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Salon Series Abstracts
The Sheep in the Bathtub: Multiculturalism and Religion in France and England. 04/14/08
guest speakers: Dr. Azouz Begag, former French Minister of Equal Opportunity; Dr. Patricia Lorcin, Associate Professor of History, U of M.
Continuing our Europe-wide programming, CGES invited Dr. Azouz Begag—former minister in
the Villepin government, politician, social scientist, novelist and screenwriter. Dr. Begag is uniquely positioned to speak about multiculturalism. Born to Algerian immigrant parents in a shantytown suburb of Lyon in the late 1950s, he is a renowned sociologist and novelist, and in 2005 was appointed first ever Minister of Equal Opportunity by Dominique de Villepin. The French equivalent of the “American Dream” and an example of the reality of the French belief in equality, one might say. But Begag assumed his post barely two months before fiery riots exploded in the run-down suburbs of cities across France, where many Muslims of North African origin live. The French nation and the world were stunned at the violence and the evidence of systematic inequality they saw. Begag, the sociologist, had warned against this kind of social unrest twenty years back. As a minister of equal opportunity, he set out to reinvent France's social fabric. For the 18 months he held office, he pushed measures that would promote genuine social integration: economic opportunities for ethnic youths, school reform, hiring of ethnic individuals into the police force, more open access to France's elite schools for the disadvantaged. In keeping with its republican ideals, he believes, France must create a culture of belonging that encompasses all. He was joined on the podium by Dr. Patricia Lorcin, who looked further west to England and the debate on multiculturalism there. What lessons can we learn? Listen to the discussion.
Austrian Writer/Director Stefan Ruzowitzky and The Counterfeiters. 02/17/08
guest speaker: Stefan Ruzowitzky, screen writer and film director; U of M faculty respondent: Eric Weitz, Distinguished McKnight University Professor and Chair of History at the University of Minnesota
Stefan Ruzowitzky's Oscar-nominated film The Counterfeiters (Die Fälscher) examines the moral struggles of a group of Jewish prisoners in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Their skills as expert counterfeiters make them key to the Nazis' grand scheme of flooding their enemies' economies with counterfeit money. The two barracks they work and live in are a separate world: high-tech equipment, abundant food, individual beds, even a ping-pong table for recreation. They listen to soft operetta music. But the threat of death is never far away. How does one survive not only physically but also morally intact in this world?
In interviews Ruzowitzky emphasizes his own surprise over choosing the film's subject matter: “I never thought I'd dare make a concentration camp movie.” But after reading Adolf Burger's autobiographical account of “Operation Bernhard” he changed his mind. As he puts it, “When you live in a country like Austria, where the right-wing-populist parties FPÖ and BZÖ, with their intolerable closeness to Nazi ideology, consistently grab about 20% of the votes and are even allowed to take part in running the country, which is just as intolerable—you simply have the urgent need to confront this topic every now and then.” CGES invited the director to discuss his film's argument about the individual's struggle for a moral life.
Echoes of Violence: Letters from a War Reporter. 01/28/08
guest speakers: Carolin Emcke, author and reporter for Die Zeit; Sharon Schmickle, reporter for minnpost.com and instructor, U of M Hubert H. Humphrey Institute for Public Affairs
Professional war reporting is still considered largely the domain of tough guys. But regardless of gender, the reporter's task is to be a witness and to convey war's reality to the world at large. In summer 1999, Der Spiegel correspondent Carolin Emcke returned to Berlin from one and a half months of reporting on the war in Kosovo. She had traveled widely in Kosovo and Albania; she had witnessed large-scale destruction and brutal violence; she had written numerous articles and dispatches. But back in Berlin she did not know what to tell her friends about her experience. To overcome her speechlessness and her own sense of failure as a reporter, she wrote a long letter to a circle of friends. Eventually, writing a letter became a ritual Emcke performed each time she returned from one of these nightmares. Over the next four years, her friends read letters about Lebanon, Nicaragua, again Kosovo, Romania, 9/11 NYC/Pakistan/Afghanistan, Colombia, and Iraq. Often they responded with surprise and outrage: this they hadn't imagined, they told her. Emcke was stunned. All her friends were well informed. How could these letters have this effect? When someone suggested the letters needed to be shared more widely, Emcke found a publisher. Von den Kriegen: Briefe an Freunde appeared in 2004, won the German political book of the year award in 2005, and in 2007 became available in English. CGES invited Carolin Emcke to discuss her book of letters and help us understand better how witnessing the pain of others affects those reporting and how we deal with war and violence.
