How to Protect – or Lose – Our Democracy: Lessons from History
Wednesday, October 29, 202512:30 - 2:00 pm (ET)
Zoom Webinar
About the Event
Extremism is on the rise in Europe, North America, and around the world. What lessons does history provide on how to protect - or lose - our democracy? This series features some of the authors of the newly published ‘Wenn das Gestern anklopft: Weimar und die Wiederkehr der Geschichte’ (Herder, 2025) to explore the drivers of democratic breakdown as well as the success factors of democratic resilience, then and now.
The first in this series of events addresses the question as to whether the ‘Never again!’ credo of the last 80 years - first expressed by Buchenwald survivors the day after their liberation and repeated by political leaders and in civil society ever since - lies in tatters.
About the Speaker
Thomas Weber is Professor of History and International Affairs as well as the founding Director of the Centre of Global Security and Governance at the University of Aberdeen. He also is a Visiting Fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University; an Associate Fellow of the Center for Advanced Security, Strategic and Integration Studies at the University of Bonn; a Senior Associate of the Centre for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies at the Munk School for Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto; and a Member of the Security History Network at Utrecht University. His expertise lies in European, international, and global political history from the 19th century to the present.
A native of Breckerfeld in Westphalia, he earned his DPhil from the University of Oxford. He also has taught or has held fellowships at Harvard, the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Chicago, and the University of Glasgow.
Read more about Thomas Weber here.