On August 24, 2012, the German daily Tagesspiegel reported a dismaying decision by the German Academic Exchange Service, or Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD). The agency decided in favor of continued cooperation between the University of Potsdam’s Institute for Religious Studies (IRS) and Iran’s University of Religions and Denominations (URD), located in Qom, the center of Shia Muslim theological studies and of indoctrination by the Tehran regime. Margret Wintermantel, president of the DAAD, declared that common projects involving the two schools should be maintained “as long as genuine academic activities are possible.”
The DAAD had been consulted about the relationship after a controversy beginning early last year. The University of Potsdam announced that 20 faculty and students from the URD had visited and agreed to produce a memorandum of understanding for a faculty exchange beginning in May 2011. The Iranian delegation also visited the Free University of Berlin and a Dominican monastery in Hamburg.
