| Ines Pohl has been based in the United States since 2020, serving as the Bureau Chief of Deutsche Welle — with a focus on the pressures facing contemporary democracies. Her reporting examines why growing numbers of voters in established democratic systems are drawn to authoritarian leaders and what this shift reveals about deeper political, social, and cultural transformations. As Bureau Chief, she oversees reporting from across the United States, consistently placing people at the center of her storytelling. Ms. Pohl has covered the Trump presidency closely as a member of the White House Foreign Press pool, while deliberately spending time reporting outside Washington in order to capture perspectives that are often absent from national political debates.
Ms. Pohl brings a distinctly German and European perspective to her reporting from the United States. Her work frequently reflects on how American political developments resonate beyond national borders and what lessons they may hold for Europe’s own democratic debates. Rather than treating U.S. politics as an isolated phenomenon, she places it in a transatlantic context, examining similarities, differences, and mutual blind spots.
Before returning to the United States, Ms. Pohl spent six years as Editor‑in‑Chief of the German daily taz. She later covered the 2016 U.S. presidential election for Deutsche Welle before becoming DW’s Editor‑in‑Chief in Berlin and Bonn. During her three years in that role, she worked closely with colleagues to sharpen the editorial profiles of Deutsche Welle’s 30 language services and to strengthen the organization’s social media strategy in response to a rapidly evolving media landscape.
Dr. Alexander Görlach is an Adjunct Professor to 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 is a Senior Fellow to the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs in New York and 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 Hongkong. Since then Dr. Görlach has had a special interest in 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. He is also the founder of the debate-magazine The European, that he also ran as its Editor-in-Chief from 2009 to 2015. He is a contributor to the New York Times, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, and the South China Morning Post, and a columnist for the business magazine Wirtschaftswoche, Deutsche Welle, and Focus Online. He is a frequent commentator on German television. |
