Center for German and European Studies

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 only Jewish-sponsored non sectarian research university in North America.

Brandeis CGES is thus well-placed to promote productive dialogue among many different voices about key issues in German and European societies and to increase American understanding of contemporary European developments.

European integration and globalization oblige Germany and Europe to become more economically, socially and ethnically mixed. These welcome processes, along with the difficulties that come with them, are CGES’s primary concern. The complex stories of the renascence of Jewish communities need to be told within this context, not only because they link a sad past to a promising present, but also because they provide models for the evolution of a new tolerant pluralism, Europe’s most important millennial frontier. The transnational melding of culture and the issues it poses are another important focus. CGES is concerned with German and European culture as living creation in literature, film, music and television of great importance to issues of regional, national and ethnic identity in the new Europe.

The end of the Cold War, German unification, globalization and the dramatic intensification of European integration provide important new contexts shaping a New Europe. CGES is committed to wide-ranging and thorough discussion of the New Europe and Germany’s place within it, particularly concerning the nature and effects of changes in patterns of governance and their implications for European senses of membership and belonging.

Europe’s new pluralism brings with it new problems of conflicts between groups and resurrects painful reminders of older ones. This dimension of the CGES program focuses on group diversity and the evolution of conflict resolution to understand the challenge of protecting diversity in the New Europe.