SPEAKER BIOGRAPHIES

Shlomo Avineri Professor of Political Science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, is a graduate of the Hebrew University and the London School of Economics, and served as Director-General of Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the first government of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. He held visiting appointments at Yale, Cornel, University of California, Cardozo School of Law, Australian National University, Central European University (Budapest), Oxford and Northwestern University; and has been a Fellow at the Brookings Institution and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, both in Washington, D.C., and the Institute for World Economy and International Relations (IMEMO) in Moscow. He was member of the Egyptian-Israeli Commission which negotiated the Cultural, Scientific and Educational Agreement between the two countries. In 1996 he received the Israel Prize, the country's highest civilian decoration. Among his books: The Social and Political Thought of Karl Marx, Hegel's Theory of the Modern State, Israel and the Palestinians, Karl Marx on Colonialism and Modernization, The Making of Modern Zionism, Moses Hess: Prophet of Communism and Zionism, and Communitarianism and Individualism. His most recent book is an intellectual biography of Theodore Herzl (in Hebrew).

Markus Baumanns is Executive Vice President of the Ebelin and Gerd Bucerius ZEIT Foundation Markus Baumanns and is responsible for the initiatives of the Foundation in the field of Science and Education and the projects in America and Asia. He is also Chairman of the Executive Board of Bucerius Law School. He obtained a Master's Degree in History, Political Science and Literature in 1990 and a Ph.D. in History in 1994 from the University of Cologne. He started his career in 1990 in the Press and Information Office of the German Federal Government. In 1995 he entered the German Foreign Service and served as Diplomat at the German embassy in Bogotá, Colombia. In January 2000 he started at the ZEIT Foundation as Program Director for international programs, press and public relations. From 2001 to 2006 he served as CEO and Provost of the biggest project of the Foundation, the Bucerius Law School. The first and so far only private Law School in Germany opened its gates in October 2000, has a strong international focus and hosts now 620 Master and Bachelor Students and 17 fulltime Professors. Markus Baumanns is a frequent speaker in Germany and abroad on issues like reforming German and European public higher education, internationalisation of the legal education situation of German foundations and philanthropy, and recent political and legal development in China. He has published numerous articles in newspapers, law journals, and books on the reform of higher education in Germany and on the internationalisation of legal education in Germany.

Kurt Biedenkopf is Former Prime Minister of the Free State of Saxony and Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Hertie School of Governance. Born in 1930 in Ludwigshafen am Rhein, he studied law and economics at the University of Munich and University of Frankfurt am Main, earning his doctorate in Law in 1958 and a post-doctorate in 1963. From 1964 - 1970 he was a full professor in the Department for Trade, Economic and Industrial Law at Ruhr University Bochum, during which he spent two years as Rector. In 1973 he became Secretary General of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in Germany, a post he held until 1977, and in 1976 he was elected as a Member of the German Bundestag. From 1980 - 1988 he was a Member of the North Rhine-Westphalia Parliament, and in 1990 was elected Minister-President of the Free State of Saxony, a post he held until 2002. He was a Member of the Parliament of the Free State of Saxony from 1990 - 2004. Dr. Biedenkopf is the Founding President of the Dresden International University and Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Hertie School of Governance.

Craig Calhoun is President of the Social Science Research Council, which has played a leading role in interdisciplinary, international research since 1923. He is also University Professor of Social Sciences at NYU. Calhoun received his doctorate from Oxford University and has also been a professor at the University of North Carolina and Columbia University as well as a visiting professor in Asmara, Beijing, Khartoum, Oslo and Paris. Calhoun’s most recent book is Nations Matter: Culture, History, and the Cosmopolitan Dream (Routledge 2007). He has also edited Lessons of Empire: Historical Contexts for Understanding America’s Global Power (with F. Cooper and K. Moore, New Press 2006), Sociology in America (Chicago 2007), and The Public Mission of the Research University (with Diana Rhoten, Columbia University Press forthcoming). Among his best known earlier books are Critical Social Theory: Culture, History and the Problem of Specificity (Blackwell, 1995) and Neither Gods Nor Emperors: Students and the Struggle for Democracy in China (California, 1994).

