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 EU for You #11 - The Europe the New Deal Made: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This week, we continue our dig through our archive, bringing you a re-broadcast of another February 2003 lecture: “The Europe the New Deal Made: Current Tensions in Historical Perspective” by Columbia University Professor and IHS board member Ira Katznelson with an introduction by chairman of Boston University’s Department of Sociology John Stone.

In his lecture Professor Katznelson explores origins of the distinctive, and shifting, varieties of liberalism at the root of the tensions between the United States and Europe. He describes the influence of the New Deal in America, in particular, the values of the Democratic south, in shaping Western Europe and the international order in the aftermath of World War II. The transformation of American liberalism, beginning with election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, has led many Europeans to question US power and legitimacy. The question, Katznelson argues, is what kind of liberalism we wish to have.
This lecture aired on WBUR on March 9, 2003. We are grateful to WBUR for making the recording available to EU for YOU.

Ira Katznelson is the Ruggles Professor of Political Science and History at Columbia University. He is an Americanist whose work straddles comparative politics and political theory, as well political and social history. His most recent books are When Affirmative Action Was White (2005), and Desolation and Enlightenment: Political Knowledge after Total War, Totalitarianism, and the Holocaust (2003). Other books include Black Men, White Cities (1973), City Trenches (1981), Schooling for All (with Margaret Weir, 1985), Marxism and the City (1992), and Liberalism’s Crooked Circle (1996). Professor Katznelson has been a Guggenheim Fellow and is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.

John Stone is Professor of Sociology and Department Chair. His research interests focus on comparative race and ethnic relations, international migration, social change and sociological theory. He is the founder and editor of Ethnic and Racial Studies (Routledge, 1978-1989).

 

 EU for You #10 - German American Relations before and after Sepember 11 [52:17m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

During the summer of 2008, the EU for You podcast will feature events from our archive. Most of these events have been recorded by WBUR and links to the broadcasts can be found on our website. This summer we bring them to you in a more convenient format.

This week’s podcast is a re-broadcast of a February 20o3 lecture by IHS board member Michael Mertes entitled “German-American Relations before and after September 11.”

Mertes’ lecture, which took place at Boston University, just prior to the US invasion of Iraq, explores the unravelling of the formerly close German-American relationship in the months following September 11 and helps us to understand the rift that would develop between the two countries under Chancellor Schroeder. Political priorities for both countries may have shifted, but the need for strong German-American partnership remains as vital as ever.

As Dr. Karen Donfried, Executive Vice President of the German Marshall Fund of the United States, points out, even while official attitudes have softened, public sentiment in Europe remains strongly anti-American, or at least, anti-Bush. The upcoming US presidential elections represent, according to her reasoning, a “window of opportunity” for both countries.

This lecture aired on WBUR on February 23, 2003. We are grateful to WBUR for making the recording available to EU for YOU.

Michael Mertes was a senior speechwriter and director general for social and political analyses and cultural affairs for Chancellor Helmut Kohl from 1987 to 1998. Since August 2006, he has been the State Secretary and Envoy from the State of Rhine-Westphalia to the Federal Government. He is member of the Permanent Advisory Council in the Bundesrat which is composed of the sixteen envoys from the states to the Bundesrat. Comparable with the Council of Elders of other parliaments, this board assists and advises the President and the Bundesrat Presidium. In addition, as the highest-ranking official of the Ministry for Federal, European and Media Affairs, he represents the state’s interests in Brussels and Berlin.

Charles Maier is the Leverett Saltonstall Professor of History at Harvard University. His research interests include US and European international politics since World War II, early modern and modern international history, modern social and economic history, and German and Italian History. His most recent publications have focused on Mahler the composer and on alternative narratives for the modern era. His current projects include a history of the world in the twentieth century, specifically the rise and decline of territoriality as a resource for state organization in the modern era.

