Thomas Mann House Events Archive
2018
What Does Democracy Mean in the 21st Century?
Berlin
A Zócalo/KCRW Berlin Event
In partnership with the Daniel K. Inouye Institute and Villa Aurora & Thomas Mann House e. V.
Moderated by Warren Olney, Host, KCRW’s “To the Point”
Democracy can mean very different things—majority rule, self-governance, the way we vote for our favorite contestants on TV dance competitions—to different people and in different places. Our lack of a shared definition of democracy adds to the confusion in times like our own, when we hear warnings of grave and growing threats to democracy. What does “democracy” really mean now in a world where almost every country purports to be democratic? Is it possible to identify essential elements of democracy that are common to the different polities of our diverse world? Is democracy really on the decline today, and what sort of civic culture, institutional norms, and public participation do societies need to be truly democratic? Oxford political scientist Stein Ringen, Brookings Institution/Robert Bosch Foundation fellow and former Clinton Administration foreign policy advisor Ted Piccone, and Mélida Jiménez, program officer at the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, visit Zócalo to consider how we can define and defend our democracies.
Location
CIEE Global Institute
Gneisenaustraße 27
10961 Berlin
Free Admission
R.s.v.p. via Zócalo.org
Discussion in English
Inauguration Thomas Mann House: Conference 'The Struggle for Democracy'
Los Angeles
„Throughout the world it has become precarious to take democracy for granted“, Thomas Mann stated after the rise of National Socialism and the end of the Weimar Republic. After living in France and Switzerland, Thomas Mann found refuge and a home in the United States. During his time in the U.S., he comprehensively addressed questions of democratic renewal, freedom, and exile in his literary works, lectures, and essays. Through his radio messages broadcast by the BBC, he became the most important German voice in exile.
Eighty-five years after Thomas Mann’s escape, the realization that democracy is vulnerable has become a shared experience on both sides of the Atlantic. The cohesion of democratic polities is endangered both in Europe and the United States. Segregation threatens to supersede exchange; confrontation supplants compromise. While political camps in Germany and the U.S. seem more and more irreconcilable, alternatives to democracy gain in confidence. It is becoming increasingly clear that the struggle for democracy has once again become one of the most important issues of our time.
Conference Program and Speakers
10 a.m. | Opening speech
By Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier
10:30-11:30 a.m. | Diversity and the search for a common ground
Jutta Allmendinger and Marcelo Suárez-Orozco, talk with UCLA students, moderated by Helmut K. Anheier
While immigration has always been an integral part of U.S. identity, increased migration poses new questions about the self-image of German society. These include discussions in politics as well as society about how open German democracy can and wants to be. At the same time, deportations of undocumented immigrants are the subject of a heated debate in the United States. What can both nations learn from each other with regards to the concept of citizenship in the 21st century? What role does education play for the coexistence of immigrant and non-immigrant populations and the strengthening of an open, democratic community?
Jutta Allmendinger is a German sociologist. After scientific stations - among others - at Harvard University, the LMU and the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Prof. Allmendinger became President of the WZB Berlin Social Science Center in April 2007. In 2013 she received the Federal Cross first class of the Federal Republic of Germany. In 2014, she received a Honorary Doctorate of the University of Tampere. From August 2018 on, Jutta Allmendiger is fellow of the Thomas Mann House.
Marcelo Suárez-Orozco is a professor of globalization and education and UCLA Wasserman Dean of Education and Information Studies. Prof. Suárez-Orozco’s research is on conceptual and empirical problems in the areas of cultural psychology and psychological anthropology with a focus on the study of mass migration, globalization, and education. He serves as a member of the board of governors of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has served as a special advisor to the chief prosecutor, the Int ernational Criminal Court, The Hague, Netherlands.
