“We are going through a big systems change,” our Academic Director, Anna Katsman, said as she opened our final spring term. This term marks the last chapter of THE NEW INSTITUTE before we close our doors at the end of June. While this immediate change is specific to our institute, we are witnessing a global systemic collapse that is visible everywhere: increasing authoritarianism, human rights violations, and the relentless advance of climate catastrophe.

What new modes might arise from this breakdown of systems? Now, more than ever, we need to fundamentally rethink our societal structures. The familiar can no longer be taken for granted. In this spirit, we have just welcomed 13 new fellows, some of whom are joining our five programs under the annual theme of Re-thinking Capitalism, while others are here as individual fellows. Our goal for this final term: to continue to foster exchange and cross-pollination between disciplines and schools of thought, in the hope that these efforts will bear fruit in new, better systems.  

Before we dive into our programs, we’d like to extend a warm welcome to Francisco Sagasti, former President of Peru and a distinguished voice on democratic innovation, who joins us as an individual fellow for this final term.

The opening conference began with a recap from our Africapitalism program. After two terms of re-thinking capitalism, fellow Donald Amaeshi summed up: “From an African point of view, capitalism is good, essentially.” For a continent facing unemployment and poverty, he argues, capitalism – if redirected – offers real developmental potential.

The central idea: business can do good when it is closely aligned with local development and local people. How? Through the OKOBI (One Kindred One Business) model, which fosters sustainable, kinship-based partnerships between businesses and local communities in order to drive inclusive growth. If you would like to learn more about OKOBI, we recommend our 60 seconds video with program chair Kenneth Amaeshi, a leading scholar on sustainable business and finance in the global south. The team is now working to make the OKOBI model applicable for African business initiatives, and they are currently working on a forthcoming handbook to help spread their ideas. Three new fellows have now joined this effort:

Christian Iaione: Professor of Public and Administrative Law at LUISS University, Rome. With a decade of work on the ground, he brings experience in commons governance and innovation policy. Christian’s insight: there is no good governance without a good economy, and economic self-organization by local communities is essential.

Camille Meyer: Associate Professor in Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the University of Cape Town. His expertise lies in social entrepreneurship and managing common goods, with a focus on engaging marginalized producers in supply chains.

Naomi Nwokolo: Executive Director of the UN Global Compact Nigeria. Her research focuses on Africapitalism and the One Kindred One Business initiative, exploring how corporate actors can forge meaningful partnerships with local communities to reduce poverty and drive sustainable development in the areas where they operate.

At THE NEW INSTITUTE, we’re not just re-thinking capitalism, we’re exploring what lies beyond it. In Kohei Saito’s program, the focus is on the tension between degrowth and socialism as responses to today’s polycrisis, especially the climate emergency. Kohei, renowned for his work on “degrowth communism,” now describes the emerging reality as “dark socialism”: a future where adaptation and new forms of solidarity will become essential. With the “end of progress” in sight, he suggests that survival, rather than emancipation, is becoming the central concern, and asks how we can preserve democratic freedom amid inevitable crisis.

The program’s internal debate contrasts Kohei’s “war economy” perspective with Aaron Benanav’s more optimistic vision of democratic planning. Aaron, Assistant Professor at Cornell University, focuses on how people can participate in economic processes even under conditions of crisis. New fellows joining this program this term include:

Troy Vettese: Environmental historian and co-author of Half-Earth Socialism, who advocates for radical ecological measures.

Tatjana Söding: Researcher and journalist with the Zetkin Collective, who is investigating the political ecology of the far right and the dangers of eco-fascism.

Cédric Durand: Political economist at the University of Geneva, known for his work on techno-feudalism and the regulationist outlook after financial hegemony. He is currently working on ecological planning as institutional design to reshape the human-nature metabolism.

Kirstin Munro: Economist at The New School, whose work on eco-conscious households and Marxist-feminist theory highlights the constraints faced by low-income families.

Photo by Luzia Cruz

Our Futures of Capitalism program, chaired by sociologist Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, has been taking the pulse of recent global developments – and the outlook is sobering. Aris shared his perspective on the current state of finance, highlighting a stark paradox. On one hand, the climate crisis poses a profound internal challenge to the financial sector, which remains uncertain about how to respond. At the same time, banks are currently reporting their strongest profits in over a decade, driven by market volatility. In his program at THE NEW INSTITUE, Aris has convened voices from the social sciences, psychoanalysis, and the arts, and the program explores how finance is not merely a backdrop to capitalism’s crisis, but a driving force in its ongoing transformation.

Recent shifts – such as the retreat of major banks from green commitments and growing un-insurability due to extreme planetary risks – signal that collapse is fast becoming a business model. Finance, it seems, now thrives on volatility and uncertainty. As Aris puts it, we are witnessing the rise of the “Homo speculans”: individuals compelled to become speculators in their own survival, managing pensions, catastrophes, and aging as personal risks that they may or may not be able to capitalize on.