The EURO and the Dollar in a Globalized Economy. 11/26/07
guest speaker: Kurt Huebner, director, Institute for European Studies at the University of British Columbia; respondent: Chris Phelan,
Dept. of Economics, U of M; Research Department, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis
First introduced in 1999 as an accounting currency, the Euro is not even 10 years old. It is the single currency for more than 320 million Europeans in the 13 states that make up the Eurozone. Including areas using currencies pegged to the euro, the euro directly affects more than 480 million people worldwide. In September 2007, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said it is "absolutely conceivable that the euro will replace the dollar as reserve currency, or will be traded as an equally important reserve currency." The Euro's value against the dollar has increased steadily since 2003; right now it trades at an all-time high of $1.44. Most economists argue that the depreciation of the dollar is good for the US economy. Across the Atlantic things may look different. What are the effects of a strong Euro on the Eurozone? What are the economic, social and political costs and benefits—for Americans, for Europeans, and for people elsewhere in the world? Is there a natural limit beyond which the Euro won't go?
In Search of Father: Approaching a Troubled Legacy. 10/25/07
guest speaker: Konrad Jarausch, Lurcy Professor of European Civilization at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; U of M faculty respondent: Prof. Stephen Feinstein, director, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies
It's one thing to confront the legacy of the Nazi period in the generalized and abstract way of social history. What if the perpetrator of evil is an individual closest to us? Renowned historian Konrad Jarausch's father was drafted into the Wehrmacht in 1939 and served as a non-combat rear soldier on the Eastern Front, much of it in camps for first Polish and later Soviet prisoners of war. In spring 1942, Jarausch Sr. suddenly caught typhoid fever and died in a field hospital. His wife, relatives, and large circle of friends coped by redoubling their veneration for the dead man. For the son an Uebervater emerged: sophisticated academic, sensitive and skilled pedagogue, deeply religious neo-Lutheran—in a Nazi uniform. Using hundreds of letters his father sent home from the front, Konrad Jarausch Jr. approaches that troubled legacy. Why tell the story?
Democratic Promise, Cultural Breakthroughs: Germany in the 1920s. 09/28/07
guest speaker: Eric Weitz, Distinguished McKnight University Professor and Chair of History at the University of Minnesota; U of M faculty respondent: Kate Solomonson
For Germany the 1920s were a period of great promise and momentous innovation in architecture, the arts, and social and political life that brought modernism to full life. Think painters such as George Grosz and Max Beckmann, the opera theatre of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill, the Bauhaus group's new buildings. Socially this period also brought major positive change. It introduced a comprehensive system of unemployment insurance, anchored the 8-hour work day, and saw women gain full political rights. But Weimar Germany also preceded Hitler and that's how it has spoken to us most loudly, as a prelude to Nazi rule. Can one tell a story about this period that captures both its exhilarating promise and its tragic failure? What story emerges when we treat history, in the historian's way, as always open? Eric Weitz tells us in his new and widely reviewed book. Weimar Germany: Promise and Tragedy (Princeton UP, 2007) has garnered praise for its wide-ranging perspectives, rich narrative, and compelling style.