In conversation with Diane Allen (Human Development & Psychology MA Student, UCLA) and Ramon Flores (Human Development & Psychology PhD Student, UCLA)
Moderation: Helmut K. Anheier is President of the Hertie School of Governance and Professor of Sociology. His research centres on indicator systems, social innovation, culture, philanthropy, and organisational studies. Anheier is the principal academic lead of the Hertie School's annual Governance Report (Oxford University Press). He also holds a Chair of Sociology at Heidelberg University and serves as Academic Director of the Centre for Social Investment. He received his PhD from Yale University in 1986, was a senior researcher at the Johns Hopkins University’s Institute for Policy Studies, Professor of Public Policy and Social Welfare at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Luskin School of Public Affairs, and Centennial Professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), and Professor of Sociology at Rutgers University.
11:30 a.m.-12:00 p.m. | Coffee Break
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12:00-1:00 p.m. | Status Panic – The Fear of Social Decline in a Democratic Society
Heinz Bude and Claire Jean Kim, talk with UC Irvine-students, moderated by Nikolai Blaumer
In Germany and the U.S., the fear of social decline is rampant. It is no longer just a question of people fearing losing their place in (falling out of) the middle class. Often enough this fear extends to beliefs in (feelings of) a broader social exclusion, a condition of losing fundamental social recognition. Where can we find the root causes of this fear of being relegated to a lesser status in both Germany as well as in the U.S.? What does this mean for the political climate in both countries and the relationship between different social and ethnic groups in both countries?
Heinz Bude is a German sociologist. Prof. Bude served as director of the research unit “The Society of the Federal Republic of Germany” at the Hamburg Institute for Social Research from 1997 until 2015. Since 2000 he has been serving as chairman of the Department of Macrosociology at the University of Kassel. Amongst his recent publications are: Society of Fear (Polity, 2017) and Adorno für Ruinenkinder – Eine Geschichte von 1968 (Hanser, 2018).
Claire Jean Kim is Professor of Political Science and Asian American Studies at University of California, Irvine. She holds a B.A. from Harvard University and a Ph.D. from Yale University, and she has been a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey and the University of California Humanities Research Institute. Her two books—Bitter Fruit: The Politics of Black-Korean Conflict in New York City (Yale University Press, 2000) and Dangerous Crossings: Race, Species, and Nature in a Multicultural Age (Cambridge University Press, 2015) both received book awards from the American Political Science Association.
In conversation with Elizabeth Clark Rubio (Anthropology PhD Student, UC Irvine)
Moderation: Nikolai Blaumer, Program Director, Thomas Mann House. Nikolai studied at Ludwigs Maximilian Universität Munich and Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He earned a doctorate in philosophy from LMU with a dissertation entitled »Korrektive Gerechtigkeit. Über die Entschädigung historischen Unrechts« (Campus Verlag, 2015) and taught at Ludwigs Maximilian Universität as well as Bauhaus University in Weimar. Since 2014, Nikolai Blaumer has been working for the Goethe-Institut’s Department of Culture. He is co-editor of the book "Teilen und Tauschen" (S. Fischer Verlag, 2017). In February of 2018, he was posted to Los Angeles, where he assumed the position of program director at the Thomas Mann House.
1:00-2:00 p.m. | Break
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2:00-3:00 p.m. | Expulsions – Shifting Borders of Democracy
Teddy Cruz, Fonna Forman, and Ananya Roy, talk with UCLA students, moderated by Steven D. Lavine
Instead of a world without borders, globalization has lead to new kinds of isolation and exclusion. New walls run not only along continental or national borders, but also through the urban centers of Western democracies. Economic inequalities, slums, refugee shelters and a growing informal sector represent developments that are often described as globalization. For democracies, the question arises how these growing, socially marginalized groups can be recognized as a part of the greater political and social community.
