Podcasts about Central European University

What is the growing appeal of fascist idealism for young people? Why is radical nationalism on the rise in Europe and throughout the world? In Living Right: Far Right Youth Activists in Contemporary Europe (Princeton UP, 2024), Dr. Agnieszka Pasieka provides an in-depth account of the ideas and practices that are driving the varied forms of far-right activism by young people from all walks of life, revealing how these social movements offer the promise of comradery, purpose, and a moral calling to self-sacrifice, and demonstrating how far-right ideas are understood and lived in ways that speak to a variety of experiences. Dr. Agnieszka Pasieka draws on her own sometimes harrowing fieldwork among Italian, Polish, and Hungarian militant youths, painting unforgettable portraits of students, laborers, entrepreneurs, musicians, and activists from well-off middle class backgrounds who have all found a nurturing home in the far right. With a focus on far-right morality that challenges commonly held ideas about the right, Dr. Pasieka describes how far-right movements afford opportunities to the young to be active members of tightly bonded comradeships while sharing in a broader project with global ramifications. In this episode we consider: the power of listening, locating and unpacking complexities, navigating field work, and handling difficult situations. Our guest is: Dr. Agnieszka Pasieka, who is a sociocultural anthropologist. Before joining the University of Montreal, she was a senior research fellow at the University of Vienna and held guest lecturer and guest professor positions at various universities: Central European University, University of Bayreuth, Dartmouth College, and Yale University. She is the author of Living right: far-right youth activists in contemporary Europe, published by Princeton University Press in 2024. Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who works as a developmental editor for scholars, and is the producer of the Academic Life podcast. Playlist for listeners: Dear Miss Perkins Preparing for War: The Extremist History of White Christian Nationalism Secret Harvests Teaching About Race and Racism in the College Classroom Immigration Realities The Ungrateful Refugee Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! You can help support the show by downloading, assigning or sharing episodes. Join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 250+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. And thank you for listening! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sociology

What is the growing appeal of fascist idealism for young people? Why is radical nationalism on the rise in Europe and throughout the world? In Living Right: Far Right Youth Activists in Contemporary Europe (Princeton UP, 2024), Dr. Agnieszka Pasieka provides an in-depth account of the ideas and practices that are driving the varied forms of far-right activism by young people from all walks of life, revealing how these social movements offer the promise of comradery, purpose, and a moral calling to self-sacrifice, and demonstrating how far-right ideas are understood and lived in ways that speak to a variety of experiences. Dr. Agnieszka Pasieka draws on her own sometimes harrowing fieldwork among Italian, Polish, and Hungarian militant youths, painting unforgettable portraits of students, laborers, entrepreneurs, musicians, and activists from well-off middle class backgrounds who have all found a nurturing home in the far right. With a focus on far-right morality that challenges commonly held ideas about the right, Dr. Pasieka describes how far-right movements afford opportunities to the young to be active members of tightly bonded comradeships while sharing in a broader project with global ramifications. In this episode we consider: the power of listening, locating and unpacking complexities, navigating field work, and handling difficult situations. Our guest is: Dr. Agnieszka Pasieka, who is a sociocultural anthropologist. Before joining the University of Montreal, she was a senior research fellow at the University of Vienna and held guest lecturer and guest professor positions at various universities: Central European University, University of Bayreuth, Dartmouth College, and Yale University. She is the author of Living right: far-right youth activists in contemporary Europe, published by Princeton University Press in 2024. Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who works as a developmental editor for scholars, and is the producer of the Academic Life podcast. Playlist for listeners: Dear Miss Perkins Preparing for War: The Extremist History of White Christian Nationalism Secret Harvests Teaching About Race and Racism in the College Classroom Immigration Realities The Ungrateful Refugee Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! You can help support the show by downloading, assigning or sharing episodes. Join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 250+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. And thank you for listening! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

What is the growing appeal of fascist idealism for young people? Why is radical nationalism on the rise in Europe and throughout the world? In Living Right: Far Right Youth Activists in Contemporary Europe (Princeton UP, 2024), Dr. Agnieszka Pasieka provides an in-depth account of the ideas and practices that are driving the varied forms of far-right activism by young people from all walks of life, revealing how these social movements offer the promise of comradery, purpose, and a moral calling to self-sacrifice, and demonstrating how far-right ideas are understood and lived in ways that speak to a variety of experiences. Dr. Agnieszka Pasieka draws on her own sometimes harrowing fieldwork among Italian, Polish, and Hungarian militant youths, painting unforgettable portraits of students, laborers, entrepreneurs, musicians, and activists from well-off middle class backgrounds who have all found a nurturing home in the far right. With a focus on far-right morality that challenges commonly held ideas about the right, Dr. Pasieka describes how far-right movements afford opportunities to the young to be active members of tightly bonded comradeships while sharing in a broader project with global ramifications. In this episode we consider: the power of listening, locating and unpacking complexities, navigating field work, and handling difficult situations. Our guest is: Dr. Agnieszka Pasieka, who is a sociocultural anthropologist. Before joining the University of Montreal, she was a senior research fellow at the University of Vienna and held guest lecturer and guest professor positions at various universities: Central European University, University of Bayreuth, Dartmouth College, and Yale University. She is the author of Living right: far-right youth activists in contemporary Europe, published by Princeton University Press in 2024. Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who works as a developmental editor for scholars, and is the producer of the Academic Life podcast. Playlist for listeners: Dear Miss Perkins Preparing for War: The Extremist History of White Christian Nationalism Secret Harvests Teaching About Race and Racism in the College Classroom Immigration Realities The Ungrateful Refugee Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! You can help support the show by downloading, assigning or sharing episodes. Join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 250+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. And thank you for listening! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/anthropology

What is the growing appeal of fascist idealism for young people? Why is radical nationalism on the rise in Europe and throughout the world? In Living Right: Far Right Youth Activists in Contemporary Europe (Princeton UP, 2024), Dr. Agnieszka Pasieka provides an in-depth account of the ideas and practices that are driving the varied forms of far-right activism by young people from all walks of life, revealing how these social movements offer the promise of comradery, purpose, and a moral calling to self-sacrifice, and demonstrating how far-right ideas are understood and lived in ways that speak to a variety of experiences. Dr. Agnieszka Pasieka draws on her own sometimes harrowing fieldwork among Italian, Polish, and Hungarian militant youths, painting unforgettable portraits of students, laborers, entrepreneurs, musicians, and activists from well-off middle class backgrounds who have all found a nurturing home in the far right. With a focus on far-right morality that challenges commonly held ideas about the right, Dr. Pasieka describes how far-right movements afford opportunities to the young to be active members of tightly bonded comradeships while sharing in a broader project with global ramifications. In this episode we consider: the power of listening, locating and unpacking complexities, navigating field work, and handling difficult situations. Our guest is: Dr. Agnieszka Pasieka, who is a sociocultural anthropologist. Before joining the University of Montreal, she was a senior research fellow at the University of Vienna and held guest lecturer and guest professor positions at various universities: Central European University, University of Bayreuth, Dartmouth College, and Yale University. She is the author of Living right: far-right youth activists in contemporary Europe, published by Princeton University Press in 2024. Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who works as a developmental editor for scholars, and is the producer of the Academic Life podcast. Playlist for listeners: Dear Miss Perkins Preparing for War: The Extremist History of White Christian Nationalism Secret Harvests Teaching About Race and Racism in the College Classroom Immigration Realities The Ungrateful Refugee Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! You can help support the show by downloading, assigning or sharing episodes. Join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 250+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. And thank you for listening!

What is the growing appeal of fascist idealism for young people? Why is radical nationalism on the rise in Europe and throughout the world? In Living Right: Far Right Youth Activists in Contemporary Europe (Princeton UP, 2024), Dr. Agnieszka Pasieka provides an in-depth account of the ideas and practices that are driving the varied forms of far-right activism by young people from all walks of life, revealing how these social movements offer the promise of comradery, purpose, and a moral calling to self-sacrifice, and demonstrating how far-right ideas are understood and lived in ways that speak to a variety of experiences. Dr. Agnieszka Pasieka draws on her own sometimes harrowing fieldwork among Italian, Polish, and Hungarian militant youths, painting unforgettable portraits of students, laborers, entrepreneurs, musicians, and activists from well-off middle class backgrounds who have all found a nurturing home in the far right. With a focus on far-right morality that challenges commonly held ideas about the right, Dr. Pasieka describes how far-right movements afford opportunities to the young to be active members of tightly bonded comradeships while sharing in a broader project with global ramifications. In this episode we consider: the power of listening, locating and unpacking complexities, navigating field work, and handling difficult situations. Our guest is: Dr. Agnieszka Pasieka, who is a sociocultural anthropologist. Before joining the University of Montreal, she was a senior research fellow at the University of Vienna and held guest lecturer and guest professor positions at various universities: Central European University, University of Bayreuth, Dartmouth College, and Yale University. She is the author of Living right: far-right youth activists in contemporary Europe, published by Princeton University Press in 2024. Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who works as a developmental editor for scholars, and is the producer of the Academic Life podcast. Playlist for listeners: Dear Miss Perkins Preparing for War: The Extremist History of White Christian Nationalism Secret Harvests Teaching About Race and Racism in the College Classroom Immigration Realities The Ungrateful Refugee Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! You can help support the show by downloading, assigning or sharing episodes. Join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 250+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. And thank you for listening! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/eastern-european-studies

Democracy in Question? is brought to you by:• Central European University: CEU• The Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy in Geneva: AHCD• The Podcast Company: scopeaudio Follow us on social media!• Central European University: @weareceu.bsky.social• Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy in Geneva: @ahcdemocracy.bsky.social• Our guest: Soli Özel Subscribe to the show. If you enjoyed what you listened to, you can support us by leaving a review and sharing our podcast in your networks! 

Democracy in Question? is brought to you by:• Central European University: CEU• The Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy in Geneva: AHCD• The Podcast Company: scopeaudio Follow us on social media!• Central European University: @weareceu.bsky.social• Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy in Geneva: @ahcdemocracy.bsky.social Subscribe to the show. If you enjoyed what you listened to, you can support us by leaving a review and sharing our podcast in your networks!   GLOSSARYGreen New Deal (p. 6 in the transcript, 27:24)The Green New Deal is a proposed framework of policies designed to combat climate change while simultaneously addressing economic inequality through large-scale public investment in clean energy, sustainable infrastructure, and job creation. The term draws inspiration from President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, which aimed to revive the U.S. economy during the Great Depression through government-led economic programs. The Green New Deal, however, focuses specifically on transitioning to a carbon-neutral economy while ensuring economic opportunities for all, particularly marginalized communities. The most well-known iteration of the Green New Deal in the U.S. was introduced as a non-binding congressional resolution in 2019 by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Edward J. Markey. It outlined broad goals such as achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by investing in renewable energy, modernizing transportation and infrastructure, and ensuring a just transition for workers in fossil fuel industries. It also emphasized social policies, including universal healthcare, affordable housing, and access to clean water and air. Supporters argue that the Green New Deal is essential for preventing catastrophic climate change and fostering economic justice, while critics claim it is financially impractical and would require massive government spending. Despite controversy, the Green New Deal has influenced climate policy discussions worldwide. source 

What happens when war leaves millions stranded, stateless, and unwanted? In this episode of the Review of Democracy podcast, host Imogen Bayley discusses with renowned historian Sheila Fitzpatrick her latest book, LostSouls: Soviet Displaced Persons and the Birth of the Cold War. Drawing from newly uncovered archival research, Fitzpatrick explores the lives of Soviet displaced persons—those who found themselves outside the USSR at the endof World War II and refused to return, despite intense Soviet pressure. Their fates became entangled in Cold War politics, as Western governments redefined them from war victims to symbols of anti-communist resistance. From forcedrepatriations and identity manipulation to the geopolitical power struggles that shaped global refugee policy, this discussion reveals how history's displaced individuals exercised agency in ways that continue to shape modernmigration debates. Listen to our podcast on exile, political propaganda, and the lasting impact of Cold War resettlement strategies. Sheila Fitzpatrick is the author of many books, including On Stalin's Team: The Years of Living Dangerously in Soviet Politics (Princeton), The Shortest History of the Soviet Union, and The Russian Revolution. She is professor of history at the Institute of Humanities and Social Science at the AustralianCatholic University and Distinguished Service Professor Emerita at the University of Chicago. Imogen Bayley: Imogen Bayley is a historian and migration studies scholar who earned her PhD in ComparativeHistory from Central European University and is currently, as a Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. Her book, Postwar Migration Policy and the Displaced of the British Zone in Germany, 1945–1951.Fighting for a Future, was recently published by Palgrave Macmillan.

Democracy in Question? is brought to you by:• Central European University: CEU• The Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy in Geneva: AHCD• The Podcast Company: scopeaudio Follow us on social media!• Central European University: @weareceu.bsky.social• Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy in Geneva: @ahcdemocracy.bsky.social• Our guest: Nacim Pak-Shiraz Subscribe to the show. If you enjoyed what you listened to, you can support us by leaving a review and sharing our podcast in your networks!   GLOSSARYWoman, Life, Freedom (p. 2 in the transcript, 08:00)Woman, Life, Freedom is a protest slogan that affirms that the rights of women are at the center of life and liberty. The slogan is best known in English-language media for its use within the context of Iran. In September 2022 protesters in Iran and abroad adopted the slogan after Jina Mahsa Amini an Iranian woman in her early 20s, died unexpectedly on September 16, 2022, while in custody of Iran's Gasht-e Ershad (Guidance Patrol; also called “morality police”) for “improper” clothing. The death of Amini, a 22-year-old Sunni woman from Iran's minority Kurdish community, was a reflection of the escalating and unrelenting authoritarianism of the Iranian regime at a time of deepening economic instability. While the circumstances surrounding Amini's death made the slogan resonate throughout Iran and the world, it already had been in wide use among Kurdish activists. The incident sparked outrage in Iran, where anger toward the government had already been flaring, and ignited a sustained and widespread protest movement. The protests over Amini's death, which reflected a broad and far-reaching set of grievances caused by persistent government negligence, found expression in the slogan. source 

Recorded at the CEPR Paris Symposium. Whenever economists gather, you will find many of tomorrow's best economists too. They get a rare chance to present their research, and traditionally we like to ask three of them to talk to us about it too. In this episode, Tim Phillips talks to three more young researchers about their work – and about how economics can do better. Matyas Molnar of Central European University describes his paper “International exhibitions as trade promotion”. Laura Arnemann of the University of Mannheim investigated “Taxes and Pay without Performance: Evidence from Executives”. And Gustavo García Bernal of Sciences Po speaks about “From Parent to Child: Intergenerational Wealth Dynamics and Inequalities.”