American & German Healthcare: Healthcare and Innovation—A Transatlantic Experts' Roundtable; evening event. 07/16/07
guest speaker: Prof. Alex Lubet, Morse Alumni Distinguished Teaching Professor, University of Minnesota School of Music
Capping a day of exchange on healthcare policy perspectives, participants in the American & German Healthcare forum and invited guests enjoyed an evening of animated conversation and live jazz with the Sam Miltich and the Clearwater Hot Club. The evening's highlight was a short and most entertaining lecture on "Music and Culture: Beyond Identity" that had nothing whatsoever to do with health care and everything with why we think the way we do. All present—just as the four guys above—gave Professor Lubet their most enthusiastic thumbs up.
In Pursuit of a Genuine "American Opera": The Musical Genius of Kurt Weill.
05/01/07
guest speakers: Prof. David Walsh, Director, Opera Theatre, University of Minnesota School of Music; Prof. Alex Lubet, Morse Alumni Distinguished Teaching Professor, University of Minnesota School of Music
When Kurt Weill fled Nazi Germany in 1933, he already was famous. His collaborations with playwright Bertolt Brecht, most notably The Three Penny Opera and The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, had brought him artistic recognition and also financial success. But Weill's quality as an extraordinary modern composer became even more apparent after his move to the United States in 1935. For the next fifteen years, he devoted himself to creating what he would describe as "American Opera." This new form would fuse classical European opera with popular American forms such as jazz and blues. It would be a special blend of musical theater that completely integrated drama and music, spoken word, song, and movement. His first foray in that direction was his adaptation of the theater play Street Scene, for which playwright Elmer Rice had won a Pulitzer Prize in 1929. It had all the elements of drama: love, passion, greed, and death. And when Weill not only convinced Rice to allow him to adapt the play but also got the famous African American poet Langston Hughes to provide lyrics, he was well on his way to realizing a new musical form.
To discuss Street Scene (1947) and Weill's pursuit of a genuine American form of opera, CGES invited an unusually large group of experts. U of M music professors David Walsh and Alex Lubet were joined by nine performers, who presented scenes from the opera which had just concluded a run under the direction of David Walsh.
Germany's Presidency of the E.U. and the G8: Improvements in Transatlantic Relations?
03/21/07
guest speakers: WApril 17, 2008ny at Chicago; Prof. Jackson Janes, Executive Director of the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies at the Johns Hopkins University in Washington, D.C.
In January 2007, Germany assumed the six-month rotating presidency of the E.U. Simultaneously, it became Germany's turn to take over the presidency of G8 group of industrialized nations. The origins of the G8 go back to the oil crisis of the 1970s and a new sense that the large Western economies would benefit from regular discussion of global economic developments. Today, the eight member countries represent about 65 percent of the world economy. As with the E.U., the holder of the G8 presidency sets the group's agenda. Germany's double presidency offers a powerful opportunity to shape transnational politics and economics. What are the key points on the agenda? What new initiatives have been brought on the way? Are there first results to be reported, particularly with regard to the transatlantic partnership?
To discuss these issues from two perspectives, CGES invited Germany's Consul General Wolfgang Drautz and the foreign policy expert Professor Jackson Janes.
The End of Ostalgia?—A Conversation with Writer/Director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck on The Lives of Others. 02/16/07
guest speaker: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, screen writer and director, Das Leben der Anderen (137 min., Germany) ; U of M faculty respondent: Distinguished Teaching Professor Emeritus Gerhard Weiss
Film director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's first full feature film The Lives of Others not only won 7 Lolas, Germany's highest film prize, but also the 2007 Academy Award for Best Foreign Film. Set in 1984 in the privileged world of East German writers and artists, it examines the pressures, accommodations, and costs of living under a totalitarian regime in an atmosphere of pervasive fear. Unlike other recent German films, it is hardly an exercise in "Ostalgie," nostalgia for the good old days of the East. Instead it shows how a surveillance society, set up to discover and prey upon human weakness, has the ability to make everyone a potential suspect and destroy everything it touches.
Von Donnersmarck is the son of parents who left East Germany before he was born. Two experiences, he says, prompted his script: memories of childhood visits to East Berlin and other parts of East Germany during which he felt the adults' intense fear—an interesting, even exciting experience for the boy; and an image he encountered in film school—the close-medium shot of a man sitting with headphones in a bleak room, listening to beautiful music he did not want to hear. That image eventually gave shape to the character of Stasi officer Gerhard Wiesler.