Teddy Cruz is a professor of Public Culture and Urbanization in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of California, San Diego. He is known internationally for his urban research on the Tijuana/San Diego border, advancing border neighborhoods as sites of cultural production from which to rethink urban policy, affordable housing, and public space. Recipient of the Rome Prize in Architecture in 1991, his honors include representing the US in the 2008 Venice Architecture Biennale, the Ford Foundation Visionaries Award in 2011, and the 2013 Architecture Award from the US Academy of Arts and Letters.
Fonna Forman is founding Director of the UCSD Center on Global Justice. She is a political theorist best known for her revisionist work on Adam Smith, recuperating the ethical, social, spatial and public dimensions of his thought. Since 2009 she has served as Editor of the Adam Smith Review, the premier international journal of Smith’s thought. Together with Teddy Cruz she founded the UCSD Cross-Border Initiative, a platform for engaged research and teaching on poverty and social equity in the border region. Forman and Cruz are principals in Estudio Teddy Cruz + Fonna Forman, a research-based political and architectural practice investigating issues of informal urbanization, civic infrastructure and public culture, with a special emphasis on Latin American cities.
Ananya Roy is Professor of Urban Planning, Social Welfare and Geography and inaugural Director of The Institute on Inequality and Democracy at UCLA Luskin. She holds The Meyer and Renee Luskin Chair in Inequality and Democracy. At UC Berkeley, Ananya held the Distinguished Chair in Global Poverty and Practice and prior to that, the Friesen Chair in Urban Studies. Amongst her recent publications: Encountering Poverty: Thinking and Acting in an Unequal World (University of California Press, 2016).
In conversation with Hilary Malson (Urban Planning PhD Student, UCLA) and Kenton Card (Urban Planning PhD Student, UCLA)
Moderation: Steven D. Lavine has been president of the California Institute of the Arts from 1988 until June 2017. Previously, he had served for eight years as a program officer for arts and humanities at the Rockefeller Foundation, with special concentration on media and museums, and from 1974 to 1981 he was an assistant professor of English literature at the University of Michigan. In 1991, he co-edited with Ivan Karp, Exhibiting Cultures: The Poetics and Politics of Museum Display; in 1992, the Smithsonian Institution Press released their second co-edited volume, Museums and Communities: The Politics of Public Culture.
3 p.m. | End
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For Parking Information go to www.getty.edu/visit/center/plan/parking
Lecture: Together we advance. Thomas Mann’s American Religion
Los Angeles
When author and Nobel Laureate Thomas Mann lived in the United States, he maintained a close relationship with the Unitarian Church and entertained a "warm sympathy" for Unitarians' beliefs, as well as for the way they put these beliefs into action. "The First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles", Thomas Mann wrote, "is particularly close to my heart and mind."
Thomas Mann's turn towards the Unitarian Church represents the coming together of the political, philosophical and religious traditions of his German heritage with those prevalent in America. Maybe Thomas Mann never got quite as close to a religious denomination as he did here.
The First Unitarian Church continues to be one of the most progressive churches in Los Angeles. Its members advocate for immigrants' rights, offer social programs to the immigrant community of Koreatown and support organizations pursuing racial and social justice, such as Black Lives Matter and Urban Partners Los Angeles.
Presentation
Heinrich Detering (University of Göttingen, Thomas Mann Fellow 2018)
Heinrich Detering is a German literary scholar, poet and translator and Professor of Modern German and Comparative Literary Studies. Detering heads the Thomas Mann Research Center in Göttingen and is the co-editor of the “Große kommentierte Frankfurter Ausgabe” of the works, letters and diaries of Thomas Mann. From 2011 until 2017, Detering was president of the German Academy for Language and Literature. In August 2018, he is Fellow at the Thomas Mann House, Los Angeles.
and talk with
Deynsie Claro (Urban Partners Los Angeles)
Oscar Cintigo (El Comite Unitario Universalista Latinoamericano Monseñor Oscar A Romero)
Detlef Schwartz (Lutheran Pastor, Friend of the First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles)
Trinity Tran (Revolution LA)
Moderator
Nikolai Blaumer (Thomas Mann House)
In cooperation with First Unitarian Universalist Church of Los Angeles and support of USC Max Kade Institute for Austria-German-Swiss Studies
Location
First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles, Channing Hall
2936 W. 8th Street, Los Angeles, CA 90005
Limited Parking in the underground garage next to the church entrance.
