Please join us for the Annual Janey Program Conference: No End of History: Crooked Circle of Democracy and Authoritarianism.
On April 25th 1974, after years of a brutal decolonization war, a group of left-wing officials of the Portuguese Army started a rebellion that caused the downfall of the Portuguese colonial and authoritarian regime. The Carnation revolution, as this rebellion is known today, inaugurated what has been described as the third democratization wave. This was followed by the collapse of military juntas, the end of authoritarian governments, and the fall of communist and apartheid regimes across Southern and Eastern Europe, Latin America, East Asia, and Southern Africa. This third wave, between 1974 and 2000, further cemented the idea of liberal democracies and multiculturalism as a predetermined destination for all modern societies. However, the last 25 years of resurgence of populist leaders, far right movements, ethno-nationalist parties, and anti-minority violence, challenged the wishful thinking of those that considered the democratizing effects of the wave permanent.
The conference will engage with the legacies of the third democratization wave and the new authoritarian turn across the globe.
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Join us for the pre-conference documentary screening of 'Citizens' (1986), portraying human dimensions of Poland’s Solidarity movement in 1980-81 that were obscured by Cold-War rhetoric. The screening will be followed by a discussion with Director/Producer Richard W. Adams. Please RSVP here.
The Janey Program for Latin American Studies, the Transregional Center for Democratic Studies, and the Zolberg Institute for Migration and Mobility at The New School.
Photo: "A mural commemorating the 25th April Liberdade known as the carnation revolution on a wall in the Rua Victor da Costa e Silva which is located in the city of Lagos, Algarve, Portugal, 28 September 2017." Source: Kolforn (Wikimedia), CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via WikiMedia Commons.
The Janey Program in Latin American Studies was launched in the 1991–1992 academic year with generous support from Daniel and Susan Rothenberg. Janey Rothenberg was strong in her ideas and in her commitment to others. She died of cancer on August 31, 1977, at the age of 27. At the time of Janey’s passing, she worked at the North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA), a nonprofit that works toward a world in which the nations and peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean are free from oppression and injustice. NACLA wrote of Janey, “Her life was dedicated to teaching and learning, succeeding and failing, but most of all growing and sustaining herself and those who knew her. She gave us the strength and hope to do more than survive from day to day; she gave us the perspective which makes it possible for us to create the future.”
The Janey Program is dedicated to Janey's spirit and to her commitment to justice in Latin America. The program supports fellowships for students from Latin America and the Caribbean pursuing graduate studies at The New School, summer fellowships for fieldwork and research in Latin America and the Caribbean, an annual conference, lectures, and occasional visits to The New School by scholars from Latin America. The Janey Program is an important component of the global perspective of The New School for Social Research and of Latin American studies in The New School as a whole.
The Transregional Center for Democratic Studies: TCDS’s transregional and cross-departmental research and study programs, conducted both at home and abroad, bring together civic-minded students, junior and senior scholars, and civil society actors from various regional contexts. Our activities — region-based institutes, workshops, conferences, talks, and fellowships — are designed to further strengthen social and human capital, i.e., individuals and organizations concerned with the promise and sustainability of democracy. Our flagship projects have been the annual Democracy & Diversity Graduate Summer Institutes (held in Poland since 1991 and also in South Africa from 1999 to 2015), aimed at a rigorous quest for a more textured understanding of the precariousness of democracy as it arises almost everywhere.
About the Zolberg Institute for Migration and Mobility:
In the world’s leading city of immigration, in a time of a troubling resurgence of anti-migrant action and rhetoric, in a University with a faculty and student body committed to social justice, the Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility supports critical and applied scholarship and provides opportunities for social action and policy engagement for faculty, students and the broader New School community.
The Institute fosters concentric circles of scholarship and action—in our University, our city, and the world. We contribute to the University community by offering courses, sponsoring lectures and events, and supporting extended visits of leading scholars. We engage deeply with New York City, supporting student work with the wide range of groups and communities in the City. We undertake initiatives to inform and influence public debate and public policy at the national and global level.
