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

Trump’s Potential Upheaval to Israel Policy

On December 15, 2016, President-elect Donald J. Trump nominated his former bankruptcy lawyer, David Friedman, to be the U.S. ambassador to Israel. The prospective appointment reiterates for the nth time …

Thinking Through the Future of Memory

Report for the Inaugural Conference of the Memory Studies Association, 3-5 December 2016, Amsterdam As part of AGI’s work on reconciliation, we are pleased to present readers with a report …

The Power of the Young?

Populist parties and governments have gained in popularity in many countries across the world in recent months. Their success is in part based on citizens’ fear of globalization, immigrants, loss …

The Rise of Populism in the U.S. and in Germany

A significant segment of the U.S. remains in shock over the results of its presidential election. Donald Trump is now the president-elect. Among politicians, media pundits, academics, pollsters, and private …

Different Approaches to War Crime and Memory in Germany and Japan since 1980

Seventy Years after World War II, How Should We Remember? Seventy years have passed since the end of World War II, and people in Germany and around the world are …

Wait and See: Advice for European Policymakers

Wait and see. That is the best advice I can give to German and European policymakers regarding the forthcoming presidency of Donald Trump. Trump’s misogynist, xenophobic, Islamophobic, and lie-ridden campaign …

The Voices from Below: Who is Civil Society?

In its most basic sense, civil society is an analytical concept denoting a domain of collective life above the individual but below the state, in which people voluntarily come together …

Reconciliation Over the Graves? A German War Cemetery in Russia (or the German-Russian Reconciliation of Sologubovka)

The remains of millions of soldiers still lie in the soil of the former battlefields of World War II in Europe. Since the end of the war, Red Army and …

Compare or Not to Compare? Or How to Compare? The Problems in Contemporary German-Japanese Memory Discourse

Japan has struggled with the legacies of its imperial aggression for decades.[1] Neither domestically nor internationally has the nation been able to find a formula which would put the so-called …

2016 DAAD Prize in German and European Studies to be Awarded to Dr. Yasemin Yildiz, UCLA

Congratulations to Dr. Yasemin Yildiz of UCLA, the recipient of the 2016 DAAD Prize for Distinguished Scholarship in German and European Studies for her outstanding academic work in the Humanities. Yasemin …

U.S. Students Are Attending German Universities In Increasing Numbers

  During his 2016 campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, Bernie Sanders’ call to make tuition at public institutions free for all students hit a nerve among his (mainly young) …

Russia and Germany in Crimea: The Irony of History

History sometimes likes to play games of irony, counting on our short memory. One such irony is revealed in the context of Russia’s annexation of Crimea. In March 2014 Russian …