Hertie School

Brian McQuinn, Assistant Professor of International Studies at the University of Regina, Canada, and an expert on armed groups and peace building, joins Dr. Katharina Emschermann, Deputy Director at the Centre for International Security, to talk about Libya. They discuss: • the origins of the 2011 Libyan uprisings, • the “who’s who” of the ensuing conflict, • his experience living among rebels in...

Stacie Goddard, Professor of Political Science at Wellesley College and an expert on international order and global power politics, joins Dr. Katharina Emschermann, Deputy Director at the Centre for International Security, to talk about grand strategy. They discuss: • grand-strategic successes and failures, • why talk isn’t cheap, • how to keep a U.S.-China “Cold War 2.0” from becoming a self-fulf...

Kai Oppermann, Professor for International Politics at the Chemnitz University of Technology and an expert on German Foreign Policy and the dynamics of coalition governments joins Dr. Katharina Emschermann, Deputy Director at the Centre for International Security, in dissecting Europe’s “top risk” in 2021 – the German Federal Election and its foreign policy implications. They discuss: • how to los...

Nils Metternich, Associate Professor in International Relations at the University College London and an expert on civil conflicts and the prediction of their dynamics joins Dr. Katharina Emschermann, Deputy Director at the Centre for International Security, in looking to the future. They discuss: - what we can and cannot predict in international security, - why a Nobel Peace Prize winner went to w...

Sarah Kreps, Professor of Government at Cornell University, U.S. Air Force veteran and seasoned policy advisor joins Katharina Emschermann, Deputy Director at the Centre for International Security, to discuss key challenges for the next U.S. administration, the crisis of NATO and how (not) to overcome it, Trump’s vs. Biden’s approach to China, and why military restraint might not be the new foreig...

Listen to a discussion with Siim Sikkut, former government CIO of Estonia, about his new book 'Digital Government Excellence: Lessons from Effective Digital Leaders'. The event took place on September 23 at the Hertie School and was moderated by Luciana Cingolani with an introduction by Gerhard Hammerschmid.

Scholars have become more interested in secret statecraft in global politics, especially in its digital manifestations. Unfortunately, the self-hiding nature of the phenomena make them hard to study. Jon Lindsay, Associate Professor at the School of Cybersecurity and Privacy and Sam Nunn School of International Affairs at the Georgia Institute of Technology, points out that this is true in spades...

This year's iteration of our speaker series Challenges in International Security examines the concept of deterrence, often defined as “the action of discouraging an action or event through instilling doubt or fear of the consequences” (Oxford Dictionary). In the realm of international security, deterrence is one of the most widely used political strategies, yet it’s application is very complex and...

In recent years, questions about the credibility of the US nuclear guarantee have re-emerged, leading to debates among some US allies about potential alternatives to US extended deterrence. A new task force report, chaired by Chuck Hagel, Malcolm Rifkind and Kevin Rudd with Ivo Daalder, analyzes the risk of potential nuclear proliferation among US allies and provides a set of policy recommendation...

NATO's nuclear sharing arrangement – the deployment of some 200 U.S. nuclear weapons in five European NATO member states as part of NATO's nuclear deterrence strategy – has come under pressure. Some analysts see the current nuclear-sharing arrangement as technologically outdated and no longer capable of deterring possible aggression against NATO. For others, the immediate elimination of these weap...

The signs of growing far-right extremism are all around us, and communities across the globe are struggling to understand how so many people are being radicalized and why they are increasingly attracted to violent movements. In this talk, Cynthia Miller-Idriss argues that instead of focusing on the how and why of far-right radicalization, we might seek answers in the physical and virtual spaces wh...

With its contextualised analysis of the European Court of Human Rights' (ECtHR) engagement in Turkey's Kurdish conflict since the early 1990s, "Limits of Supranational Justice" makes a much-needed contribution to scholarships on supranational courts and legal mobilisation. Based on a socio-legal account of the efforts of Kurdish lawyers in mobilising the ECtHR on behalf of abducted, executed, tort...