Links:

Germany’s Christian Democrats are Pulled Left by David Vickrey, editor of Dialog International

 

 EU for You #8 - Could a United States of Europe Rival the United States of America [52:23m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Today’s podcast features a December 2002 lecture by historian, author, and IHS Board member Timothy Garton Ash entitled “Could a United States of Europe Rival the United States of America.”

Responding to Timothy Garton Ash is Michael Ignatieff, who was, at the time of this lecture, Director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

In his lecture, Garton Ash asks three questions:

One, Could a US of Europe rival the US?

Two, Do Europeans want a US of Europe to rival the US (and do Americans worry about it)?

And three, Will there be a US of Europe?

To first two question, he says, yes, absolutely - Europe has bigger population, a strong economy, more favorable trade balance, etc., but to the third question, will there be a US of Europe, he says, “most definitely not,” and he goes on to list ten reasons. Garton Ash was speaking to an American audience and he cautioned, lest anyone find his conclusions reassuring, that a weak Europe is in fact cause for worry - the challenges we face require a strong partnership.

Even though this lecture took place five years ago, during a time of heightened tensions between the United States and Europe, when commentators on right and left were predicting “the End of the West,” and before the 2004 expansion of the European Union, Timothy Garton Ash’s concerns are still relevant, one, because we don’t know just how the European Union will evolve in the coming years, what sort of political entity it will be, and two, because, as Dominique Moisi points out in out a more recent assessment of US-European relations, the outlook for the transatlantic alliance is uncertain.

This lecture aired on WBUR, New England’s largest public radio station on December 29, 2002. We are grateful to WBUR for making the recording available to EU for YOU.

 

 EU for You #6 - The US and Europe: Coming to Terms with Change: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

The Institute for Human Sciences was founded in November 2001, in the immediate wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, during a time of growing tensions between the United States and Europe, with the goal of increasing understanding across the Atlantic. A year later, in November 2002, we launched a lecture series, on the transatlantic relationship, that continues to this day.

In today’s podcast, we bring you the inaugural lecture in that series, given on November 6, 2002, prior to the war in Iraq, entitled “The US and Europe: Coming to Terms with Change.” Our speaker is James Hoge, Editor-in-Chief of Foreign Affairs, and a member of the Institute’s Board of Directors. Responding to James Hoge is David Fromkin, University Professor and Professor of International Relations at Boston University.

While our intent is to keep the EU for You podcast current, we have wanted to revisit a less auspicious moment in the transatlantic relationship, to give our listeners a sense of how far we have come. It was in the summer of 2002, that Robert Kagan’s essay “Power and Weakness,” announcing that “Americans are from Mars and Europeans are from Venus,” made such a splash, particularly among neoconservatives. While tensions across the Atlantic have largely abated, the need for understanding and knowledge has not, and the goal of the EU for You podcast is to actively explore the political and cultural differences between the United States and Europe, with the aim of increasing understanding across international borders.

James Hoge describes the frayed relationship between the US and Europe in the aftermath of September 11, but argues – convincingly - that our differences are not unbridgeable and need not signal a parting of the ways.

This lecture was aired on WBUR, New England’s largest public radio station on November 24, 2002; we are grateful to WBUR for making the recording available to EU for You.

James Hoge brings 30 years in journalism to his role as editor of Foreign Affairs. In the 1960s, he was a Washington correspondent covering Congress, national politics, and international assignments. In the ’70s and ’80s, he was editor and publisher of newspapers in Chicago and New York, winning a total of seven Pulitzer Prizes under his direction. For the inaugural lecture of the Institute for Human Science, Hoge chose the topic of the changing nature of the relationship between the U.S. and the nations of Europe.

David Fromkin is director of the Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer Range Future at Boston University, University Professor, and Professor of History, International Relations, and Law. He is the author of six books including A Peace To End All Peace and The Way of the World: From the Dawn of Civilization to the Eve of the Twenty-First Century.

Links:

Columbia Journalism Review Podcast: Delacorte Lecture with Foreign Affairs’s Jim Hoge

“Power and Weakness” by Robert Kagan