What gives you hope?

I am indeed hopeful in certain respects, but I hasten to add that I’m not optimistic. Hope means that pathways for democratic reform, for instance, are available or even clearly visible; optimism would imply that there’s a high chance that they will be taken. At the risk of saying the obvious: whether they will be taken, depends on us.

How does change happen?
In democracies? On the streets, on the screen, and in the voting booth. All these sites—and the democratic action they ideally enable—are important and should not be played off against each other. Liberals are too afraid of the streets (since 2016 it has become all too easy to revive old prejudices about the great unwashed and despair of the supposedly irrational masses); self-styled radical democrats are too dismissive of parties and elections, which are wrongly seen as inherently anti-egalitarian or even oligarchic.

Why have you joined THE NEW INSTITUTE?

Possibilities to have conversations not just with very stimulating colleagues in one's own field but also from other areas and, less obviously, activists and artists. I think any academic who uses the expression “ivory tower” should pay a fine, but it’s not completely untrue that, too often, the incentives for in-depth exchanges with people outside universities are somewhat skewed. So, I like the idea of active outreach and an experimental platform for people to meet and have unexpected exchanges of ideas and experiences.