Democracy in Question? is brought to you by:• Central European University: CEU• The Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy in Geneva: AHCD• The Podcast Company: scopeaudio Follow us on social media!• Central European University: @weareceu.bsky.social• Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy in Geneva: @ahcdemocracy.bsky.social• Our guest: @steffenmau.bsky.social Subscribe to the show. If you enjoyed what you listened to, you can support us by leaving a review and sharing our podcast in your networks!   GLOSSARYTraffic light coalition (p. 2 in the transcript, 08:14)In German politics, a "traffic light coalition" (Ampelkoalition) refers to a governing alliance comprising the Social Democratic Party (SPD), the Free Democratic Party (FDP), and Alliance 90/The Greens. The term derives from the parties' traditional colors—red for the SPD, yellow for the FDP, and green for The Greens—which correspond to the sequence of a traffic light. This coalition model was implemented at the federal level following the 2021 German parliamentary elections. The SPD, Greens, and FDP agreed on a coalition contract titled "Daring to make more progress—an alliance for freedom, justice, and sustainability," leading to the formation of the government under Chancellor Olaf Scholz. However, in November 2024, the coalition faced significant challenges. Disagreements over budget policies culminated in Chancellor Scholz dismissing Finance Minister Christian Lindner of the FDP. This decision led to the resignation of all FDP ministers, effectively collapsing the coalition and leaving an SPD-Greens minority government. The "traffic light coalition" concept has also been applied in other political contexts, such as in Austria, to describe similar alliances. source 1 source 2

Given the shameful American sacrifice of Ukraine, there will be few timelier movies than Anna Kryvenko's upcoming “This House is Undamaged”,. It will be an Orwellian documentary examining the Russian destruction of Mariupol, the Ukrainian city devastated by Putin's invasion in 2022. Krivenko, a Fellow at the Artist in Residence program, Institute for Advanced Studies at CEU, explains how Russian authorities are rapidly rebuilding and selling properties there while erasing Ukrainian history and creating the big lie of Mariupol as a historically Russian city. Kryvenko, originally from Kyiv, also discusses the parallels between Putin's and Trump's lies about Ukraine, summarizing their fundamental misrepresentation of the truth as a "carnival of hypocrisy."Here are the five KEEN ON takeaways from our conversation with Kryvenko:* The Russians are engaged in a systematic erasure of Mariupol's Ukrainian identity, not just through physical reconstruction but through an aggressive propaganda campaign that claims the city was "always Russian." This reconstruction effort began shortly after the city's destruction in 2022.* Pre-war Mariupol was not characterized by deep Russian-Ukrainian divisions as Russian propaganda claims. According to Kryvenko, language differences weren't a source of conflict before political forces deliberately weaponized them.* The rebuilding of Mariupol has a dark commercial aspect - Russians are selling apartments in reconstructed buildings, sometimes in properties where the original Ukrainian owners were killed, and marketing them as vacation properties while ignoring the city's tragic recent history.* There's a humanitarian crisis unfolding as some Ukrainians are being forced to return to occupied Mariupol because they have nowhere else to live, with Kryvenko citing statistics that around 150,000 people returned to occupied territories by the end of 2024.* The filmmaker is using a unique methodology of gathering evidence through social media content, vlogs, and propaganda materials to document both the physical transformation of the city and the narrative being constructed around it, rather than traditional documentary filming techniques.Transcript of Anna Kryvenko InterviewAndrew Keen: Hello, everybody. As the situation in Ukraine becomes more absurd, it seems as if the lies of Donald Trump and the lies of Vladimir Putin are becoming increasingly similar. Trump has been talking about Zelensky and Ukraine, what is described as a barrage of lies. As CNN reports, Trump falsely called Zelensky a dictator. It's becoming more and more absurd. It's almost as if the whole script was written by some Central European or East Central European absurdist. Meanwhile, the Russians continue to lie as well. There was an interesting piece recently in the Wall Street Journal about Russia wanting to erase Ukraine's future and its past. My guest today, Anna Kryvenko, is a filmmaker. She's the director of an important new movie in the process of being made called "This House Is Undamaged." She's a visual fellow at the Central European University, and she's joining us from Budapest today. Congratulations on "This House is Undamaged." Before we talk specifically about the film, do you agree with my observations that there seems to be an increasingly eerie synergy between the lies coming out of Washington, D.C. and Moscow, between Trump and Putin?Anna Kryvenko: I think the situation is becoming more crazy and absurd. That's a better word to use in this situation. For me, all of this looks like some carnival of hypocrisy. It's unbelievable that someone can use the word "dictator" in comparison with Vladimir Putin or speaking about this 4% of the people who support Zelensky when he says it's only four persons. It looks completely absurd. And this information comes from Moscow, not from actual Ukrainian statistics.Andrew Keen: The phrase you use "carnival of hypocrisy" I think is a good description. I might even use that in the title of this conversation. It's almost as if Trump in particular is parodying himself, but he seems so separated from reality that it seems as if he's actually being serious, at least from my position in California. How does it look from your perspective in Budapest? You're originally from Ukraine, so obviously you have a particular interest in this situation.Anna Kryvenko: I don't even know what to think because it's changing so fast into absurd situations. Every day when I open the news, I'm speaking with people and it looks like some kind of farce. You're expecting that the next day someone will tell you that this is a joke or something, but it's not. It's really hard to believe that this is reality now, but unfortunately it is.Andrew Keen: Kundera wrote his famous novel "The Joke" as a parody of the previous authoritarian regime in Central Europe. Your new movie, "This House is Undamaged" - I know you are an artist in residence at the Institute for Advanced Study at Central European University - is very much in that vein. Tell us about the project.Anna Kryvenko: We're in work in progress. I was doing research in the archives and internet archives. This documentary film will explore the transformation of Mariupol, a Ukrainian city that was destroyed by the Russian invasion in 2022. I will use only archives and found footage materials from people who are in Mariupol now, or who were in Mariupol at the time of invasion, who were actually trying to film what's going on. Sometimes I'll also use propaganda images from Russia, from Russian authorities. In May 2022, Mariupol, after intense fighting, was almost completely destroyed.Andrew Keen: Tell us the story of Mariupol, this town on the old border of Russia and Ukraine. It's in the southeast of Ukraine.Anna Kryvenko: It's on the shore of the Azov Sea. It's part of Donetsk region. It was always an industrial city, most known for the Azovstal factory. In 2022, after incredible brutality of Russian war against Ukraine, this strategically important city was almost completely destroyed in May 2022 and was occupied by Russian government. About 90% of buildings were destroyed or demolished in some way.Andrew Keen: The Russians have essentially leveled the town, perhaps in the same way as the Israelis have essentially destroyed Gaza.Anna Kryvenko: Exactly. For a lot of people, we have this image of destroyed Mariupol until today. But after these terrible events, the Russians started this big campaign to rebuild the city. Of course, we know it was done just to erase all the scars of war, to erase it from the city's history. They started the reconstruction. Some people who stayed in Mariupol thought they would have new housing since they had no place to live. But business is business - Russian authorities started to sell these apartments to Russian citizens.Andrew Keen: I'm surprised Trump hasn't got involved. Given his real estate background and his cozy relationship with Putin, maybe Trump real estate will start selling real estate in Mariupol.Anna Kryvenko: I was thinking the same thing this last week. It was looking like such an absurd situation with Mariupol. But now we are in this business mode again with Ukraine and all the minerals. It's only the economical part of war they look at.Andrew Keen: He probably would come up with some argument why he really owns Mariupol.Anna Kryvenko: Yes.Andrew Keen: Coming back to the Wall Street Journal piece about Russia wanting to erase Ukraine's future and its past - you're originally from Kyiv. Is it the old East Central European business of destroying history and creating a new narrative that somehow conforms to how you want history to have been made?Anna Kryvenko: I was really shocked at how fast this idea of Russian Mariupol is repeating after two years in Russian media, official and semi-professional blogs, YouTube, and so forth. As a person working with this type of material, watching videos every day to find what I need, I'm listening to these people doing propaganda from Mariupol, saying "we are citizens of the city and it's always been Russian." They're repeating this all the time. Even when I'm hearing this - of course it was always a Ukrainian city, it's completely absurd, it's 100% disinformation. But when you're hearing this repeated in different contexts all the time, you start to think about it.Andrew Keen: It's the same tactics as Trump. If you keep saying something, however absurd it sounds or is, if you keep saying it enough times, some people at least start believing it. You're not a historian or political scientist, but Mariupol is in the part of Ukraine which had a significant population of Russian-speaking people. Some of the people that you're filming and featuring in your movie - are they Russians who have moved into Mariupol from some other part of Russia, or are they people originally from Mariupol who are somehow embracing their new Russian overlords?Anna Kryvenko: The people I'm watching on social media, most of them say they're from Mariupol. But you can find journalistic articles showing they're actually paid by the Russian government. It's paid propaganda and they're repeating the same narrative. It's important that they're always repeating "we were born in Mariupol" and "we want the city to be Russian." But of course, you can see it's from the same propaganda book as 2014 with Crimea. They're repeating the same narrative from Soviet times - they just changed "Soviet Union" to "Russia" and "the West" to "European Union."Andrew Keen: You grew up in Kyiv, so you're familiar with all these current and historical controversies. What's your take on Mariupol before 2020, before it was flattened by the Russians? Was it a town where Russian-speaking and Ukrainian people were neighbors and friends? Were there always deep divisions between the Russian and Ukrainian speaking populations there?Anna Kryvenko: It's hard to explain because you need to dig deeper to explain the Russian-speaking and Ukrainian-speaking parts of Ukraine. But it was never a problem before Yanukovych became prime minister and then president. It was his strategy to create this polarization of Ukraine - that the western part wants to be part of the European Union and the eastern part wants to be part of Russia because of language, and they cannot live together. But it's not true. For me as a person from Kyiv, from the center of the country, with friends from different parts of Ukraine, it was never a problem. I'm from a Russian-speaking family and have many friends from Ukrainian-speaking families. It was never a question. We were in a kind of symbiotic connection. All schools were in Ukrainian, universities in Ukrainian. We were bilingual. It was not a problem to communicate.Some of this division came from Yanukovych's connections to Putin and his propaganda. It was important for them to say "we are Russian-speaking people, and because we are Russian-speaking, we want to be part of Russia." But I have friends from Mariupol, and after 2014, when war in eastern Ukraine started and Mariupol was bombed a few times, it became a really good city to live in. There were many cultural activities. I know friends who were originally from Mariupol, studied in Kyiv in theater or visual art, and went back to Mariupol because it was a good place for their art practice. Ukraine is still a bit centralized, with most activity in Kyiv, Kharkiv, Lviv, and the big cities, but Mariupol wasn't a city with internal conflict. It's weird that so fast after 2022, people started saying it was always problematic in wanting to be part of Russia. It was never like that.Andrew Keen: It's as if I lived for a year in Bosnia before the civil war, and it was almost as if ethnicity was invented by the nationalist Serbian regime. It seems as if the Putin regime is doing or has done the same thing in the eastern part of Ukraine.Anna Kryvenko: Yes.Andrew Keen: You talk to lots of friends still and you're from Kyiv originally, and obviously your professional life remains focused on the situation. In late February 2025, what's your sense of how Ukrainians are feeling given what Trump is now saying?Anna Kryvenko: I think a lot of people in Ukraine or Ukrainians abroad are feeling lonely, that they don't have support. Again we are in this situation where you have big deals about Ukraine without Ukraine. You feel like nothing, just an empty space on a map with minerals or sea access. We're just sitting there waiting while they're agreeing on deals. That's the negative layer. But it's important for all Ukrainians to be together and speak about the situation. After Trump's words about the 4% support for Zelensky, there were statistics from last year showing 57-55% support for Zelensky. Today, after these few days, new statistics show 65% support.Andrew Keen: Zelensky started his political career as a satirical comedian, and it's as if he's participating in his own comedy - as if he's almost paid Trump to promote him. What about the broader take on the US? Obviously Trump isn't all America, but he was just elected a couple of months ago. Are your Ukrainian friends and associates, as well as many people at the Central European University in Budapest, taking this as a message from America itself, or are people able to separate Trump and America?Anna Kryvenko: This is a hard question because we always know that you have a president or representative figure, but that's not the whole state. I spoke with someone from our university who was in Pennsylvania before the election, and he said all the people were pro-Trump. The logic was really simple - "he's good" and "he will stop this war" - though people sometimes don't even know which war or which country. They're just repeating the same talking points.Andrew Keen: It's sort of Orwellian in the sense that it's just war and it doesn't really matter who's involved - he's just going to stop it.Anna Kryvenko: It reminded me of how everyone was repeating about Lukashenko from Belarus that "he's a good manager" and can manage things, and that's why he's still president - not that he's a dictator killing his opponents. They use this to explain why he's good and people choose him. Now with Trump, they say "he's a good businessman," but we can see how this business works. Today, someone from Trump's administration said Zelensky needs to stop being arrogant because Trump is in a bad mood. In what world are we living where this is used as an argument?Andrew Keen: Coming back to real estate, he probably sees Mariupol as a nice strip on the Black Sea, like Gaza, which he sees as a valuable strip on the Mediterranean for real estate development. I found an interesting piece online about the Russian invasion, "When Buildings Can Talk: The Real Face of Civilian Infrastructure Ruined by Russian Invaders." In a way, your project "This House is Undamaged" is your way of making buildings talk. Is that fair?Anna Kryvenko: I think it's the best description you can use.Andrew Keen: Perhaps you might explain how and why.Anna Kryvenko: This name "This House is Undamaged" might or might not be the final name. For me, it's important because after the first months when it started to be a Russian city, some people were trying to sell apartments just to have some money. The reconstruction started a bit later. They were using video websites like Craigslist. It immediately became Russian, part of Russian territory. People from different Russian regions who saw this opportunity were trying to buy something because prices were so cheap. People needed money to buy a ticket and go to other cities or to relatives. In every advertisement, there was this phrase "this house has no damages" or "this house is undamaged." You had to put it there even if it wasn't true - you could see pictures where one building had a hole, but they were still saying "this house is undamaged."Andrew Keen: It's just again coming back to the carnival of hypocrisy or the carnival of absurd hypocrisy - you see these completely destroyed homes, and then you have the signs from the Russians saying this house is undamaged.Anna Kryvenko: It was also interesting why some people from Russia want to buy apartments in Mariupol, in these reconstructed buildings with weird pro-Russian murals - it's like Stalinism. They don't even know where Mariupol is - they think it's somewhere near Crimea, but it's not the Black Sea, it's the Azov Sea, an industrial region. It's not the best place to live. But they think it will be some kind of resort. They're living somewhere in Russia and think they can buy a cheap apartment and use it as a resort for a few months. This is absurd because the city was completely destroyed. You still have mass graves. Sometimes they're selling apartments where they can't even find the owner because the whole family is dead.On Google Maps, someone made an alternative version where you can see all the buildings that were destroyed, because officially you can't find this information anywhere. People were putting crosses where they knew someone died in a building - entire families. And after this, people are buying their apartments. For me, this is unbearable. You can do research about what you're doing, but people are lazy and don't want to do this work.Andrew Keen: It comes back to the Journal piece about Russia literally erasing not just Ukraine's past but also its future, creating a culture of amnesia. It's chilling on so many levels. But it's the old game - it's happened before in that part of the world and no doubt will happen again. As a filmmaker, what particular kind of political or aesthetic responsibility do you have? People have been writing - I mentioned Kundera, Russian writers, Gogol - satires of this kind of absurd political power for centuries. But as a filmmaker, what kind of responsibility do you have? How does your form help you make this argument of essentially restoring the past, of telling the truth?Anna Kryvenko: A lot of filmmakers in Ukraine, with the start of invasion, just brought cameras and started making films. The first goal wasn't to make a film but to document the crimes. My case is different - not only because my family's in Ukraine and I have many friends there and lived there until my twenties. For the last ten years, since the Maidan events in 2013-2014, I started working with archive and found footage material. This is my methodology. For me, it's not important to go somewhere and document. It's more interesting to use media deconstruction from propaganda sources, maybe from Ukrainian sources also because it's a question of ideology.One of my favorite materials now is people doing vlogs - just with their camera or mobile phone going from Russia to Crimea or back. You only have two ways to go there because airports aren't working, so you go through the Kerch-Crimea bridge. Now because of Mariupol's strategic location, you can go through there, so you have two different roads. People from different Russian cities sometimes film their road and say "what is this, is it destroyed?" This is the average Russian person, and you can hear the propaganda they're repeating or what they're really thinking. For me, it's important to show these different points of view from people who were there or are there now. I don't have the opportunity as a Ukrainian citizen to go there. Through this method, in the near future when I finish this film, we can have testimonies from the inside. We don't need to wait for the war to end because we don't know how or when it ends. It's important to show it to people who maybe don't know anything about what's going on in Mariupol.Andrew Keen: Given the abundance of video on the internet, on platforms like YouTube, how do you distinguish between propaganda and truth yourself in terms of taking some of these segments to make your film? It could be conceivable that some of the more absurd videos are put out by Ukrainians to promote their own positions and undermine the Russians. Have you found that? Is there a propaganda war on YouTube and other platforms between Ukrainian and Russian nationalists? And as a filmmaker who's trying to archive the struggle in an honest way, how do you deal with that?Anna Kryvenko: Of course, there are many people, and Mariupol is the best example because the Russian government is paying people to repeat pro-Russian ideology. Sometimes you can see just an average person from Mariupol going with a camera and shooting something without speaking - this is just documentation. Sometimes you have Russian people there for some days just saying something. And of course, you get different segments of real propaganda from some ministry in Russia with drone material and big music. I'm always trying to question myself: What am I looking at? Who is speaking? On technical aspects, why is this like this? It helps me to be holistic.Of course, I'm from Ukraine, and sometimes this is the most uncomfortable - you can hear actual people from Mariupol saying something you don't want to hear because it's not your point of view on the war. But these are people really from the city giving some kind of realistic point of view on the situation. It's sad, but there were statistics at the end of 2024 that about 150,000 people were returning to occupied territories, not only to Mariupol but all occupied territories. Maybe 40% were coming back to register their property and then returning to Ukrainian territory, but many people are returning to Mariupol because they don't have anywhere to live in Ukraine. It's not hundreds but thousands of people. As Ukrainians, we're not comfortable with this because we're all in different situations. But if something's not comfortable for my point of view, it doesn't mean it's bad or good.Andrew Keen: It's an important project. I know your artist residency at the Central European University is finishing at the end of February. You're going to focus on finishing the movie. When do you think it will be ready and what are your ambitions for the finished movie? Will you put it online, in theaters? What's your ideal?Anna Kryvenko: If everything goes well, we can finish it in a year and a half because it will be a long process of editing and working with rights. We only started working on it six months ago, and it's starting to go faster. Documentary making is a long process because of funding and everything. Even though I don't need to go somewhere physically, it's still a long process with a lot of waiting. First, we're thinking about festivals, maybe a theater release, maybe we'll have some broadcasters because it's an important topic to show to a wider audience. After a year, we'll see.Andrew Keen: If "Buildings Can Talk" is the subtitle of this upcoming movie "This House is Undamaged," it's a really important project about Mariupol. Thank you for being on the show. I'm going to have to get you back when the movie is done because I can't wait to see it.Anna Kryvenko: Thank you so much. Thank you.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Anna Kryvenko (1986, Ukraine) is a video and fine art photography artist based in Prague and Kyiv. She is a Fellow at the Artist in Residence program, Institute for Advanced Studies at Central European University. She graduated from the Centre for Audio-Visual Studies at the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts (FAMU, Prague). Her films and performances were screened at Dok Leipzig, ZagrebDox, Visions du Reel Nyon, Fluidum Festival, Jihlava Documentary Film Festival, etc. With her found-footage film Silently Like a Comet, she won the prize for the Best Experimental Act at FAMUFEST, Prague (CZ), and a few others. Her film Listen to the Horizon won the prize for the Best Czech Experimental Documentary, Jihlava IDFF (CZ). Her first feature documentary film My Unknown Soldier won the Last Stop Trieste 2018 Postproduction Award, Special Mention at Zagreb Dox, the Special Prize of the Jury at IDFF CRONOGRAF, and the Andrej Stankovič Prize. Her newest short film Easier Than You Think won the Jury Award of the Other Vision Competition 2022 (PAF, Czech Republic).Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Apresentada nesta semana pelo Procurador-Geral da República (PGR) ao Supremo Tribunal Federal (STF), a denúncia contra o ex-presidente Jair Bolsonaro e 33 aliados tem caminho certo: tramitará na 1ª Turma. Mas esta é apenas uma das certezas sobre o julgamento do caso. As demais certezas e o que há de dúvidas sobre o futuro do ex-presidente na Corte são o tema do Sem Precedentes desta semana.O podcast do JOTA que discute o Supremo e a Constituição aborda ainda a composição da peça assinada pelo procurador-geral da República, Paulo Gonet. "Chama a atenção o esforço do PGR de mostrar que nada era à toa. As falas de Bolsonaro, as lives, esses movimentos, o que só reforça a situação peculiar que a gente estava, que era uma tentativa de golpe em câmera lenta feita à luz do dia", afirma no episódio o professor de Direito Constitucional do Insper Diego Werneck.No documento, Gonet concluiu que Bolsonaro planejou e atuou de forma direta e efetiva para impedir que o presidente Lula e o vice Geraldo Alckmin assumissem o poder em 2023 e buscou apoio das Forças Armadas para isso.Para Juliana Cesario Alvim, professora da Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais e da Central European University, a denúncia contra o ex-presidente se distancia, por exemplo, das críticas ao Mensalão pela ausência do debate sobre a teoria do domínio de fato. "Nesse caso, existem provas suficientes que tornam desnecessárias uma afirmação desse tipo, que tem que fazer uma construção muito indireta da relação entre as lideranças e os fatos que ocorreram", ressalta."A gente tem não só as delações, mas também os testemunhos de chefes das Forças Armadas, no sentido de que houve, sim, um envolvimento direto do ex-presidente Bolsonaro", completa.O debate no Sem Precedentes é conduzido pelo diretor de Conteúdo do JOTA, Felipe Recondo, e conta também com a participação de Thomaz Pereira, especialista em Direito Constitucional.

