AGI

Society, Culture & Politics

The AGI Society, Culture & Politics Program focuses on crucial topics within the German-American dialogue, including: demographic change, migration/integration, and aging societies; electoral politics at the national, state, and European levels, and comparative analysis of Germany and the United States; diversity within Germany, Europe, and the United States; the politics of collective memory and identity, Holocaust remembrance and reconciliation, and shifting conceptions of national identity that shape perspectives and policy responses.
Reset

Munich’s Lessons for U.S. Airports

Most airport travel in the United States is less than pleasant. A typical experience may include long waits in drab and uninviting corridors, a greasy pre-flight fast food meal, and …

Jeff Rathke on Suspension of 29 Police Officers with Neo-Nazi Propaganda

AGI President Jeff Rathke joins PRX’s The World to discuss the recent suspension of twenty-nine police officers in North Rhine-Westphalia, charged with sharing neo-Nazi propaganda. He notes that while German …

We Could Schaffen Das, But We Won’t

EU migration policy reform still stalled five years after peak of crisis The crisis that hit Europe in 2015 has never gone away. This summer, Germans reflected on the fifth …

The Linke’s Search for Leadership – and Direction

Otto von Bismarck is once reported to have said “Faust complains of having two souls in his breast. I have a whole squabbling crowd.” So it is with any leader …

QAnon Goes Global

“Please, Mr. President, make Germany great again.” It’s not every day that demonstrators in Germany plea for America’s president to come to their aid. But the August 29 anti-lockdown protest …

The Anticlimactic Opening of the Humboldt Forum

December will witness one of Germany’s (actually, Europe’s) biggest cultural events in at least a decade: the opening of a massive new museum and cultural complex in the heart of …

The Saga of Berlin’s Long-Delayed Airport Opening

It’s finally happening: Berlin will soon have a new airport. After decades of repeated delays and mishaps, Berlin Brandenburg Airport (BER) is set to open this fall, with service beginning …

The SPD Goes Back to the Future

German politics today is fit for a Greek tragedy, which is particularly true for the Social Democratic Party (SPD). The quest for new leadership less than a year ago brought …

Episode 30: German Politics Heats Up

German political dynamics have made an early and perhaps unexpected change this summer, coming out of the “Sommerloch,” with two new announcements from the Social Democratic Party. First, the SPD …

#BlackLivesMatter: Social Unsettlement and Intersectional Justice in Pandemic Times

Notes From Black Berlin in the Summer of 2020 Seven years after the initiation of the #BlackLivesMatter Movement by Alicia Garza, Patrisse Khan-Cullors, and Opal Tometi, we are again facing …

Like Sands Through an Hourglass, So Are Angela Merkel’s Approval Ratings

German chancellor Angela Merkel may be cementing her legacy in the pandemic as the most popular leader in the history of the Bundesrepublik. While Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, Emmanuel Macron, …

Lucky Soldiers

Part Four of Rubble Child’s World: Stories from Bremen’s Ruins Introduction George H. Jordan, Jr. did not like the movie Commando.[1] He made this clear to me as the Arnold …