Jena Declaration
The Jena Declaration is a scientific statement that questions and refutes the concept of human "races in a biological sense". It was published in September 2019 at the 112th Annual Meeting of the German Zoological Society (Deutsche Zoologische Gesellschaft) in Jena. The statement was written by leading scientists from the fields of evolutionary research, genetics and zoology, and was instrumental in influencing the legislative amendment to remove the term "Rasse" (roughly "race in a biological sense") from the German constitution. With this statement, the Institute for Zoology and Evolutionary Research at Friedrich Schiller University Jena explicitly distances itself from its 20th century predecessors, especially from the controversial scholar and evolutionary biologist Ernst Haeckel, who was closely associated with the University of Jena and whose ideas of racism and eugenics are today considered scientifically untenable and morally reprehensible.