Lecture and discussion are in English with Spanish simulcast
Free admission, R.s.v.p required until August 8: rsvp@vatmh.org
Education - Excellence at All Costs?
Boston
An event by the German American Conference, co-sponsored by VATMH
Speakers: Jutta Allmendinger (Thomas Mann Fellow), Jörg Dräger (Bertelsmann Stiftung), Manuel Hartung (DIE ZEIT), Nicole Menzenbach (Consul General of Germany, German Consulate Boston), Nikhil Goyal (PhD Candidate, University of Cambridge), Pam Eddinger (Bunker Hill Community College)
The field of education is under constant tension between excellence for a few or affordable education for many if not for all.
On an almost daily basis international students in the US come across differences in the educational systems, especially in higher education. Navigating them can be challenging at times. The education panel will offer a closer look at both the German and American system of higher education and explore similarities as well as differences.
Especially concerning the long-term impact that political and personal decisions in this area have, the education panel aims to improve our understanding of the advantages and drawbacks of the American system of excellence for a few (requiring huge financial commitment) and the German system of affordable education for a large student body.
What are the pros and cons of each system from the perspectives of scientists, politicians, and professors? How much are individuals and society willing - or even required - to sacrifice, financially and personally, and what are the consequences of high tuition for individuals? And maybe the most important question: What can America learn from Germany and vice versa?
Education has long term effects on every individual, the society at large, and future generations. Unlimited access to knowledge is a social and economic key for individual, societal, and economical growth. How can we ensure access to education for everybody while maintaining the highest possible quality of education to allow for innovation and growth?
Location
Harvard Medical School, Joseph B. Martin Conference Center, 77 Avenue Louis Pasteur Boston, MA 02115
Ticket reservations: https://www.germanamericanconference.org/tickets/
Event information: https://www.germanamericanconference.org/agenda/
Location information: https://www.germanamericanconference.org/venue/
What is in a Category? Telling Political Refugees and Economic Migrants Apart
Berkeley
Please join us for our Annual Bucerius Lecture with David Miliband, President and CEO of the International Rescue Committee, followed by a conversation with Jutta Allmendinger, President of the WZB Berlin Social Science Center.
The Bucerius Lecture is part of an annual lecture and workshop program at GHI West, funded by the ZEIT-Stiftung Ebelin und Gerd Bucerius, one of the major German private foundations active in the field of migration and transformation studies. This year's lecture is co-sponsored by the Thomas Mann House Los Angeles and the International Rescue Committee.
David Miliband is the President and CEO of the International Rescue Committee. He oversees the agency’s relief and development operations in over 30 countries, its refugee resettlement and assistance programs throughout the United States and the IRC’s advocacy efforts in Washington and other capitals on behalf of the world’s most vulnerable people.
Prof. Dr. h.c. Jutta Allmendinger, Ph.D. is President of the Berlin Social Science Center (WZB) and Professor of Sociology in Education and Labor Market Research at Humboldt Universität Berlin. Currently, she is spending four months at Thomas Mann House Los Angeles as one of the first Thomas-Mann-Fellows, appointed by the German Federal Foreign Office.
An event by the German Historical Institute in Washington DC and the ZEIT-Stiftung, co-sponsored by the International Rescue Committee and VATMH
Discussion: Almost Total Recall. The Science and Ethics of Brain Implants
Los Angeles
Brain implants to augment memory used to be the stuff of science fiction, but no longer. Today, brain implants to improve and augment memory is the epicenter of neuroprosthetics R&D and for good reason. Based on current projections, by 2050, persons with various types of dementia, which includes Alzheimer’s disease, will exceed 16 million. Memory loss from traumatic brain injury (TBI) will only raise this number. Some of the largest challenges the neuroprosthetic research continues to face in regards to those developments, are the effective and accurate measurement of brain signals.