CGES invited von Donnersmarck with a few clips to discuss his argument about the GDR and its strong resonance with German and foreign audiences. He was joined on the podium by U of M Morse Alumni Distinguished Teaching Professor Emeritus Gerhard Weiss and, in the audience, a capacity crowd of CGES guests.
CGES partnered for this event and a special pre-release full screening at Landmark Theatres with Sony Pictures and TalkCinema.
Making Minnesota Home: Sweet Land and the Immigrant Experience. 11/13/06
guest speaker: Ali Selim, director, Sweet Land (110 min., USA 2005). U of M faculty respondent: Prof. Emeritus Hy Berman.
In mid-October, the feature film Sweet Land by Twin Cities director Ali Selim opened in local theaters to wide audience acclaim. At the film's center is a German refugee who arrives as a Norwegian mail order bride in rural Minnesota in 1920, two years after the end of World War I. Her arrival throws the local community in disarray. Everything about her is suspect: she only speaks German; her most prized possessions are a gramophone and a set of waltz records; she loves poetry. The church, the law, and the local elite refuse to accept her. Billed as a love story, the film traces the dynamics inside rural communities. How do world events shape local interactions? What is the capacity of small communities to accommodate strange new-comers? How do people come together despite strongly negative cultural preconceptions? Director Selim addresses these questions in a story about the past but the issues remain salient as ever.
To discuss the immigrant experience to Minnesota, CGES invited director Ali Selim with a few clips of his film and long-time U of M historian and Minnesota history specialist Hy Berman. The topic had special resonance for many in the capacity audience, who know immigrant experiences first-hand.
Germany/Europe and the United States: Reconfiguring Relations. 10/09/06
guest speakers: Karsten D. Voigt, Coordinator of German-American Cooperation, Foreign Office, Federal Republic of Germany; Dr. Klaus Friedrich, former chief economist of Dresdner Bank.
As the European states grow together more closely also in political terms, their new relationship also has an impact on their relationship to the United States. Germany perhaps has most dramatically rethought her connection to America. Where is Germany heading, what are the dynamics at work, and will the partnership with the United States remain crucial for Germany and for Europe also in the future?
To discuss these questions, CGES invited Karsten Voigt and Klaus Friedrich, two individuals singularly qualified to provide information. Karsten D. Voigt holds the important position of Coordinator of German–American Cooperation in Germany's Foreign Office. A long-time former member of the German Bundestag, Mr. Voigt also represented Germany internationally before assuming his present post in 1999. He is the former Chairman of NATO's Defense and Security Committee and a passionate Atlanticist. He serves on a number of boards, including the Advisory Board of CGES. His speech emphasizd the need to reshape the old client-sponor relationship to the USA into a relationship among partners. Dr. Klaus Friedrich is the former Chief Economist of the Allianz Group and Dresdner Bank AG. In this position he advised the chairman and the board on economic issues, oversaw country and industry risk analysis, and participated in the group's asset and liability management. He also lobbied for more than a decade for a single European currency, which was finally introduced in 2001.
CGES partnered with the American Council on Germany for this event.
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Selling Democracy: Films of the Marshall Plan, 1948-1953—A Conversation with curator and director Sandra Schulberg. 04/03/06
guest speaker: Sandra Schulberg. U of M faculty respondent: Prof. Lary May
In the wake of World War II the United States government mounted a massive effort to rebuild Europe under the Marshall Plan. What is less known to Americans is that this effort to lift Europe out of the ruins also encompassed an ambitious film project. Between 1948 and 1955, the Marshall Plan filmmakers created over 260 films ranging from documentaries, to technical know-how films, to feature films. Their goal was to paint a convincing picture of a future in which Europeans could aspire to American-style prosperity, bury the hatreds of the war, and embrace interdependence with their European neighbors rather than pursue divisive nationalist agendas. Democracy and prosperity, these films argue, are inextricably linked.
