Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Vestibulum sagittis mi eu elementum malesuada. Maecenas arcu felis, suscipit vitae mi in, posuere ultricies nunc. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Ut ante velit, condimentum eget erat a, suscipit porttitor nisl. Pellentesque in semper nunc
Please join Democracy Seminar members from around the world as they discuss the upcoming U.S. election as seen from their respective localities, countries, and regions.
Presented by the Democracy Seminar & the Transregional Center for Democratic Studies (TCDS) at The New School for Social Research (NSSR).
By joining this online event, you will be prompted to accept Zoom Terms of Service. If the session is recorded, you acknowledge that by participating, your name, phone number, and profile picture might be visible to the public. You can customize your personal information when creating your Zoom account. The New School may use any recorded material from the event.
The Democracy Seminar is a project convened by publisher and founding editor Jeffrey Goldfarb and senior editors Elzbieta Matynia and Jeffrey C. Isaac. This world-wide discussion among pro-democracy intellectuals and activists addresses the political, social and cultural obstacles to democratic governance; investigates the rise and appeal of illiberal philosophies and practices; and explores ways for rolling back autocratic politics.
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.
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.
Jeffrey C. Goldfarb is the Michael E. Gellert Professor of Sociology Emeritus at The New School for Social Research.
He is the author of dozens of articles and eight books, including Reinventing Political Culture: The Power of Culture versus the Culture of Power, The Politics of Small Things: The Power of the Powerless in Dark Times and Civility and Subversion: The Intellectual in Democratic Society. He is the founder of the online magazine Public Seminar and the convener of The Democracy Seminar, first developed in the 1980s as an exchange between oppositionist groups in Central Europe and the United States, and in 2018 reconvened as a “World Wide Committee of Democratic Correspondence.”
Goldfarb lived in Poland in 1973-4 doing the research for his dissertation on Polish Student Theater. He collaborated with the democratic opposition before Solidarnosc and worked with Solidarnosc both above and below ground in the 1980s. Since 1989, he has annually returned to Poland to teach in an institute on Democracy and Diversity. For his work in Poland, he received the Solidarity Medal, presented by former President Lech Walesa, on behalf of the Polish government, in recognition of support for Solidarity, commemorating its 25th anniversary, September 28, 2005, and the Medal of Gratitude, from the European Solidarity Centre, Gdansk, Poland, 2012.
Hilla Dayan is a New School and TCDS alumna (Ph.D 2008) and lecturer at Amsterdam University College. She is currently a Visiting Fellow at Remarque Institute New York University. Her current Research Project is on Europe and Middle Eastern Jews: Memory, Heritage and Postcolonial Entanglements. Her earlier work on Mizrahi memory appeared as a book chapter: “Memory-of and memory-against the People: the Mizrahi memory surge in Israel” in European Memory in Populism: representations of self and Other, Chiara De Cesari and Ayhan Kaya (eds.), p. 257-275. London: Routledge.
Dr Jacek Kucharczyk is President of the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA), one of Poland’s leading thinktanks.
In the 1980s Kucharczyk was active in independent student movement and clandestine publishing in Poland. He has been a co-founder and board member of a number of international NGOs, including Prague Civil Society Center, the European Partnership for Democracy (EPD) in Brussels and Policy Association for an Open Society PASOS in Prague. Dr Kucharczyk was also the chair and member of Advisory Board of Scholarship Programs at Open Society Foundations and earlier served as Advisory Board member of Think Tank Fund at Open Society Institute. In 2009-2015 he served as board member of the National School of Public Administration in Warsaw.
He has authored and edited articles, reports, policy briefs and books on European integration, democratic governance, populism and migration policy. Dr Kucharczyk regularly comments on current domestic and European affairs and political developments for Polish and international media.
Dr Kucharczyk received PhD in sociology at the Polish Academy of Sciences. He studied at the Graduate School for Social Research in Warsaw, Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research in New York, the University of Kent at Canterbury (MA in philosophy) and Warsaw University (MA in English studies).
Haroun Rahimi is an Associate Professor and Chair of the Law Department at the American University of Afghanistan, teaching with the Open Society University Network (OSUN) and affiliated with the University of Washington School of Law. He's a research fellow at the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law. Rahimi’s research focuses on religious education, rule of law, Islamic finance, and institutional reform. His book examines economic institution reform in Afghanistan, with his research published in reputable journals. Rahimi consults independently for research firms and policy think tanks on institutional development and governance in South Asia. He's been a visiting professor at Università Bocconi and contributed to research on Islamic finance, Afghan legal history, and legal transplantation at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies. Rahimi was a visiting scholar at UNIDROIT in Rome and a Global Academy Scholar with the Middle East Studies’ Association. He earned his B.A. in Law from Herat University and his LLM and Ph.D. from the University of Washington.
Enrique Peruzzotti is Chair of the Department of Political Science and International Studies at Torcuato Di Tella University and an Independent Researcher at CONICET. He specializes in populism, democratic accountability, and Latin American politics. His most recent publications are “Post-Liberal and Post-Populist Democracy: Rethinking Democratic Representation”, Chinese Political Science Review; “The nature of populist democracy: a Latin American perspective” in Urbinati, N. (ed.) Thinking democracy now. Between innovation and regression, Feltrinelli.