Applications for these neuroprosthetics are manifold: from the detection and surveillance of epilepsy, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s or even depression, to the reduction of their symptoms. DARPA (Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency) began research over three decades ago on neurotechnology for military personnel impacted by TBI in the theatre of war, but there are developments in this area of research that should give us pause. DARPA is also employing this same research to support military training and effectiveness by using non-invasive interventions to accelerate and improve the performance of complex, military-relevant skills by healthy individuals.
To discuss these developments in the world of bio-medical neuro-engineering, and the attending moral and ethical questions, Professor Yiannos Manoli, Thomas Mann Fellow and Director of the Fritz Huettinger Chair of Microelectronics, will hold a quintescentially polymathic conversation with USC Associate Professor of Neural Engineering Dong Song and USC Professor of Philosophy Janet Levin. As medical advances continue to lengthen the human life-span, our future depends on the breakthroughs in neuroscience and neural interface devices to improve memory function to recapture our past. But it is imperative we bring the moral and ethical checks alongside these developments.
Location
Sidney Harman Academy for Polymathic Study, DML 241
University of Southern California, 3550 Trousdale Parkway, Los Angeles, CA 90089
Tickets
Admission is free
To r.s.v.p. for this event go to www.usc.edu/esvp and enter rsvp code: RECALL
An event by the Sidney Harman Academy for Polymathic Study in cooperation with Thomas Mann House - Los Angeles
#FeminismToMe: Are You In?
Washington, DC
On November 13, at 6:30 pm, the Goethe-Institut Washington will host German sociologist Jutta Allmendinger and DC-based entrepreneur Kate Godall in a conversation about women in the workplace, and the effect feminism in the 21st century has had on their careers. Both women have excelled in their respective fields – Jutta Allmendinger has made great strides in her empirical research on social inequality, while Kate Godall has championed women-led businesses in Washington and around the world – and demonstrated their ingenuity as strong women in the world of work. Allmendinger and Godall will discuss how they arrived in their positions, their current projects, and where they see themselves in the future. How has feminism affected their work? In what ways has “digital feminism” impacted their lives? Moderated by Cathleen Fisher.
Dr. Jutta Allmendinger is President of the WZB Berlin Social Science Center and Professor of Educational Sociology and Labor Market Research at Humboldt University. Her research interests focus on gender inequality in the workplace, sociology of the labor market, rising inequality in Europe, and educational reform in Germany. Dr. Allmendinger earned her Ph.D. degree in Social Studies from Harvard University. Currently she is one of the first Fellows at Thomas Mann House, Los Angeles.
Kate Goodall is the Co-Founder and CEO of Halcyon, a non-profit dedicated to solving 21st century problems by providing space and access to emerging leaders in social entrepreneurship and the arts. Goodall continues to grow Halcyon’s offerings with By The People, an international arts and innovation festival in partnership with the Smithsonian and numerous organizations throughout DC. In 2016, Goodall helped establish WE Capital, a consortium of leading businesswomen investing in and supporting women and women-led companies.
Dr. Cathleen Fisher is the President of the American Friends of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. She has been engaged in transatlantic and German-American relations for over 25 years. She joined American Friends in 2008 as executive director. From 2002-2006, she was deputy director of the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies (AICGS), The Johns Hopkins University, where she was centrally involved in management of all operations and programs in support of the Institute’s mission. Before joining AICGS, Fisher served ten years as a senior associate at the Henry L. Stimson Center, where she focused on nuclear arms control, export controls, and transatlantic security issues.
