About the Center
The Center for German and European Studies at Brandeis University (CGES) was founded in 1997 with generous gifts from the German government and Brandeis University, and dedicated in May 1998 by Chancellor Helmut Kohl. It is one of only six Centers for German and European Studies established in partnership with the German Foreign Office in North America in the 1990s, and one of a network of twenty such Centers worldwide.
Mission Statement
Our mission is to support interdisciplinary teaching and research on contemporary Germany and Europe at Brandeis and to reach out to broader communities on the social, political and cultural issues facing Germany and Europe today.
Relatively youthful in the world of distinguished American universities, Brandeis University was founded in 1948 around the search for “truth even unto its innermost parts” and beliefs in creative diversity, free inquiry and social justice. It is the country’s only secular research university founded by the American Jewish community, and one of the very few top research universities focused on its undergraduate liberal arts program.
Brandeis CGES is well-placed to promote productive dialogue among many different voices about key issues in German and European society and to increase American understanding of contemporary European developments. As Chancellor Kohl noted at the ribbon-cutting, it would be difficult to imagine an institution better suited to understand, interrogate, and reimagine the cultural and political identity of Europe than a university with its roots in the Jewish experience and its doors open to the world.