Challenges to Democracy in Europe Speaker Series
Spring 2025 Events
From Where We Stand | March 18, 2025
Film Screening of "From Where We Stand" and discussion with producer Adrian Favell and filmmaker Lucy Kaye
Lucy Kaye's one hour documentary and deep dive into the life and times of residents of three post industrial towns in the North of England is at once moving, visually haunting, and (in parts) disturbingly raw. It is part of a 4 year project run at the University of Leeds which took a sociological look at political disaffection -- and issues of austerity, deprivation, race and nation -- in the North of England after Brexit and during COVID.
With a direct and spontaneous approach, filmmaker Lucy Kaye creates intimate portraits of diverse individuals in three post-industrial northern English towns. Through the stories of people connected by place, the film explores our relationship with where we’ve come from, what we’ve left behind and where we live. Amongst the people we meet are Bini, a former asylum seeker from Eritrea trying to root himself in Middlesbrough; Stella, a Polish woman stuck in the UK after a relationship breakdown, making a life for herself and her daughter; and Yan, a former power station worker enveloped in nostalgia for the past. We also get to know Yubi, a Pakistani immigrant mourning the passing of his father in Wakefield; and Lisa, another Halifax resident determined to make sure the voices of her community are heard. In pared-back verité style that deploys music and lingering shots of the landscapes that define these lives, From Where We Stand offers the people portrayed time and space to express how they feel about their lives and their towns.
This event was co-sponsored by the Department of Sociology and the Migrations Program.
The Orders and Borders of Global Inequality: Rethinking Migration and Mobilities in the Era of Neoliberalism and Beyond | March 17, 2025
Description
In a world of massive inequalities between nations, and where citizenship at birth is the biggest determining factor of anyone's life chances, migration and international mobility are often seen as dramatic mechanisms of change. Yet strict borders and hierarchies between nations persist. The recently initiated five year ERC Advanced Grant project, MIGMOBS - The Orders and Border of Global Inequality: Migration and Mobilities in Late Capitalism (2024-28) investigates how and why global inequalities are reproduced through the shifting classification of mobile populations. In opening a new vision by seeing "international migration" as only a narrow and symbolically overcharged slice in a continuum of "mobilities", both human and non-human, it effects a paradigm shift in conventional migration studies, in both theoretical and operational terms. Building a global database with case studies across 23 sending and receiving countries, MIGMOBS charts how nation-states have preserved power through the era of neoliberalism by selectively opening and closing channels of mobility: making immigration and asylum the obsessive target of sovereign control while rendering invisible and fluid the mass mobilities of tourism, students, business and commuter travel. For more information, contact the PI, Adrian Favell (adrian.favell@ucc.ie), or see: https://www.ucc.ie/en/migmobs
Speaker
Adrian Favell, University College Cork
This event was co-sponsored by the Migrations Program, Department of Sociology, and the Comparative Muslim Societies Program.
Suspect Citizenship: Rethinking Belonging and Non-belonging in Plural Societies | March 12, 2025
Description
Based on years of ethnographic research on France’s present antiracist movement and mobilization against state violence, I introduce a framework of “suspect citizenship” which demonstrates how ethnoracial minorities are constantly outside of the boundaries of full societal inclusion. I argue that postcolonial plural societies like France position a certain populations as suspect or suspicious, due to their ethnoracial assignment. I examine suspect citizenship at the nexus between active citizenship, belonging/non-belonging, antiracism at a macro level, and activism against state violence. I consider how certain populations are automatically rendered suspicious or suspect by virtue of their ethnoracial assignment on micro and macro levels, and how this construction of citizenship is not just a postcolonial formation. I discuss how we can understand how individuals resist their categorization as suspect through examining mobilization against state violence, as well as how suspect citizenship exists without state recognition of ethnoracial difference. Suspect citizenship is therefore a framework and mode for understanding and making sense of how colonial hierarchies are maintained in postcolonial or neocolonial societies.
Speaker
Jean Beaman, City University of New York
This event was co-sponsored by the Department of Sociology and French Studies.
Fall 2024 Events
A “Nuclear Umbrella” for Ukraine? | November 7, 2024
Speaker
Matthew Evangelista, Cornell University
This event was hosted by the Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies and co-sponsored by the Institute for European Studies.
