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Exorcising Ghosts of Inflation and Unification from German Economic Policy
Adam Posen, president of Peterson Institute for International Economics and the spring 2013 Kurt Viermetz Distinguished Visitor, thinks central bankers and economic policymakers need to be more humble. But that's not just because things went wrong over the last few years -- although, says Posen -- a former economic...
read more >>Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty
On the evening of March 11, James A. Robinson, a political scientist and an economist at Harvard University, presented his and economist Daron Acemoglu's recent and renowned work, Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty (Random House, 2012), at the European School of Management and Technology. Esteemed by the likes of Thomas Friedman, Jared Diamond, and...
read more >>Theories of Forgetting: A Novel After Robert Smithson
One is tempted to call him Lance Armstrong—if for nothing more than his turbo-charged prose, lightning fast intellect, and an ability to delay the truth. But his name is actually Lance Olsen, Professor of Experimental Narrative Theory and Practice at the University of Utah, and the Mary Ellen von der Heyden Fellow in...
read more >>Confused About Photography: From the Weimar Republic to the Arab Spring
Weimar in the interwar years, reminded Susie Linfield at her February 21 lecture, was modernity's workshop. And whether it was sexuality or psychoanalysis, literature, theater, or the arts writ large, Berlin was the hotbed of its unfolding experimentation. Even in the comparatively staid realm of journalism and press...
read more >>Three Tales: A Video Opera
The American Academy in Berlin is proud to inform its music-loving audiences about an upcoming video opera at a partner institution, Konzerthaus Berlin: "Three Tales - A Video Opera" will be performed on Saturday, March 2, at 8pm, featuring a score composed by Steve Reich, one of the United...
read more >>Politics of Religious Freedom: A Genealogy from the Middle East
The rise of religious sectarianism in the Middle East is often met with calls for the institutionalization of religious liberty to ensure that non-Muslim minorities can practice their religion freely without state intervention and social coercion. While linked to the civic virtue of tolerance, the right to religious liberty is distinct in that it is enshrined in national constitutions and...
read more >>US Foreign Policy in Obama's Second Term
Journalist and novelist David R. Ignatius predicts that President Obama will face urgent global issues in his second term. First of all, he will have to address the relationship between the US and China, which he has called “the biggest opportunity and danger ahead,” and confront Iran in a growing conflict...
read more >>Credit and Representations of Jews in Early Modern Europe
The term "early modern" refers to the centuries between 1500 to 1800, and it has replaced predecessor terms like "Renaissance" or "Baroque." Those overly-Eurocentric terms focus on artistic production, as opposed to other spheres of human activity -- banking, law, trade, for example. Or even, says...
read more >>Democratic Bodies: The Abolition of Torture and the Uprising of the Rule of Law
Philosopher J.M. Bernstein of the New School for Social Research began his January 29 American Academy lecture with an uncomfortable if revealing anecdote: An intruder breaks into his home and threatens to kill him and his whole family. Under United States law, Mr. Bernstein would be permitted to kill the intruder in self-...
read more >>Welcoming the Spring 2013 Fellows
Under the frostbitten night of January 17, the American Academy in Berlin warmly welcomed the spring 2013 class of fellows at the Hans Arnhold Center. Thronged with curious and heartened guests from Berlin's worlds of academia, publishing, politics, and business, a dozen new fellows -- the 29th class since the American Academy opened its doors, in 1998 -- were publicly welcomed by the Academy'...
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