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

Dealing with a Violent Past and Reconciliation as a Challenge for Policymakers and Civil Society Actions Experience from the Church’s Reconciliation Work between Germans and Poles

Twenty-five years after the Kohl-Mazowiecki meetings and joint mass that inaugurated “official” German-Polish reconciliation after 1989, German-Polish reconciliation is viewed as an instructive example both in Europe (Polish-Ukrainian relations) and East Asia (Japanese-Korean relations).

Rising Tensions in East Asia?

This speech was delivered as the keynote address at the conference of the same name: “Rising Tensions in East Asia? A Transatlantic Perspective.” For the presentations, photographs, and full summaries …

The Miracle of Leipzig

This is a story about the secret of freedom—courage.  Germans in Leipzig courageously faced down a regime that had killed fellow citizens, whose only crime was to seek freedom and …

How Think Tanks Think          

The crisis in Ukraine, advancing ISIS radical Islamic terrorists, spreading of the Ebola virus, possible consequences of sanctions against Russia for the economy: The current list of foreign policy challenges …

Freedom Cannot Be Taken for Granted

In the fall of 1989, I studied at the Karl-Marx-University in Leipzig. As a student of theology, I was able to participate in the demonstrations on the street as well …

Regional Institution-Building in Asia: Are There Any Lessons from Europe?

For many in the international media and among casual observers of Asia, regional institution-building may appear a mundane subject. Strengthening existing regional institutions, or establishing a more substantive one, is …

Post-Unification German Studies: Momentum Gained or Lost?

Carl Bildt, until recently Sweden’s foreign minister, told Thomas Friedman of the New York Times in 2003: “For a generation Americans and Europeans shared the same date: 1945. A whole …

Germany’s Foreign Policy of Reconciliation

Now available in paperback, AGI Society, Culture & Politics Director Dr. Lily Gardner Feldman’s book, “Germany’s Foreign Policy of Reconciliation: From Enmity to Amity,” highlights Germany as a model for …

Can Germany Reconcile the Western Balkans?

In April 2013, Serbia and Kosovo signed an agreement that enabled a rapprochement between the two sides, including an understanding that they will not block each other’s bid for European …

Toward Historical Reconciliation in East Asia: Emergence and Expansion of Transnational Networks

Pragmatic Necessity to Grapple with History Problems East Asian countries are now facing a situation often called the “Asian paradox,” in which deepening economic interdependence coexists with historical and territorial …

The Day the Berlin Wall Really Fell

Contrary to popular lore, the Berlin Wall did not fall on November 9, 1989. Nor did it fall in Berlin. It fell on October 9 some 120 miles away, in …