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

A World in Flux: German American Relations in a Changing American Order

This year’s AGI Annual Symposium is framed around the idea of “A World in Flux”: the relative decline of the West’s economic power; the  need to  adapt our work forces …

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 …