Democracy in Question? is brought to you by:• Central European University: CEU• The Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy in Geneva: AHCD• The Podcast Company: scopeaudio Follow us on social media!• Central European University: @weareceu.bsky.social• Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy in Geneva: @ahcdemocracy.bsky.social• Our guest: @kathapollitt.bsky.social Subscribe to the show. If you enjoyed what you listened to, you can support us by leaving a review and sharing our podcast in your networks!   GLOSSARYIncels (p. 5 in the transcript, 19:50)Incel is a member of an online subculture of primarily heterosexual men who identify as being unable to have romantic or sexual relationships. This self-described inability to form attachments is often expressed as grievance toward women. Incel subculture has been associated with misogyny, extremism, rape culture, and expressions and acts of violence. Incels are a subset of the “manosphere,” which includes other online communities animated by sexism and hostility toward women, such as pickup artists, Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW), and men's rights activists. The Southern Poverty Law Center classifies incels as a hate group and identifies them as part of the online male supremacist ecosystem. The term incel was initially coined by a woman. Known only by her first name, a Canadian woman named Alana began using the term invcel (later shortened to incel) in 1997 to connect with other singles struggling with social awkwardness. She documented her experiences on her personal website, “Alana's Involuntary Celibacy Project,” which became a forum for people struggling to form romantic relationships. In 2000 Alana stopped participating in the project, and she has since said that she feels uncomfortable with how the term has been hijacked. As incel communities began to establish themselves on the forum-based websites Reddit and 4chan, the term shifted from its initial meaning. By 2010 incel was associated with misogynistic trolling and threats of violence by men's rights groups operating on fringe right-wing platforms. In 2017 Reddit banned a particularly active subreddit called r/incels for violating Reddit's rule against content that “encourages, glorifies, incites, or calls for violence or physical harm against an individual or group of people.” source Me Too movement (p. 7 in the transcript, 26:22)Me Too movement is an awareness movement around the issue of sexual harassment and sexual abuse of women in the workplace that grew to prominence in 2017 in response to news reports of sexual abuse by American film producer Harvey Weinstein. While the phrase had been in the lexicon for more than a decade, a tweet by American actress Alyssa Milano sparked a social media phenomenon that raised awareness, gave voice to survivors, and led to sweeping cultural and workplace changes. The movement is credited with giving visibility to the scope of sexual violence within the United States and across the world. It is also defined by a push for accountability, including examining power structures in the workplace that had enabled misconduct, and, in some cases, renewed efforts to seek justice for survivors through criminal and civil court systems. In the first year of the movement, numerous prominent men lost their jobs after they were publicly accused of wrongdoing. Since then, the Me Too movement's legacy has broadened to encompass issues related to gender equity in the workplace and legal reforms to eliminate barriers that had prohibited victims from coming forward. Some U.S. states have since abolished statutes of limitations for reporting sexual crimes and banned nondisclosure agreements (NDAs) that aimed to keep misconduct allegations from the public's view. The movement has also led to changes in the workplace and society at large through the implementation of greater safeguards and educational tools that aim to change behavior in future generations. source

O presidente do Supremo Tribunal Federal (STF), ministro Luís Roberto Barroso, ao abrir o Ano Judiciário nesta semana afirmou que há uma “obsessão negativa por parte alguns” em relação à Corte e disse que “é possível não gostar da Constituição e do papel que ela reservou para o Supremo Tribunal Federal, mas criticar o Supremo por aplicar a Constituição simplesmente não é justo”. A fala deixou em aberto uma questão: é possível gostar da Constituição e criticar o Supremo? O debate em torno desta pergunta é o tema que abre o primeiro episódio do Sem Precedentes de 2025.O podcast do JOTA que discute o Supremo e a Constituição desdobra o discurso simplificador do presidente do Supremo sobre queixas em relação ao Tribunal. Neste primeiro episódio do ano, Juliana Cesario Alvim, professora da Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais e da Central European University e integrante do time do Sem Precedentes, considera que o discurso simplista de Barroso “não se mostra suficiente para um certo nível que críticas que quer respostas com mais nuances”.“Dizer estamos cumprindo a Constituição e por isso não há nada errado com a nossa atuação é muito simplório para quem está criticando, olhando para o Supremo no detalhe e, de alguma maneira, até para quem está criticando o supremo pelas razões erradas. Isso pode dar até uma munição”, avalia a professora.“Por um lado, entendo que seja papel da presidência do Supremo defendê-lo de suas críticas, por outro, eu não sei quem é convencido com uma defesa feita nesse tom, por isso e eu acho que, inclusive, às vezes afasta até aliados que estão de fato de boa-fé, tentando falar sobre problemas do Supremo, de suas decisões, problemas no seu funcionamento institucional e uma resposta talvez fosse tentar ouvir”, acrescenta o especialista em Direito Constitucional e também integrante do time do podcast, Thomaz Pereira.Além do discurso de Barroso, o Sem Precedentes desta semana também aborda o que esperar da presidência do ministro Edson Fachin, que assume o comando da Corte em setembro deste ano. Conduzido pelo diretor de Conteúdo do JOTA, Felipe Recondo, o episódio conta ainda com a participação de Diego Werneck, professor de Direito Constitucional do Insper.

Canada has a lot going on right now. It's facing a potential trade war with the United States, President Trump wants it to become the 51st US state and its long-standing leader Justin Trudeau is set to depart in March, ahead of a general election where a Conservative victory looks likely. Former leader of Canada's Liberal Party Michael Ignatieff joins Geraldine and Hamish to discuss why he is taking President Trump's threats very seriously, and why he thinks we should too. Guest: Michael Ignatieff - former leader of the Liberal party of Canada. He teaches history at Central European University, Vienna. Audio grab courtesy of Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.Recommendations:Geraldine: Fire and Ashes: Success and Failure in Politics, by Michael IgnatieffHamish: Syria's new Islamist president consolidates power, Financial TimesGet in touch:  We'd love to hear from you! Email us at global.roaming@abc.net.au

From Dylan to democracy, from Bobby Kennedy to Putin's Russia - this wide-ranging conversation with Michael Ignatieff riffs off “The Adults in the Room,” his latest essay for Liberties Quarterly. A liberal intellectual and politician who grew up enchanted by the Sixties counterculture, Ignatieff is deeply concerned by the American lurch into MAGAism. That said, however, the Canadian still seems (half) in love with the United States and hasn't totally given up on what he calls liberalism's “incorrigible vitality”. Here are the 5 KEEN ON takeaways from our conversation with Ignatieff:* Ignatieff sees the current global situation as potentially the biggest change since 1945, marked by a fundamental shift in America's approach to international relations under Trump - from viewing allies as sources of power to treating them as potential adversaries to be exploited.* He describes a profound crisis in the international rules-based order, with institutions like the UN Security Council deadlocked, Geneva Conventions being ignored in current conflicts, and increasing reckless behavior by powers like Russia that threatens international stability and safety.* Drawing from his experience as both a liberal intellectual and politician, Ignatieff traces the decline of the liberal coalition in America to growing class divides between credentialed elites and working people, as well as racial backlash to civil rights progress - while still defending liberalism's achievements in expanding inclusion and rights.* Despite current challenges, Ignatieff maintains a deep faith in what he calls liberalism's "incorrigible vitality," seeing it not just as a political program but as a way of life based on civility, listening, and finding ways for people to live together despite differences.* Ignatieff argues that middle powers like Canada, Denmark and others have a crucial role to play in helping to establish "deconfliction" protocols between major powers and rebuilding a minimal rules-based order to prevent catastrophic conflicts - not out of virtue but out of legitimate fear of what could happen without such guardrails.Writer, historian, professor and politician, Michael Ignatieff was born in Canada, educated at the University of Toronto and Harvard and now lives and works in Vienna, Austria where he is a professor of history at Central European University. He is married to Zsuzsanna Zsohar and has two children. He has written biography, reportage, history, philosophy and his books have been published in many languages. His recurrent themes are the fate of human rights and liberal values in a time of convulsive change. His novel--Scar Tissue-- was nominated for the Booker Prize and his defense of academic freedom and liberal principles earned him the Dan David Prize in 2019.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Why are history books so full of men? Why have so many societies treated women as property? In short, why is patriarchy so pervasive? A casual thinker might find an easy answer from biology. Men tend to be bigger and stronger. Hence, they get to run the show. “Just look at chimpanzees!” But this explanation has obvious problems. Indeed, female chimpanzees don't have much power in their groups. But female bonobos do. And looking at humans, not all human societies are patriarchal — not nearly to the same extent. We don't need to look at modern Scandinavia to get inspiration for women's empowerment. Quite the contrary, equality between the sexes might have been the norm throughout most of the human story. This might sound surprising given the rates of patriarchy across time and space. However, it is supported by a simple finding: gender equality is relatively common in existing hunter-gatherers. This stands in stark contrast to their agricultural neighbours. This old finding became part of the scholarly conversation again in late 2024 when a new paper reported high levels of equality between husbands and wives amongst married hunter-gatherers. The levels of equality surprised the scholars themselves. But all this raises an interesting question: why is this? Why would hunting and gathering incline societies towards equality? Or vice versa, why would agriculture nudge societies towards male power? And what should we make of the many outliers from this pattern, like the matriarchal farmers of northeastern India? To discuss these topics, I invited the lead author of the recent paper to the show. Angarika Deb is a cognitive anthropologist, soon to earn her PhD from the Central European University. Despite her young career, she has produced tons of interesting articles on gender inequality around the world. A wide-ranging conversation was guaranteed. LINKS For links to academic articles and a summary of the conversation, head here (uploaded with a short delay after the episode). Read more at ⁠⁠OnHumans.Substack.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. You can also find On Humans on ⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠BlueSky⁠! Feeling generous? Join the wonderful group of my patrons at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Patreon.com/OnHumans⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠or get in touch for other ways to support! Email: ⁠⁠makela dot ilari at outlook dot com⁠⁠⁠ MENTIONS Technical terms Patrilocality | Matrilocality | Virilocatily | Y-chromosome bottleneck Ethnic groups Agta | BaYaka | !Kung | Mongols | Garo and Khasi | Inuit Keywords Patriarchy | Agriculture | Neolithic | Social evolution | Social complexity | Hunter-gatherers | Sexual division of labor | Human evolution | Anthropology | Archaeology | Evolutionary psychology | Sociology | Social science | Human science

Some consider the swearing in of a new US President a hallmark of American democracy. Others may be asking themselves, after a whirlwind week of Trump's presidential decrees and controversial pardons how much is democracy in danger in the US? Steve Crilley sat down with Erin Jenne, Professor and Chair of the International Relations Department at Central European University in Vienna, and she her impressions of this transformational time.Sendungshinweis: FM4, OKFM4, 23.01.2025, 17 Uhr

O ano de 2024 no Supremo Tribunal Federal (STF) iniciou com a expectativa de uma pauta sem polêmicas. Com o passar dos meses, o cenário foi tomando novos contornos, temas como a descriminalização do porte de maconha para consumo próprio e abordagem policial foram levados ao plenário, mas é possível dizer que eles foram a marca da Corte neste ano? É com o foco em elaborar o que caracteriza o STF de 2024 que o time do Sem Precedentes conduz o debate neste último episódio do ano.Além de temas que marcaram 2024, o podcast do JOTA sobre o Supremo e a Constituição traz para a conversa uma visão mais geral sobre a conduta da Corte, com um aceno ao conservadorismo, a uma conversa mais clara com a sociedade e a uma postura mais conciliadora.Assine gratuitamente a newsletter Últimas Notícias do JOTA e receba as principais notícias jurídicas e políticas diariamente no seu emailIntegrante do time fixo do Sem Precedentes, Luiz Fernando Esteves, professor do Insper e doutor em Direito do Estado, avalia que o Supremo tenha sido mais conciliador e “menos decisor talvez”. Entre os exemplos de conciliação estão ações sobre direitos indígenas, orçamento secreto, queimadas e medicamentos. Também é possível incluir nesta lista o caso da desoneração da folha de pagamentos, que embora não tenha sido uma conciliação nos moldes do Supremo, levou a um alinhamento entre os Poderes.Em relação aos direitos fundamentais, o time do Sem Precedentes avalia que a Corte fez afirmações fortes, mas evitou usar da mesma assertividade na hora de decidir. Um exemplo é o julgamento da descriminalização do porte de drogas, em que o STF definiu quantidades, mas na hora de decidir se restringiu à maconha.Este julgamento também é citado como exemplo de como o Supremo passou a perceber o contexto em que ele está e como isso afeta o alcance de suas decisões. Enquanto em 2015, havia o debate em torno da legalização de todas as drogas, em 2024, o presidente da Corte, ministro Luís Roberto Barroso, pedia a palavra para explicar para a sociedade exatamente o que estava sendo julgado.O diretor de Conteúdo do JOTA, Felipe Recondo, que apresenta o Sem Precedentes, acrescenta como uma marca do ano o “monocratismo”, que continua a ser uma questão, apesar de a Corte ter dito que já o enfrentou. Além de Recondo e de Luiz Fernando Esteves, participam do debate Thomaz Pereira, especialista em Direito Constitucional; Ana Laura Barbosa, professora de Direito Constitucional da Escola Superior de Propaganda e Marketing, e Juliana Cesario Alvim, professora da Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais e da Central European University.