Followed by reception
Location
Goethe-Institut Washington, 1990 K St. NW, Suite 03, Washington, DC 20006
Tickets
Admission is free
RSVP via Eventbrite
An event by
Goethe-Institut Washington and Thomas Mann House, Los Angeles
With support by: German Historical Institute Washington DC and German Research Foundation
Lecture: Yiannos Manoli - A Fully Immersible Deep-Brain Probe with an Analog-to-Digital-Converter under each of the 144 Electrodes for Parallel Neural Recording
Los Angeles
The evolution of tissue-penetrating probes for high-density, deep-brain recording of in vivo neural activity is limited by the level of electronic integration on the probe shaft. As the number of electrodes increases, conventional devices need either a large number of interconnects at the base of the probe or allow only a reduced number of electrodes to be read out simultaneously. Active probes are used to improve the signal quality but still need to route these signals from the electrodes to a base where the readout electronics is located on a large area. In this talk, I present a modular and scalable architecture of a needle probe. Instead of routing or pre-buffering noise-sensitive analog signals along the shaft, it integrates the analog-to-digital conversion under each electrode in an area of 70 μm × 70 μm. The presented reconfigurable 11.5 mm probe with 144 integrated recording sites features a constant width of 70 μm and thickness of 50 μm from top to bottom for minimal tissue damage. The design eliminates the need for any additional readout circuitry at the top of the probe and connects with a digital 4-wire interface. Connected to a cable, it can be fully immersed in tissue for deep-brain recording applications.
Yiannos Manoli holds the Fritz Huettinger Chair of Microelectronics in the Department of Microsystems Engineering (IMTEK) at the University of Freiburg, Germany. He additionally serves as director of the Hahn-Schickard Institute. He is currently a Fellow at the Thomas Mann House in Pacific Palisades. His research interests are the design of low-voltage and low power, mixed-signal systems with over 300 papers published in these areas. The emphasis lies in Analog-to-Digital converters as well as in CMOS circuits for energy harvesting and sensor read-out. Further research activities concentrate on motion and vibration energy transducers and on inertial sensors.
Prof. Manoli received Best Paper Awards from ESSCIRC 2012, 2009 and 1988, PowerMEMS 2006, MWSCAS 2007 and MSE 2007. Spicy VOLTsim, a web-based animation and visualization of analog circuits, received the Multi-Media-Award of the University of Freiburg in 2005 (www.imtek.de/svs). He received the Best Teaching Award of the Faculty of Engineering in 2008 as well as the Excellence in Teaching Award of the University of Freiburg and the Teaching Award of the State of Baden-Württemberg, both in 2010. He holds a B.A. degree (summa cum laude) in Physics and Mathematics, a M.S. degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley and the Dr.-Ing. degree in Electrical Engineering from the Gerhard Mercator University in Duisburg, Germany.
Location
UCLA, Engineering Bldg. VI, Mong Learning Center – EE-VI – #180
404 Westwood Plaza, Los Angeles, California 90095
For more information, contact Prof. Ankur Mehta (mehtank@ucla.edu)
Panel Discussion: I wish the rent was heaven sent - Housing precarity in Los Angeles and Berlin
Los Angeles
The number of people experiencing homelessness has increased dramatically in Los Angeles as well as in Berlin. As recently as 2015, less than 17,000 people were housed in emergency shelters in Berlin. In the coming years, this number is expected to increase to 47,000. The German authorities are threatened to fail in their search for suitable accommodations.
While homelessness used to be a phenomenon limited to the margins of society, today, even middle-class families can be affected. That also holds true for Los Angeles, the city with the largest number of people experiencing homelessness in the United States. Here, many unsheltered people live in cars, RVs or tents. They are often employed, but unable to afford the high rents.
Jutta Allmendinger (Thomas Mann Fellow, WZB), Ananya Roy (UCLA) and Jürgen Robert von Mahs (The New School) discuss the causes of the lack of affordable housing in Los Angeles and Berlin, contributing legal and cultural factors and what measures and initiatives to be taken, so that both Sister Cities may learn from each other. The discussion will be moderated by journalist Caroline Porter.
