Today we bring you an unedited recording of a December 3, 2009 discussion with David Rennie, British journalist and EU correspondent at The Economist and author of the Charlemagne column.  Rennie shared his thoughts on the future of the European Union with Boston University students and discussed his role as a journalist in Brussels. He said that while the adoption of the Lisbon Treaty in the EU was supposed to have been a celebrated event, people in Brussells were instead “sunk in gloom.” He then laid out a compelling argument for why he feels the European project is in trouble, listing the trade offs that various actors in the EU must make in order for the EU to function.

On November 17, 2009, Igor Lukes, Professor of International Relations and History at Boston University and an expert on the history of Central Europe in the 20th century, joined William Keylor, former Chairman of the Department of History at Boston University and Director of the International History Institute, to discuss the lead-up to and the aftermath of the fall of the Berlin Wall ten years earlier.  Lukes and Keylor engaged in a dialogue regarding local actors and their role in the events of 1989. Lukes suggested that the West did not necessarily desire change and while the local actors may have wanted change, they did not have power to obtain it.  Instead, he argued, the communist leadership was the agent of change. Although Gorbachev’s reforms contributed to the destruction of communism, Lukes claimed this was not their intended purpose. Keylor responded to Lukes’ points but with a focus on the West’s reaction to the fall of the Berlin Wall and on to broach the topic of German reunification.

As we have mentioned, we were only able to record six of these events and the quality of the recordings is not up to our usual standards; however, all of the discussions were extremely interesting, so we have opted to podcast the unedited recordings where available.

On November 2, 2009, Peter Pulzer, Professor Emeritus of Government at the University of Oxford and an Emeritus Fellow of All Souls College, discussed Germany’s interaction with the European Union and the process of its re-integration with the rest of the West in the years following World War II. After World War II, Germany desired to reassimilate into Europe. Membership in the European community provided Germany with a chance to redeem itself – to “serve out probation” as it were and try to prove its ethical character. Germany even turned down an invitation to NATO to display its new commitment to peace.  After 1989, Pulzer argued, Germany had proven its legitimacy and was no longer on “probation.” He suggested that Germany has since become a key leader and decision-maker.

On October 21, 2009, Mark Blyth, professor of International Political Economy at Brown University, whose luncheon discussion at the Center for International Relations we featured in our most recent podcast, was joined by Rawi Abdelal, the Joseph C. Wilson Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. Today’s podcast is an unedited recording of the discussion, which centered on their forthcoming book: Constructing the International Economy. Blyth introduced the book and described the various chapters and how they fit together. Abdelal discussed the value of constructivism for international political economy and described the four ways that he and Blyth approached constructivism in their book.

Links:

Rawi Abdelal’s faculty page at Harvard Business School

Mark Blyth faculty profile

Constructing the International Economy

Today’s podcast is an unedited recording of an October 21, 2009 luncheon discussion with Mark Blyth, a professor of International Political Economy at Brown University. In his fast paced talk, Blyth explained the ins and outs of the financial crisis, elucidating what is going on beyond the surface, using imagery to bring to life the current situation. He likened the crisis to past “bubbles,” suggesting that the recent financial crisis was a result of all of these bubbles converging. To illustrate the perceptions and opinions of people in the financial industry, Blyth shared excerpts from interviews with industry leaders. Many of the quotes are shocking, revealing a great sense of confusion in the industry. He concluded by suggesting that even if we manage to weather the current crisis, there is another crisis developing that will be even more difficult to overcome, in particular given how much the US has spent on the current one.

Unfortunately, we were only able to record six of the events and the quality of the recordings is not up to our usual standards; however, the conversations are quite fascinating, so we’ve opted to podcast the unedited recordings where available, beginning with Kathrin Zippel’s March 4, 2009 lecture and discussion at the Center for International Relations on the politics of sexual harassment in the EU.  Zippel is an associate professor of sociology at Northeastern University and an affiliate of the Center for European Studies at Harvard University.

In her lecture, Zippel noted that while the US has been at the forefront in the discussion of women’s issues and in the fight against sexual harassment, feminists in the EU have begun to make strides. Using Germany as a case study to highlight the EU experience, she compared the two environments, noting the greater awareness of sexual harassment in the US. Europeans, she argued, are more hesitant to confront it as the outcomes are more uncertain. She described what amounts to a “ping-pong effect” resulting from the interaction between the EU and member states as activists lobby the EU for policies that have to be implemented at the national level but which raise issues that go back up to the EU level.

Kathrin Zippel’s homepage