Monday, May 5, 6:30 p.m.
Location: Humboldt Universität zu Berlin / Unter den Linden 6 / Senatssaal / 10117 Berlin

How the National Security Constitution Evolved and What To Do about It?

Harold Hongju Koh, Former Legal Adviser, US Department of State; Sterling Professor of International Law, Yale Law School

Americans have long trumpeted the checks and balances that animate their constitution, but the dramatic first 100 days of Donald Trump’s presidency have called this into question. In this talk, and in his new book, The National Security Constitution in the 21st Century, Harold Hongju Koh, Sterling Professor of International Law and former Dean at Yale Law School, former Legal Adviser and Assistant Secretary for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor at the State Department, explains how the national security laws in the U.S. have changed. From a “shared powers” model — where responsibility and authority are divided between different branches of government (especially between the President and Congress) — to “executive unilateralism” — where the President increasingly acts alone in national security matters, without needing approval or input from Congress. Koh’s lecture will investigate how the second Trump presidency has already elevated executive unilateralism into an overarching constitutional rationale. Join the Academy and Harold Hongju Koh to explore this historical shift in the United States, and to learn what actions should be taken now in response to this change.

In cooperation with the Integrative Research Institute Law & Society, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin

Tuesday, May 6, 7:30 p.m.

In Search of Truth: A Journalist’s Journey

Mona El-Naggar, International Journalist and Filmmaker, The New York Times

In this talk, veteran journalist Mona El-Naggar offers a close look at her career as a reporter and storyteller, exploring the nuances of how journalists gather information and strive for the elusive goal of objectivity. She discusses the often intimate, complex relationships journalists build with sources and how facts can sometimes fall short of fully capturing the truth. El-Naggar also explores the interplay between what we understand with our minds and what we perceive with our hearts, revealing the challenges that shape a journalist’s quest for meaning in the stories they tell.

Monday, May 12, 6:30 p.m.
Location: Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin - Unter den Linden / Humboldt-Saal / Unter den Linden 8 / 10117 Berlin

History and Geopolitics of Global Inequality: The Past Thirty Year

Branko Milanovic, Research Professor, The Graduate Center, and Senior Scholar, Stone Center on Socio-Economic Inequality, City University of New York

Explore how the past thirty years of differential economic growth, rising inequality, and changing intellectual paradigms have shaped today’s geopolitical landscape. In this lecture, CUNY economist Branko Milanovic examines the key economic and political shifts that have influenced global power structures since the end of the Cold War. In addressing the rise of new economic powers, changes in global inequality, and evolving international alliances, he offers a clear and engaging overview of the forces affecting our world today.

Tuesday, May 13, 7:30 p.m. 

Tracing the Black Sonic Avant-Garde

Adam Shatz, US Editor, London Review of Books

W.E.B. Du Bois famously described Black music as the gift that an enslaved people gave to America, a music containing a “singularly spiritual heritage.” This view has become conventional wisdom, particularly with respect to popular genres such as soul, R&B, and hip hop. Seldom, however, is Black art music understood as embodying a sonic avant-garde. In this talk, Adam Shatz challenges this view by tracing this music’s emergence and development, from the early days of Bebop to the birth of Free Jazz, and its relationship to the freedom struggles of the larger Black community in the United States. He touches upon innovators including Charles Mingus, Charlie Parker, Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, Marion Brown, Jeanne Lee, Julius Hemphill, and Henry Threadgill, and explores the ways in which the Black sonic avant-garde both echoes and diverges from the history of European modernism.

Thursday, May 15, 6:15 p.m. 
Location: Heidelberg Center for American Studies (HCA) / Hauptstrasse 120 / 69117 Heidelberg

Freedom’s Dominion: A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power

Jefferson Cowie, James G. Stahlman Professor of American History, Vanderbilt University

We tend to think of freedom as the struggle of the oppressed for a better world. But for centuries, whenever the federal government intervened on behalf of nonwhite people, many white Americans fought back in the name of freedom—their freedom to dominate the land, labor, and political power of others. Using the micro-history drawn from his Pulitzer Prize winning history, Freedom’s Dominion: A Sage of White Resistance to Federal Power, Jefferson Cowie helps to explain how the freedom to oppress others has meant an enduring war against federal authority and what has changed since the re-election of Donald Trump.

In cooperation with the Heidelberg Center for American Studies, Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg