and well-being.

We re-affirm Daniel Barenboim’s and Mariam Said’s call from April 2024 for an immediate ceasefire: all killing must stop. Without acknowledging that there will never be a military solution to this conflict, the suffering and existential insecurity of all sides will only increase.

The Akademie was not founded to solve conflicts, and it cannot do so. Our work tries to show that, on a small scale and under specific circumstances, an alternative is possible.

What can we do within this institution? We can listen. We are not looking for the lowest common denominator on contentious topics that everybody can agree on. That would be meaningless. Embracing contradictions and challenging deeply held personal convictions is the core of what we do. This is central to creating a utopian space.

What do we stand for? We stand unwaveringly for human dignity, the free expression of ideas and their respect and protection, and we stand for creating music together despite our differences.

This is why we are here. We hope that our message of humanism, justice, equality, and the beauty of music is heard this year, more clearly than ever.

Prof. Dr. Regula Rapp, Rector

Prof. Dr. Dr. James Helgeson, Dean

Dr. Carsten Siebert, Chancellor