In Munich, Munich Dialogues on Democracy had a wonderful array of speakers, profiting from Zoom to be able to welcome experts from various locations to talk about the state of democracy around the world.
We kicked the year off in February with Arun Chaudhary, political operative and White House Official Videographer under President Obama, who spoke to us about what makes a successful campaign in a healthy democracy. In March, former Ambassador and President of the World Bank Robert B. Zoellick joined us to talk about the evolution of U.S. diplomacy and foreign policy, and in May, Sterling Professor of History and Director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for Slavery, Resistance and Abolition at Yale, David W. Blight, joined us for a wonderful conversation about his Pulitzer Prize winning biography of Frederick Douglass.
In June, Jacob Urowsky Professor of Philosophy at Yale, Jason Stanley, joined us for an event co-sponsored by the Munich Documentation Centre for the History of National Socialism, talking about his work on fascism, and in September we were able to be together live and inaugurate the beautifully renovated theater at Amerikahaus in Munich. Princeton Professor of Politics and award winning author Jan-Werner Mueller spoke about his latest book Democracy Rules, taking on the true definition of democracy and how we can re-invent our social contract to strengthen it. This event showed us that a hybrid format is possible, and our events going forward will hopefully therefore be available live to all of you online and for view on YouTube afterwards. Finally in October we had an amazing panel on what is going on in India today with Yale professor Steven I. Wilkinson, Founder and Editor-in-Chief of The Wire Siddharth Varadarajan , and the Senior Fellow for India, Pakistan and South East Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations Manjari Chaterjee Miller.
We have exciting speakers lined up for 2022, starting with The Atlantic’s George Packer ('82), whose December event had to be postponed due to the resurgence of the corona virus. The events are always posted on the Yale Club of Germany website, and you can sign up to follow Munich Dialogues directly at https://www.dialoguesondemocracy.com, where you can also watch most of the above events with links to the YouTube channel of our partners at Amerikahaus Munich.