Listen to a presentation by Daniel Nexon and Alexander Cooley based on their recent book Exit from Hegemony: The Unravelling of American Global Order. In Exit from Hegemony, Cooley and Nexon explore three processes that have eroded US leadership: exit from above via great-power challengers, exit from below via weaker states leveraging the availability of new patrons, and exit from within via count...

Germany’s Constitutional Court has long been a powerful actor within the German political system. Recent decisions of the Court, however, indicate its increasing willingness to flex its muscles in European politics too. The German Court’s action have received a torrent of criticism: that it is undermining EU law, overstepping its judicial mandate and even lending implicit support to governments un...

he Centre for Fundamental Rights is honoured to welcome Tendayi Achiume for a talk on racial borders. This presentation will aim to discuss the intersection between racial injustice and migration governance from international law perspective. Tendayi Achiume is Professor of Law at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law, and a research associate of the African Center for Migration...

On 16 September, Alice Margaria opened the programme of the Fundamental Rights Research Colloquium for the new academic year with a presentation of her book, The Construction of Fatherhood: The Jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights (Cambridge University Press, 2019). Michaela Kreyenfeld will be a discussant of the book.

In November 2019, the head of the EU Fundamental Rights Agency described the EU ‘hotspot’ in Moria, Lesbos, Greece, as “the single most worrying fundamental rights issue that we are confronting anywhere in the European Union.” An overcrowded place of confinement for those seeking refuge in the EU, it was destroyed in a devastating fire days ago, leaving nearly 13,000 men, women, and children witho...

In an online presentation on 20 May, Mark Dawson, Professor of European Law and Governance at the Hertie School, discussed how the EU’s political process affects the level of rights protection afforded by EU law. During the presentation the two stages of the political process affects were discussed: first, the analysis of how institutional politics plays an important role in the evolution of the E...

How far does the German constitution, compared to other legal orders, allow for fundamental rights to be restricted in times of crises? How far can the German State change its institutional set-up as well as its legislative procedure to adjust to crisis mode? Where are the constitutional limits to restrictions such as curfews, social distancing and forced closure of businesses and has the German S...

A webinar presentation by Başak Çalı, Professor of International Law and Director of the Centre for Fundamental Rights at the Hertie School. Fundamental rights-based analysis offers an important legal and ethical yardstick to evaluate the responses of states to the COVID-19 pandemic: Have states around the world tackled the pandemic through rights-protecting and rights-respecting policies? Have th...

In Episode 4 of our Hertie School Online Education Training Series, we talk about why it can be a good thing to be online and take the innovation with us back on campus This podcast series is created by Annika Zorn, Director Digital Learning and PhD Programmes at the Hertie School. Annika is the founder of the Florence Online School of Regulation, trainer of early-career researchers in teaching at...

In Episode 3 of our Online Education Training Series, we talk about how to stay in touch with your students. +++ Formative feedback to get a better insight into what is happening in class +++ In your course, you assess the learning of your students - often at the end of the semester or, for example, as a mid-term exam. Students might have to give a presentation or submit other graded assignments....

In Episode 2 of our Hertie School Online Education Training Series, we talk about why it is a good idea to pre-record your lecture (anyway). +++ Tools and ideas in this podcast +++ Warm-up your voice before you start recording your lecture: Many professional speakers use tongue twisters to do so. Find some examples here that warm up your voice and mouth for different sounds: https://www.ef.com/wwe...

In Episode 1 of our Hertie School Online Education Training Series, we talk about why your first class online might be especially challenging. +++ Tools and ideas in this podcast +++ Create a word cloud in your first class to see where people are connecting from and share it on the main screen. Two tools you can use to do that: - PollEveryWhere: https://www.polleverywhere.com/word-cloud - Answerga...

Estonian govt CIO Siim Sikkut and Gerhard Hammerschmid discuss Estonia’s digital transformation. Siim Sikkut, the Republic of Estonia's Chief Information Officer and Gerhard Hammerschmid, Professor of Public and Financial Management and Director of the Hertie School Centre for Digital Governance discussed on 11 March what lessons Germany and other countries might draw from Estonia's digital transf...