Flexible Authoritarianism: Cultivating Ambition and Loyalty in Russia | November 4, 2024
Speaker
Anna Schwenck, University of Siegen
Selecting Refugees for Resettlement to Norway and Canada: Vulnerability, Integration and Discretion | October 31, 2024
Speaker
Dagmar Soennecken, York University (Canada)
This event was co-sponsored by the Migrations Program.
How To Hide an Empire? Austro-Hungarian Economic Space in Central & Southeastern Europe 1890–1930: Actors, Structures, Embeddedness, and Factors of Resilience | October 18, 2024
Speaker
Gábor Egry, Columbia University
This event was co-sponsored by the History Department.
Thinking about the Russia-Ukraine War | September 19, 2024
Speaker
Keith Gessen, Columbia University
This event was hosted by the Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies and co-sponsored by the Institute for European Studies.
Democracy at Risk: The Radical Right’s Interaction with Mainstream Parties and Its Effects in Eastern Europe | September 12, 2024
Description
The lecture offers an overview of the radical right's interactions with mainstream parties and the effect they have on setting political agendas in the region. The focus is on sensitive policy areas such as minority policies and asylum regulations. Based on a study of shifts in major parties’ policy positions and in minority-related policies, the lecture addresses the question to what extent the radical right has changed the quality of democracy in Eastern Europe. This question shall be answered by comparing three groups of countries that are distinct in terms of the relevance of radical right parties: Bulgaria and Slovakia; Hungary, Poland, and Romania; and the Czech Republic and Estonia.
Speaker
Michael Minkenberg, European University Viadrina in Frankfurt
Unearthing and Reckoning with Ukrainian History | September 4, 2024
Description
Growing up in Cleveland in the final years of the Cold War, writer Megan Buskey understood little about her Ukrainian family’s traumatic history. It was only well into adolescence that she learned that her mother had grown up in a gulag exile settlement in Siberia because her grandparents had been deported there from their Ukrainian village after the Second World War.
As an adult, Megan spent years researching her family’s experience for her award-winning book, Ukraine Is Not Dead Yet: A Family Story of Exile and Return (ibidem, 2023). In this talk, Megan Buskey will discuss the political significance of Ukrainian family histories in light of the restrictions placed on memory during the Soviet period, share what she learned about her family’s experience, and connect their story to current politics, specifically Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Speaker
Megan Buskey
Spring 2024 Events
Between Political Commitment and Creativity: Re nudo and Underground Culture in 1970s Italy | April 26, 2024
Description
In the heated political climate of 1970s Italy, the first and longest-lived underground journal—Re nudo—aimed to link American radicalism with Italian extra-parliamentary politics.An arbiter of underground culture until the late 70s, Re nudo embraced the liberation of the individual from capitalism’s yoke by promoting psychedelics, sexual liberation, gay rights,feminism, and the revision of the institution of the family. Its audience was a new class in the making: a marginalized suburban proletariat made up of wage laborers, absentee students, and disaffected, angry youth. Its project went beyond the page: it even organized the largest music festival in Italian history. This talk will address the uses and limits of underground culture in creating a class aware of its revolutionary potential.
Speaker
Sergio Ferrarese, William & Mary
This event was co-hosted with Romance Studies.
American Democracy Challenges in Comparative Perspective | April, 10 2024
Description
Anti-democratic politics is a global phenomenon. Apart from the United States, countries in Europe, Latin America, Africa have seen the rise of populism, polarization, and illiberal politics. This event is an informal conversation among Einaudi Center faculty Mabel Berezin (IES), Ken Roberts (DTR and LACS), and Rachel Beatty Riedl (Einaudi Center director and DTR) and renowned Harvard sociologist Theda Skocpol, AD White Professor-at-Large, on American democracy’s place among global challenges to democracy.
Speaker
Theda Skocpol
Peace Pedagogies in a Divided Society | February 29, 2024
Speakers
Dr. Sara Clarke-Habibi
Professor Larisa Kasumagić- Kafedžić
This event was hosted by the Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies and co-sponsored by the Institute for European Studies.
Fall 2023 Events
Authoritarian Near Miss: The Future of the Polish Democracy after the Populist Defeat | November 30, 2023
Speakers
Anna Wojciuk, University of Warsaw
Maciej Kisilowski, Central European University
How Russia's Invasion of Ukraine is Changing Europe | October 26, 2023
Speaker
Mitchell Orenstein, University of Pennsylvania
Coping with Defeat: Sunni Islam, Roman Catholicism and the Modern State | October 20, 2023
Speaker
Jonathan Laurence, Boston College
"Your Past is My Present": The Case of Ukraine | October 5, 2023
Description
Seeking international support to counter Russia’s February 2022 invasion, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has publicly addressed foreign politicians and public in several democratic nations. Media coverage paid special attention to his explicit comparison of Ukraine’s current situation to salient historical events in the audiences' countries. Since public opinion can influence foreign policy decisions in democracies, we investigate whether evoking the past of the audience's country effectively increases popular support for aiding Ukraine.
Speaker
Anil Menon, University of California, Merced
The Return of the Native: Can Liberalism Safeguard Us Against Nativism? | October 2, 2023
Speaker
Jan Willem Duyvendak, University of Amsterdam
Past Events
Panel: Nationalism Unsettled | April 28, 2023
Speakers
Ernesto Bassi, History
Mara Yue Du, History
Irina R. Troconis, Romance Studies
Leila Wilmers, Sociology
Discussant
Begüm Adalet, Government
This event was hosted as part of the Einaudi Center's democratic threats and resilience research priority. It was co-sponsored by Latin American and Caribbean Studies and the East Asia Program.
Negotiating Diversity in Expanded European Public Spaces | April 17, 2023
Speaker
Riva Kastoryano, SciencesPO
This event was cosponsored by Migrations.
The Capital Order: How Economists Invented Austerity and Paved the Way to Fascism | April 13, 2023
Speaker
Clara Mattei, The New School
This event was cosponsored by History and Sociology.
Left for Dead in Far-Right Times? The Decline of Social Democracy and the Rise of the Far-Right in Western Europe | March 23, 2023
Speaker
Mona Krewel, Victoria University of Wellington
This event was cosponsored by Government.
Contesting Autocracy: Lessons from Democratic Social Movements in Portugal, Italy, and Chile | March 6, 2023
Speakers
Tiago Carvalho, Instituto Universitario de Lisboa
Sidney Tarrow, Cornell University
Ken Roberts, Cornell University
This event was hosted in collaboration with the Einaudi Center's Democratic Threats and Resilience Global Research Priority and co-sponsored by Latin American and Caribbean Studies and Government.
The Geopolitics of the European Union's Single Market for Financial Services | February 22, 2023
Speaker
Amy Verdun, University of Victoria
This event was cosponsored by Government.
Can Democracy Exist Without Borders? Irregular Migration in Europe and the Rise of Authoritarian Populism | February 15, 2023
Speaker
Simon Parker, University of York
This event was cosponsored by Migrations.
Centrism From the French Revolution to Today | November 29, 2022
Speaker
Hugo Drochon, University of Nottingham
This event was cosponsored by French Studies, History, and Government.
Resurrecting the Jew: Nationalism, Philosemitism, and Poland's Jewish Revival | November 15, 2022
Speaker
Geneviève Zubrzycki, University of Michigan
This event was co-sponsored by Sociology and the Jewish Studies Program.
How Populism Deals with Complexity | September 6, 2022
Speaker
Oscar Mazzoleni, University of Lausanne
Dmitry Bykov in Conversation | March 24, 2022
Speaker
Dmitry Bykov, Visiting Critic
The Return of History: The War in Ukraine and the Future of Great Power Competition | March 15, 2022
Speaker
Serhii Plokhy, Harvard University
Odd Arne Westad, Yale University
Cristina Florea, Cornell University
From Populism to Fascism? | March 8, 2022
Speaker
Federico Finchelstein, The New School
Impossible Pluralism? Religious Minorities, Migrants and Unsettled European Democracy | February 15, 2022
Speaker
Elisabeth Becker, University of Heidelberg
Hate in the Homeland: The New Global Far Right | February 3, 2022
Speaker
Cynthia Miller-Idriss, American University