Após três semanas com sessões de julgamento no Supremo Tribunal Federal (STF) sobre a constitucionalidade do artigo 19, do Marco Civil da Internet, o cenário ainda é incerto, mas já é possível fazer análises sobre as sinalizações e os méritos dos votos dos ministros Dias Toffoli e Luiz Fux, relatores das ações em análise pelo plenário. E é justamente sobre os rumos do julgamento o episódio do Sem Precedentes desta semana.Para participar do debate, o podcast do JOTA sobre o Supremo e a Constituição ouve os especialistas no tema: Francisco Brito Cruz, diretor executivo e co-fundador do InternetLab, e com Clara Iglesias Keller, líder de pesquisa em Tecnologia, Poder e Dominação no Instituto Weizenbaum pelo Centro de Ciências Sociais de Berlim e professora do IDP.Ambos foram entrevistados no Sem Precedentes do dia 22 de novembro, que antecedeu o início do julgamento, e já neste episódio, eles afirmaram não ver solução satisfatória para este caso. Avaliação que se mantém após a leitura dos votos, a manifestação dos amici curiae e o pedido de vista do presidente da Corte, ministro Luís Roberto Barroso.Um dos impasses deste caso, de acordo com Clara Keller, é sua complexidade. Ela ressalta que há pelo menos três dimensões diferentes em questão: liberdade de expressão, governança de conteúdo online e limites da competência do Supremo — até onde a Corte deve interferir, especialmente quando o tema está sendo discutido pelo Legislativo.Além disso, Francisco Brito Cruz acrescenta o desafio técnico-acadêmico como outro ponto de complexidade. Para ele, há imprecisões nas falas dos ministros e falta de alinhamento com o cenário internacional. “É chocante a naturalidade com que falam de tornar bem-vindo ao ordenamento jurídico brasileiro a responsabilidade civil objetiva por conteúdo de terceiro”, diz. “Uma coisa é responsabilidade administrativa, dever de cuidado é uma coisa, e isso não se confunde com responsabilidade civil objetiva por conteúdo de terceiro”, completa.Ele pontua também que não é verdade que a lei europeia estabeleça o monitoramento ativo. “A lei de serviços digitais na Europa, inclusive, veda o monitoramento ativo”, diz. Além disso, o novo episódio do Sem Precedentes traz uma análise sobre o que esperar do voto de Barroso e sobre os limites de atuação da Corte. O voto deve ser proferido na próxima quarta-feira (18/12).Conduzido pelo diretor de Conteúdo do JOTA, o Sem Precedentes também conta com participação de Juliana Cesario Alvim, professora da Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais e da Central European University, e de Thomaz Pereira, especialista em Direito Constitucional.

Balazs Trencsenyi, co-director of Invisible University for Ukraine (IUFU), joins us to discuss the university's work to uphold education and democracy in Ukraine amid the country's ongoing war with Russia. IUFU, an initiative of Central European University was founded shortly after the start of the war in 2022. Since then, more than 1,000 students have taken online and in-person courses taught by faculty around the world.Trencsenyi is a professor of historical studies at CEU and and director of the university's Institute for Advanced Studies. He is a historian of East Central European political and cultural thought. He's witnessed Hungary's democratic erosion firsthand and discusses Viktor Orban's rise to power and how he's slowly dismantled the country's democratic institutions.IUFU received the 2024 Brown Democracy Medal from the McCourtney Institute for Democracy. Trencsenyi and IUFU student assistant Nataliia Shuliakova visited Penn State in October to accept the award. Read the 2024 Brown Medal book from IUFU students and facultyWatch the Brown Medal ceremony and lecture

As two cis-gendered men without children, talking about motherhood in academia isn't really our forte. So, with Lachlan travelling, we took the opportunity to invite Hélène Draux from Digitial Science as guest co-host with Jakob for a conversation about motherhood in academia with Lisette Espín-Noboa and the role it plays in the gender gap. Lisette is a postdoc at the Complexity Science Hub and Central European University.We discuss the structural issues within academic institutions that disproportionately affect mothers and offer recommendations for creating a more supportive environment for women researchers. We also touch on the role of fathers in sharing parental responsibilities and the positive aspects of motherhood that can enhance academic productivity.  We end the conversation with a chat about actionable steps that can be taken to improve conditions for parents in academia, including better childcare options, flexible contracts, and the need for role models.The presenting sponsor if this episode is Digital Science.It's produced and edited by Peter Xiong. You can find Lisette and Hélène here:Lisette's website: https://www.lisetteespin.info/Lisette at LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisetteespin/Hélène at LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/h%C3%A9l%C3%A8ne-draux-4059233a/Organisations mentioned in the episodeMothers in Science | @mothersinsci. Global non-profit organization that advocates for mothers in STEMM and creates evidence-based solutions to promote workplace equity & inclusion of caregivers. mothersinscience.com. Parenthood in Academica (@parenthood_ns) Selected articles and resources mentioned in the episode:Anne Sophie Lassen, and Ria Ivandić. "Parenthood and Academic Career Trajectories." In American Economic Association (AEA) Papers and Proceedings, 2024.Stephanie D. Cheng "Careers versus children: How childcare affects the academic tenure-track gender gap." Working Paper (2020).Scott Daewon Kim & Petra Moser. “BOOM, BABY. WOMEN IN SCIENCE LESSONS FROM THE BABY BOOM." (2020).Gemma Derrick, E., Pei-Ying Chen, Thed van Leeuwen, Vincent Larivière, and Cassidy R. Sugimoto. "The relationship between parenting engagement and academic performance." Scientific Reports 12, no. 1 (2022): 22300.Allison C. Morgan, Samuel F. Way, Michael JD Hoefer, Daniel B. Larremore, Mirta Galesic, and Aaron Clauset. "The unequal impact of parenthood in academia." Science Advances 7, no. 9 (2021): eabd1996.A Simple Act of Defiance Can Improve Science for WomenResearcher parents are paying a high price for conference travel — here's how to fix it (https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-01571-x) Lindsey Smith Taillie “​​Being a parent is a hidden scientific superpower — here's why” Nature (2024)Kendall Powell “The parenting penalties faced by scientist mothers”Cecilie Steenbuch Traberg “I had three children during my PhD: here's what I learnt” Nature (2024)Thanks for listening. Please share, rate, review and follow us on Twitter @Divrespod .If you're interested in our work with diversity and internationalisation in research, please visit www.diversiunity.com.

Por unanimidade, o Supremo Tribunal Federal (STF) decidiu que o uso de símbolos religiosos em órgãos públicos não fere o princípio do Estado laico nem a liberdade de crença. Prevaleceu o voto do relator, ministro Cristiano Zanin, que considerou que a presença dos símbolos não viola a esses princípios, desde que o objetivo seja manifestar tradição cultural. Mas, embora tenha sido julgado como um caso simples, muitas questões ficaram em aberto. Essa complexidade do caso é o tema do Sem Precedentes desta semana.O podcast do JOTA que discute o Supremo e a Constituição aborda as dúvidas que o STF não respondeu, como quais símbolos podem e se podem em prédios novos. Pode em universidades? E em escolas públicas? O episódio destaca que não há legislação específica sobre o tema. É correto, então, que a decisão fique a cargo do presidente do Tribunal ou do responsável pela administração?O caso concreto, julgado no ARE 1.249.095 com repercussão geral (Tema 1.086), envolve uma representação contra a existência de um crucifixo no plenário do Tribunal Regional Federal da 3ª Região (TRF3). O tribunal negou provimento ao pedido, sob o argumento de que a presença dos símbolos "não colide com a laicidade do Estado brasileiro” e representa a “reafirmação da liberdade religiosa e do respeito a aspectos culturais da sociedade brasileira”. O MPF recorreu no STF em 2019, com o argumento de que o Brasil é um país laico e o poder público não deveria estar vinculado a igreja ou religião.Ao votar pela permissão do uso de símbolos religiosos, Zanin destacou a forte presença de elementos religiosos na formação da sociedade e da cultura brasileira. "Não fossem apenas os crucifixos, não há como desconsiderar as dezenas de dias consagrados [...], a nomenclatura de ruas, praças, avenidas e outros logradouros públicos, escolas públicas, estados brasileiros, que revelam a força de uma tradição que, antes de segregar, compõe a rica história brasileira", afirmou o ministro no voto.Conduzido pelo diretor de Conteúdo do JOTA, Felipe Recondo, o debate conta com a participação de Diego Werneck Arguelhes, professor associado do Insper e Juliana Cesario Alvim, professora da Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais e da Central European University.Ouça o novo episódio do Sem Precedentes 

The Second World Approaches to International Law (SWAIL) project, which will be launched at Central European University in Vienna in February 2025,  aims to establish a more accurate way of conceptualising East Central Europe's position in, and relationship with, international law. Three themes arise continuously throughout the podcast: liminality, domination, and the emancipatory potential of international law. Liminality is the cornerstone of the SWAIL project. It is discussed throughout the podcast, whether in reference to geography, epistemology, or time. Patryk identifies an issue whereby East Central Europe is too readily thought of as part of the West, when for him, and he proposes for others from this region, it should be thought of as both in and out, speaking to its liminal place in the global order. The result of this false conceptualisation is East Central Europe's dual exclusion from theoretical understandings of international law; East Central Europe will not feature as the protagonist in a top-down study, nor is it the subject of post-colonial research. Patryk's proposition is it ought not be sandwiched into either of these camps, rather East Central Europe's place in international law ought to be understood in its own, fundamentally in-between, position. Communicating his driving thesis, he points out the contradistinction between Ukraine's experience of the Russian invasion and Poland's roles in the invasion of Iraq. East Central Europe is a geographic space sharing parallels with the West and the Global South but sharing space with neither. The most significant parallel Patryk makes between East Central Europe and the Global South is their joint experience of domination by external states. Between Russian and Soviet expansion from the East and a history of Western imperialism, East Central European states have a long history of fighting for their sovereignty. By applying a modified post-colonial framework to the region, Patryk contends we can remove a blind sport from Western and Third World approaches to international law, which both fail to give appropriate focus to non-European colonialist entities. Considering East Central Europe's vulnerable position, it would be wrong not to consider what the recent US election means for the area's geopolitics. Fortunately, we interviewed Patryk the day after the election. Patryk identified an understandable trepidation in East Central Europe leading up to the election. In the wake of the result, he deems a reconceptualization of the region's security methods to be necessary. The issue gets to the heart of the SWAIL project, international law itself has been somewhat thrown into the liminal flux, exhibiting a bulwark of rules designed to protect states, but lacking a leader on which vulnerable states can rely to enforce those rules. These rules link to the final theme, which made for a surprisingly optimistic podcast given the current regional context: Patryk identifies emancipatory potential in international law. This optimism flowed into the podcast aboard two vessels, NATO and the Special Tribunal for the Crimes of Aggression against Ukraine by Russia, although it is clear Patryk's optimism extended beyond these, applying to international law more generally. Regarding the former, Patryk identifies a worrying acceptance among many Global South actors of Russia's justifications for its aggression when, for Patryk, NATO membership is a sensible defensive measure for East Central Europe to take given the region's aforementioned geographical vulnerability and related history of imperial domination. Concerning the latter focus, Patryk rejects a commonly advocated position that all special tribunals entrench double standards in international law and communicate a message of selective criminal justice. Patryk identifies binary state-to-state, or region-to-region, comparisons as a misleading way to interpret international law. For Patryk, special tribunals like the one for Ukraine or similar experiments in the Central African Republic and Colombia can also be interpreted as a form of respect for the demands of weaker states in the global order; by shifting the framework away from binaries like Global North versus the Global South or West versus the Rest many more factors can be identified that unites second- and third-world countries than divides them. It is on the point of unity beyond binaries that Patryk already identifies potential scope for expansion of the SWAIL project. Latin America is a region in which he foresees particularly fruitful parallels and avenues for interesting scholarship. For the time being, the project exhibits significant potential, hopefully enabling a better understanding of East Central Europe's position in international law, which may guide thought on a region that is already and will continue to be pivotal to world order moving forward.

******Support the channel****** Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thedissenter PayPal: paypal.me/thedissenter PayPal Subscription 1 Dollar: https://tinyurl.com/yb3acuuy PayPal Subscription 3 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/ybn6bg9l PayPal Subscription 5 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/ycmr9gpz PayPal Subscription 10 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/y9r3fc9m PayPal Subscription 20 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/y95uvkao   ******Follow me on****** Website: https://www.thedissenter.net/ The Dissenter Goodreads list: https://shorturl.at/7BMoB Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thedissenteryt/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheDissenterYT   This show is sponsored by Enlites, Learning & Development done differently. Check the website here: http://enlites.com/   Réka Blazsek is a PhD candidate at the ACES Lab (Adaptive Cognition & Economics in Society) of the Department of Cognitive Science at Central European University. She is interested in the cognitive and evolutionary roots of economic and political institutions. In other words: what are the links between the design of the mind and the design of institutions? She aims to tackle this topic by focusing on the cognitive foundations of ownership. In this episode, we start by talking about how social minds may generate societal phenomena. We discuss coordination games, and how they can be used to model social norms. We then get specifically into ownership, the domains of our lives it applies to, and where beliefs about ownership come from. In the second part of the interview, we talk about mental health in PhD students, and the challenges they go through. -- A HUGE THANK YOU TO MY PATRONS/SUPPORTERS: PER HELGE LARSEN, JERRY MULLER, BERNARDO SEIXAS, ADAM KESSEL, MATTHEW WHITINGBIRD, ARNAUD WOLFF, TIM HOLLOSY, HENRIK AHLENIUS, FILIP FORS CONNOLLY, ROBERT WINDHAGER, RUI INACIO, ZOOP, MARCO NEVES, COLIN HOLBROOK, PHIL KAVANAGH, SAMUEL ANDREEFF, FRANCIS FORDE, TIAGO NUNES, FERGAL CUSSEN, HAL HERZOG, NUNO MACHADO, JONATHAN LEIBRANT, JOÃO LINHARES, STANTON T, SAMUEL CORREA, ERIK HAINES, MARK SMITH, JOÃO EIRA, TOM HUMMEL, SARDUS FRANCE, DAVID SLOAN WILSON, YACILA DEZA-ARAUJO, ROMAIN ROCH, DIEGO LONDOÑO CORREA, YANICK PUNTER, CHARLOTTE BLEASE, NICOLE BARBARO, ADAM HUNT, PAWEL OSTASZEWSKI, NELLEKE BAK, GUY MADISON, GARY G HELLMANN, SAIMA AFZAL, ADRIAN JAEGGI, PAULO TOLENTINO, JOÃO BARBOSA, JULIAN PRICE, EDWARD HALL, HEDIN BRØNNER, DOUGLAS FRY, FRANCA BORTOLOTTI, GABRIEL PONS CORTÈS, URSULA LITZCKE, SCOTT, ZACHARY FISH, TIM DUFFY, SUNNY SMITH, JON WISMAN, WILLIAM BUCKNER, PAUL-GEORGE ARNAUD, LUKE GLOWACKI, GEORGIOS THEOPHANOUS, CHRIS WILLIAMSON, PETER WOLOSZYN, DAVID WILLIAMS, DIOGO COSTA, ALEX CHAU, AMAURI MARTÍNEZ, CORALIE CHEVALLIER, BANGALORE ATHEISTS, LARRY D. LEE JR., OLD HERRINGBONE, MICHAEL BAILEY, DAN SPERBER, ROBERT GRESSIS, IGOR N, JEFF MCMAHAN, JAKE ZUEHL, BARNABAS RADICS, MARK CAMPBELL, TOMAS DAUBNER, LUKE NISSEN, KIMBERLY JOHNSON, JESSICA NOWICKI, LINDA BRANDIN, GEORGE CHORIATIS, VALENTIN STEINMANN, PER KRAULIS, ALEXANDER HUBBARD, BR, MASOUD ALIMOHAMMADI, JONAS HERTNER, URSULA GOODENOUGH, DAVID PINSOF, SEAN NELSON, MIKE LAVIGNE, JOS KNECHT, LUCY, MANVIR SINGH, PETRA WEIMANN, CAROLA FEEST, STARRY, MAURO JÚNIOR, 航 豊川, TONY BARRETT, BENJAMIN GELBART, NIKOLAI VISHNEVSKY, STEVEN GANGESTAD, AND TED FARRIS! A SPECIAL THANKS TO MY PRODUCERS, YZAR WEHBE, JIM FRANK, ŁUKASZ STAFINIAK, TOM VANEGDOM, BERNARD HUGUENEY, CURTIS DIXON, BENEDIKT MUELLER, THOMAS TRUMBLE, KATHRINE AND PATRICK TOBIN, JONCARLO MONTENEGRO, AL NICK ORTIZ, NICK GOLDEN, AND CHRISTINE GLASS! AND TO MY EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS, MATTHEW LAVENDER, SERGIU CODREANU, BOGDAN KANIVETS, ROSEY, AND GREGORY HASTINGS!

