Professor Elzbieta Matynia to Receive the 2023 Courage in Public Scholarship Award
Here at TCDS “headquarters” we are pleased to convey – while somewhat taken aback – the following completely unexpected announcement from the NSSR-Europe Collective:
The NSSR-Europe Collective and the wider TCDS Network have nominated Elzbieta Matynia, Professor of Sociology and Liberal Studies and Director of the Transregional Center for Democratic Studies at the New School for Social Research, for the next Courage in Public Scholarship Award. The nomination has been signed by sixty-seven representatives of the NSSR-Europe Collective and the wider TCDS network from around the world.
The nomination was supported by the following rationale, quote:
Professor Elzbieta Matynia, sociologist and historian of ideas, is a generous mentor and undaunted academic leader committed to the idea and practice of democracy and freedom of thought worldwide. Inspired by her deep experience of exile, she has built a transnational and transatlantic community of scholars, leaders, and activists who extend her vision of dialogic and performative democracy across the world. Through this network of compassionate doers and thinkers, she has created a universe in which borders are erased, ideas are generated, and possibilities for participation in public life are expanded. The award recognizes her original interventions whereby bold conceptual ideas galvanize courage in the pursuit of new and hopeful actions for the future of democratic culture and politics, even in dark times.
The award will be bestowed during a ceremony at the conclusion of the 30th anniversary edition of the Democracy & Diversity Summer Institute in Wrocław, Poland, in the summer of 2023.
Please join us in congratulating Elzbieta Matynia on this highly-deserved honor that recognizes her contributions to transnational public scholarship!
The NSSR-Europe Collective and the TCDS Network
The Courage in Public Scholarship Award was envisioned in 2014 at the conclusion of the Transregional Center for Democratic Studies’ (TCDS) Democracy & Diversity Summer Institute in Wrocław, Poland, by a group of New School for Social Research (NSSR) and TCDS alumni living and working in Europe. They discussed the meaning of The New School academic experience that had shaped their personal and professional lives: its openness to others, its critical approach, its intellectual engagement, and its culture of dare-to-know and dare-to-discuss. Guided by The New School’s commitment to scholarly excellence, civic engagement, and ethical commitment to the larger world, they formed the NSSR-Europe Collective. Drawing on the ethos of the University in Exile and the conviction that, especially in dark times, universities carry a special responsibility vis-à-vis society, they proposed to establish an annual tribute to exceptionally audacious thinkers, teachers, and doers through an annual Courage in Public Scholarship Award. To date, the Award has been conferred upon five recipients: Ann Barr Snitow (2015), Agnes Heller (2016), Ewa Letowska (2017), Jan Tomasz Gross (2019) and Osman Kavala (2021).