The term “mobility” in the Institute’s name is the key to our mission. It commits us to a dynamic understanding of concepts central to the field of migration studies—borders, citizenship and other forms of membership, the nation-state, forced migration, migration due to climate change and disasters. It also opens up for examination the prevailing political, cultural and economic narratives that both influence and are influenced by scholarship, policy and social action. It is a time for serious scrutiny of the premises, categories and policies that have produced the current historical moment, and for imagining new approaches to understanding human mobility (and immobility).
Committed to amplifying diverse voices, The New School offers more than a thousand public programs and events each year, providing fresh perspectives and unique learning opportunities. These lectures, exhibitions, concerts, and performances feature prominent and emerging artists, activists, and thought leaders. Be sure to visit our Events Calendar to see the full roster.
To receive updates about public programs and events at The New School, subscribe to our mailing list. Visit our Livestream and YouTube channels to watch select events live and recorded.
Alex Aleinikoff is Dean of The New School for Social Research and University Professor at The New School. He has served as Director of the Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility since January 2017.
Alex has written widely in the areas of immigration and refugee law and policy, transnational law, citizenship, race, and constitutional law. His latest book, New Narratives on the Peopling of America (co-edited with Alexandra Delano), will be published by the Johns Hopkins University Press in 2024. He is also the author of The Arc of Protection: Reforming the International Refugee Regime (Stanford University Press, 2019, co-authored by Leah Zamore) and Semblances of Sovereignty: The Constitution, the State, and American Citizenship (Harvard University Press, 2002). He is a co-author of leading legal casebooks on immigration law and forced migration. He is currently working on several projects relating to climate migration and reform of the international protection regime.
Before coming to The New School, Alex was United Nations Deputy High Commissioner for Refugees from 2010-2015. He was Dean, Executive Vice President for Law Center Affairs, and a faculty member at Georgetown University Law Center, and was a faculty member at the University of Michigan Law School. He served as Co-chair of the Immigration Task Force for President Barack Obama’s transition team in 2008. From 1994 to 1997, he served as the general counsel, and then Executive Associate Commissioner for Programs, at the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
Alex received a JD from Yale Law School and a BA and honorary Doctorate of Laws from Swarthmore College. He was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2014.
Elzbieta Matynia is Professor and Chair of Sociology and Liberal Studies, and founding director of the Transregional Center for Democratic Studies (TCDS).
I am a sociologist and historian of ideas, and my work at the crossroads of political and cultural sociology aims to illuminate how dramatic shifts in past and present social imaginaries shape and furnish our future at the local, national, and transregional levels.
At the center of my interests is the state of today’s democracy, which – while still aspirational – has been failing large segments of citizenry whether in the United States, East and Central Europe, or Sub-Saharan Africa. My research explores peaceful transitions to democratic order in various parts of the world, gender equality and democracy, and the challenges faced by democracies that have emerged with a legacy of violence.
My early book, "Grappling with Democracy: Deliberations on Post-communist Societies (1990-1995)" (1996) is a rare document of semi-clandestine debates on building a democratic order by dissident intellectuals in the countries of the newly defunct Soviet bloc. "Performative Democracy" (2009) examines a potential in political life that easily eludes theorists – the indigenously inspired enacting of democracy by citizens – and identifies the conditions for civic performativity in public life. "An Uncanny Era: Conversations between Václav Havel and Adam Michnik" is a discussion between two iconic dissidents of Eastern Europe, Václav Havel and Adam Michnik, on the precariousness of democracy and early signs of its retreat. The book was listed among the eight Times Higher Education Books of 2014. The essays "How to Kill a Democracy" (2019), and "Is Liberal Democracy Already History?" discuss further democratic retreat and decline. In my research and teaching I often explore the arts as a site of social reflection, knowledge, and civic agency (“1989 and the Politics of Democratic Performativity” in the International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society), “Architectures of Gender,” “Democracy Dies in Darkness,” “The Promise of Active Freedom,” “Tribute to a Bridge,” and “Democracy’s Endgame?”). I am currently working on a book, “Democracy After Violence.”