Episode 4, Season 13 of the Social Change Career Podcast features, Mara Tissera Luna, a leading expert in child protection, forced migration, and gender-based violence, discusses how decolonization is reshaping social change careers. With over 15 years of experience, Mara shares practical insights into building a meaningful career in international development, advocating for more equitable and inclusive approaches. Why Take a Listen: Learn how decolonization can transform your approach to social change and international cooperation. Gain insights from Mara's global career journey, working across continents on child rights and forced migration. Discover valuable tips on starting and growing a consulting career, from setting consulting rates to managing international projects. Key Resources: Mara Tissera Luna on LinkedIn – Connect with Mara. Georgetown University's Collaborative on Global Children's Issues – Learn more about her fellowship. Central European University (CEU) is a globally recognized institution known for its focus on social justice, human rights, policy and has over 50 academic programs, attracting students and scholars from around the world. Mara Tissera Luna's Website – Discover more about Mara's work, upcoming courses and podcast as well as and publications. Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed – An essential resource for understanding decolonial thought and education. To stay updated with more career resources, stories, and opportunities in the social impact space, sign up for the free PCDN Weekly Impact Newsletter, offering the world's best curated jobs, funding, and learning opportunities. Listen to the episode on PCDN.global or any major podcast platform. Don't forget to subscribe, rate, and share if you find it valuable! Bio: Mara Tissera Luna is an independent consultant and social anthropologist specializing in child protection, forced migration, and gender-based violence. She has worked with 16 universities, NGOs, and international agencies across 14 countries, using decolonial frameworks to advocate for social justice. Currently based in California, Mara is a fellow at Georgetown University's Collaborative on Global Children's Issues. She holds a Masters Degree from Central European University, a certificate in Afro-Latin American Studies from Harvard University and a BA from the University of Buenos Aires. Listen to the episode on PCDN.Global. or any major podcast platform. Don't forget to check out the 160+ other episodes of the Social Change Career Podcast for more insights from global changemakers! Timestamp of the Episode 0:00 - Introduction to Decolonization and Social Change Careers 1:30 - Understanding the Current Focus of Work 5:04 - Key Insights on Building a Career in Social Change 12:16 - The Importance of Specialized Knowledge 14:27 - Applying a Decolonial Lens to Research 17:10 - The Role of Historical Context in Social Change 25:05 - Navigating the Challenges of Consulting Careers 32:22 - Strategies for Effective Networking 57:55 - Embracing Different Viewpoints in International Cooperation 1:09:15 - Resources and Recommendations for Continuous Learning 1:12:02 - Engaging with the Audience and Opportunities for Connection 1:14:06 - Concluding Thoughts and Future Directions

Pat Flynn is the founder and host of Smart Passive Income podcast with 50 million downloads. He has created a massive community of online business owners and built SPI over the last 14 years. His YouTube channel has almost half a million followers. In this episode, we'll talk about how to build your brand, gain visibility and influence to grow your business. You will learn directly from the OG himself on: • How to gain trust from your audience online • How to build influence and become a thought leader • How to make your influence work for your business I'm your host - Nausheen I. Chen - 3-time TEDx speaker and public speaking coach for the C-suite and founders + public speaking professor at Central European University. Enjoyed this episode? Give us a 5-star review - it'll help others find out about us. Grazie!

In this essay, Jon Burke describes Qalang Smangus, an aboriginal village in Taiwan which has been collectively organized. Jon makes a case for identifying it as an intentional Christian anarcho-collectivist community, assesses its success, and identifies its internal and exernal challenges. Jon is a former lecturer in photography and media studies at Ming Chuan University in Taiwan, and is currently a technical writer in Melbourne, Australia. His most recent publications are ‘Learning to love fakes: how to overcome the inauthenticity of digital artifacts', for the 2023 conference Medievalisms on the Screen III: Digital Medievalisms and the Teaching of History, hosted by Central European University, and ‘Anarchitecture: Anarchist Principles Made Concrete for the Anarchist Studies Network 7th International Conference, 2022.' Anarchist Essays is brought to you by Loughborough University's Anarchism Research Group and the journal Anarchist Studies. Follow us on Twitter @arglboro. Our music comes from Them'uns (featuring Yous'uns). Artwork by Sam G.

In this interview, Jack Wilson, historian of the Mongol Empire and PhD candidate at Central European University discusses his current research into the Mongol invasions of Hungary in the thirteenth century.Focussing on the lesser known Mongol invasion of Hungary in the 1280s, and viewing this from the perspective of the Mongols, Jack's research considers the likely reasons for the invasion.  His analysis shows that the Mongol motivations were closely linked to internal power struggles  and dynastic conflicts within the Golden Horde, and changing climatic conditions in their home steppe-land.  Jack's analysis also implies that the invasion was not for conquest, but for loot and slaves, and to enhance the reputation a leading contender within their internal power struggles.  Jack also demonstrates how the Mongolian elite viewed the world and the place of themselves and their vast empire within it.This podcast is part of a series of interviews covering central Europe in the medieval period for MECERN and CEU Medieval Studies.

In this conversation at the Review of Democracy, András Bozóki – author of the new collection Töréspontok. Tanulmányok az autokrácia kialakulásáról (Breaking Points. Studies on the Formation of Autocracy) – reflects on what has made the anti-democratic turn in Hungary so effective and discusses what has surprised him the most about the evolution of the Orbán regime; comments on the regime's attempted remaking of Hungarian elite groups and its uses of ideology to legitimate its rule; evaluates his thesis on the Orbán regime being an “externally constrained hybrid regime” in light of more recent developments; and assesses the role of his own generation, the 1989ers, in the longer arc of history.   András Bozóki is Professor at the Department of Political Science at the Central European University and a research affiliate of the CEU Democracy Institute. His main fields of research include democratization, de-democratization, political regimes, ideologies, Central European politics, and the role of intellectuals.   Töréspontok. Tanulmányok az autokrácia kialakulásáról (Breaking Points. Studies on the Formation of Autocracy) has been published by Gondolat Kiadó.   Ferenc Laczó: You have just released a large and exciting collection in Hungarian under the title Töréspontok. Tanulmányok az autokrácia kialakulásáról, which might be translated as Breaking Points. Studies on the Formation of Autocracy. This new volume of some 500 pages collects sixteen important articles that you have authored or co-authored since 2013 and presents them in a largely chronological fashion. The Orbán regime has clearly been a central concern of yours. How this regime has emerged, how it operates, how it may be classified, and what can be said about its international embeddedness—these are all questions that are repeatedly raised and considered on these pages. You have evidently been studying a moving target since the early 2010s. I wanted to start our conversation there: How has your understanding of the Orbán regime evolved over the years? What was foreseeable to you already back in the early 2010s about where this regime would be heading, and what came rather as a surprise to you in more recent years? András Bozóki: There was already a de-consolidation of democracy, in the form of increasing political polarization, between 2006 and 2010. However, according to all international democracy-measuring institutes, Hungary was still a liberal democracy up until 2010, despite all the troubles. People were disappointed with the government of the time; they found it ineffective, and they wanted a more decisive turn towards what was supposed to be a more democratic system. It was interesting to see that, while Viktor Orbán started his de-democratization project quite early on, it was propagated as making the system more democratic. Forget about the rule of law and all these legal nuances, or what the Constitutional Court defends, or the ombudsman, all these legal brakes on the regime. Let the people govern, let the will of the people rule without any brakes. Autocratization was sold as democratization. As a political scientist I was surprised by three phenomena in the process of de-democratization: weak popular identification with democracy, the effectiveness of political propaganda, and, third, the radical change in Hungarian foreign policy.  As someone who used to be a member of Fidesz at the change of the regime, but left it early, I had no illusions about Orbán. My surprise is not so much about his behavior as a leader, but about the passive behavior of Hungarian society. I did not expect that the democratic backsliding process would go so swiftly, and without much social resistance, I would say. That was a major disappointment: that people didn't see the existent democracy as something worth fighting for, worth defending. They said that democracy is just about a multiparty system and nothing more. It is not about the spirit of the people, it is only about weak institutions and corrupt party machineries. They didn't want to defend that system. It was easy, retrospectively speaking, for Orbán to change the regime because the social resistance was surprisingly weak. My second surprise concerns the effectiveness of propaganda. I did not believe that propaganda after the 1950s can again be used for direct political purposes in Hungary, that a country which survived Communism can go back to daily propaganda. But that happened in 2015 with the migration crisis and the 2016 referendum afterwards. It was just intolerable. In the late Communist period, the regime was not propagandistic at all. They had neither ideology, nor propaganda; it was just based on traditional mentalities. It was striking to see that propaganda can again be effective, together with the manipulation of social media, and make citizens change their opinion concerning foreign migrants. Before 2015, there was no Islamophobia in Hungary at all, unlike some traditional anti-Semitism. However, the Orbán regime propagated Islamophobia and mixed it up with anti-Roma sentiments. And, finally, I did not expect Orbán to become a pro-Putin politician. I mean, I do not have to tell you that back in the 19th century, the Russian army destroyed the Hungarian Revolution and struggle for freedom; then, during the Second World War, they came to Hungary, and there are now accounts about their activity beyond the fronts, like not only killing people, but raping hundreds of thousands of women; then crushing the Hungarian Revolution in 1956; and stationing troops in Hungary for decades. Hungary was not as anti-communist a country as Poland, but there were strong anti-Soviet sentiments. “Russians, go home” was a leading slogan of the 1956 Revolution. That Orbán could change this and make Fidesz supporters pro-Russian, anti-EU, pro-war—that was something truly unexpected. They may now present themselves as the “party of peace,” but they actually support Russia's war against Ukraine and have some invisible but easily detectable relationship with Putin such as economic and political collaboration. That has been genuinely surprising. Orbán currently holds the rotating presidency of the Council of the EU and is working on the deconstruction of the Union. The Trojan horse has arrived. FL: Several pieces included in this new collection address the regime debate that has been raging concerning Orbán's rule. As part of that, you discuss its illiberal and antidemocratic features, and critique the widely used concept of ‘illiberal democracy' in particular. You write about ‘electoral autocracy' instead, and some years ago even formulated the thesis of a ‘liberal autocracy.' Which key conclusions would you draw today from those regime debates? What might be key points of consensus among scholars despite their different emphases and terminological choices? AB: The first few years after 2010 were a shock. What should we call this regime? It was the constitutional lawyers, plus economist János Kornai, who claimed that the regime is moving fast towards autocracy. It was the constitutional lawyers—Gábor Halmai, Kim Lane Scheppele, Imre Vörös, and others—who claimed that there was an unconstitutional putsch when the new constitution started to be used for anti-constitutional purposes, when it was used to change the legal system and undermine the rule of law by 2013. In contrast, political scientists were rather quiet in those early years. They said: Let's wait for the elections in 2014 to see whether these early warnings have been well-substantiated or not. Political scientists started to speak about electoral autocracy, or hybrid regimes, only after 2014, when the constitutional lawyers were already sounding the alarm that this was the end of the rule of law. Political scientists responded basically by saying, “Fine, but the rule of law is just one side of the story. What about free elections and the will of the people?” But, as it turned out, we could not consider the 2014 elections honest elections. It was free, but unfair. And that opened the way to the regime debates, which dominated the mid-2010s in Hungarian political science. There were several interesting approaches, such as the concepts of ‘mafia state', neo-Bolshevism, re-feudalization, prebendalism, illiberal democratic capitalism, plebiscitary leader democracy, transmuted fascism, party-state, post-fascism, populist electoral autocracy and the likes. Also a distinction has been made between regime and rendszer – ‘regime' and ‘system', though the meaning of the Hungarian distinction does not translate well into English – or concerning the practices of the political formula vis-à-vis the formalities of institutional order. There were a lot of different approaches. At this point Orbán proudly came up with the notion of ‘illiberal democracy.' In English, ‘illiberal' sounds pretty derogatory. I do not think Orbán felt that it was that way. He wanted to state that “We want to keep democracy but make a break with liberalism.” But illiberal democracy means something else: it is not a democracy but a sort of hybrid regime. Still, not only Orbán but some political scientists in Hungary also wanted to argue that ‘illiberal democracy' is just a form of democracy: there is a Western liberal democracy and there is a non-Western democracy which might be illiberal but is equally legitimate. I did not like those attempts. I did not think they were scholarly. I realized that being in the EU, there is a stronger defense of the rule of law from European Union institutions than from domestic elements. When people were prevented from initiating a referendum in Hungary in early 2016, I clearly felt that this meant the end of any sort of democracy. But maybe there is a new form of autocracy which keeps some sort of remnants of liberalism due to the constraints of the European Union. So, I was venturing with the concept of ‘liberal autocracy' around the time. It is not my invention, Fareed Zakaria and Larry Diamond were debating it back around the turn of the millennium. Hong Kong was called a liberal autocracy, even the ideal type of a liberal autocracy when human rights were respected, but there was no democracy because the government was not elected by the people—though Diamond thought that having a liberal autocracy was illusionary. Around 2015, I met Dániel Hegedűs, a younger colleague of mine. As an expert of EU politics, he pointed out the dubious role of the EU toward Hungary. We realized that the unparalleled specificity of this regime is indeed that it is located within the EU, and we have to focus on the interplay between Hungary and the European Union. Since EU legislation has domestic impact in Hungary, we cannot fully separate these two entities: following the principle of subsidiarity, some parts of sovereignty are given up by each Member State. So let us see what the consequences of EU membership are. Concerning Hungary, we came up with the proposition of an externally constrained – but also supported and legitimized – hybrid regime. There was a huge debate about the latter notion too, whether ‘hybrid regime' makes sense or not. It is a bit too broad of a category, but it was suitable for covering those years when Hungary was no longer a democracy, but not yet an autocracy. We can still use it today: if the Hungarian state is an electoral autocracy, it is still part of the hybrid regime category on the authoritarian end of the spectrum. Our article gained remarkable international attention and it came to be seen as our statement. In the years since 2018, these regime debates have slowly lost significance and lost their importance. Everything has been said, I think. The new consensus may be that nobody calls Hungary a modern democracy anymore. People realize that there was de-democratization, democratic erosion, backsliding – whatever you want to call it. More recently, academics have been talking about autocratization, not democratic backsliding, which can be a backsliding within democracy whereas autocratization trespasses the line between democracy and autocracy. I should add that this volume just collects some of the articles I wrote at different moments in time between 2013 and 2023. I see how naïve I was at certain points. I tried to correct myself later and was correcting myself again after that. Of course, I did not want to change what I wrote ten years ago, so this collection also shows how my thinking has changed. The lesson I learned from the debate on the nature of the regime is that a purely political science approach and the use of purely political science concepts are not enough to understand the Orbán regime. You need to have historical and sociological knowledge, and an interdisciplinary approach is needed. In Embedded Autocracy: Hungary in the European Union, the book I have just co-authored with Zoltán Fleck, we combine political science concepts with sociological approaches to conclude that the Orbán regime might be an electoral autocracy politically speaking, however it can be called an embedded autocracy from the social point of view. FL: The collection focuses extensively on how Hungary's antidemocratic turn has unfolded in the early twenty-first century. The decline of democracy in the country has been conspicuous, making Hungary a rather notorious case even in global comparison. What do you view as critical junctures during this process of de-democratization? And what might explain the overall effectiveness of such an anti-democratic turn in Hungary? AB: On the one hand, it was a smooth change. On the other, there were some critical junctures, some breaking points. I think that, as I said, many people did not value democracy, or better to say, they had different understandings of democracy. I think that the twenty years between 1990 and 2010 were a shining moment in the history of Hungary – in a history stretching over a thousand years, we had two decades of liberal democracy, and I feel fortunate to have been part of this story. Having said that, part of the answer is that this democracy was not without problems. To put it this way, the government lost credibility right after 2006 and they lost the 2008 referendum. People really wanted a change of government, or maybe an early election which the government refused to hold. They just did not feel the danger; they felt that there was just a normal crisi

From April 14, 2020: Nobody has been more aggressive about using the coronavirus crisis to seize power than Hungarian strong man Viktor Orbán. Orbán declared a state of emergency and has been ruling by decree. He has also instigated criminal penalties for spreading false information about the coronavirus, and his Fidesz party has effectively dissolved Parliament. Joining Benjamin Wittes to discuss the decline of Hungarian democracy is András Pap, a Hungarian scholar of constitutional law and a professor at Central European University's nationalist studies program in Budapest, and Anne Applebaum, essayist, author, and scholar of Eastern Europe, nationalism and the former Soviet Union. They talked about whether Orbán's seizure of power is as big a deal as it initially appears, about where Orbán stands in the pantheon of right wing populists worldwide, and about what, if anything, the European Union is likely to do about it.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode of the Vienna Coffee House Conversations, Ivan Vejvoda hosts Kim Lane Scheppele, the Lawrence S. Rockefeller Professor of Sociology and International Affairs at Princeton University. With a particular focus on the example of Hungary under Orbán, they explore the rise of populism, identity politics, and nationalism, and point out the threats these pose to democracy - especially when leaders exploit the legal frameworks of democratic institutions to entrench and extend their power. How can populism corrupt a democratic state into an autocracy?They comment on the European Union's struggles to address democratic backslides in Hungary and Poland, emphasizing the complexity and slowness of the EU's response. Scheppele reflects on Hungary's shift from a pro-European democratic atmosphere in the 1990s to its current autocratic state. They also discuss strategies for opposition and civil society, the role of economic policies in populist strategies, the importance of media control, and the implications of urban-rural political divides. Finally, they touch on the potential challenges in upcoming elections in France and the United States, stressing the need for vigilance and robust democratic engagement.Kim Lane Scheppele is the Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Sociology and International Affairs at Princeton University, focusing on the intersection of constitutional and international law, particularly in systems under stress. She has researched the development of constitutional law in Hungary and Russia post-1989 and the impact of anti-terrorism laws globally post-9/11. Scheppele has served as an expert advisor to the Hungarian Parliament's Constitutional Drafting Committee and co-directed the Gender and Culture Studies program at Central European University. She previously taught at the University of Pennsylvania School of Law and has held visiting professorships at Humboldt University, Erasmus University, Yale, and Harvard. She directed Princeton's Program in Law and Public Affairs and has received the Kalven Prize from the Law and Society Association, with elections to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the International Academy of Comparative Law​.Find Kim on X @KimLaneLawSee her selected publications at princeton.edu  Ivan Vejvoda is Head of the Europe's Futures program at IWM implemented in partnership with ERSTE Foundation. The program is dedicated to the cultivation of knowledge and the generation of ideas addressing pivotal challenges confronting Europe and the European Union: nexus of borders and migration, deterioration in rule of law and democracy and European Union's enlargement prospects.The Institute for Human Sciences (IWM) is an institute of advanced studies in the humanities and social sciences. Founded as a place of encounter in 1982 by a young Polish philosopher, Krzysztof Michalski, and two German colleagues in neutral Austria, its initial mission was to create a meeting place for dissenting thinkers of Eastern Europe and prominent scholars from the West.Since then it has promoted intellectual exchange across disciplines, between academia and society, and among regions that now embrace the Global South and North. The IWM is an independent and non-partisan institution, and proudly so. All of our fellows, visiting and permanent, pursue their own research in an environment designed to enrich their work and to render it more accessible within and beyond academia.You can find IWM's website at:https://www.iwm.at/

