2025 Spring Seminars
This year, the Clough Center for the Study of Constitutional Democracy is dedicated to Envisioning Democratic Futures. Guided by that theme, this Spring, we look forward to welcoming several leading scholars to campus for a series of conversations about recent elections around the world. We will kick off this series on聽January 21 with Harvard's聽Arthur Goldhammer, who will lead our discussion of France, and on February 4 we will turn to the United Kingdom with BC's own James Cronin. Germany will be our focus later that month, on February 27, when Hannes Kerber of Boston College will be joined by David Spreen of Harvard, Anja von Rosenstiel of Boston University, and Sonia Kreibich, Consul General of Germany to the New England States. BC's Marsin Alshamary will consider the past and future of elections in Iraq on March 11, and BC's Mary C. Murphy will lead our discussion of Ireland's electoral politics on April 1. Our series will conclude on April 15 when Thibaud Marcesse of Boston College will guide our look at elections in India.
Tuesday, January 21
12:00 pm-1:15 pm | 10 Stone Avenue |聽Registration form to come
A Dead End for Fifth Republic聽France?
Arthur Goldhammer (Harvard University)
Arthur Goldhammer is a writer, translator, and long-time observer of French politics, on which he writes regularly for such publications as The New Republic, The Nation, The American Prospect, The New York Times, and the Guardian. He is the author of a novel, Shooting War, and is working on another about physicists in the 1930s and 40s. He is also president of the Tocqueville Society and serves on the editorial boards of The Tocqueville Review and French Politics, Culture, and Society.
Tuesday, February 4
12:00 pm-1:15 pm | 10 Stone Avenue |聽Registration form to come
The Tories Are Out in the UK -- Is Labour In?
James Cronin (Boston College)
James Cronin is Research Professor in History who has long taught British, European, comparative and international history. His research interests have involved the relationship between states and social structures, parties, and the rise and fall of the Cold War world order. His most recent work has been on the fragility of 鈥渓iberal,鈥� domestically and internationally, in the post-Cold War, neoliberal world. Professor Cronin has long been a local affiliate of the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies at Harvard University, where he currently co-chairs the Seminar on Contemporary European Politics. He has been awarded fellowships by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the German Marshall Fund and is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society.
Thursday, February 27
5:00 pm | Gasson Hall Commons | Registration form to come
Untangling Germany鈥檚 Elections
Sonia Kreibich (Consul General), Anja von Rosenstiel (Boston University),
David Spreen (Harvard University), Hannes Kerber (Boston College)
Hannes Kerber (Boston College)
Hannes Kerber is an Assistant Professor of Political Philosophy at Boston College, where he studies and teaches primarily 18th-century political thought. Prior to joining BC, he was the academic program director at the Carl Friedrich von Siemens Stiftung and a lecturer in philosophy and religious studies at the University of Munich, Germany. In 2022/2023 he held a position as a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University and in 2024 as a visiting professor at the Universit脿 degli Studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia, Italy. His first book, Die Aufkl盲rung der Aufkl盲rung: Lessing und die Herausforderung des Christentums, was published in 2021 by Wallstein Verlag and was awarded the first Chodowiecki Prize by the Interdisciplinary Centre for European Enlightenment Studies in Halle-Wittenberg, Germany. He has co-edited Leo Strauss on Plato鈥檚 鈥淓uthyphro鈥�: The 1948 Notebook, with Lectures and Critical Writings (2023) and Die Praktiken der Provokation. Lessings Schreib- und Streitstrategien (2024).
Friday-Saturday, March 21-22
2101 Commonwealth Avenue |聽Registration form to come
Spring Symposium: Envisioning Democratic Futures
Ezra Klein (New York Times), Jytte Klausen (Brandeis),
Paul Romer (Boston College), and many more
Tuesday, April 1
12:00 pm-1:15 pm | 10 Stone Avenue |聽Registration form to come
Ireland's Election Result: More of the Same
Mary C. Murphy (Boston College)
Mary C. Murphy joined Boston College in Fall 2024. Her main research and teaching interests include Ireland/Northern Ireland and the EU, peace and conflict in Northern Ireland, and the politics of Brexit on the island of Ireland. Her current research focuses on post-Brexit Northern Ireland and relations with the EU and US. In addition to being a member of the Political Science Faculty, she is the Director of the Irish Institute at Boston College.
Her latest book, co-authored with Jonathan Evershed, A Troubled Constitutional Future: Northern Ireland after Brexit, Agenda/Columbia University Press 2022, won the UACES Best Book Prize in 2023. The book examines the factors, actors, and dynamics that are most likely to be influential, and potentially transformative, in determining Northern Ireland's constitutional future after Brexit. It offers an assessment of how Brexit and its fallout may lead to constitutional upheaval and includes a cautionary warning about the need to prepare for it.
She is also the author of Europe and Northern Ireland鈥檚 Future: Negotiating Brexit鈥檚 Unique Case, Agenda/Columbia University Press 2018, which was one of the first book-length studies of Northern Ireland and Brexit. Her previous book, Northern Ireland and the European Union: The Dynamics of a Changing Relationship, was published by Manchester University Press in 2014. She has guest edited special issues of Irish Political Studies, Administration and Irish Studies in International Affairs (forthcoming), and her work has also been published in leading academic journals including The British Journal of Politics and International Relations, International Political Science Review, and Territory, Politics, Governance.
Before joining the faculty at Boston College, she was Head of the Department of Government and Politics at University College Cork, Ireland. She is the former President of the Irish Association for Contemporary European Studies, has twice been awarded an Erasmus+ Jean Monnet Chair award, and holds a fellowship with the Centre on Constitutional Change at Edinburgh University. She was also previously a Fulbright-Schuman scholar and has won the Political Studies Association of Ireland (PSAI) Teaching and Learning Prize.
Tuesday, April 8
Heights Room |聽Registration form to come
Defending Democracy: What Does NATO Protect?
Tuesday, April 15
12:00 pm-1:15 pm | 10 Stone Avenue |聽Registration form to come
What Kind of Democratic Elections in India?
Thibaud Marcesse (Boston College)
Thibaud Marcesse received his Ph.D. in Government at Cornell University in 2018. His dissertation investigated the impact of rights-based policies in the field of poverty alleviation on electoral politics at the local level in rural India. His research has most recently appeared in World Development. He is currently working on a book manuscript that will focus on the interactions between elected officials and local state bureaucrats in the context of public policy reform and decentralization in India. Thibaud was awarded a National Science Foundation Award for his field research. Prior to attending graduate school, Thibaud worked in international development, with organizations such as the United Nations Children鈥檚 Fund (UNICEF), the National Democratic Institute (NDI), and Chemonics International.
Thursday, May 1
5:00 pm | 10 Stone Avenue |聽Registration form to come
Issue Launch: Clough Center Journal, Volume 3
Clough Center Fellows