I received my MA in literature and philosophy and PhD in sociology from Warsaw University, and came to the United States for post-doctoral studies at the New School’s Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Science. Soon after I arrived in NYC, the Polish government imposed martial law upon a society that 16 months earlier had organized the Independent and Self-governing Trade Union Solidarity, a workers-led movement unique in the Soviet Bloc that ultimately launched a long-running rights revolution throughout the region. Unable to go back to Poland under martial law, I taught at Bard and Sarah Lawrence Colleges and was then offered a junior position at The New School for Social Research.
As head of TCDS, I developed international fellowship programs in critical studies of democracy and launched the Democracy & Diversity Graduate Summer Institutes open to civic-minded junior scholars for rigorous cross-cultural study on the critical issues facing today’s world (see a one-minute video-lecture here). I am a member of the editorial board of the Social Research International Journal. And am honored to have recently received the 2023 Courage in Public Scholarship Award, established in 2014 by the NSSR/Europe Collective (view a short intro video from the ceremony here.)
Andreas Kalyvas is Associate Professor in the Department of Politics at The New School for Social Research. He received his PhD and MA in Political Science at Columbia University and a BA in Political Science and Public Administration from the National and Kapodistrian University in Athens, Greece. Before joining the New School, he taught at Columbia University and the University of Michigan. He has been a visiting research professor at the University of Barcelona, Spain, and has also taught in Chile, Germany, Poland, and South Africa.
Professor Kalyvas's work focuses on democratic theory and the history of political thought from ancient Greek and Roman to modern and contemporary continental political theory. His research interests are situated in the intersection of politics, history, and jurisprudence with a strong emphasis on the relationship between popular sovereignty and constituent power; disobedience, resistance, sedition, and revolutionary breaks; the norm and the exception; emergency rule and dictatorship; state theory and oligarchic power; citizenship, cosmopolitanism, and migration. He is currently completing a book manuscript entitled, Tyranny Legalized: Republicanism, Dictatorship, and the Enemy Within.
Federico Finchelstein is Professor of History at the New School for Social Research and Eugene Lang College. He has taught at the History Department of Brown University and he received his PhD at Cornell University. Finchelstein is Director of the Janey Program in Latin American Studies at NSSR.
Professor Finchelstein is the author of seven books on fascism, populism, Dirty Wars, the Holocaust and Jewish history in Latin America and Europe. His books have been translated into Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Chinese, Hungarian, Korean and Turkish.
Forthcoming book: The Wannabe Fascists: A Guide to Understanding the Greatest Threat to Democracy (University of California Press, May 2024)
Fascist Mythologies. The History and Politics of Unreason in Borges, Freud, and Schmitt (Columbia University Press, 2022) Italian and Portugese editions 2022.
A Brief History of Fascist Lies (University of California Press, 2020). Portuguese Edition, 2020; Chinese, Spanish, Turkish, Italian, Hungarian, 2021, Korean, 2022; Paperback edition with new preface, 2022.
From Fascism to Populism in History (University of California Press, 2017 & 2019 with new preface). (Spanish edition, Taurus, 2018; Italian edition, Donzelli, 2019: Turkish edition Iletisim Yayinlari, 2019: Portugese edition, 2019.)
His previous books in English include, The Ideological Origins of the Dirty War (Oxford University Press, 2014) and Transatlantic Fascism (Duke University Press, 2010).
Finchelstein's books have received 75 reviews in academic journals. They were also reviewed in newspapers and media such as The Washington Post, Financial Times, Clarín, La Nación & La Voz del Interior (Argentina), La Repubblica, Corriere della Sera, Avvenire, Messaggero, Il Manifesto (Italy), Milenio (Mexico), El País and ABC (Spain) and El País (Uruguay).