The films re-emerged at the 2004 and 2005 Berlin Film Festivals because of the efforts of award-winning film producer Sandra Schulberg. Schulberg is the founder and former president of the Independent Feature Project (IFP) and the Independent Feature Film Market (IFFM) and cofounder of First Run Features. She has been active in supporting independent cinema for more than 25 years. She also is the daughter of Stuart Schulberg, chief of the Marshall Plan Motion Picture Section in Europe.
Schulberg collected two dozens of the most interesting Marshall Plan films into the four-part retrospective "Selling Democracy," which showed at the Walker Art Center April 5-8 as a joint project between CGES and the Walker Art Center. Each night's Marshall Plan film program was accompanied by Sandra Schulberg and a U of M faculty expert for post-screening discussions with the audience.
Ernestine Schlant Bradley: A German Childhood, An American Life. 02/15/06
guest speaker: Ernestine Schlant Bradley; U of M faculty respondent: Prof. Donna Gabaccia
What does it mean to grow up in one country but to live one's adult life in another? How does that experience shape not just the individual's self but also such central concepts as home, family, belonging, work, and—if the immigrant achieves high prominence—public life? Ernestine Schlant-Bradley, the evening's speaker, embodies this experience. Born in Germany and an immigrant to the U.S., she is an accomplished professor of literature. She also happens to be the wife of former senator and presidential hopeful Bill Bradley. Her story is one of personal and public triumph against great odds.
She was joined for this salon by the Rudolph J. Vecoli Professor of History and new director of the Immigration History Center at the University of Minnesota, Donna Gabaccia. Professor Gabaccia is a specialist on international migrations. Her current research project "Imagining the Nations of Immigrants" seeks to explain why the United States—almost alone among the many nations around the world that have grown and developed economically as a result of international migration—features immigration so prominently in its national history.
CGES partnered with the American Council on Germany for this event.
Literatur schreiben fuer Kinder und Jugendliche: Ein Gespraech mit der Autorin Karin Guendisch. 11/07/05
guest speaker: Karin Guendisch; U of M moderator: Dr. Sabine Engel
To mark the annual Frankfurt Book Fair, an event that each year brings together about 250,000 individuals in the world's book industry, CGES invited noted children's book author Karin Guendisch to speak about writing. The salon was conducted in German.
Karin Guendisch was born in Siebenbuergen, a part of Romania that has been home to a sizeable German-language minority. She studied literature in Cluj and Bucharest, later taught German in Bucharest and began contributing to Romania's German-language press as well as to radio and television programs. In 1984 she left Romania for Germany, experienced first-hand the life of a German Aussiedler, and eventually became a full-time writer who specializes in books for children. Based in her own experience of migration, many of her writings deal with the difficulty of moving and adjusting to a new country. Ms. Guendisch's books have been translated into several languages, including Japanese and English. In 2002, her novel How I Became an American (dt.: Das Paradies liegt in Amerika ) made the annual list of the American Library Association's Notable Children's Books and won the Mildred L. Batchelder Award for the year's most outstanding children's book in English translation. The English-language manuscript of Ms. Guendisch's prize-winning book is among the holdings of the University of Minnesota's internationally renowned children's literature research collection.
A special highlight of Ms. Guendisch's visit to Minneapolis was a story-telling workshop for German-language students at Maple Grove High School.
CGES partnered with the Goethe Institute in Chicago for this project.
