Twenty years ago, the velvet revolutions of eastern and central Europe toppled the region’s communist governments. The revolutions startled the world with their lack of violence and demonstrated a new way to think about how fundamental political change occurs. Since The New School became intellectually engaged with members of the region’s democratic opposition well before 1989, it is fitting for the university to host a symposium on the political changes of the past two decades. Professors and students address the way these changes have affected civil society, social movements, democratic culture, migrations, and gender. This, in keeping with The New School for Social Research’s University-in-Exile tradition, reflects the university’s continued dedication to civic-minded intellectual engagement.

The symposium hosted by the Transregional Center for Democratic Studies (TCDS), will be held on Wednesday, October 14, from 6:00-8:00 p.m., celebrates a double legacy: that of the negotiated revolutions of 1989 and The New School’s remarkable relationship to them. Keynote speaker Adam Michnik, a major architect of the region’s transition and recipient of an honorary degree from The New School in 1984, will be joined by a panel of scholars and writers.

Participants include Ira Katznelson, Ruggles Professor of Political Science and History at Columbia University; Jonathan Schell, author of The Unconquerable World and The Unfinished Twentieth Century; Christopher Hitchens, contributor to The Nation and Vanity Fair; Andrew Arato, Dorothy Hart Hirshon Professor of Political and Social Theory at The New School for Social Research; Jeffrey Goldfarb, Michael E. Gellert Professor of Sociology at The New School for Social Research; Elzbieta Matynia director of the Transregional Center for Democratic Studies, associate professor of sociology and liberal studies at The New School for Social Research; and Ann Snitow, associate professor of literature and gender studies at Eugene Lang College and editor of The Feminist Memoir Project.

This free event will take place at Tishman Auditorium, Alvin Johnson/J. M. Kaplan Hall, 66 West 12th Street.