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

From the AGI Bookshelf: Wir können nicht allen helfen

Just before the German elections in September 2017, Boris Palmer, the mayor of Tübingen presented a new book he wrote about the refugee crisis in Germany: Wir können nicht allen helfen: …

Do We Still Need “the West”?

Diagnoses of a “crisis” in transatlantic relations often raise questions about the future of “the West.” Over the last fifteen years, pundits and scholars have discussed a possible “end of …

Multi-Ethnic Tenant Movements in Los Angeles and Berlin

Multi-ethnic and immigrant resistance play a pivotal role in challenging the political shifts right, which have been rooted in racism, xenophobia, and social, political, and economic isolationism. Housing movements serve …

Transnational Reconciliation and the Value of Transatlantic Civil Society Actors

“States cannot be tried before foreign courts because of their sovereign activity, for example, the actions of their soldiers,” claims Minister of Justice of the state of Berlin, Dirk Behrendt, …

The Age of Youth: Civil Society and International Understanding Since World War II

After World War II, various discourses emerged that assigned the “youth” and the “young generation” to an important role for the material and mental reconstruction of the postwar societies. These …

Saving the Transatlantic Partnership: Why and How?

Since the end of World War II, the partnership between the U.S. and European countries, built on common security/economic interests and shared values, such as democracy, liberty, rule of law, …

We Need More Diversity in the Transatlantic Civil Society

Civil society organizations need to be more diverse in order to assume their pivotal role in transatlantic relations, especially in the current period of mutual alienation. In the past, dynamic …

To Be or Not to Be a Woman…in Germany or the U.S.?

Since accusations of sexual assault and harassment by prominent Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein have surfaced, different segments of society, both in the U.S. and Germany, have had to grapple with …

Shattered by Glass: Working through Memories of Kristallnacht and Shanghai

We should learn from this story of the Shanghai Jews. But we haven’t learned.

Understanding Russia

For most of the past 70 years, Germans and Americans have found themselves largely on the same side of issues related to Eastern Europe and Russia.  During the Cold War …

Europe’s Illusions

Although for more than 70 years common values were invoked to keep the transatlantic partnership together, now is the time to assert shared U.S.-German interests.

Herero Activists in the United States: Demanding Recognition and Reparation for the First Genocide of the Twentieth Century

Between 1904 and 1908, over 100 000 people were killed in the first genocide of the twentieth century.[1]  Only 20 percent of the Herero and about 50 percent of the …