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.
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A Doctor’s Mission: The Life and Work of Ernst Kisch

Read the stories of other Shanghai Jews Dr. Ernst Kisch was an opera-loving Viennese physician who was imprisoned in Dachau and Buchenwald for being Jewish.  Upon his release from Buchenwald, …

Us versus Them: The Steady Narrative of “Othering” in Historical and Contemporary Debates in Germany and the U.S.

Germany and the United States today face rising anti-Semitism and anti-Muslim sentiment as nativist politics on both sides of the Atlantic gain not only traction, but also legitimacy. From the …

Getting Over the Cold War. Why German-American Relations Need a New Narrative

According to the planners of Germany’s current year-long public diplomacy campaign, Deutschlandjahr USA, Germany and the United States are “Wunderbar Together.” Under this—some would say catchy, some would say naïve—slogan, …

Comparing the Experiences of Discrimination Faced by Jews in Early 20th Century Germany and by Muslims in Contemporary Germany

As a DAAD/AGI Research Fellow from October to December 2018, Dr. Ufuk Topkara conducted research on a project that emerges out of the interconnected strands of intellectual inquiry: comparing the …

The Former Soviet Union and East Central Europe between Conflict and Reconciliation

Edited by Lily Gardner Feldman, Raisa Barash, Samuel Goda, Andre Zempelburg Influenced by the crisis in the former Soviet Union following the March 2014 Russian annexation/integration of Crimea, the essays …

The U.S. and Germany Are Losing Cultural Ambassadors: Students Studying Abroad

Last month, the Institute of International Education and the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs released their Open Doors 2018 report, which assesses the role of …

The Radicalization of the Extreme Right: Charlottesville August 2017 and Chemnitz August 2018  

In Germany, as in the United States, we are confronted with growing right-wing radicalism. Right-wing populists or radicals “offer” “solutions” by addressing perceived or real weaknesses or even crises in …

The Radicalization of the Extreme Right: Charlottesville and Chemnitz

As a DAAD/AGI Research Fellow from October to December 2018, Prof. Dr. Hajo Funke looked at the developments of two extreme-right events, in Charlottesville and Chemnitz, including the conditions of …

Migration – A Global Reality or Threat

On December 12, 164 nations ratified the United Nations-Migration Pact (or Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration) at a UN conference in Marrakesh, the very first of its …

Never Again!

A Historical Survey of Anti-Semitism in Germany between 1933 and 1935 and Implications for Contemporary Debates When an anti-Semitic loner killed 11 members of a Jewish congregation in Pittsburgh in …

Global Memory Clashes Or the End of Serenity   

Coming to terms with the past has become one of the very core features of German political identity in the second half of the twentieth century. In fact, actively dealing …

The Dilemmas of Promoting Gender Equality in Times of Polarization

The political landscapes in both countries are characterized by increasing polarization. In the U.S., a man became president who makes a spectacle of himself through derogative language and who tends …