Jutta Allmendinger is President of the WZB Berlin Social Science Center and Professor of Educational Sociology and Labor Market Research at Humboldt University Berlin. Her research focusses on social inequality, the sociology of the labor market and social policy. Jutta Allmendinger earned her Ph.D. at Harvard University and is currently one of the first fellows at the Thomas Mann House Los Angeles.
Ananya Roy is Professor of Urban Planning and Social Welfare and inaugural Director of The Institute on Inequality and Democracy at UCLA Luskin . She held the Distinguished Chair in Global Poverty and Practice at UC Berkeley. Her most recent publications include Encountering Poverty: Thinking and Acting in an Unequal World (University of California Press, 2016).
Jürgen Robert von Mahs is Associate Professor of Urban Studies at the New School in New York City. His research and teaching interests include poverty, homelessness, comparative social policy analyses, globalization processes, and social movements. Most recently, he published Down and Out in Los Angeles and Berlin: The Sociospatial Exclusion of Homeless People (Temple University Press, 2015).
Location
Thomas Mann House, 1550 N San Remo Drive, Pacific Palisades, CA 90272
(By Invitation Only)
An event in cooperation with the Goethe-Institut Los Angeles
Lecture: The Erosion of Western Democracies and How to Turn the Tide
Berlin
The Erosion of Western Democracies and How to Turn the Tide.
An evening with Laura-Kristine Krause (Direktor, More in Common) and Daniel Ziblatt (Eaton Professor of the Science, Harvard University) moderated by Sudha David-Wilp (Senior Transatlantic Fellow and Deputy Director Berlin Office, The German Marshall Fund of the United States)
The German Marshall Fund of the United States, the Villa Aurora & Thomas Mann House e. V., and the Robert Bosch Stiftung are pleased to invite you to the opening event of their newly launched lecture series on “The Backlash against Liberal Democracy”.We are delighted to have Daniel Ziblatt, Eaton Professor of the Science of Government at Harvard University, provide his analysis on how democracies die and Laura-Kristine Krause, director of More in Common Germany, contribute her ideas on protecting democratic societies from the threats of populism, polarization, and social division. Liberal norms, values, and democratic institutions are increasingly under pressure. Polarization and renationalization characterize the political atmosphere on both sides of the Atlantic. Both Europe and the United States have seen the election of leaders playing to an often populist agenda and bringing with them a new flavor of political discourse. With the narrative of “Us vs. Them” increasingly extended to the roles of judiciaries and parliaments in public debate, how can societies halt the erosion of democracy and its fundamental institutions? What mechanisms and safeguards can be deployed to ensure democracies do not suffer?
Henry Alt-Haaker
Head of International Relations Programs & Liaison Work at the Berlin Representative Office Robert Bosch Stiftung
Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff
Vice President and Director Berlin Office, The German Marshall Fund of the United States
Heike Catherina Mertens
Executive Director, Villa Aurora & Thomas Mann House e.V.
The series “The Backlash Against Liberal Democracy” brings together influential voices from Europe and the United States, and seeks to shed light on different aspects of the challenges that liberal democracies face.
Laura-Kristine Krause is the Germany Director of More in Common, a new international initiative set up in 2017 to build communities and societies that are stronger, more united and more resilient to the increasing threats of polarization and social division. More in Common brings together attitudinal research, narrative work, and connecting people across divides and has teams in the UK, France, and the US. Laura-Kristine Krause previously headed the Future of Democracy program at the Berlin-based think tank Das Progressive Zentrum and worked on the election campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Martin Schulz in the European Parliament elections. She is also the co-chairwoman of D64 – Center for Digital Progress, and consults for the state governments of Rhineland-Palatine and Brandenburg at the intersection of digitalization and democracy. She has published on societal unity, institutional reform, digital democracy, and women in politics and was selected as one of the 40 under 40 of German society and science in 2017 and 2018. She holds a master’s degree in Political Science from Freie Universität Berlin and was a Fulbright Fellow at the University of Washington.