What did commemoration of the dead look like in Medieval Livonia and how did memoria shape group identities in the region? Dr. Gustavs Strenga shares insights into his research and parallels with modern-day memory wars. Baltic Ways is a podcast brought to you by the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies, produced in partnership with the Baltic Initiative at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of AABS or FPRI.Read more:Remembering the Dead: Collective Memory and Commemoration in Late Medieval Livonia Transcript Indra Ekmanis: Hello, and welcome to Baltic Ways, a podcast bringing you interviews and insights from the world of Baltic studies.I'm your host Indra Ekmanis, and today we're speaking with Gustavs Strenga, senior researcher at the Institute of Arts and Cultural Studies at the Latvian Academy of Culture and recently a postdoctoral researcher at the University of In Germany. Today, he speaks with us about his recent book, Remembering the Dead: Collective Memory and Commemoration in Late Medieval Livonia, and what parallels that might have for us today in the modern Baltic states. Stay tuned.Dr. Gustavs Strenga, thank you so much for joining us on Baltic Ways. Perhaps we can start, you can tell us a little bit about your background and how you came into this field of study.Gustavs Strenga: First of all, thank you for inviting me. Well, my background is I'm Latvian. I was born in Riga and I began my studies in Riga, in Latvia, and I studied history at the University of Latvia. And since high school, I had an interest in the history of the Catholic Church, partially because I went to a Catholic school. And during my studies, when I began studying at the end of the last century, beginning of this century, I understood that I'm interested into medieval history. I wrote my bachelor thesis and also later my MA about Dominicans. It's a mendicant order founded in the 13th century and they also had their priories in the Baltics, like in Riga and Tallinn. I spent, during my studies, a year in Lublin at the Catholic University of Lublin. I had a wonderful Erasmus semester in Kiel, in Germany. And I really understood that I want to do medieval history. In Riga, I had really two good professors who were teaching medieval history, but I understood that it's not enough, so I went to Budapest, the Central European University now located in Vienna, and I studied medieval studies there.And later, I had a chance to study at the University of Queen Mary in London, and I was supervised by Mary Rubin. And there, my interest in medieval commemoration began.And during my studies in London — it was a wonderful time — but I had a problem. I didn't have funding. So I moved to Germany to the University of Freiburg where I was writing — continuing writing my doctoral thesis on medieval commemoration and memory in Livonia. And after that, I had a chance to work at the National Library of Latvia, and also very exciting and interesting postdoctoral projects at the universities of Tallinn and Greifswald.IE: Wonderful. So that's interesting that your early experience in a Catholic school has brought you all the way into studying commemoration in medieval Livonia. Thanks. Thank you for sharing that.So, as I mentioned, you are the author of Remembering the Dead: Collective Memory and Commemoration in Late Medieval Livonia, which came out in November of 2023 and was also awarded the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies book publication subvention.It's also one of two recent monographs by Latvian historians to really be published internationally. And our colleague Una Bergmane, who also recently spoke on this podcast, published, published the other. The book examines the practices of remembering, and how those practices have influenced or had their impact on medieval Livonia, now modern day Latvia and Estonia. But I wonder if you can tell us a little bit more about that book. I gather it comes from your doctoral research — tell us a little bit more about the research that informs that work.GS: Yes, so this book, as you said, is a transformed version of my doctoral dissertation, which had a bit different title, and which I defended in 2013. And, after I finished writing the thesis, I understood, yes, I want to transform it into a book, but maybe with a bit different structure, so it took me quite a lot of time to restructure it.Though medieval commemoration of the dead had, of course, religious aims — for example, to lessen the suffering of the deceased in purgatory — I wanted to pursue the idea that the medieval commemoration of the dead was both a form of collective memory and also a social practice. As a form of collective memory, it created group self awareness of the past and thus shaped their identities.As a social practice, it created bonds between individuals and groups, and also between living and dead. I can demonstrate that by saying, for example, if someone in the Middle Ages wanted to be commemorated, the person had to have resources.IE: Yeah.GS: And resources could have been donated to a particular institution, and this institution — for example, a friary, a monastery, or a nunnery, or even a parish Church — this institution would, for example, say to some priests, you have to pray or celebrate the service, and you have to pray for a certain person. So it's a, basically it's a kind of an economy of gift exchange.IE: Yeah.GS: You're giving resources to someone to commemorate you. In my book I was looking more on groups. I was interested not so much into commemoration of individuals, because lots of research has been done in the field. For example, if some of the listeners are interested, you can look up the books on medieval memorial culture. I — rather, I was interested in that, how through the commemoration of the dead, groups were remembering their past. And this is, this is something maybe a bit different, just, looking at medieval memorial culture.Thus, in my book, I'm featuring several such groups. For example, the Church of Riga, which means the Cathedral chapter and the bishops, later archbishops. The Livonian branch of the Teutonic Order, different urban guilds and brotherhoods in Livonian cities like Riga and Tallinn. And I also was interested in — how did the collective memory shape relationships between these groups, particularly I was interested in the conflicts.IE: Mm hmm.GS: And in the case of my research, it's definitely influenced by the surviving sources. For example, in the book, you cannot read anything about how peasants were remembering the past in the Middle Ages through the commemoration of the dead, because yes, you have, you have archaeological material, but you don't have other kinds of sources, which would give some kind of a background information.Also, medieval artisan groups are not much represented. So it's a bit of — I would say it's a collection of case studies. My colleague, Marek Tamm, also partially criticized me of that, but I was interested really in the cases of the research, less perhaps painting this large landscape picture of the medieval commemoration in medieval Livonia, because I thought that's difficult to do because not many sources survive.As we know Livonia later, after the Middle Ages was a battleground between several large regional powers and many archives had burned down. And also lots of the churches have been destroyed. Also during the Reformation, altars, murals, other things involved in the commemoration of the dead have been destroyed.So, yes, it's, let's say, it's a collection of case studies looking at certain groups and how they were remembering their past in the long term.IE: Yeah, I'd like to ask you to, to talk about, a case study or two, but I wonder if you can tell us a little bit more, especially for the non-historians or people who are not really looking always at material from, from the middle ages — how do you go about finding your source material? What does that look like?GS: Particularly this research in this study, I was using all kinds of sources. Written sources. For example, you have testaments, last wills. Then you have chronicles. I was also using some books of different brotherhoods and guilds where, like, they were keeping their records and also recording how they are commemorating their dead.You have documents written down. You have necrologies. These are like calendars where you're putting the names of the dead and you know when they should be commemorated. Liturgical manuscripts, for example, missals. And you also have other kinds of sources. You have material culture. You have chalices. You have altar pieces. You have objects, tokens given to the poor in order that they know that they, that they receive alms, that they should commemorate someone.So, I was trying to use all kinds of sources. Also, last but not least, for example, the grave slabs, which are, some of them are surviving in the churches of former Livonia. So you have all kinds of sources, and I think this is what makes the study of commemoration interesting, that you can combine them. You're not just using written material, but you're trying to look on memory as something that was kept not only in one kind of media, but in numerous kinds of media.IE: Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. In the book, I think you go into a variety of different kind of contexts, looking at elites, non elites, as you mentioned, urban and rural sort of practices, liturgical, non liturgical. We'd love to hear your thoughts on one or two of those case studies.GS: Yes, I think this book has several interesting case studies. I would just introduce a few of them. In most cases, the groups in the Middle Ages were, in fact, interested a lot in remembering their beginnings. Into remembering their origins.As most of the listeners would know, medieval Livonia was Christianized quite late. The Christianization process began only in the late 12th, early 13th century, when the missionaries and crusaders from northern Germany and Scandinavia arrived in the eastern Baltic, which we now know today as Latvia and Estonia. And it is the time when the history of two, let's say, most important institutions in the region begin, and this is the history of the Riga Church, particularly the Cathedral chapter, and the history of the Livonian branch of the Teutonic Order, and these groups in the late Middle Ages were looking back at their beginnings, and these events which took place in the late 12th and early 13th century were important for them. And also not just events, but also the dead of that age.We can say the collective memory of the Riga Cathedral chapter and Riga bishops, was not just carried by the famous and very well known text the Livonian and Chronicle of Henry, which was written around 1227, but also by Riga Cathedral itself. Riga, as a city, was founded in 1201, and then in 1211,the founder of the city, Bishop Albert, began constructing the cathedral.What do I mean, the Cathedral and its choir was memory itself — the space was the commemorative space? Before the city of Riga was founded, Livonia already had two dead bishops. The first bishop, the first missionary, Meinhard, and the second bishop, Bertolt, who was killed in a battle in 1198, just three years before the foundation of Riga.For every community in the Middle Ages, the founders were very important for their memory. So around 1229 when Bishop Albert died, or 1230, the bodies of Meinhard and Bertol were transferred from Ikšķile or Üxküll where they were buried, to the new cathedral and buried in the choir. And so we could say that in the Middle Ages, they were not just reading a chronicle, this one, for example, the Chronicle of Henry, or commemorating bishops liturgically, but also they were in contact with the graves, with the places where the bishops were buried. So it was both. A phenomenon of memory that was recorded in the texts and performed during the liturgy. And also, we can say it was a physical experience, because still, though historians are arguing about that — whether in the Middle Ages, the three founding bishops of Rīga's Church were considered to be saints — we can say that they were seen as a holy man. Maybe, yes, we can still argue about their sainthood because they were never canonized in the Middle Ages, but they were seen also as important founding figures.In the case of the Teutonic Order, it is a bit different. Spaces — maybe if we are talking about this memory of the origins or memory of the beginning — spaces are maybe not so important. More, we have textual sources showing how the Teutonic Order's Livonian branch were commemorating their death. For example, the Livonian Rhymed Chronicle — text composed around 1290 — the text has numerous references to the brethren of the Teutonic Order who had been killed during the battles against the Baltic pagans during the 13th century. Later, it's very interesting, in 14th and 15th century, we can trace numerous necrologies of the Teutonic Order, not in Livonia, but nowadays Germany, Belgium, and Switzerland, where we can see the Teutonic Order were — that they were Commemorating those men, their own brethren, killed in distant Livonia.Sometimes they were misspelling the name of Livonia. Most likely those people who were recording these records in the necrologies or commemorating these dead brethren, they didn't know where Livonia is, but still, this experience of crusading was part of the Teutonic Order's collective memory.It's also interesting that in the later times, as I was saying about the commemorative culture of the Riga Cathedral, we have some evidence of the commemoration. For example, the Missal of Riga — the sole complete manuscript from the Middle Ages that gives us a glimpse into how liturgy in medieval Riga looked like. In this missile, we can also spot several instances where we can see the curation of the Riga archbishops. Their names have been recorded. And also, this is a time when there was a conflict between the Teutonic Order and the Cathedral Chapter of Riga. Because the Teutonic Order, during the late 15th century, wanted to take control over the Cathedral of Riga, and also over the cathedral chapter, and you can see the struggle also in the commemoration, because the records are telling us that these archbishops had died, during captivity into the Teutonic Order's prison, for example.IE: Well, yeah, thank you for sharing those, those glimpses into those case studies.And, you know, when I first thought about that topic of medieval Livonia, it wasn't totally clear to me how it drew to my own interest, but I was really drawn in, even by those first few paragraphs. You know, you talk about memoria as this form of collective memory and social practice that creates groups, that shapes identities, that helps remember the past, and creates those relationships.And I was thinking about, how does that translate a little bit into today's society? You know, collective memory group identity still plays such an important role in our world, and so, I wonder — do you have any insights as to what, what your work might tell us about the Baltic nations today?GS: It is indeed difficult to link medieval history with the contemporary world.IE: Yeah.GS: But, I would say that the commemoration of the dead is a phenomenon that shows that every group, in every historical period, is remembering their dead. So we can see the commemoration of the dead as a basic form of collective memory. And, if we look to the past, we can also see conflicts that have been created by different memories. And, today we are living into the age of memory wars in, in the Baltics.IE: Yeah.GS: Let's just remember, for example, the removal of the so-called Alyosha statue in Tallinn in 2007 and the riots which began afterwards and which were also supported by Russia in numerous ways, also by cyberattacks.IE: Right.GS: And also the removal of the monument to the Liberators of Soviet Latvia and from the German fascist invaders — now I'm just quoting the official name of that monument, which was removed in Riga in 2022. So these and also early examples show us that Baltics have experienced different practices of erasing memory.IE: Yeah.GS: Also, of trying to replace the memories. If we remember that during Soviet times in Latvia and also in Estonia, numerous monuments erected during the interwar period, for example, commemorating the independence wars against, against different forces, including Soviet Russia, those monuments were destroyed in the 1940s, 1950s in Latvia and Estonia. And afterwards, many of these monuments were restored by the movements.IE: Yeah.GS: So there we can see some kinds of parallels and this is quite similar to that, what I'm trying to show in my book, long term developments of commemoration and remembering.IE: Yeah. The long tail and how, how it is, perpetually moving that collective identity. Um, maybe we can talk a little bit about your current project on Saints and Heroes: From Christianization to Nationalism. Can you tell us a little bit about that work, as well?GS: Yes. In 2021, I had a chance, together with my colleague Cordelia Heß from the University of Greifswald to revisit the question of remembering in quite different settings. So, together with Cordelia Heß and also our partners from the State University of St. Petersburg in Russia, we created a project. It was a Russian-German co-project [financed by Deutsche Forschungs Gemeinschaft]. We were working on the medieval saints and medieval heroes in the Baltic Sea region and how they have been used and later abused after the medieval times.Yes, and I have to say that when Russia's full scale invasion in Ukraine began, our cooperation was discontinued, though we continue working on our part, let's say, on our German part of the project.IE: Yeah.GS: The idea behind was really to look at these long term developments in remembering medieval figures. I can assume that many listeners know medieval heroes, for example, Joan Arc, or Emperor Barbarossa, or Charlemagne, or Scottish and Welsh rebels, William Wallace and Owen Glyndwyr, or Russian Prince and Saint Alexander Nevsky, who nowadays is abused by Putin's regime. And in the case of these all figures, you can see different ways how people have been remembering them and also using them, for example, much later in the 19th and 20th century for nation building or for creation of smaller groups. We have lots of examples — for example, in Scandinavia, that medieval saints in late 19th and early 20th century, played very important role in creating identity of Catholic groups in these countries, because let's remember that Scandinavia became Protestant after the Reformation, and then when there was this Catholic revival, many Swedish intellectuals were choosing St. Bridget as their patron and also revisiting the materials of the canonization process of St. Bridget and also living this medieval religious life during the late 19th and early 20th century.Within the project, I was working on Baltic medieval heroes. That's, for example, the master of the Livonian branch of the Teutonic Order, Walter von Plettenberg, who was a Baltic German hero in the 19th century and also in the early 20th century. I was also working on Latvian medieval kings as heroes — for example, Viesturs and Namējs. As listeners would know, those were not real kings. During the 1920s and '30s in Latvia, they were called kings, but they were just leaders of the local ethnic groups. In the case of the Viesturs and Namējs, those were Semigallians. And I wrote an article, which has been recently published, on Liv warrior Imanta, who has been mentioned in medieval sources just once, in the Livonian Chronicle of Henry, in the scene where Imanta killed Bishop Bertold, who was mentioned in this podcast earlier.And, it is, in fact, fascinating to see that in the Baltic case, not so much history writing has been important for the revival of these medieval heroes, but literature, poetry, and also drama. Those have been the main tools — in the case of Imanta, also one of the main tools has been music, a song, which has been composed at the beginning of the 20th century, using lyrics of Latvian poet Andres Pumpurs. And the result that can be read in the case of the project is a book called Doing Memory: Medieval Saints and Heroes and Their Afterlives in the Baltic Sea Region (19th–20th centuries), that has been recently published by De Gruyter. And there we have 10 contributions about different medieval saints and heroes from Scandinavia, from Northern Germany, and also Latvia, Estonia, and Finland.IE: That is really interesting to see how arts, literature, music, theater come into play in rememberings, as well. We really appreciate you taking the time to speak with us and to share this glimpse into medieval history, medieval Livonia. The book grabbed me from the very beginning. So thank you so much, for your time and for sharing your thoughts with us.GS: Thank you. It was a pleasure.IE: Thank you for tuning in to Baltic Ways, a podcast from the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies produced in partnership with the Baltic Initiative at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. A note that the views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of AABS or FPRI. I'm your host, Indra Ekmanis. Subscribe to our newsletters@aabs-balticstudies.org and FPRI.org/baltic-initiative for more from the world of Baltic Studies. Thanks for listening and see you next time. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit fpribalticinitiative.substack.com

Our guests this week are Andrea Petö from the Central European University in Vienna and Jo-Anne Dillabough of Cambridge University in the UK. These two are collaborators on the UK ESRC project Higher Education, States of Precarity and Conflict in the 'Global North' and 'Global South': UK, Hungary, South Africa, and Turkey and the Horizon Europe project Rising nationalisms, shifting geopolitics and the future of European higher education and research openness. In early May, they jointly penned an article for University World News entitled New Deceptions: How Illiberalism is hijacking the university. Today's discussion ranges over the history of higher education (haven't universities been illiberal for most of their history), institutional ownership (are private universities necessarily illiberal?) and the role of federalism in moderating illiberalism. 

