Annual German Conference at Harvard University
Co-hosted by Bertelsmann Foundation
The two-day conference focused on wide-ranging topics that included the role of collective identities in the financial crisis; the effects of the economic downturn on American and European defense budgets; US and European labor-market models; and the role of innovative financing in transforming the healthcare sector.
The Bertelsmann Foundation again partnered with Harvard University's German graduate students to host the fourth annual German conference at Harvard in February 2011. Keynote speakers included Peter Bofinger, member of the German Council of Economic experts; Ludger Volmer, former German deputy foreign minister and Matthias Machnig, Thuringian minister of labor economics and technology.
Bertelsmann Foundation Executive Director Annette Heuser participated in a discussion on changing trans-Atlantic security doctrines in the midst of the economic crisis. She was joined by Niels Annen, Executive Board, Social Democratic Party of Germany; Henning Riecke, program director USA at the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP); and Steve Clemons, director of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation. Klaus Linsenmeier, executive director of the Heinrich Böll Foundation North America moderated.
Warren Getler, Bertelsmann Foundation director of trans-Atlantic relations, also participated in
the conference, moderating a lively panel on identities in the US and Germany. His panelists were Mathias Risse, professor of philosophy and public policy at Harvard's Kennedy School; Godelieve Quisthoudt-Rowohl, member of the European Parliament; Jutta Ditfurth, German social scientist and publicist; Bilal Kaleem, executive director of the Muslim American Society of Boston; and Keli Carender, political blogger and Tea Party activist.
The Bertelsmann Foundation is one of the founding partners in the German Conference at Harvard. The full program for this year's event can be found at: http://www.germanconference.org/2011.