Strengthening Democracy in Europe

TUM launches Forum for Freedom and Democracy

At TUM’s main campus in Munich, the building at Gabelsbergerstraße 39 will be renovated and transformed into the new “Forum for Freedom and Democracy at TUM,” featuring event and workshop spaces, laboratories for democratic media design, as well as dialogue and seminar rooms.

TUM will operate the Forum as an open venue for exchange and discourse among educational institutions, industry, civil society, and policymakers. Through regular exhibitions and interactive formats, it will create new opportunities for listening to one another and foster democratic education and civic values among school students, university students, employees, working professionals, and the broader public, with the goal of strengthening social cohesion in our free and open society.

As part of the initiative, a workshop for democratic innovation and civic participation will be established. At its core will be a “Democracy Co-Lab,” serving as the Forum’s operational centerpiece and dynamic interaction space. The Co-Lab will view civic education not as passive knowledge transfer, but as an active process of shaping the future.

The “Forum for Freedom and Democracy at TUM” brings together under one roof the established expertise of the TUM School of Social Sciences and Technology, the Munich School of Politics and Public Policy, the TUM Think Tank, the TUM Institute for LifeLong Learning, the TUM Junge Akademie, the Cluster of Excellence TransforM, and the European university alliance EuroTeQ. The Forum will further expand its impact and reach through partnerships with organizations from academia, industry, start-ups, the arts and cultural sector, and public policy. These include, for example, the TUM School Network, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, the Munich School of Philosophy, the Munich Security Conference, and relevant foundations.

TUM President Prof. Thomas F. Hofmann emphasizes: “TUM embraces its responsibility to society not only through research and innovation, but also through the promotion of democratic values and the education of responsible, globally minded individuals. I am deeply grateful to our Honorary Senator Ingeborg Pohl for her philanthropic commitment, which makes it possible to establish the Forum for Freedom and Democracy at TUM with strong symbolic impact and to promote the values of our free and open society across generations.”