Daniel Ziblatt is Eaton Professor of the Science of Government at Harvard University where he is also a resident faculty associate of the Minda de Gunzburg Cener for European Studies and Harvard’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. His research focuses on democratization, democratic breakdown, political parties, state-building, and historical political economy, with an emphasis on Europe from the nineteenth century to the present. His three books include How Democracies Die (co-authored with Steve Levitsky), which is being translated into fifteen languages. Ziblatt is also the author of Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy, which won the American Political Science Association’s 2018 Woodrow Wilson Prize for the best book in government and international relations as well as three other prizes including the American Sociological Association’s 2018 Barrington Moore Book Prize. His first book was Structuring the State: The Formation of Italy and Germany and the Puzzle of Federalism. Ziblatt co-chairs (with Steve Levitsky) a new Challenges to Democracy Research Cluster at Harvard's Weatherhead Center. He also directs a research program at Harvard's Institute of Quantitative Social Science (“Politics Through Time”) and has served as interim director of Harvard’s de Gunzburg Center for European Studies. He has been a visiting fellow at European and American universities, including the European University Institute (Florence, Italy), Sciences Po (Paris), as well as several German universities, including most recently in the Department of History (State Archive of Bavaria and Institute of Bavarian History) at the Ludwigs Maximilian University (Munich, Germany)
Lecture: Surveying the Brain - picoampere, nanovolt, micrometer - that's all it takes!
Los Angeles
Lecture: Surveying the brain - picoampere, nanovolt, micrometer - that's all it takes!
Location
Thomas Mann House, 1550 N San Remo Drive, Pacific Palisades, CA 90272
(by invitation only)
Panel Discussion: The Doctor Faustus Dossier
Los Angeles
On December 17, the Thomas Mann House is hosting a panel discussion with E. Randol Schoenberg and Marjorie Perloff on the ties between Arnold Schoenberg and Thomas Mann, most famously the Doctor Faustus dispute. The panel will be moderated by Marc Katz (Scripps College, Claremont).
Thomas Mann and Arnold Schoenberg, two of the most important figures of literature and music in their day, were neighbors in Pacific Palisades from 1941 to 1951. Thomas Mann had won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1929 for his essays and novels, among them Buddenbrooks and Magic Mountain. By 1926, Schoenberg was teaching the master class in composition at the Prussian Academy of the Arts in Berlin. Each in their own métier, Schoenberg and Mann were at the pinnacle of German culture. However, both of them were ostracized shortly after by the Nazi regime: Schoenberg’s music was banned, Mann’s books were burned. Both of them fled from Germany in 1933. During their time in Los Angeles they met occasionally at social gatherings and hosted one another a couple of times. However, their respectful relations suffered severely with the publication of Mann’s Doctor Faustus. The work featured Schoenberg’s philosophy and particularly his twelve-tone technique prominently, but made no reference to Schoenberg or his oeuvre. A heated dispute ensued between the two great minds.
Randol Schoenberg, the grandson of Arnold Schoenberg, has edited The Doctor Faustus Dossier: Arnold Schoenberg, Thomas Mann, and their Contemporaries, 1930-1951, a complete edition of the correspondence between Schoenberg and Mann.
Marjorie Perloff, herself part of the émigré community in Pacific Palisades, is a scholar and critic who has written extensively on 20th and 21st century poetry and poetics.
Marc Katz, who will be moderating the event, is Associate Professor of German and the Chair of the Department of German Studies at Scripps.
Location
Thomas Mann House, 1550 N San Remo Drive, Pacific Palisades, CA 90272
(by invitation only)
An event in cooperation with the Wende Museum.