Past Events

	Title	Date	Type	Speakers
	Vienna meets Prague	Thu, 21.04.2022, 19:00	Festivals		Vienna meets Prague Praha//cross over Thu, 21.04.2022, 19:00 Speakers: Series: Festivals Vom 21.-24. April 2022 wird im Rahmen von Vienna meets Prague wieder tschechische Kunst und Kultur in Wien präsentiert. Unter dem Motto Praha//cross over bietet das Kulturfestival in Kooperation mit der Botschaft der Tschechischen Republik, dem Tschechischen Zentrum und dem Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen ein Programm des grenzübergreifenden und interdisziplinären Dialogs. Hauptspielstätte ist das Architekturzentrum Wien im Museumsquartier. Read more
Vienna meets Prague Praha//cross over Thu, 21.04.2022, 19:00 Speakers: Series: Festivals Vom 21.-24. April 2022 wird im Rahmen von Vienna meets Prague wieder tschechische Kunst und Kultur in Wien präsentiert. Unter dem Motto Praha//cross over bietet das Kulturfestival in Kooperation mit der Botschaft der Tschechischen Republik, dem Tschechischen Zentrum und dem Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen ein Programm des grenzübergreifenden und interdisziplinären Dialogs. Hauptspielstätte ist das Architekturzentrum Wien im Museumsquartier. Read more
	Reporting on the War in Ukraine	Wed, 20.04.2022, 18:00	Panels and Discussions	Katherine Younger Nataliya Gumenyuk	Reporting on the War in Ukraine Wed, 20.04.2022, 18:00 Speakers: Katherine Younger Nataliya Gumenyuk Series: Panels and Discussions Journalist Nataliya Gumenyuk talked about how Ukrainian society is responding to the Russian invasion and the role narrative journalism can play in shaping broader understanding of the war. Read more

	The “Migrant” in the Middle: How the Struggle for Decolonization and the Struggle against Fascism Are Linked	Wed, 20.04.2022, 16:00	Seminars and Colloquia	Ayşe ÇağlarGregory Feldman	The “Migrant” in the Middle: How the Struggle for Decolonization and the Struggle against Fascism Are Linked Wed, 20.04.2022, 16:00 Speakers: Ayşe ÇağlarGregory Feldman Series: Seminars and Colloquia The “migrant” – as the figure outside the polity – stands at the intersection of two global struggles: that of decolonization and that against fascism. An emancipatory politics for all involved will remain elusive until 1) the link between these two struggles is clarified; and 2) those structurally aligned with the category of “white citizen” realize that they, too, are impoverished by the dehumanization of the Other. This paper firstly explains how fascism is baked into modern sovereign power beginning with Hobbes’s Leviathan and fully expressed in Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. By fascism, I mean the inclination of an atomized and insecure national-cum-racial majority to form homogenous mass movements that regard the state with suspicion and that targets all others as existential threats. The paper secondly argues that this sovereign arrangement also diminishes the “white citizen” in the majority because that person must sacrifice their own perspective to find safety in conformity, but at the expense of becoming monstrous versions of themselves as they support a politics of oppression. Dismantling fascism’s enabling logic corresponds to decolonization as both struggles necessarily question the basis of modern politics: the atomized individual. The paper, then, draws on Frantz Fanon and James Baldwin who, each in their own way, outline an alternative (and more realistic) political subject that is both inherently related to others and utterly unique in its own worldly perspective. However fleetingly, this subject is poised for an alternative sovereign action premised upon the fact of human plurality rather than myth of national-cum-racial homogeneity. Read more
The “Migrant” in the Middle: How the Struggle for Decolonization and the Struggle against Fascism Are Linked Wed, 20.04.2022, 16:00 Speakers: Ayşe ÇağlarGregory Feldman Series: Seminars and Colloquia The “migrant” – as the figure outside the polity – stands at the intersection of two global struggles: that of decolonization and that against fascism. An emancipatory politics for all involved will remain elusive until 1) the link between these two struggles is clarified; and 2) those structurally aligned with the category of “white citizen” realize that they, too, are impoverished by the dehumanization of the Other. This paper firstly explains how fascism is baked into modern sovereign power beginning with Hobbes’s Leviathan and fully expressed in Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. By fascism, I mean the inclination of an atomized and insecure national-cum-racial majority to form homogenous mass movements that regard the state with suspicion and that targets all others as existential threats. The paper