------------------Support the channel------------ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thedissenter PayPal: paypal.me/thedissenter PayPal Subscription 1 Dollar: https://tinyurl.com/yb3acuuy PayPal Subscription 3 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/ybn6bg9l PayPal Subscription 5 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/ycmr9gpz PayPal Subscription 10 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/y9r3fc9m PayPal Subscription 20 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/y95uvkao   ------------------Follow me on--------------------- Website: https://www.thedissenter.net/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thedissenteryt/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheDissenterYT   This show is sponsored by Enlites, Learning & Development done differently. Check the website here: http://enlites.com/   Angarika Deb is senior PhD student at Central European University, Vienna. She is a cognitive anthropologist working on moral fairness, perceptions of it, and the topic of gender inequality. She has been looking at fairness perceptions as it occurs in diverse human societies, including hunter-gatherer groups, westernized groups, and different socioeconomic class groups in India.   In this episode, we start by talking about moral fairness from an anthropological perspective, and how fairness perceptions differ across societies. We discuss individual preferences, where they come from, and what factors play a role in a preference for individualism versus collectivism. Finally, we discuss gender inequality from an anthropological perspective, and explore topics like gender equality in immediate-return hunter-gatherers, how gender inequality develops, gender inequality in industrialized societies, and imbalances in household division of labor. Finally, we talk about how we can help reduce gender inequality with the knowledge coming from anthropology. -- A HUGE THANK YOU TO MY PATRONS/SUPPORTERS: PER HELGE LARSEN, JERRY MULLER, HANS FREDRIK SUNDE, BERNARDO SEIXAS, ADAM KESSEL, MATTHEW WHITINGBIRD, ARNAUD WOLFF, TIM HOLLOSY, HENRIK AHLENIUS, FILIP FORS CONNOLLY, DAN DEMETRIOU, ROBERT WINDHAGER, RUI INACIO, ZOOP, MARCO NEVES, COLIN HOLBROOK, PHIL KAVANAGH, SAMUEL ANDREEFF, FRANCIS FORDE, TIAGO NUNES, FERGAL CUSSEN, HAL HERZOG, NUNO MACHADO, JONATHAN LEIBRANT, JOÃO LINHARES, STANTON T, SAMUEL CORREA, ERIK HAINES, MARK SMITH, JOÃO EIRA, TOM HUMMEL, SARDUS FRANCE, DAVID SLOAN WILSON, YACILA DEZA-ARAUJO, ROMAIN ROCH, DIEGO LONDOÑO CORREA, YANICK PUNTER, CHARLOTTE BLEASE, NICOLE BARBARO, ADAM HUNT, PAWEL OSTASZEWSKI, NELLEKE BAK, GUY MADISON, GARY G HELLMANN, SAIMA AFZAL, ADRIAN JAEGGI, PAULO TOLENTINO, JOÃO BARBOSA, JULIAN PRICE, EDWARD HALL, HEDIN BRØNNER, DOUGLAS FRY, FRANCA BORTOLOTTI, GABRIEL PONS CORTÈS, URSULA LITZCKE, SCOTT, ZACHARY FISH, TIM DUFFY, SUNNY SMITH, JON WISMAN, WILLIAM BUCKNER, PAUL-GEORGE ARNAUD, LUKE GLOWACKI, GEORGIOS THEOPHANOUS, CHRIS WILLIAMSON, PETER WOLOSZYN, DAVID WILLIAMS, DIOGO COSTA, ANTON ERIKSSON, ALEX CHAU, AMAURI MARTÍNEZ, CORALIE CHEVALLIER, BANGALORE ATHEISTS, LARRY D. LEE JR., OLD HERRINGBONE, MICHAEL BAILEY, DAN SPERBER, ROBERT GRESSIS, IGOR N, JEFF MCMAHAN, JAKE ZUEHL, BARNABAS RADICS, MARK CAMPBELL, TOMAS DAUBNER, LUKE NISSEN, KIMBERLY JOHNSON, JESSICA NOWICKI, LINDA BRANDIN, NIKLAS CARLSSON, GEORGE CHORIATIS, VALENTIN STEINMANN, PER KRAULIS, KATE VON GOELER, ALEXANDER HUBBARD, BR, MASOUD ALIMOHAMMADI, JONAS HERTNER, URSULA GOODENOUGH, DAVID PINSOF, SEAN NELSON, MIKE LAVIGNE, JOS KNECHT, ERIK ENGMAN, LUCY, YHONATAN SHEMESH, MANVIR SINGH, AND PETRA WEIMANN! A SPECIAL THANKS TO MY PRODUCERS, YZAR WEHBE, JIM FRANK, ŁUKASZ STAFINIAK, TOM VANEGDOM, BERNARD HUGUENEY, CURTIS DIXON, BENEDIKT MUELLER, THOMAS TRUMBLE, KATHRINE AND PATRICK TOBIN, JONCARLO MONTENEGRO, AL NICK ORTIZ, NICK GOLDEN, AND CHRISTINE GLASS! AND TO MY EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS, MATTHEW LAVENDER, SERGIU CODREANU, BOGDAN KANIVETS, ROSEY, AND GREGORY HASTINGS!

For this episode of the Global Exchange podcast, Colin Robertson talks with Michael Ignatieff about the successes and failures about the Responsibility to Protect, and Canada's role in the world in light of this. // Participants' bios - Michael Ignatieff is Rector Emeritus and Professor of History at Central European University. A scholar and author of many books, Michael has taught at the University of British Columbia, Cambridge University, the University of Toronto, the London School of Economics and Harvard University, where he was Director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. He was also Leader of the Liberal Party of Canada and Leader of the Official Opposition from 2008 until 2011. Michael is a member of the Order of Canada. // Host bio: Colin Robertson is a former diplomat and Senior Advisor to the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, www.cgai.ca/colin_robertson // Read & Watch: - "How Democracies Die", by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/562246/how-democracies-die-by-steven-levitsky-and-daniel-ziblatt/ // Recording Date: April 30, 2024.

Pete Townsend said it best. “Hope I die before I get old” he wrote in The Who's anthemic 1965 hit, “My Generation”. But what Townsend really meant in a lyric that best captured the rebellious Boomer spirit of the Sixties, he later acknowledged, was “hope I die before I get very rich”. Townsend, as it happens, is still alive and, like many other members of his generation, very very rich. In fact, the accumulated wealth of Townsend's generation is now estimated by the New York Times to be over $78 trillion. And it's this seismic imbalance of power and wealth between his Boomer generation and those born after 1960 that Michael Ignatieff writes about in his excellent new LIBERTIES essay, “A History of My Privileges”. Never one to dodge uncomfortable truths, Michael Ignatieff points an accusatory finger at himself in acknowledging that his generation has much responsibility for today's polycrisis. This is the beginning of a much needed conversation from one of the Boomer generation's most articulate liberals.Born in Canada, educated at the University of Toronto and Harvard, Michael Ignatieff is a university professor, writer and former politician. Between 2006 and 2011, Michael Ignatieff served as an MP in the Parliament of Canada and then as Leader of the Liberal Party of Canada and Leader of the Official Opposition. He is a member of the Queen's Privy Council for Canada and holds thirteen honorary degrees. Between 2012 and 2015 he served as Centennial Chair at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs in New York. Between 2014 and 2016 he was Edward R. Murrow Chair of the Press, Politics and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. Michael Ignatieff was until recently the Rector and President of Central European University in Budapest. He stepped down at the end of July 2021, to stay as a Professor in the History Department.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

In this conversation at the Review of Democracy, Angéla Kóczé introduces civil rights icon Ágnes Daróczi, and sketches her paths and the development of her consciousness as a Roma woman; covers the main facets of the movement of Roma emancipation in Hungary and the roles Daróczi has played in them; discusses why the nationality question has been so crucial in Daróczi's understanding and how her agenda might be placed in transnational contexts; and reflects on the achievements and shortcomings of Hungary's post-89 democracy and how she perceives the legacies of Daróczi. Angéla Kóczé is an Assistant Professor of Romani Studies, Chair of the Romani Studies Program, and Academic Director of the Roma Graduate Preparation Program at the Central European University. She is also affiliated with the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology of the CEU. Angéla Kóczé has authored and edited numerous scholarly publications and is the recipient of prestigious awards and fellowships. Her research focuses on the intersections of gender, ethnicity, and class as well as the social and legal inequalities faced by the Roma in various European counties. Her activities prominently include community engagement and policy making as well. Ágnes Daróczi's Hosszú az út előttem (The Long Road Before Me), edited by Angéla Kóczé, has been published by Magvető.

Free guide: 52 Ways to Be More Emotionally Intelligent https://newsletter.sankalpgarud.org/52waysguide In this podcast, I talk to Sanat Sogani on the intersection between psychology and politics. We discuss a range of issues from the history of political theory to morality and Buddhism. I hope you find this discussion engaging. Sanat Sogani is a PhD student in Political Theory at the Central European University in Vienna. (00:00) Introduction (02:24) Psychology and Politics discussion begins (05:35) What is politics (11:36) Key Ideas of Politics 12:36 Plato and Socrates 13:24 Aristotle 14:28 Hobbes 15:55 Rousseau 17:33 Hobbes vs Rousseau 18:23 Kant 19:36 Marx 20:31 Rawls 21:41 Feminism 22:15 Nancy Fraser & Elizabeth Anderson 24:00 Confucius and Eastern Thinkers 26:52 Which thinker influenced Sanat the most? 27:57 Is Rishi Sunak Kantian? 29:46 Buddhism, Religion and Atheism 34:51 Where does religion go wrong? 35:38 Deontology vs utilitarianism 38:51 The trolley problem 41:18 Trolley problem in the pandemic 42:04 Buddhist philosophy 43:47 Is growth limited to a few? 45:47 The problem of psychopathy and bad actors 46:23 Problems inherent in Buddhsim and any belief system 48:39 Liberalism 50:16 Is political theory useful in day to day life? 54:32 Arriving at political conclusions through psychological premises 55:02 Agency and mental health 57:49 Intersection of psychology and politics 01:00:27 Status and social hierarchies 01:04:50 Morality 01:09:43 Sankalp's views on where morality comes from 01:11:02 Jonathan Haidt's Moral Foundation Theory 01:14:20 Marriage 01:19:25 Conform or Rebel: How to Decide? 01:22:18 Protests 01:24:05 Books & resources to learn political theory 01:25:25 Left - right spectrum 01:28:06 Wrapping up

------------------Support the channel------------ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thedissenter PayPal: paypal.me/thedissenter PayPal Subscription 1 Dollar: https://tinyurl.com/yb3acuuy PayPal Subscription 3 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/ybn6bg9l PayPal Subscription 5 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/ycmr9gpz PayPal Subscription 10 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/y9r3fc9m PayPal Subscription 20 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/y95uvkao   ------------------Follow me on--------------------- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thedissenteryt/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheDissenterYT   This show is sponsored by Enlites, Learning & Development done differently. Check the website here: http://enlites.com/   Katarina Kovačević is a PhD candidate in the Department of Cognitive Science at Central European University. Her main research interest is responsibility. She investigates how people ascribe responsibility for good and bad outcomes across various situations. She is specifically interested in epistemic responsibility and strategic ignorance.   In this episode, we talk about epistemic responsibility and strategic ignorance. We start by discussing how to approach responsibility from the perspective of psychology/cognitive science, and when exactly people ascribe responsibility to others. We talk about epistemic responsibility, what happens when people lack relevant information, if the effort put into acquiring it matters, and if outcomes matter. Finally, we discuss strategic ignorance, and focus on health-related examples, particularly testing for STIs. -- A HUGE THANK YOU TO MY PATRONS/SUPPORTERS: PER HELGE LARSEN, JERRY MULLER, HANS FREDRIK SUNDE, BERNARDO SEIXAS, OLAF ALEX, ADAM KESSEL, MATTHEW WHITINGBIRD, ARNAUD WOLFF, TIM HOLLOSY, HENRIK AHLENIUS, FILIP FORS CONNOLLY, DAN DEMETRIOU, ROBERT WINDHAGER, RUI INACIO, ZOOP, MARCO NEVES, COLIN HOLBROOK, PHIL KAVANAGH, SAMUEL ANDREEFF, FRANCIS FORDE, TIAGO NUNES, FERGAL CUSSEN, HAL HERZOG, NUNO MACHADO, JONATHAN LEIBRANT, JOÃO LINHARES, STANTON T, SAMUEL CORREA, ERIK HAINES, MARK SMITH, JOÃO EIRA, TOM HUMMEL, SARDUS FRANCE, DAVID SLOAN WILSON, YACILA DEZA-ARAUJO, ROMAIN ROCH, DIEGO LONDOÑO CORREA, YANICK PUNTER, CHARLOTTE BLEASE, NICOLE BARBARO, ADAM HUNT, PAWEL OSTASZEWSKI, NELLEKE BAK, GUY MADISON, GARY G HELLMANN, SAIMA AFZAL, ADRIAN JAEGGI, PAULO TOLENTINO, JOÃO ARBOSA, JULIAN PRICE, EDWARD HALL, HEDIN BRØNNER, DOUGLAS FRY, FRANCA BORTOLOTTI, GABRIEL PONS CORTÈS, URSULA LITZCKE, SCOTT, ZACHARY FISH, TIM DUFFY, SUNNY SMITH, JON WISMAN, DANIEL FRIEDMAN, WILLIAM BUCKNER, PAUL-GEORGE ARNAUD, LUKE GLOWACKI, GEORGIOS THEOPHANOUS, CHRIS WILLIAMSON, PETER WOLOSZYN, DAVID WILLIAMS, DIOGO COSTA, ANTON ERIKSSON, CHARLES MOREY, ALEX CHAU, AMAURI MARTÍNEZ, CORALIE CHEVALLIER, BANGALORE ATHEISTS, LARRY D. LEE JR., OLD HERRINGBONE, MICHAEL BAILEY, DAN SPERBER, ROBERT GRESSIS, IGOR N, JEFF MCMAHAN, JAKE ZUEHL, BARNABAS RADICS, MARK CAMPBELL, TOMAS DAUBNER, LUKE NISSEN, KIMBERLY JOHNSON, JESSICA NOWICKI, LINDA BRANDIN, NIKLAS CARLSSON, GEORGE CHORIATIS, VALENTIN STEINMANN, PER KRAULIS, KATE VON GOELER, ALEXANDER HUBBARD, BR, MASOUD ALIMOHAMMADI, JONAS HERTNER, URSULA GOODENOUGH, DAVID PINSOF, SEAN NELSON, MIKE LAVIGNE, JOS KNECHT, ERIK ENGMAN, LUCY, YHONATAN SHEMESH, AND MANVIR SINGH! A SPECIAL THANKS TO MY PRODUCERS, YZAR WEHBE, JIM FRANK, ŁUKASZ STAFINIAK, TOM VANEGDOM, BERNARD HUGUENEY, CURTIS DIXON, BENEDIKT MUELLER, THOMAS TRUMBLE, KATHRINE AND PATRICK TOBIN, JONCARLO MONTENEGRO, AL NICK ORTIZ, AND NICK GOLDEN! AND TO MY EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS, MATTHEW LAVENDER, SERGIU CODREANU, BOGDAN KANIVETS, ROSEY, AND GREGORY HASTINGS!

