Join the Wende Museum, the Thomas Mann House, and dublab radio for the second program in a new series on the current state of democracies. How should a democracy deal with its own vulnerabilities? How do democracies need to evolve to deal successfully with increasing global levels of ecological crisis, geopolitical tensions, economic disparities, and culture wars? How much vulnerability can a democracy endure?

The Student Council consists of a team of highly engaged, talented, and diverse undergraduate and graduate students who invite prominent guest speakers to discuss topics relating to society, politics, culture, and art. In conversation with academics, journalists, politicians, and artists, the students will explore the various threats to democratic institutions and principles worldwide, as well as strategies to potentially overcome these threats.

The guest speaker for our February program is Friedemann Karig, journalist, author, and moderator from Berlin. He has written for several leading German newspapers and magazines, including Süddeutsche Zeitung, Die Zeit, and Spiegel Online, among others. His nonfiction book Wie wir lieben (The Way We Love) was published in 2017, followed by his debut novel Dschungel (Jungle, 2019) and the nonfiction bestseller Erzählende Affen: Mythen, Lügen, Utopien – Wie Geschichten unser Leben bestimmen (Talking Monkeys: Myths, Lies, Utopias – How Stories Determine Our Lives, 2021). His novel Die Lügnerin (The (Female) Liar) will be published in September 2023. Karig is a 2024 Thomas Mann House Fellow. During his fellowship, he will examine protest cultures in the United States. Taking as his starting point Henry David Thoreau’s term “civil disobedience,” he will look at the civil rights movement, Occupy Wall Street, and Black Lives Matter and ask which protest cultures make today’s democracies vulnerable.