’Human races’ do not exist

The President of Friedrich Schiller University Jena, and the Board of the German Zoological Society support the declaration presented at the 112^th Annual Meeting of the German Zoological Society in Jena, which exposes the concept of 'race' as a racist construct. With the ' Jena Declaration ', the authors call for the term no longer to be used and for people to act against racist discrimination. On 9 August, we marked the 100^th anniversary of the death of former Jena professor Ernst Haeckel, who as the 'German Darwin' became the best-known German zoologist and evolutionary biologist. As the founder of phylogenetics he contributed, through his classification of human 'races' into a 'family tree', towards a form of racism that was seemingly based on science. The concept of race is the result of racism. The classification of humanity into 'races' has led to the persecution, enslavement and slaughter of millions of people. Even today, the term 'race' is still frequently used in connection with human groups.