Germany's 2005 General Election: Who Won and Why? 09/28/05
guest speakers: Dieter Roth (Forschungsgruppe Wahlen e.V.) and Dieter Dettke (Friedrich Ebert Foundation)
In summer 2005, Germany went through an intense early federal elections campaign. The elections, originally scheduled for October 2006, took place in early September and the results will likely change Germany's political landscape. Before the elections, analysts had outlined two scenarios. The first saw an absolute majority of voters supporting the conservative Christian Democratic Party (CDU) and its liberal Free Democrat coalition partner FDP. Gerhard Schroeder would be replaced by Angela Merkel. The second and perhaps more challenging scenario was that neither of the two big parties and their coalition partners succeed in gaining 50% of the popular vote but would need to go for a "Grosse Koalition." When in May Schroeder called for this extraordinary election, he argued it was needed because citizens needed to either reaffirm their support for his government's painful policies of retrenchment or withdraw their mandate. Even a few days before the election, fully a third of polled voters hadn't decided yet on whether they would vote and for whom, an unprecedented situation. The CGES salon focused on voters' decisions: who decided to vote which way, why, and what would it mean for Germany's future? Was there a sea-change in political affiliations?
To discuss these issues, CGES invited two long-time observers of the German political scene. Dieter Roth is the recent Chairman of Forschungsgruppe Wahlen e.V. (Elections Research Group), one of Germany's leading public opinion research institutes. An economist and political scientist by training, Dr. Roth is a familiar face on German television: for years he has been providing analyses of public and political attitudes in the monthly "Politbarometer," which offers pre-election polls and post-election analyses. Dieter Dettke, a foreign policy and security specialist, has been the Executive Director of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation's DC office since 1985. Trained in political science and law, Dr. Dettke also served as a research associate at the German Council on Foreign Relations in Bonn, as political counselor of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) Parliamentary Group of the German Bundestag, and as Staff Director at the Office of the State Minister of the German Foreign Ministry.
CGES also arranged for Dr. Dettke and Dr. Roth to appear on Minnesota Public Radio's Mid-Morning with Keri Miller show for an extended interview.
Talk about Trade: Opportunities and Pitfalls of Economic Liberalization. 04/21/05
guest speakers: Prof. Timothy Kehoe (U of M; Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis) and Prof. Eric Sheppard (U of M)
The May 2004 EU expansion to twenty-five member states not only was preceded by intense discussions of its potential economic effects, but that discussion has continued unabated. Most economists agree that the models they developed to assess the effects of trade liberalization (such as the EU's integration of Spain in 1986 and NAFTA) no longer apply. We need new models and a new understanding.
To introduce some of these models and to present a state-of-the-art take on trade liberalization, CGES invited Timothy Kehoe, Distinguished McKnight University Professor of Economics at the U of M and Eric Sheppard, professor in the Department of Geography also at the U of M. Professor Kehoe is an internationally acknowledged expert on trade liberalization. He also is an adviser to the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis and has served as a government consultant. He advised the Spanish government on the impact of joining the European Community in 1986 and the Mexican government on the impact of joining the North American Free Trade Area in 1994. In 1997, he helped design a foreign trade and investment reform program for Panama that was enacted the next year. Professor Sheppard comes at trade liberalization from a different perspective. An economic geographer and member of the National Research Council Committee on Geography, he researches the effects of economic development at the global, regional, and local scales.
Trans-Atlantic Relations at the Beginning of the New Bush Administration. 02/18/05
guest speaker: Ambassador Reinhard Bettzuege; U of M respondent: Prof. W. Phillips Shively
With the American Presidential elections and the inauguration just past, CGES invited salon participants to look toward the future of transatlantic relations. Will there be a new dialog that stands to benefit Americans and Germans equally? What are the two governments doing—partly behind the scenes—to enable it?
To provide insight into these repositionings, CGES invited to Minneapolis a seasoned German diplomat, Ambassador Reinhard Bettzuege. Mr. Bettzuege currently is Visiting Ambassador and Professor for International Relations at the Andrassy University Budapest. Trained in Law, Literature, English, and Political Science in Germany and the United States, he has filled important diplomatic posts across Europe, including as envoy to NATO and as Ambassador to the OSCE. His expertise ranges from the areas of economics and trade, to foreign policy, to security, all the way to the media and public relations.
As a special treat, Ambassador Bettzuege conducted a two-day extracurricular workshop with about 20 undergraduates on geopolitics. At issue was the geopolitical distribution of power in the year 2030. What scencarios were possible and what would they mean for the United States and Europe?