secondly argues that this sovereign arrangement also diminishes the “white citizen” in the majority because that person must sacrifice their own perspective to find safety in conformity, but at the expense of becoming monstrous versions of themselves as they support a politics of oppression. Dismantling fascism’s enabling logic corresponds to decolonization as both struggles necessarily question the basis of modern politics: the atomized individual. The paper, then, draws on Frantz Fanon and James Baldwin who, each in their own way, outline an alternative (and more realistic) political subject that is both inherently related to others and utterly unique in its own worldly perspective. However fleetingly, this subject is poised for an alternative sovereign action premised upon the fact of human plurality rather than myth of national-cum-racial homogeneity. Read more
	Idealism and Capitalism: Two Sides of the Beginnings of Private Higher Education in the Czech Republic	Tue, 19.04.2022, 16:00	Seminars and Colloquia	Ludger Hagedorn Milada Polišenská	Idealism and Capitalism: Two Sides of the Beginnings of Private Higher Education in the Czech Republic Tue, 19.04.2022, 16:00 Speakers: Ludger Hagedorn Milada Polišenská Series: Seminars and Colloquia The lecture will focus on the origins and early years of private colleges in the Czech Republic. Polišenská’s earlier research on this topic will be supplemented by the findings in the framework of her Fellowship investigating the impact of underground universities on the post-communist transformation of tertiary education in Czechia. The private higher education in Czechia, preconditioned by the collapse of Communism, was part of the post-communist transformation and was impacted by the dynamic international changes in higher education in the late 1990s and by the accession of the Czech Republic to the EU in 2004. Read more
Idealism and Capitalism: Two Sides of the Beginnings of Private Higher Education in the Czech Republic Tue, 19.04.2022, 16:00 Speakers: Ludger Hagedorn Milada Polišenská Series: Seminars and Colloquia The lecture will focus on the origins and early years of private colleges in the Czech Republic. Polišenská’s earlier research on this topic will be supplemented by the findings in the framework of her Fellowship investigating the impact of underground universities on the post-communist transformation of tertiary education in Czechia. The private higher education in Czechia, preconditioned by the collapse of Communism, was part of the post-communist transformation and was impacted by the dynamic international changes in higher education in the late 1990s and by the accession of the Czech Republic to the EU in 2004. Read more
	Denial, Ignorance and Wilful Unknowing: The Episteme of the Israeli Occupation	Mon, 11.04.2022, 16:00	Seminars and Colloquia	Merav Amir Mieke Verloo	Denial, Ignorance and Wilful Unknowing: The Episteme of the Israeli Occupation Mon, 11.04.2022, 16:00 Speakers: Merav Amir Mieke Verloo Series: Seminars and Colloquia To the external onlooker, a puzzling predicament plagues Israeli politics. While the majority of Jewish-Israelis state that they support reaching a peace agreement with the Palestinians abiding by the two-state solution, this public still has been repeatedly electing leaders who oppose reaching such an agreement for over two decades to date. Most often, this apparent anomaly is explained through the disillusion of Jewish-Israelis from the peace process, which has swayed the Israeli electoral power towards nationalistic hardliners. However, a more fundamental change has occurred in this period, rendering the question of the position of the Jewish-Israeli electorate towards peace obsolete. Accordingly, Jewish-Israelis are increasingly becoming ignorant regarding the causes fueling regional hostilities: that Israel maintains an occupation, and that Israel is holding millions of Palestinians as occupied subjects under a military rule. This talk explored the political technologies and discursive strategies through which this ignorance has been induced, and how the politico-spatiality of the occupied Palestinian territory has so successfully been eradicated from the collective Israeli consciousness. Through this analysis Merav Amir demonstrated that this epistemic reshaping has not only reconfigured the geography of the Israeli polity for this public, but has also warped the region’s political time, and disrupted the State’s own political trajectory, as it bestows the (presumed) future eventuality onto the present. Read more
