Committee for the Study of DemocracyAlthough the East and Central Europe Program is primarily focused on the activities in the region, its very existence has contributed to the intellectual life of the Graduate Faculty itself. Both the scholarly commitment on the part of the faculty to issues of the transition to democracy and the growing interest on the part of students in the problems of comparative transitions, led to the establishment of the Committee for the Study of Democracy.The curriculum of the Committee, avoiding the constraints of area studies, is thematic and comparative in nature. The Committee deals with both empirical and normative problems in pursuing the following themes: foundations of democracy, processes of democratization, constitutional and political design of different democratic models, threats to democracy in different world contexts, problems of citizenship, and modes of democratic political action and participation. The interdisciplinary and interdepartmental Committee was officially opened in the fall of 1994 with a series of guest lectures conducted by Adam Michnik.Although the East and Central Europe Program is primarily focused on the activities in the region, its very existence has contributed greatly to the intellectual life of the Graduate Faculty itself. Both the scholarly commitment on the part of the faculty to issues of the transition to democracy and the growing interest on the part of students in the problems of comparative transitions, led to the establishment of the Committee for the Study of Democracy.
G-Tech
Visiting Professorships in Democracy at the New School for Social
Research In the Fall of 1995, the New School for Social Research - with the support of the G-Tech Corporation - established a Visiting Professorship in Democracy. The Professorship is awarded each semester to a distinguished public intellectual from one of the world's emerging democracies.The overall goal of the Visiting Professorship is to promote deeper and more textured understanding of the emergence and consolidation of democracy in the contemporary world. The visitors are from areas of the world in which the New School has special intellectual interests and professional ties, such as East and Central Europe, the former Soviet Union, South Africa, and Latin America.Adam Michnik, respected for his intellectual accomplishments and widely known for his contribution to the cause of democracy, became the exemplar for the Visiting Professorship in Democracy. In keeping with this example, the Visiting Professors come to the New School to teach on the lessons and prospects of democracy in their home countries, and to help us reflect more broadly on the challenges facing democratically-minded people around the world. Although the Professorship is to be filled by individuals who have been engaged actively in promoting or protecting democracy, the Visiting Professor is expected not to use the appointment as a platform to advance partisan positions in home-country debates.Among those who were nominated for the G-Tech Professors in Democracy are: Fall '95 Keorapetse Kgositsile, poet and philosopher (South Africa) Spring '96 Galina Starovoitova, anthropologist, human rights activist (Russia) Fall '96 Adam Michnik, historian, writer (Poland) Spring '97 Guillermo de la Peña, anthropologist (Mexico) Fall '97 Miklos Haraszti, writer, media specialist (Hungary)