Professor Finchelstein has published more than fifty academic articles and reviews on Fascism, Latin American Populism, the relationship between history and political theory, the Cold War, Genocide and Antisemitism in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, German and Italian publications, both in collective books and specialized peer review journals in the United States, the United Kingdom, Mexico, the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Israel, Brazil, and Argentina. He has been a contributor to major American, European, and Latin American newspapers and media, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Clarin (Argentina), Fol ha de S.Paulo (Brazil), Domani Giornale (Italy), Corriere della Sera (Italy), Politico, Mediapart ( France), The Guardian (UK), CNN, Foreign Policy, The New Republic, Reuters, El Diario (NYC).
Selin Bengi Gümrükçü is a Postdoctoral Associate at the Department of Political Science, Rutgers University. She received her PhD from University of Zurich in 2014 with a dissertation titled “Reconstructing a Cycle of Protest: Protest and Politics in Turkey, 1971-1985”. She worked as a postdoc at the Center for European Studies (2020-2022) and a visiting scholar at the Department of Political Science (2018-2020) at Rutgers University, as Assistant Professor (2015-2016) at Izmir University, and as research assistant at Izmir University of Economics (2007-2014). During and after her PhD, she held visiting positions at Bielefeld University, Sciences Po Paris, University of Paris 8, and the European University Institute.
Her research and teaching fields of interest include social movements, political parties and democratization and authoritarianism, and far-right and political violence, and as of late, interplay of populism with protests and global political parties.
She is currently finalizing a manuscript titled “Protest and Politics in Turkey in the 1970s: The Making of a Protest Wave” for Routledge. Her publications appeared in peer-reviewed journals such as Terrorism and Political Violence, Turkish Studies, Southeast European and Black Sea Studies, Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies, and in edited volumes.
Nadia Urbinati (Ph.D., European University Institute, Florence, 1989) is a political theorist who specializes in modern and contemporary political thought and the democratic and anti-democratic traditions. She co-chaired the Columbia University Faculty Seminar on Political and Social Thought and was a co-editor with Andrew Arato of the academic journal Constellations: An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory. She is a member of the Executive Committee of the Foundation Reset Dialogues on Civilization and the Feltrinelli Foundation (Milan).
She has been a member of the School of Social Sciences of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton University, and a Laurance S. Rockefeller Visiting Fellowship in the University Center for Human Values, Princeton University. She is permanent visiting professor at the Scuola Superiore de Studi Universitari e Perfezionamento Sant'Anna of Pisa (Italy), and taught at Bocconi University (Milan), SciencesPo (Paris) and the University UNICAMP (Brazil).
She is the winner of the 2008-9 Lenfest/Columbia Distinguished Faculty Award. In 2008 the President of the Italian Republic awarded Professor Urbinati the Commendatore della Repubblica (Commander of the Italian Republic). In 2004 her book Mill on Democracy (cited below) received the David and Elaine Spitz Prize as the best book in liberal and democratic theory published in 2002. In 2020 her book Me the People (cited below) received the Capalbio International Prize.
Professor Urbinati is the author of Me The People: How Populism Transforms Democracy (Harvard University Press, 2019); The Tyranny of the Moderns (Yale University Press 2015); Democracy Disfigured: Opinion, Truth and the People (Harvard University Press, 2014); Representative Democracy: Principles and Genealogy (University of Chicago Press, 2006), and of Mill on Democracy: From the Athenian Polis to Representative Government (University of Chicago Press, 2002). She has edited Carlo Rosselli, Liberal Socialism (Princeton University Press, 1994); Piero Gobetti, On Liberal Revolution (Yale University Press,2002). She co-edited several books, in particular: with Monique Canto-Sperber Le socialism libéral: Une anthologie; Europe-États-Unis (Éditions Esprit 2003); with Alex Zakaras, John Stuart Mill's Political Thought: A Bicentennial Reassessment (Cambridge University Press, 2007); with Stefano Recchia, A Cosmopolitanism of Nations: Giuseppe Mazzini's Writings on Democracy, Nation Building and International Relations (Princeton University Press, 2009); with Steven Lukes, Condorcet's Political Writing (Cambridge University Press, 2012); with Carlo Invernizzi-Accetti, Hans Kelsen’s On the Worth and Values of Democracy (Rowman & Littlefield, 2013); with Lisa Disch and Mathijs van de Sande, The Constructivism Turn in Political Representation (Edinburg University Press, 2019).
