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Yascha Mounk

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Yascha Mounk
Mounk in 2016
Born
Yascha Benjamin Mounk

(1982-06-10) 10 June 1982 (age 42)
Munich, West Germany
Nationality
  • German
  • American
Occupations
  • Academic
  • journalist
Political partySocial Democratic Party of Germany (c. 1990s – 2015)
Academic background
Alma mater
ThesisThe Age of Responsibility (2015)
Doctoral advisorMichael Sandel[1]
Academic work
DisciplinePolitical science
Websiteyaschamounk.com Edit this at Wikidata

Yascha Benjamin Mounk[2] (born 10 June 1982) is a German-American political scientist and author. He is Associate Professor of the Practice of International Affairs at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C. In July 2020, he founded Persuasion, an online magazine devoted to defending the values of free societies.

As a freelance journalist, Mounk has written for the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, Slate, and German weekly newspaper Die Zeit.

Biography

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Early life

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Mounk was born and raised in Munich. His mother was Jewish and a socialist[citation needed], and left Poland in 1969 after the purge of Jews from positions in the Communist apparatus. Much of his mother's side of the family had been killed in the Holocaust.[3] He has said he felt like a stranger in Germany, and though German is his native language, he never felt accepted as a "true German" by his peers.[4]

Mounk read history at Trinity College, Cambridge, and received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 2003.[5][6] He then received a PhD from Harvard University in the United States, with the dissertation The Age of Responsibility: On the Role of Choice, Luck, and Personal Responsibility in Contemporary Politics and Philosophy.[2] He remained in the US as a lecturer on government, and was named a senior fellow in the Political Reform Program at the think tank New America.[7][8] Mounk became an American citizen in 2017.[9]

Career

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He was executive director of the Renewing the Centre team at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change. As a freelance journalist, he has written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, The Atlantic, Slate, and Die Zeit.

He runs a podcast called The Good Fight.[10]

In July 2020, he founded Persuasion, an online magazine,[11][12] and in February 2024 the Atlantic cut ties with Mounk.[13] In September 2024, Mounk took up a role as visiting professor at Sciences-Po Paris.[14]

Political views

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Mounk joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) as a teenager. In 2015, he resigned from the party by publishing an open letter to then-chairman Sigmar Gabriel. He cited the lack of helpfulness of German institutions to refugees, the passive attitude of SPD leaders and other parts of the party during the Crimea crisis in 2014, and the SPD's policy on Greece, which he called a "betrayal of the social democratic dream of a united Europe."[15][16]

In a February 2018 interview published in Süddeutsche Zeitung, Mounk stated that he had changed his position on nationalism. He initially considered it a relic of the past that must be overcome, but he now advocates an "inclusive nationalism" to head off the threat of aggressive nationalism.[17] On the German television newscast Tagesthemen, he stated that Germany is on a "historically unique experiment, namely to transform a mono-ethnic and mono-cultural democracy into a multi-ethnic one."[18] In the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Mounk advised the "liberal camp" to adopt this inclusive nationalism to foster a multi-ethnic and democratic society: "The key ... is the adoption of the populist demand that people and nations should again feel they have control of their lives or their destiny."[19]

Bibliography

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Books

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  • The Identity Trap: A Story of Ideas and Power in Our Time Penguin Press, 2023
  • The Great Experiment: Why Diverse Democracies Fall Apart and How They Can Endure, Penguin Press (2022)
  • The Age of Responsibility – Luck, Choice and the Welfare State, Harvard University Press, 2019.
  • The People vs. Democracy: Why Our Freedom Is in Danger and How to Save It. Harvard University Press, 2018, ISBN 978-0674976825
  • Stranger in my own country: a Jewish family in modern Germany. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2014.

References

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  1. ^ Newman, Lainey A.; Zheng, Ruth (7 May 2018). ""Intellectual Powerhouse": Yascha Mounk Examines the Future of Democracy". The Harvard Crimson. Cambridge, Massachusetts. Retrieved 10 August 2022.
  2. ^ a b Mounk, Yascha Benjamin (2015). The Age of Responsibility: On the Role of Choice, Luck, and Personal Responsibility in Contemporary Politics and Philosophy (doctoral thesis). Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University. Retrieved 10 August 2022.
  3. ^ Mounk, Yascha (21 May 2020). "Prepare for the Roaring Twenties". The Atlantic.
  4. ^ Stranger in My Own Country: A Jewish Family in Modern Germany, jewishbookcouncil.org
  5. ^ Mounk, Yascha (2015). "Yascha Mounk (CV)" (PDF).
  6. ^ Skeptic (11 November 2023). "385. Yascha Mounk — Identity Politics and its Discontents". Skeptic. Retrieved 28 February 2024.
  7. ^ "Yascha Mounk | About". yascha.
  8. ^ "Yascha Mounk | C-SPAN.org". www.c-span.org. Retrieved 28 February 2024.
  9. ^ Mounk, Yascha (24 March 2017). "How Did I Celebrate Becoming American? Protesting Trump". The New York Times. Retrieved 26 September 2017.
  10. ^ "Slate | The Good Fight Podcast". Slate Magazine. Retrieved 28 February 2024.
  11. ^ The Purpose of Persuasion, persuasion.community.
  12. ^ Shephard, Alex (8 July 2020). "The Problem With Yascha Mounk's Persuasion". The New Republic. ISSN 0028-6583. Retrieved 28 February 2024.
  13. ^ https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/media/2024/02/05/atlantic-yascha-mounk/ [bare URL]
  14. ^ "Yascha Mounk: 'The problem isn't just the existence of populists, but the unpopularity of alternatives'". Le Monde. 9 November 2024. Retrieved 16 November 2024.
  15. ^ Mounk, Yascha (15 July 2015). "Griechenland-Politik: Hiermit trete ich aus der SPD aus". Die Zeit (in German). ISSN 0044-2070. Retrieved 24 September 2024.
  16. ^ Waarom ik uit de SPD stap, dewereldmorgen.be, 17 July 2015.
  17. ^ "Die liberale Demokratie bricht gerade auseinander" , sueddeutsche.de, 15 February 2018.
  18. ^ Sendung vom 20.02.2018, Tagesthemen/ARD-aktuell, 20 February 2018, at 0:24:45.
  19. ^ Does the Political Scientist Who Foresaw the Trump Era Still Believe Democracy Has a Future?, archive.is, Anshel Pfeffer, Haaretz, 29 March 2017; The key, says Mounk with an ironic smile, is in the slogan often used by populists, also popular among Brexit supporters: to give people a feeling they have a control over their lives, and that your own nation has control over its destiny. In order for people to feel that, they have to be convinced that they can live in a multi-ethnic and democratic society and still be better off materially, and the liberal camp must learn how to embrace nationalism.
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