The collapse of the Soviet Union put an end to the bipolar political world. Some anticipated the “end of history” and the triumph of the liberal democratic order. Others hoped that the collapse will put an end to the appeal of 20th-century ideologies and ideological politics. The history of 1989 also suggests a strong anti-ideological nature of resistance movements across Central and Eastern Europe. Yet, we are witnessing the emergence of populist movements with democratic rule and practices facing numerous challenges from the democratically elected governments.
On April 26 at 5 PM (Vilnius time) the Open Lithuania Foundation kindly invites students and faculty of EHU to the dialogue between two distinguished academics:
- Jeffrey Goldfarb, the Michael E. Gellert Professor of Sociology at the New School for Social Research
- Nadia Urbinati, Kyriakos Tsakopoulos Professor of Political Theory at Columbia University
In order to sign up for the discussion please click here. The dialogue will focus on various questions, such as: Is 1989 the point of the beginning of post-truth populism?; How the role of ideologies transformed in the past 30 years: from the marketplace of ideas towards subversion of the democratic rule; What does it mean to think and act politically beyond ideological divide? National populism as a backlash against technocratic politics and what covid-19 epidemic revealed about the belief versus evidence-based politics?
Moderator: Simona Merkinaite, OLF, Institute of International Relations and Political Science/Vilnius University.
About the speakers:
Jeffrey Goldfarb, the Michael E. Gellert Professor of Sociology at The New School for Social Research. Jeffrey is the founding editor of Public Seminar and runs Democracy Seminar. Author of Beyond Glasnost: The Post-Totalitarian Mind, After The Fall: The Pursuit Of Democracy In Central Europe, Reinventing Political Culture: The Power of Culture versus the Culture of Power among other books.
Nadia Urbinati, Kyriakos Tsakopoulos Professor of Political Theory at Columbia University, specializing in modern and contemporary political thought and democratic and anti-democratic traditions. She co-chaired the Columbia University Faculty Seminar on Political and Social Thought and was a co-editor with Andrew Arato of the academic journal Constellations: An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory. She is a member of the Executive Committee of the Foundation Reset Dialogues on Civilization, author of Me The People: How Populism Transforms Democracy, The Tyranny of the Moderns, Democracy Disfigured: Opinion, Truth, and the People, Representative Democracy: Principles and Genealogy among other books.
Background reading:
- Jeffrey Goldfarb Democracy and Social Justice On the significance of C.T. Vivian and Adam Michnik
- Nadia Urbinati: Populism? It’s not Fascism, and also Democracies Are “Elastic”
- Simona Merkinaite What 1989 can (and cannot) teach us