Heuer ist ein Mega-Wahljahr und das ist eure Vorbereitung darauf. Wie stabil ist die Demokratie? Was will die FPÖ? Welche Koalitionen sind im Herbst denkbar? Ein deep dive mit Anton Pelinka, der die Politik so gut kennt wie kaum sonst jemand.Anton Pelinka ist einer der führenden Politikwissenschafter in Österreich. Er war lange an der Universität Innsbruck und an der Central European University.DANKE an alle Unterstützer:innen des Podcasts. Hier kannst du den Podcast supporten.

------------------Support the channel------------ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thedissenter PayPal: paypal.me/thedissenter PayPal Subscription 3 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/ybn6bg9l PayPal Subscription 5 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/ycmr9gpz PayPal Subscription 10 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/y9r3fc9m PayPal Subscription 20 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/y95uvkao   ------------------Follow me on--------------------- Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheDissenterYT   This show is sponsored by Enlites, Learning & Development done differently. Check the website here: http://enlites.com/   Dr. Uta Frith is Emeritus Professor of Cognitive Development at UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience since 2006. She has been a Visiting Professor at the University of Aarhus at the Interacting Minds Centre from 2007 to 2015. She has been a Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies at the Central European University in Budapest (February - June 2014). Dr. Chris Frith is Emeritus Professor of Neuropsychology at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at University College London, Visiting Professor at the Interacting Minds Centre at Aarhus University, Research Fellow at the Institute of Philosophy, and Quondam Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. They are authors of “What Makes Us Social?”.   In this episode, we focus on “What Makes Us Social?”. We start by discussing what social cognition is, and then go through topics like learning and imitation; emotions, our need to affiliate, and joint action; predicting other people's behavior; group identity; reputation; trust; mentalizing; how high-level cognitive processes interact with low-level cognitive processes; consciousness; collective problem-solving; and teaching, cumulative culture, and the role of culture in human cognition. Finally, we discuss how we can foster cooperation. -- A HUGE THANK YOU TO MY PATRONS/SUPPORTERS: PER HELGE LARSEN, JERRY MULLER, HANS FREDRIK SUNDE, BERNARDO SEIXAS, OLAF ALEX, ADAM KESSEL, MATTHEW WHITINGBIRD, ARNAUD WOLFF, TIM HOLLOSY, HENRIK AHLENIUS, JOHN CONNORS, FILIP FORS CONNOLLY, DAN DEMETRIOU, ROBERT WINDHAGER, RUI INACIO, ZOOP, MARCO NEVES, COLIN HOLBROOK, PHIL KAVANAGH, SAMUEL ANDREEFF, FRANCIS FORDE, TIAGO NUNES, FERGAL CUSSEN, HAL HERZOG, NUNO MACHADO, JONATHAN LEIBRANT, JOÃO LINHARES, STANTON T, SAMUEL CORREA, ERIK HAINES, MARK SMITH, JOÃO EIRA, TOM HUMMEL, SARDUS FRANCE, DAVID SLOAN WILSON, YACILA DEZA-ARAUJO, ROMAIN ROCH, DIEGO LONDOÑO CORREA, YANICK PUNTER, ADANER USMANI, CHARLOTTE BLEASE, NICOLE BARBARO, ADAM HUNT, PAWEL OSTASZEWSKI, NELLEKE BAK, GUY MADISON, GARY G HELLMANN, SAIMA AFZAL, ADRIAN JAEGGI, PAULO TOLENTINO, JOÃO BARBOSA, JULIAN PRICE, EDWARD HALL, HEDIN BRØNNER, DOUGLAS FRY, FRANCA BORTOLOTTI, GABRIEL PONS CORTÈS, URSULA LITZCKE, SCOTT, ZACHARY FISH, TIM DUFFY, SUNNY SMITH, JON WISMAN, DANIEL FRIEDMAN, WILLIAM BUCKNER, PAUL-GEORGE ARNAUD, LUKE GLOWACKI, GEORGIOS THEOPHANOUS, CHRIS WILLIAMSON, PETER WOLOSZYN, DAVID WILLIAMS, DIOGO COSTA, ANTON ERIKSSON, CHARLES MOREY, ALEX CHAU, AMAURI MARTÍNEZ, CORALIE CHEVALLIER, BANGALORE ATHEISTS, LARRY D. LEE JR., OLD HERRINGBONE, MICHAEL BAILEY, DAN SPERBER, ROBERT GRESSIS, IGOR N, JEFF MCMAHAN, JAKE ZUEHL, BARNABAS RADICS, MARK CAMPBELL, TOMAS DAUBNER, LUKE NISSEN, KIMBERLY JOHNSON, BENJAMIN GELBART, JESSICA NOWICKI, LINDA BRANDIN, NIKLAS CARLSSON, ISMAËL BENSLIMANE, GEORGE CHORIATIS, VALENTIN STEINMANN, PER KRAULIS, KATE VON GOELER, ALEXANDER HUBBARD, LIAM DUNAWAY, BR, MASOUD ALIMOHAMMADI, JONAS HERTNER, URSULA GOODENOUGH, GREGORY HASTINGS, DAVID PINSOF, SEAN NELSON, MIKE LAVIGNE, JOS KNECHT, ERIK ENGMAN, AND LUCY! A SPECIAL THANKS TO MY PRODUCERS, YZAR WEHBE, JIM FRANK, ŁUKASZ STAFINIAK, TOM VANEGDOM, BERNARD HUGUENEY, CURTIS DIXON, BENEDIKT MUELLER, THOMAS TRUMBLE, KATHRINE AND PATRICK TOBIN, JONCARLO MONTENEGRO, AL NICK ORTIZ, AND NICK GOLDEN! AND TO MY EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS, MATTHEW LAVENDER, SERGIU CODREANU, BOGDAN KANIVETS, AND ROSEY!

Mihai Patru is an Entrepreneur in Residence on Social Entrepreneurship at the Office of Technology Partnerships, University of California in Riverside. Prior, he was a Senior Fellow at the School of Public Policy, University of California in Riverside, where he designed and launched the first social entrepreneurship pre-accelerator at the University, SEED Lab. He serves as Executive Director of Caravanserai Project, a hybrid mission-driven venture he co-founded in 2016 which focuses on identifying, mobilizing and supporting change makers along their journeys. He founded Mozaïque, a social business working with artisans around the world to develop mechanisms meant to increase their financial predictability. He was involved in various capacities with numerous social impact ventures as part of initiatives like Echoing Green, European Social Innovation Challenge and Mentor Capital Networks. He started his professional career as a diplomat with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Romania serving in different capacities including advisor to the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Deputy Minister for Global Affairs. In 2015, he joined the Center for Transatlantic Relations, Johns Hopkins University, as Senior Fellow, and was the recipient of the U.S. State Department Transatlantic Diplomatic Fellowship (2013/2014 cohort). He completed his graduate work at Central European University in Budapest (MA '10) and Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies in Washington DC (MIPP '17).

We spoke with Joanna Talewicz about the Netflix Poland show Infamy (Infamia), on which she was an advisor. It was a fascinating conversation about navigating media representation, behind the scenes with other Roma involved in the series, activism, and more! Joanna Talewicz, PhD, is co-founder and president of the Foundation Towards Dialogue [Fundacja w Stronę Dialogu]. She is a researcher, educator, author, and activist. For twenty years she has been working for the benefit of the Roma community and minority rights. While her work focuses on Roma communities in Europe, her main topics relate to the Roma Holocaust and Roma refugees. A Doctor of Cultural Anthropology, she has also worked as an assistant professor in Jagiellonian University and University of Warsaw and is a graduate of the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion program at Judge Business School at the University of Cambridge. Joanna is a member of the Polish delegation in the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), and a Batory Foundation Award winner for constant integration, educational, psychological, legal and activation assistance for refugees of Roma origin. She was nominated by the US Embassy in Poland to the “Award for Global Anti-Racism Champions”. Her associations and experiences additionally include: the Alliance for Historical Dialogue and Accountability Program at Columbia University; the Leadership Academy for Poland; a grantee of the Fulbright scholarship; the Tom Lantos Institute; the European Commission Marie Curie program - Conferences and Training Courses on Multi-Disciplinary and Cross-National Approaches to Romani Studies; the Central European University; and the International Leadership Visitor Program of the U.S. State Department.Foundation Towards Dialogue https://fundacjawstronedialogu.pl/en/home/You can support the organization here. Find on social media under the name Fundacja w Stronę DialoguReports on Romani rights issues: https://fundacjawstronedialogu.pl/en/reports/https://fundacjawstronedialogu.pl/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Report_They-Are-Not-Refugees_They-Are-Travellers.pdfInformation on Edward Paczkowski : https://wiadomosci.onet.pl/tylko-w-onecie/rocznica-wyzwolenia-auschwitz-edward-paczkowski-rom-ktory-przezyl-zaglade/wyznn8tRomanistan is hosted by Jessica Reidy/Jezmina Von Thiele and Paulina VerminskiConceived of by Paulina VerminskiEdited by CherubWith Music by Viktor PachasAnd Artwork by Elijah Vardo

Read the full transcript here. What interesting social phenomena can be observed at nightclubs? What are "whales" hoping to achieve by spending big at nightclubs? Trying too obviously to increase social status tends to backfire; so how can people buy status without appearing to do so? What do "promoters" gain from these social interactions? How does their work differ from or overlap with sex work? How can they make money without being seen as "gold-diggers"? What ethnicities tend to comprise these nightclub groups? How do wealthy people attempt to navigate the norms of the various elite substrata which expect them both to put their wealth on display and to do so without being ostentatious or gaudy?Ashley Mears is a professor of sociology and women's, gender, and sexuality studies at Boston University, and she's the co-founder of the Ethnographic Cafe and BU's Precarity Lab. She received her BA in sociology from the University of Georgia in 2002 and her PhD in sociology at New York University in 2009. Working primarily at the intersections of economic and cultural sociology and gender, she studies how societies value people and things; she researches value and exchange in the context of labor, beauty, free stuff, elites, consumption, and social media; and she has written on theory and qualitative methods. She has held visiting positions at the University of Amsterdam and the Central European University in Budapest. In 2021-2022, she was a Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Budapest. She currently serves on the editorial boards of American Sociological Review and Qualitative Sociology. Learn more about her at her website, ashleymears.com.Further reading:Very Important People: Status and Beauty in the Global Party Circuit by Ashley Mears" The Great Happiness Space: Tale of an Osaka Love Thief " [Read more]

On Sunday, the people of Poland cast their votes in an election that some have called a battle for the country's soul. When we released this episode, we were still watching for the various parties to confirm the parliamentary coalitions that would lead to the final result. But experts tell us no matter who wins, one thing is likely to stay the same: Poland's hardline approach to refugees from its eastern border with Belarus. So today, we head to that border, where scientists are studying the impact of rising militarization and anti-refugee activity on the region. It's not always easy — because the Polish border guard isn't always keen to hand out the answers these scientists would love to add to their analysis. But Eliot Higgins, the founder of investigative website Bellingcat, says civilians have an edge these days when states won't answer our questions. We have an unprecedented amount of information at our fingertips — and we're using it to challenge our governments around the world in all kinds of ways. A NOTE: We're heartbroken by the sudden Hamas attack on Israelis and by the Israeli airstrikes and devastation in Gaza. Donate to Doctors Without Borders as it continues to offer impartial medical care to those most impacted by war. GUESTS: Katarzyna Nowak, University of Warsaw; Michał Żmihorski, Mammal Research Institute; Maciej Kisilowski, Central European University; Eliot Higgins, Bellingcat ADDITIONAL RESOURCES: Threats to Conservation From National Security Interests, Katarzyna Nowak, Dinah Bear, Anwesha Dutta, Myles Traphagen, Michał Żmihorski, and Bogdan Jaroszewicz, Conservation Biology Recognizing Opposition Movements is Riskier Than It Seems, John Reid Wilcox, Inkstick Media Monitoring the Environmental Consequences of the War in Ukraine, Jon Letman, Inkstick Media Can National Reconciliation Defeat Populism? Maciej Kisilowski, Anna Wojciuk. Project Syndicate. Thanks to Sławomir Makaruk for additional field production.

Support the podcast, become a patron, get additional benefits: https://bit.ly/3nMGeYjIn this episode we welcome the newest co-host of Talk Eastern Europe Alexandra Karppi! Alexandra is a research analyst at Freedom House covering the Western Balkans and Central and Eastern Europe for Nations in Transit. She has also held research and editorial positions at the Institute for Social Research in Zagreb, Central European University's Center for European Neighborhood Studies, and the Post-Conflict Research Center. Welcome Alexandra!In the round of news, Adam and Alexandra discuss the recent Slovak elections, the Azerbaijani offensive to retake the Nagorno-Karabakh region, and the upcoming Polish parliamentary elections.Later they are joined by Grigol Julukhidze, the director of the Foreign Policy Council, a think tank in Tbilisi who specialises in security studies and propaganda research. They discuss the growing role of Russian influence in Georgia and what it means for Georgia's Euro-Atlantic agenda. They also look at how the recent moves in Nagorno-Karabakh and how it reflects a decreasing role of Russia in that part of the region. For further reading: “In the shadow of impeachment”, by: Giorgi Beroshvili, New Eastern Europe 5 October 2023: https://neweasterneurope.eu/2023/10/05/in-the-shadow-of-impeachment/“Putin's hidden war. How the Kremlin is bombing us on the internet” by: Grigol Julukhidze, New Eastern Europe Issue 1 2023, https://neweasterneurope.eu/2023/02/15/putins-hidden-kremlin-internet/ Follow Alexandra on Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/AlexandraKarppi/This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/4065065/advertisement

Nineteen months since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the books are coming thick and fast. Fortunately, each tells a different and compelling story. Like other recent books, Gwendolyn Sasse's Russia's War Against Ukraine (Polity, 2023) analyses three decades of diverging Russian and Ukrainian politics and society, burgeoning Russian neo-imperialism, and Western temerity. Unique to this book, however, is the restoration of Crimea to centre-stage in the conflict. The war didn't start in February 2022 when Russian and Ukrainian troops battled on the northern outskirts of Kyiv. It didn't even start in April 2014 when Ukrainian forces tried to retake Sloviansk. "Russia's war against Ukraine began with the annexation of Crimea on 27 February 2014,” writes Professor Sasse, and the signal it sent to secessionists in the Donbas. It may only be 69 years since the Soviet government assigned Crimea to Ukraine but, as she explains, Russia's claim to the peninsular is no stronger. Crimea threads through the book on post-Soviet Ukrainian and Russian histories, the war, and its potential aftermath. Gwendolyn Sasse directs the Centre for East European and International Studies in Berlin and is a professor at Humboldt university. Before that, she was a professor of comparative politics at Oxford and taught at the Central European University and the London School of Economics. Her 2007 book - The Crimea Question - won the Alec Nove Prize for scholarly work in Russian, Soviet and post-Soviet studies. *The author's own book recommendations are The Frontline: Essays on Ukraine's Past and Present by Serhii Plokhy (Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 2021) and 100 Kinder: Kindersachbuch über den Alltag von Kindern auf der ganzen Welt by Christoph Drösser and Nora Coenenberg (Gabriel Verlag, 2019) Tim Gwynn Jones is an economic and political-risk analyst at Medley Advisors, who also writes the twenty4two newsletter on Substack and also hosts the In The Room podcast series. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Nineteen months since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the books are coming thick and fast. Fortunately, each tells a different and compelling story. Like other recent books, Gwendolyn Sasse's Russia's War Against Ukraine (Polity, 2023) analyses three decades of diverging Russian and Ukrainian politics and society, burgeoning Russian neo-imperialism, and Western temerity. Unique to this book, however, is the restoration of Crimea to centre-stage in the conflict. The war didn't start in February 2022 when Russian and Ukrainian troops battled on the northern outskirts of Kyiv. It didn't even start in April 2014 when Ukrainian forces tried to retake Sloviansk. "Russia's war against Ukraine began with the annexation of Crimea on 27 February 2014,” writes Professor Sasse, and the signal it sent to secessionists in the Donbas. It may only be 69 years since the Soviet government assigned Crimea to Ukraine but, as she explains, Russia's claim to the peninsular is no stronger. Crimea threads through the book on post-Soviet Ukrainian and Russian histories, the war, and its potential aftermath. Gwendolyn Sasse directs the Centre for East European and International Studies in Berlin and is a professor at Humboldt university. Before that, she was a professor of comparative politics at Oxford and taught at the Central European University and the London School of Economics. Her 2007 book - The Crimea Question - won the Alec Nove Prize for scholarly work in Russian, Soviet and post-Soviet studies. *The author's own book recommendations are The Frontline: Essays on Ukraine's Past and Present by Serhii Plokhy (Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 2021) and 100 Kinder: Kindersachbuch über den Alltag von Kindern auf der ganzen Welt by Christoph Drösser and Nora Coenenberg (Gabriel Verlag, 2019) Tim Gwynn Jones is an economic and political-risk analyst at Medley Advisors, who also writes the twenty4two newsletter on Substack and also hosts the In The Room podcast series. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history