Professor Urbinati has published articles in numerous international scholarly journals and is a political columnist for Italian newspapers. She recently participated in a podcast, The Resurgence of Populism, its History, and its Various Forms, with Central European University president and rector Shalini Randeria.
Oliviero Angeli is a political scientist and philosopher at the Technical University of Dresden (TU Dresden). Before joining the TU Dresden, he taught and conducted research at various institutions, including the Scuola Normale Superiore (Pisa), Oxford University, and the Université Catholique de Louvain in Belgium. He holds a binational doctorate (cotutelle) from he University of Saarland and the University of Tours. Since 2017, he is the scientific coordinator of the research center ‘Mercator Forum Migration and Democracy’ (MIDEM).
Angeli conducts research in various areas of political science and philosophy, with a particular focus on democratic theories and migration studies, resulting in numerous publications in these fields. A revised version of his Ph.D. thesis was published as “Cosmopolitanism, Self-Determination, and Territory: Justice with Borders” in 2015 (Palgrave Macmillan). He is also the author of the recent German monograph “Migration und Demokratie. Ein Spannungsverhältnis” [Migration and Democracy: A Tension], published by Reclam in 2018.
Alex Betancourt is Professor of political science at the University of Puerto Rico. Professor Betancourt completed his graduate studies at The New School for Social Research and at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where he obtained his doctorate. He is the author of two books, Walter Benjamin and Sigmund Freud: between Theory and Politics (2008/2012) and El poder en plural: entre la Antropología y la Teoría Política (co-author, 2014). He recently published, “Trouble with Donald Trump”, “Violencia y Justicia: una mirada dialéctica” y “La política de lo humano.” Professor Betancourt has been a Fulbright fellow, Director of Revista de Ciencias Sociales, visiting professor at the University of Los Andes and founding member of Red Antropolítica.
Emmanuel Guerisoli holds a PhD in Sociology and History from The New School for Social Research and is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility.
Previously, he studied law in Argentina and France, specializing in international criminal law and human rights, and earned a Master's degree in politics and international studies in the United States, focusing on international security and terrorism. In his doctoral dissertation, he explores how the interaction of emergency regimes, racialized securitization, and settler colonial spatial frameworks cements the foundations of the war on terror’s legal architecture and informs the design of the different legal modalities that have been applied by the United States against terrorist subjects.
Emmanuel relies on race critical theory and (post)colonial studies, making use of a historical comparative methodology and critical legal analysis, in order to trace the complex genealogies of each different legal mechanisms, revealing their settler colonial legacies and showcasing how they have generated differential citizenship by extending jurisdiction beyond U.S. borders and by fragmenting constitutional protections to certain racialized subjects within the country. While at Zolberg, he will teach courses focusing on racialized (im)mobilities and settler colonialism, transform his dissertation into a book manuscript, and start exploring a research framework to study the current, and future, effects of climate change on human and no-human mobility and to develop impact scenarios on states capabilities.
He has taught courses on race critical theory, sociological theory, citizenship, legal, political & historical sociology, migration, and state & non-state violence. He has also been engaged with NGOs and other agencies in Buenos Aires and NYC in areas such as imprisonment, sexual violence, reproductive rights, immigration. Since March 2020, he has been involved with COVID mitigation and research efforts at various medical and vaccination centers in the New York City area, focusing on assisting Hispanic patients.
