Prof. Dr. Marcia Pally (New York University / Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin): "Why America doesn't know what to do with its own government: Trump, Sanders, and frankly, everyone else"

Wednesday, 06.07.2016, 2:15-3:45 p.m., U2/01.33

Neither Donald Trump nor the present US presidential election is exceptional but rather reflections of American history and political imaginary. These formed from the experiences of immigration, religious dissent, and British resistance to centralization and interacted with conditions of settlement in America to yield the politics of today. The Federalists and anti-Federalists of the Jefferson's time would not be surprised. Prof. Pally will look at the present election in light of this political imaginary and discuss the foundational structure that characterizes election contests in the US.

Professor Marcia Pally teaches Multilingual Multicultural Studies at New York University. She has spoken at the World Economic Forum in 2010, was a Fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, and has been awarded the prestigious DFG "Mercator" Guest Professorship. Marcia Pally is also a columnist and writer for The New York Times, Die Zeit, Süddeutsche Zeitung, FAZ, Taz, Frankfurter Rundschau, and other major American and German newspapers and periodicals. She is the author of several books on culture, religion and politics, including Die Neuen Evangelikalen: Freiheitsgewinne durch Fromme Politik (2008). Her most recent book, Commonwealth and Covenant: Economics, Politics, and Theologies of Relationality (2016), asks whether a loss of vision and purpose is driving some to extreme ideologies and terrorism, arguing that it is not more policy proposals that are needed in our time, but rather a renewed understanding of our ontology, the foundations of the way we and the world work.