New York: Building Consensus: How to Successfully Navigate Differences in Democracies

The ACG, 1014, and the Goethe Institut will host a discussion as part of the “Let’s Talk Democracy” series with Dr. Sheri Berman
Author and Professor of Political Science at Barnard College and Columbia University, and Dr. Alexander Görlach, Adjunct Professor at New York University Gallatin School, and Senior Advisor to the Berggruen Institute.

Dr. Sheri Berman is a Professor of Political Science at Barnard College, Columbia University. She is the author of numerous books and scholarly articles on European politics and political development, the left, fascism, populism, and the fate of democracy. Dr. Berman’s forthcoming book is entitled: The Political Consequences of Economic Ideas: Neoliberalism, the Left, and the Fate of Democracy (Oxford 2027). She has also published in a wide variety of non-scholarly publications, including the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, VOX, The Guardian, and Dissent. She is on the boards of The Journal of Democracy, Political Science Quarterly, and Persuasion. Dr. Berman holds an Honorary Doctorate from Uppsala University in Sweden.

Dr. Alexander Görlach is an Adjunct Professor at NYU Gallatin School where he teaches democratic theory. Prior to that, he had various positions as visiting scholar and as fellow at Harvard University in the United States, and Cambridge University and Oxford University in the United Kingdom. He was a senior fellow to the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs in New York and is a senior advisor to the Berggruen Institute in Los Angeles. Dr. Görlach holds a ThD in comparative religion and a PhD in linguistics. His academic interests include democratic theory, politics and religion, and theories of secularism, pluralism and cosmopolitanism. In the academic year 2017-18 he was a visiting scholar at National Taiwan University and City University Hong Kong. Since then, he focuses on the rise of China and what it means for the democracies in East Asia.

Dr. Görlach is an honorary professor of ethics and theology at Leuphana University in Lüneburg, Germany. In addition, he is the founder of the debate-magazine The European, that he also ran as its editor in chief from 2009 to 2015. Today, he serves as an op-ed contributor to the New York Times, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, and the South China Morning Post. He is a columnist for the business magazine Wirtschaftswoche, Deutsche Welle and Focus Online. Dr. Görlach is also a frequent commentator on German News Channel Welt TV.