Jazz on the River: An Evening of Music and Conversation on Jazz in the Tradition of Anti-Traditionalist Django Reinhardt. 12/14/04
guest musicians and speakers: Sam Miltich & The Clearwater Hot Club, Dr. Mirjana Lausevic (U of M), Prof. Alex Lubet (U of M), and Michael Dregni (author of Django: The Life and Music of a Gypsy Legend)
This salon's topic is jazz in one of its early and most influential European incarnations—the music of Jean-Baptiste "Django" Reinhardt. So we can appropriately connect the oral with the aural, we will have two speakers from the School of Music and a wonderful jazz group from Northern Minnesota, Sam Miltich's Clearwater Hot Club.
Jazz has traveled back and forth across the Atlantic over the last century and in the process integrated many new elements. The sound of Django Reinhardt and the music of Sam Miltich clearly demonstrate this mutually enriching dynamic. Reinhardt (1910-1953) was a Sinti who spent most of his short life in and around Paris. He began to play in the Paris dance halls professionally before he turned thirteen. His genius and distinctive style as a guitarist fully emerged when he encountered early recordings of Louis Armstrong's Hot Five. The rest is music history: teaming up with violinist Stéphane Grappelli and three others as the Hot Club de France, Reinhardt single-handedly originated what has become known in music circles as "Gypsy Jazz," an unlikely mix of 1930s American swing, French dance hall "musette," and the folk strains of Eastern Europe. Sam Miltich, a nineteen-year-old guitar whiz from a family of musicians, has been awing gypsy jazz aficionados for the past three years. He first learned of Reinhardt through a Woody Allen movie he happened to watch. Since then he has traveled across the country and to Europe to perform with some of the leading figures in gypsy jazz. In February, he was the subject of an NPR special jazz profile. If you happened to catch that broadcast you will know what a special treat it is for us to have him perform.
The Public Research University for the 21st Century: Is the American System a Model? 08/23/04
special forum organized for members of the Congressional Study Group on Germany and their counterparts from the German Bundestag
guest speakers: Rep. Gil Gutknecht, Hans-Ulrich Klose (MdB), Prof. Steven Rosenstone (Dean, College of Liberal Arts, U of M), Dr. Frank B. Cerra (Senior Vice President, U of M Academic Health Center)
This special forum was organized on the occasion of the annual meeting of the Congressional Study Group on Germany with their counterparts from the German Bundestag in St. Paul. The Congressional Study Group on Germany is chaired by Minnesota Congressman Gil Gutknecht. Since the fall of 2003, the state of higher education and research at German universities has been the subject of intense public debate. There is strong concern that Germany universities have lost their premier international standing. Meanwhile, American public universities are under intense budgetary and competitive pressures. CGES invited two of the University of Minnesota's most senior officials, Dr. Steven J. Rosenstone, Dean of the College of Liberal Arts, and Dr. Frank B. Cerra, Senior Vice President for Health Sciences in the Academic Health Center, to present keynote remarks on the challenges facing American higher education. MdB Petra Ernstberger acted as a respondent.
This forum was recorded for broadcast as a 60-minute public television special. The DVD is available upon request.
The Spirit of the Berlin Republic. 10/20/03
guest speakers: Dr. Dieter Dettke (Friedrich Ebert Foundation, Washington), Prof. Kurt Huebner (York University), Prof. Ton Nijhuis (University of Amsterdam)
Since unification and the movement of the Federal Government to Berlin, Germany has undergone vast changes. From this side of the Atlantic it is not always easy to follow those trends, especially given the relative lack of a larger public discussion on the shape and direction of these transformations also in Germany itself. Where is Germany going in the next few years? What kind of an agenda is being formulated in political and economic circles? What are the overall goals that will govern German policies in the near future? These issues are discussed in detail by more than twenty experts from politics and public life in a new book that appeared in June 2003. CGES invited Dr. Dieter Dettke, Director of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation in D.C. and editor of The Spirit of the Berlin Republic, and two commentators to Minneapolis to share and discuss the book's findings.