Karlsruhe Dialogues 2009

Right-Wing Extremism in Europe today

Prof. Dr. David Art

Speaker 

 

Prof. Dr. David Art comes from the USA. He graduated with “summa cum laude” in history at Yale University in 1995 and then studied read Russian and east European history as Yale’s Henry Fellow at Oxford University and German at Karl-Franzens University in Graz/Austria. From 1997 to 2004 he did his Ph.D. in political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) about comparative politics, political economy and international relations. Afterwards, he went to the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester/Massachusetts as a scientific assistant of political science.

Since 2006 he is scientific assistant at the Department of Political Science at Tufts University in Medford/Massachusetts. In addition, he is Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence/Italy. Art has received a great number of further academic fellowships and awards, such as the “Department of Political Science Graduate Fellowship, MIT” (1998-2000), the “Harvard Center for European Studies Dissertation Grant” (2000-2001) and the “Lucian Pye Award for best dissertation in political science”, given by the Department of Political Science, MIT (2004). He is for example concerned with West European politics, European integration as well as Fascism and the Far Right in comparative perspective.

Amongst others, these are the topics of his books “Inside the Radical Right: The Development of Anti-Immigrant Parties in Postwar Europe” (forthcoming) and “The Politics of the Nazi Past in Germany and Austria” (2006) and his articles, such as “The Organizational Origins of the Contemporary Radical Right: The Case of Belgium” (in: “Comparative Politics 40, No. 4, 2008).

Art is member of several institutions, such as the German Studies Association, the Council of Europeanists and the American Political Science Association. Furthermore, he is Faculty Affiliate at the Harvard Center for European Studies and Co-Convener Standing Group on “Extremism and Democracy” of the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR).



ZAK asked Prof. Dr. David Art to answer the following question:

What Can Citizens do Against Right-Wing Extremism? 

"Citizens need to communicate to their elected representatives that they view the struggle against right-wing extremism as an important issue – one that needs to be funded. This pressure is particularly important during periods when the media is not reporting on right-wing violence, and when politicians might be tempted to cut funding for programs that have been successful in confronting the problem. "