But the group is not content to let this be the end of the story. Rather than accepting collapse as an endpoint, they are investigating how breakdowns can open up new spaces for collective imagination and action. Across the globe, grassroots financial practices are reimagining what finance can be – transforming tools of speculation into instruments for collective survival and democratic renewal. The challenge now: How can these emergent practices scale up to become genuine engines of transformation? We welcome two new fellows to the program:

Jamieson Webster: Psychoanalyst and author who is exploring the psychological dimensions of contemporary capitalism.

Melinda Cooper: Social and political theorist, analyzing the rise of private equity and venture capital as new hegemonic forms of capitalism.

Throughout the world, but especially in our program chair José Luis Chicoma's home country of Peru, the rise of capitalism has been accompanied by a loss of diversity in unprocessed foods.

The program’s recent Advisory Committee Meeting highlighted the need for a shift from seeing food as a commodity to treating it as a commons and a human right. The group continues to develop concrete recommendations for policy and practice, drawing on diverse expertise in nutrition, agroecology, and social justice. Their shared aim: to move beyond market-driven mechanisms and create food systems that truly nourish people and planet.

Although the Advisory Committee Meeting was held under Chatham House Rules, we were able to get some important international participants to join us for brief interviews between working sessions. We compiled their responses into a short behind-the-scenes video, available below.

A highlight of the meeting was the thought-provoking talk by anti-hunger activist and scholar Jose Luis Vivero, who challenged the dominant logic of food as a mere commodity. Vivero deconstructed this paradigm, framing food as a commons, a public good, and a human right, which is essential and multidimensional, and has historically been treated as such across societies. In this talk, Vivero argues that the commodification of food is a historical anomaly: most societies, past and present, have governed food collectively, not solely through markets. Learn more about his vision for the future of food here.

The new fellows in this program are:

Emma McDonell: Anthropologist at the University of Tennessee, whose research on quinoa traces its path from local staple to global commodity.

Chris Vogliano: Public health dietitian, advocating for greater dietary biodiversity and sustainable food systems.

Kristin Reynolds: Professor of Food Studies at The New School, focusing on urban agriculture, social justice, and decolonial approaches to food systems.

As the world overshoots climate targets and planetary boundaries, Maja Groff and the Planetary Governance program at THE NEW INSTITUTE are tirelessly working to turn urgent proposals into reality. Their focus: designing new global legal frameworks – including a Global Environmental Agency and, most ambitiously, an International Environmental Court – to hold states accountable and catalyze meaningful action. Environmental problems cross borders, but current international law is often too weak to enforce real change: existing courts lack teeth, and most agreements remain unenforceable unless states voluntarily comply. Maja’s team is working to change this by developing enforceable legal frameworks and building “smart coalitions” of NGOs, governments, and civil society to push for action

Our media fellow Felix Rohrbeck highlights this urgent project in his forthcoming newsletter, offering an in-depth look at how law and collective action could reshape planetary stewardship. Stay tuned for this conversation with Maja for a closer look at how global governance reforms might move from vision to implementation.

As we approach the closure of THE NEW INSTITUTE, we invite you to join us for a series of final public events and conversations.

Plan B for the Climate? On May 21, journalist Stephanie Rohde will moderate a timely discussion with sociologist Jens Beckert and environmental economist Susanne Dröge at the Körber Foundation. Together, they’ll explore what realism in climate policy means today and ask: If climate neutrality remains out of reach, what’s Plan B for our planet? Please register here.

The one thing that truly distinguishes a democracy from a dictatorship is the freedom of artistic expression. That’s why, together with DIE ZEIT and the Bundeskanzler-Helmut-Schmidt-Stiftung, we are dedicating this year’s Helmut-Schmidt-Future-Prize to two exceptional cultural figures: choreographer and director Sasha Waltz and artist and architect Olafur Eliasson. The award ceremony will take place on May 22 at 7 pm at Hamburg’s Thalia Theater. While tickets are currently unavailable online, a limited number of free tickets will be available at the box office on the evening of the event – so arrive early if you hope to join us in celebrating these laureates in person.

This evening also marks the culmination of the Helmut Schmidt Future Festival (Helmut-Schmidt-Zukunftsfestival), which brings together 100 young people from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland to explore the question: Can democracy be resilient and innovative? Over two and a half days, participants work in teams to develop bold new ideas for the future of democracy, addressing challenges such as defending democratic achievements, reimagining participation for the next generation, and harnessing AI for the common good.

Reading Club at the Bookstore. Of course all of these people are fascinating and great. But a real treasure for us this year has been the Reading Club, which meets every last week of the month at the Felix Jud Bookstore. So come and dance with us – we've got two titles left: On June 10, The Empusium by Olga Tokarczuk and on June 24, I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman, a title chosen by you, our dear readers.