Denial, Ignorance and Wilful Unknowing: The Episteme of the Israeli Occupation Mon, 11.04.2022, 16:00 Speakers: Merav Amir Mieke Verloo Series: Seminars and Colloquia To the external onlooker, a puzzling predicament plagues Israeli politics. While the majority of Jewish-Israelis state that they support reaching a peace agreement with the Palestinians abiding by the two-state solution, this public still has been repeatedly electing leaders who oppose reaching such an agreement for over two decades to date. Most often, this apparent anomaly is explained through the disillusion of Jewish-Israelis from the peace process, which has swayed the Israeli electoral power towards nationalistic hardliners. However, a more fundamental change has occurred in this period, rendering the question of the position of the Jewish-Israeli electorate towards peace obsolete. Accordingly, Jewish-Israelis are increasingly becoming ignorant regarding the causes fueling regional hostilities: that Israel maintains an occupation, and that Israel is holding millions of Palestinians as occupied subjects under a military rule. This talk explored the political technologies and discursive strategies through which this ignorance has been induced, and how the politico-spatiality of the occupied Palestinian territory has so successfully been eradicated from the collective Israeli consciousness. Through this analysis Merav Amir demonstrated that this epistemic reshaping has not only reconfigured the geography of the Israeli polity for this public, but has also warped the region’s political time, and disrupted the State’s own political trajectory, as it bestows the (presumed) future eventuality onto the present. Read more
	Years that Changed the Face of Europe: 1989 and 2022	Wed, 06.04.2022, 18:00	Exhibition	Dariusz Stola Katherine Younger Ludger HagedornTimothy Garton Ash	Years that Changed the Face of Europe: 1989 and 2022 Wed, 06.04.2022, 18:00 Speakers: Dariusz Stola Katherine Younger Ludger HagedornTimothy Garton Ash Series: Exhibition In his talk, Timothy Garton Ash reflected upon the years 1989 and 2022 as dramatic events that “change the face of Europe for ever,” as the title of his Guardian column put it. The presentation was followed by a discussion with Polish historian Dariusz Stola (like Garton Ash a member of the IWM’s Board) and IWM Permanent Fellow Ludger Hagedorn. The event was moderated by IWM Permanent Fellow Katherine Younger. Read more
Years that Changed the Face of Europe: 1989 and 2022 Wed, 06.04.2022, 18:00 Speakers: Dariusz Stola Katherine Younger Ludger HagedornTimothy Garton Ash Series: Exhibition In his talk, Timothy Garton Ash reflected upon the years 1989 and 2022 as dramatic events that “change the face of Europe for ever,” as the title of his Guardian column put it. The presentation was followed by a discussion with Polish historian Dariusz Stola (like Garton Ash a member of the IWM’s Board) and IWM Permanent Fellow Ludger Hagedorn. The event was moderated by IWM Permanent Fellow Katherine Younger. Read more
	How Does - And How Should - The EU Tell Europe’s Story to the World?	Tue, 05.04.2022, 18:00	Panels and Discussions	Ivan Vejvoda Julia De Clerck-Sachsse Luuk van MiddelaarNathalie Tocci	How Does - And How Should - The EU Tell Europe’s Story to the World? Tue, 05.04.2022, 18:00 Speakers: Ivan Vejvoda Julia De Clerck-Sachsse Luuk van MiddelaarNathalie Tocci Series: Panels and Discussions In addition to the battlefield, today’s confrontation of alternative ideologies is increasingly playing out in the realm of words. States and non-state actors alike routinely use disinformation and ‘alternative facts’ to sow confusion, breed fear, and undermine trust. In this brave new world, a compelling narrative will be paramount for the survival of the European project. How can the European Union best tell its story in these difficult times? Read more
How Does - And How Should - The EU Tell Europe’s Story to the World? Tue, 05.04.2022, 18:00 Speakers: Ivan Vejvoda Julia De Clerck-Sachsse Luuk van MiddelaarNathalie Tocci Series: Panels and Discussions In addition to the battlefield, today’s confrontation of alternative ideologies is increasingly playing out in the realm of words. States and non-state actors alike routinely use disinformation and ‘alternative facts’ to sow confusion, breed fear, and undermine trust. In this brave new world, a compelling narrative will be paramount for the survival of the European project. How can the European Union best tell its story in these difficult times? Read more
