Hertie School

Global trends suggest that norms and institutions of fundamental rights are losing ground. Many governments and political movements explicitly deny fundamental rights' primacy, and some even violate them with impunity. Some political actors and scholars question the centrality and utility of fundamental rights, claiming that they undermine other values such as security, cultural identity, economic...

Panel discusses findings of the Physicians for Human Rights report at Centre for Fundamental Rights event. Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) presented research into the arrest, detention, and torture of health workers by the Syrian government at an event on 4 December hosted by the Hertie School Centre for Fundamental Rights. The report, “'My only crime was that I was a doctor': How the Syrian gov...

A discussion following the German Federal Constitutional Court’s decision on 5 November 2019 declaring the sanctions imposed on recipients of unemployment benefits in part unconstitutional. Hosted by the Hertie School Centre for Fundamental Rights. The “Hartz IV” German labour market reform of 2005 has long been controversial - in particular, placing conditions on welfare recipients to receive ben...

Climate change is increasingly considered a security threat with potentially far-reaching implications for the geostrategic environment. Through large-scale migration, increased border tensions, and greater demands for rescue and evacuation efforts, climate change potentially impacts the individual security of people and the viability of vulnerable states to an extent that exceeds existing disaste...

Keynote and discussion with Masood Ahmed, President of the Center for Global Development. Major constraints to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) include limited financing, inadequate infrastructure, poor quality institutions, and social norms. In this talk, Masood Ahmed focuses on the financing challenges related to achieving the SDGs. He discusses the low levels of private invest...

Why do some ideas take hold in fields and become standard practice while others are passed over and forgotten? What happened to these ideas that were “lost” along the way and may have pointed to an alternative path, one that was not necessarily wrong or bad? Hertie School Professor of Organization, Strategy and Leadership Johanna Mair and co-authors look at how forms of systemic power arise in a p...

How do you solve some of the world's most "wicked problems"? In her keynote on social innovation at the Hertie School's 2019/2020 Opening of the Academic Year, Johanna Mair, Professor for Organization, Strategy and Leadership, discusses insights from her research. Social innovation on its own is not enough to solve these big world problems, she says. Instead, we need "scaling" to really make an im...

Tech companies have recently been criticised for not doing enough to control the negative effects of the internet. Spreading false information and hate speech, fomenting conflict, discontent and polarisation, and threatening peace and stability are among some of the most discussed issues. On the other hand, many tech companies have invested in this field and argue that it shouldn’t be them, but go...

Turning to domestic and international courts through strategic litigation has been central to global human rights activism for decades. It is a strategy that has been used to create long lasting social change in laws and public policies with the goal of advancing human rights. For some, litigation in the name of human rights has been a great success, making the human rights movement stronger by in...

How can we explain the geographical variation of populism in Europe? In the North, right-wing populism dominates, while for many years left-wing populism has been the common in the South. Outside Europe, for example in Latin America, governments frequently shift between left and right populist presidents. In a talk at the Hertie School, Philip Manow discussed populist protest in various political...

Panel discussion centres on work, care-giving and how to bring about real equality in today’s world. Long-held notions of both women’s and men’s roles in society need re-thinking to allow people to reach their full potential, both privately and professionally, said Anne-Marie Slaughter, CEO of the New America Foundation and the 2018 recipient of the Dr. Michael Endres Prize, in a panel discussion...

Four young European Parliament candidates discussed their vision for Europe at the Hertie School on 11 April. On the panel were Hannah Neumann, 35, from Bündnis 90/Die Grünen in Germany, Vojtěch Vais, 26, a member of TOP 09 Party from Czechia, Marco Candela, 34, with Podemos in Spain, and Caroline Flohr, 25, a candidate for the pan-European party Volt in Germany. The event was part of the The Gove...

The upcoming 2019 European parliament election is increasingly portrayed as a fundamental turning point in the process of European integration. Following electoral gains in previous European and national elections in recent years, anti-EU populist parties are expected to increase their support even further, challenging the European project at its core. How can we explain the support of these parti...

Catherine de Vries discusses how to move the European project forward ahead of the EP elections. Catherine de Vries is Professor of Political Behaviour in Europe at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and a Hertie School Board member.

Kapuscinski Development Lecture with H.E. José Ramos-Horta, former President of the Republic of Timor-Leste and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate. "We are living in very dangerous times. Right here in the heart of Europe forces of good and of intolerance are on a collision course. Across the English Channel there are forces bent on wrecking a magnificent social, political and security architecture built...

The next European Commission faces a broad array of challenges in regulating the evolving digital world. What are the ethical implications of artificial intelligence, how can you regulate competition and what are the implications for diversity in the digital era? In a discussion between France’s State Secretary for Digital Affairs Mounir Mahjoubi, Stephanie Kaiser, Founder and Managing Director of...

Siv Jensen, Norwegian Minister of Finance, and Mark Hallerberg discussed the economic case for rules-based global integration. Liberal values have guided international cooperation over decades, based on the view that an open economic architecture with common rules is a shared interest, both regionally and globally. A common set of rules has promoted the development of free and open markets across...

The Hertie School of the Governance convened top foreign policy thinkers from the United States and Germany on 18 February, directly after the 55th Munich Security Conference. Discussants reflected on the key issues, conclusions and critical challenges to international security raised at the conference, before a packed audience hosted by the school’s Centre for International Security Policy (CISP)...

At the end of 2018 the European Union launched a “war against disinformation” in an attempt to protect the upcoming European Parliament elections in May 2019. The proposed measures include a rapid alert system to support member states in identifying disinformation campaigns, an increased budget of €5m for the detection of disinformation, and pressure on tech companies to get on board with weeding...

Reward and punishment: Inside China’s social credit system by Hertie School

A lecture by Thomas Hegghammer on 3 December 2018 on the causes, evolution, and revival prospects of the latest jihadism wave. This event is chaired by Julian Wucherpfennig, Assistant Professor of International Affairs and Security at the Hertie School of Governance, and was a continuation of the lecture series 'Frontline research on terrorism' at the Centre for International Security Policy at th...

Panelists Katrin Suder, Chairperson of the Advisory Council on Digitalisation to the German Federal Government, Constanze Stelzenmüller, inaugural Robert Bosch Senior Fellow in the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution, and Ambassador Wolfgang Ischinger, Senior Professor for Security Policy and Diplomatic Practice at the Hertie School of Governance and Director of the...

Panelists discuss future of US political parties, implications for transatlantic relations and what’s in store for 2020. A "blue wave" has now met a "red wall" – this is how Nelson Cunningham, former advisor to President Bill Clinton and co-founder of political consultancy McLarty Associates, described the election results to an audience of 130 at a 2018 US election post-mortem at the Hertie Schoo...

“People-centred, inclusive, experimental, data-enabled and connected,” – these are the five elements of the “new practice of public problem-solving,” according to US political scientist Anne-Marie Slaughter. Slaughter outlined her vision for how government, civil society and the private sector must work together to solve problems like climate change, homelessness or work-life balance, in an accept...

In his spring 2018 International Security course, Professor Julian Wucherpfennig tasked first-year Master of International Affairs (MIA) students to produce podcasts focussing on a singular aspect of security – climate change, digital technology, migration, to name a few. This is an example of the students’ work. Understand today. Shape tomorrow. https://www.hertie-school.org This podcast is for e...