Baerbock Declares Columbia Campus Her New Nation, Demands Full Diplomatic Immunity for Office Hours
As her UN term ends, Annalena Baerbock reportedly takes a professorship at Columbia University, but sources say she is treating the campus as sovereign territory, complete with a flag, a security detail, and a demand that all grading be conducted under UN protocol.
Annalena Baerbock will not return to Germany when her term as President of the UN General Assembly ends in September; instead, she will assume a professorship at Columbia University in New York, where she has reportedly declared the entire Morningside Heights campus a sovereign extension of her diplomatic mission, complete with a flag-raising ceremony scheduled for the first day of classes.
The Green politician, who will serve as Professor for Global Leadership and co-director of the Master of Public Administration program, has already submitted a formal request to the university administration to have her office hours observed under UN protocol, meaning all student consultations must be conducted with simultaneous interpretation into all six official languages and a minimum of two security officers present at all times.
University officials have reportedly agreed to install a permanent delegation plaque outside her lecture hall, reading «Federal Republic of Germany – Outpost Columbia», and have ordered 300 additional chairs for the auditorium after Baerbock insisted that every lecture be treated as a plenary session of the General Assembly, complete with a gavel and a rule that no student may speak for more than three minutes without being recognized by the chair.
Baerbock has also demanded that her syllabus be reviewed by the UN Legal Affairs Committee, and has proposed that all final exams be submitted as official UN documents, to be distributed to all 193 member states for comment before grades are issued. The first lecture, titled «Global Leadership and the Art of the Multilateral Pivot», is scheduled for October, with a waiting list already exceeding the university's total enrollment.
157