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Arien Mack Editor’s Introduction THIS ISSUE CONTAINS THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE TWENTIETH Social Research conference, which continued the journal’s celebration of the seventy-fifth anniversary of its founding and of the founding of the University in Exile at the New School. The University in Exile came into existence in 1933 and provided an academic haven for some of the mostlyJewish professors and intellectuals threatened by extermination in Germany. These scholars were rescued by virtue ofthe extraordinary persistence and imagination of the New School’s first president, Alvin Johnson. In the second year of its existence, the University in Exile became the Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Science, and in the same year this exiled group of academics, with the full encouragement ofAlvinJohnson, created this journal. Social Research has been published by the New School four times a year ever since. The terrible history surrounding the origin of the University in Exile ensured that the values offree inquiry and academic freedom, the subjects of both our celebratory conferences, have been cherished and nurtured at this institution since it began. It was to honor this heritage that we mounted two conferences on “Free Inquiry at Risk: Universities in Dangerous Times.”The first ofthese conferences was held in October 2009 at the New School, and the conference proceedings were published in the summer 2009 issue of Social Research. The issue you are now read­ ing contains the papers from the second conference, which was held at the American Academy in Berlin in February 2009. By holding this second conference in Berlin, we were not only honoring the tradition established by the New School’s fiftieth anniver­ sary celebrations, which also occurred both in NewYork City and Berlin, Editor's Introduction xi but were honoring our own roots. It was the dark times in Germany in the 1930s that required a university in exile. Returning to these roots to explore the distance travelled as well as the contemporary threats to free inquiry and academic freedom in Europe and beyond seemed the most appropriate way of celebrating our own past. The conference in Berlin was shorter than the one in New York— only one day with two serial sessions. Also unlike our New York confer­ ence, where most of our speakers reflected on the state of American universities with respect to academic freedom and free inquiry, most of the speakers in Berlin came from outside the United States: from Germany, Hungary, Israel, the United Kingdom, and Lithuania by way of Belarus. You will, I think, discover that while there are some differ­ ences between threats against academic freedom in U.S. universities and those abroad, there are more similarities. For example, the threats to these basic values from the corporatization of the university is a problem here and elsewhere, as is the mega-increase in the number of students demanding higher education. So discussion of these issues across large geographical divides seems not only recommended but perhaps mandatory if what we cherish most about our institutions of higher learning is to remain alive. You will find in these pages not only the papers on which the talks at the conference were based, but edited versions of the discus­ sion sessions at which interesting questions were raised and interesting answers elicited, and which seemed to merit publication. The questions asked during the Q&A sessions were raised both by speakers and the small invited audience. This conference, like all Social Research conferences, could only take place because of the generosity of others. The conference in Berlin was made possible by support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and from one of the New School’s most loyal and generous trustees, Henry Arnhold. We are deeply grateful to them. The first day of the Berlin conference began with the awarding of a New School honorary degree to German Federal Chancellor Angela xii social research Merkel, whose acceptance speech, as well as the laudatory speech in her honor given by the distinguished Professor Fritz Stern, is included in this issue. This issue also includes one paper that is not connected to the conference in any way: an essay...

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