	Governance of Forced Migration in South Asia	Tue, 05.04.2022, 16:00	Seminars and Colloquia	Ayşe ÇağlarSabyasachi Basu Ray Chaudhury	Governance of Forced Migration in South Asia Need for a Decolonial Approach Tue, 05.04.2022, 16:00 Speakers: Ayşe ÇağlarSabyasachi Basu Ray Chaudhury Series: Seminars and Colloquia The world has been witnessing frequent mixed and massive flows of population in the recent times, when refugees, asylum-seekers, and migrants on the move together can hardly be differentiated. The New York Declaration 2016, and its two Global Compacts—the “Global Compact on Refugees” (GCR) and the “Global Compact on Safe Orderly and Regular Migration” (GCM)—raised expectations for better governance of international human migration by committingitself to securing the rights and protection of refugees and migrants in the context of human rights discourse and working toward sustainable development. But even this laudable initiative seems to have been triggered specifically by Europe’s reaction to its 2015 “crisis” and the disconcerting images that circulated as migrants and refugees from different parts of the world crossed the Mediterranean to reach European shores, with many perishing in the sea. Read more
Governance of Forced Migration in South Asia Need for a Decolonial Approach Tue, 05.04.2022, 16:00 Speakers: Ayşe ÇağlarSabyasachi Basu Ray Chaudhury Series: Seminars and Colloquia The world has been witnessing frequent mixed and massive flows of population in the recent times, when refugees, asylum-seekers, and migrants on the move together can hardly be differentiated. The New York Declaration 2016, and its two Global Compacts—the “Global Compact on Refugees” (GCR) and the “Global Compact on Safe Orderly and Regular Migration” (GCM)—raised expectations for better governance of international human migration by committingitself to securing the rights and protection of refugees and migrants in the context of human rights discourse and working toward sustainable development. But even this laudable initiative seems to have been triggered specifically by Europe’s reaction to its 2015 “crisis” and the disconcerting images that circulated as migrants and refugees from different parts of the world crossed the Mediterranean to reach European shores, with many perishing in the sea. Read more
	Ukraine and the Future of Europe	Tue, 05.04.2022, 14:00	Conferences and Workshops	Ivan Vejvoda Katherine YoungerTimothy Garton Ash	Ukraine and the Future of Europe Tue, 05.04.2022, 14:00 Speakers: Ivan Vejvoda Katherine YoungerTimothy Garton Ash Series: Conferences and Workshops As Ukrainians resist the Russian assault on their country, they speak powerfully of defending the principles and values on which the European project rests, and of Ukraine's place in Europe. The war has opened an opportunity for the European Union to reaffirm its purpose, as not merely an economic union but a normative alliance. Will this moment of European unity and resolve lead to lasting change? What can Ukraine expect from Europe? And what can Europe learn from Ukraine? Read more
Ukraine and the Future of Europe Tue, 05.04.2022, 14:00 Speakers: Ivan Vejvoda Katherine YoungerTimothy Garton Ash Series: Conferences and Workshops As Ukrainians resist the Russian assault on their country, they speak powerfully of defending the principles and values on which the European project rests, and of Ukraine's place in Europe. The war has opened an opportunity for the European Union to reaffirm its purpose, as not merely an economic union but a normative alliance. Will this moment of European unity and resolve lead to lasting change? What can Ukraine expect from Europe? And what can Europe learn from Ukraine? Read more
	Tempering Power	Mon, 04.04.2022, 16:00	Seminars and Colloquia	Adam Sitze Ludger Hagedorn Martin Krygier	Tempering Power How to Think, and Not to Think, about and beyond the Rule of Law. Mon, 04.04.2022, 16:00 Speakers: Adam Sitze Ludger Hagedorn Martin Krygier Series: Seminars and Colloquia The rule of law came to enjoy unprecedented acclaim after (and, it can be argued, directly because of) the collapse of communism in Europe. In recent decades, and throughout the world, there has likely been more said, paid, and promoted in its name than ever before. But quantity has not always gone together with quality. The rule of law has been the beneficiary of many more stale words than fresh thoughts. And today its aura has dimmed. Yet it is hugely important to think well about it and find better ways. Read more
Tempering Power How to Think, and Not to Think, about and beyond the Rule of Law. Mon, 04.04.2022, 16:00 Speakers: Adam Sitze Ludger Hagedorn Martin Krygier Series: Seminars and Colloquia The rule of law came to enjoy unprecedented acclaim after (and, it can be argued, directly because of) the collapse of communism in Europe. In recent decades, and throughout the world, there has likely been more said, paid, and promoted in its name than ever before. But quantity has not always gone together with quality. The rule of law has been the beneficiary of many more stale words than fresh thoughts. And today its aura has dimmed. Yet it is hugely important to think well about it and find better ways. Read more