COURSES
31st Democracy & Diversity Graduate Summer Institute
WROCŁAW, POLAND
July 4-19, 2025
RECLAIMING DEMOCRATIC FUTURES
4 COURSES OFFERED:
Liberal Crises: History, Theory, Lessons
Andreas Kalyvas, Associate Professor of Politics, The New School for Social Research
The course revisits liberalism in terms of its crises. It focuses on the main theories of liberal crisis and examines the politico-theoretical debates on three major historical crises of liberal democracy. Two from the last century and one still actual: the interwar crisis of the 1920s and 1930s; the postwar crisis of the 1960s and 1970s; and the current crisis that originated in the global financial collapse of 2008 and is connected with a growing polarization, the weakening of the political center, the historical defeat of the left, the persistent radicalization of the right and its successive electoral victories, and the autocratic and authoritarian mutations of the liberal constitutional state. In short, this last crisis is associated with the rise of what is commonly described as authoritarian or right-wing populism in the age of neoliberal globalization. The course will treat these three liberal crises as cases to explore in relation to the democratic dilemmas of the liberal project, its historical possibilities and limitations, and the tension between its normative promises and its commitment to capital. We will seek to understand the ways these crises have reconfigured democratic life, questioned liberal assumptions and certainties, and mobilized, on the one hand, revolutionary and emancipatory desires, mainly in the past, and on the other hand, authoritarian, conservative, and reactionary fears, and anxieties, as is the case presently. Readings include selections from the following authors: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels; Max Weber, Carl Schmitt, Harold J. Laski, and Antonio Gramsci; Hannah Arendt, Jürgen Habermas, Clauss Offe, Samuel Huntington, Nikos Poulantzas, and Reinhart Koselleck; Wolfgang Streeck, Chantal Mouffe, Nancy Fraser, Pierre Rosanvallon, Levitsky and Ziblatt, Wendy Brown, and Nadia Urbinati.
Imagining Other Futures: Gender, Class and Race in Democratic Projects
Shireen Hassim, Canada150 Research Chair in Gender and African Politics, Carleton University, Ottawa, and the 2025 Hans Speier Visiting professor at The New School for Social Research
Throughout history, people have organised collectively to challenge injustices and advance projects of democracy. The movements they create are articulated in different registers and offer various ways in which to think about democracy beyond a set of procedural imperatives. These ideas are often expressed in the form of manifestos, or statements of collective purpose. In this course, we will read these manifestos not simply as mobilising documents with political-strategic aims, but also as expressions of utopian visions for just societies. What is meant by justice? What kinds of injustices are centred for action and what are understood to be the sources of such injustices? How is freedom understood? Who is to be included among the free?
We will study, among others:
A range of feminist manifestos such as Olympe des Gouges’ Declaration of the Rights of Women (1791), the SCUM Manifesto (1968), Wages for Housework (1975), the South African Women’s Charters (1954 and 1994), the Combahee River Collective Statement (1975) and
Classic texts of the left such as The Communist Manifesto (1848), An Anarchist Manifesto (1895), Declaration of the Occupation of New York City (2013)
Global documents such as the United Nations Declaration (1948), the Bandung Principles (1955), and the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995)
Democracy’s Endgame?
Making Sense of the Political Today
Elzbieta Matynia, Professor of Sociology and Liberal Studies, The New School for Social Research
It was just over three decades ago that the world witnessed measurable success in the creation of both a political culture and political mechanisms that made possible a peaceful dismantling of military dictatorships and oppressive regimes. But people today — in various parts of that same world — have found themselves at another inflection point: democracy is being abandoned, a trend that is not confined to any one region or country.
This forward-looking seminar is organized around a set of historically and theoretically informed conversations addressing the factors that facilitated the unprecedented setbacks to democracy and the growing appeal of its regressive alternatives. While discussing the precariousness of democracy and the processes of its making and unmaking, we will examine the shifting of social imaginaries — those collective interpretive frameworks — to make sense of the dynamics of social fears and hopes and, ultimately, of the political and the social today. In our critical explorations in democracy, we will depart from the modern separation between political and ethical commitments and reach out to the arts and literature for the profound insights they can provide. While a part of the seminar will focus on what went wrong, in our final considerations on the infrastructure of public hope, we will explore ways to sustain democratic promise and the possibilities for a renewal of the political.
The readings include works by Pierre Rosanvallon, Cornelius Castoriadis, Paul Ricoeur, Achille Mbembe, Eugene Ionesco, Samuel Beckett, Hannah Arendt, Thomas Mann, Claude Lefort, Leszek Kolakowski, Ernesto Laclau, Philippe C. Schmitter and Terry Karl, Etienne Balibar, Umberto Eco, Judith Butler, and others.
America is Hard to Find: Crisis, Resistance, and Renewal
Jeremy Varon, Professor of History, The New School for Social Research and Eugene Lang College
In 1968, the radical Catholic priest Daniel Berrigan burned draft files in protest of the Vietnam War. Going on the run after his arrest, he wrote the poem “America is Hard to Find” as a way to express what he felt was the destructiveness of the American way of life. His quest was to find, save, and help create a country he could believe in. He was not alone.
Despite the great wealth and power of the United States, Americans have long feared that the country is losing its way, estranged from its defining values or essence.
This course uses persisting claims of crisis and decline as a frame to understand post-World War Two American history and the place of the United States in the world. We will cover the Cold War, the Civil Rights and Black Power movements, the Vietnam War and antiwar protest, the “Second Cold War” under Ronald Reagan, right-wing critiques of the liberal state, LGBTQ activism, and the so-called “War on Terror.” Particular attention will be given to the ways various historical actors have tried to define American values and aimed to save the nation’s soul, in the face of perceived crisis. The political repression of dissident voices is a central part of the American story. But vigorous protest of the status quo and powerful social movements is part of the story too, contributing to the strength of American democracy and its historic pluralism. Through it all, we will ask if the second Trump administration and larger MAGA movement represents a fundamental transformation of American identity. Today, countless people the world over are asking. “What is happening to America?” “Where has America Gone?” The course will combine 1) videotaped lectures about historical topics 2) works of history and literature to illuminate the American past and 3) contemporary works that will help us evaluate if America — in the current assaults on freedom, democracy, and the rule of law — is at risk of losing itself forever.
For any questions about the Institute or the application process please email us at tcds@newschool.edu.