Jonathan R. Cole is at Columbia University. He is currently the John Mitchell Mason Professor of the University, and he was Provost and Dean of Faculties at Columbia from 1989-2003. He received his B.A. from Columbia, 1964; and his Ph.D., Sociology, Columbia, 1969. He was the Adolphe Quetelet Professor of Social Science, 1989 to 2001; Professor of Sociology, Columbia University from 1976 to present; Adjunct Professor, Rockefeller University, 1983-1985; Vice President of Arts and Sciences, Columbia University, 1987-1989. Director, Center for the Social Sciences, 1979-1987; Fellow, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, California, 1975-76; John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, 1975-76; Elected Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1992; Cavaliere Ufficiale in the Order of Merit of the Republic of Italy, 1996; Commendatore in the Order of Merit of the Republic of Italy, 2003; "National Associate" U.S. National Academies of Sciences, 2003. Elected Member, Council on Foreign Relations, 2003; Elected Member, American Philosophical Society, 2005; Served on and continues to serve on multiple national committees of the NSF, NRC, and NAS. Recent Board Memberships: Center for Advanced Study in the Behavior Sciences, 2006 to present; Boston University, Board of Trustees, 2006 to present; Urban Justice Center, 2003 -; JED Foundation, 2003- ; Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America, 1992-2003; President of Reid Hall Inc., Paris, 1989-2003; Marconi International Fellowship Foundation, 1997. Some publications in the sociology of science, science policy, and higher education, include: Social Stratification in Science (with Stephen Cole) (1973); Peer Review in the National Science Foundation: Phase One (1978) and Phase Two (1981) of a Study (co-authored); Fair Science: Women in the Scientific Community (1979); The Wages of Writing: Per Word, Per Piece, or Perhaps (1986) (co-authored); The Outer Circle: Women in the Scientific Community (1991) (co-edited and author); The Research University in a Time of Discontent (co-edited and author)(1994); multiple journal publications on similar topics. His book, The Great American University: Its Rise to Preeminence, Its Threatened Future, will be published by Public Affairs in the fall of 2009. Teaching interests include social theory; science and science policy; problems in higher education; the uses and abuses of social theories, social facts, and empirical evidence in legal decision-making.

Yehuda Elkana was born 1934 in former Yugoslavia. Elkana immigrated to Israel in 1948. There he studied physics, math and the history of science. He graduated with a dissertation on “On the development of a energy concept” from Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts, later published at the Harvard University Press. He has taught at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem since 1968. He was a member of the Centre for Advanced Study in the Behavior Science (1973-74) and a visiting Fellow of the All Souls College in Oxford (1977-78). From 1981 to 1991 Elkana was director of the Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas at Tel Aviv University. Furthermore, he was director of the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute between 1968 and 1993. He has been permanent member at the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin from 1987 till 2006. From 1992 to 1999 Elkana was member and vice president of the Academic Advisory Board of the Collegium Budapest and between 1995 to 1999 professor for philosophy of sciences at the ETH Zurich. He has been a member of the Scientific Board of the Collegium Helveticum since 1997 and in 2001 he was elected in the Board of Trustees of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Yehuda Elkana is correspondent member of the International Academy of the History of Science, co-founder and editor of the “Science in Context“ and author of many books and articles. Since 1999 Yehuda Elkana is president and rector of the Central European University in Budapest.

Bob Kerrey, president of The New School, has served as a governor and U.S. senator from Nebraska, on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and as an active member of the 9/11 Commission. Along with his duties as president of The New School, Bob Kerrey leads a five-year writing challenge sponsored by The National Commission on Writing in America's Schools and Colleges and is co-chair with Newt Gingrich of The National Commission for Quality Long-Term Care. He is a recipient of the Robert L. Haig Award for Distinguished Public Service from the New York State Bar Association, an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from New York Law School, as well as the Distinguished Nebraskan Award and numerous other citations. Bob Kerrey was educated in pharmacy at the University of Nebraska. He served three years in the United States Navy. After his military service and prior to entering political life, he started a chain of restaurants and health clubs in Nebraska, Iowa and Kansas. In 2002, Kerrey published a widely praised memoir, When I Was A Young Man.

Hans-Peter Krüger is Professor of Practical Philosophy at the University of Potsdam, Germany. He has been co-editor of the Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie (German Journal of Philosophy) since 1993 and the President of the Helmuth Plessner Society for Philosophical Anthropology since 2005. Krueger studied philosophy and psychology at the Humboldt University in Berlin where he also took his PhD about the philosophical development of young Hegel. Since the 1990s, Krueger has participated in the renaissance of philosophical pragmatisms (particularly that of John Dewey) in Europe, and he has reinvented philosophical anthropologies (especially that of Helmuth Plessner) in present philosophical discussion. He has served as Fellow at UC Berkeley, the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (Institute for Advanced Study Berlin), and the University of Pittsburgh Center for Philosophy of Science. Krueger has served as guest professor at the Jagiellonen University of Krakow (Poland), at the University of Vienna (Austria), and at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in Uppsala. Among his books are: Kritik der kommunikativen Vernunft (Critique of Communicative Reason); Demission der Helden (Resignation of Heroes); Perspektivenwechsel; Autopoiese, Moderne und Postmoderne(Changing Perspectives. Autopoiesis, Modernity, and Postmodernity); Zwischen Lachen und Weinen. Bd. 1: Das Spektrum menschlicher Phänomene (Between Laughing and Crying. Vol 1: The Spectrum of Human Phenomena); Bd. 2: Der dritte Weg Philosophischer Anthropologie und die Geschlechterfrage (Vol. 2: The Third Way of Philosophical Anthropology and the Question of Genders/Sexes); and Life Politics, and the Variety of Philosophical Anthropologies (in preparation for 2009).

Benjamin Lee is University Professor of Anthropology and Philosophy and Senior Vice President for International Affairs at The New School. From 2006-2008 he served as its Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and from 2004-2006 he was the Dean of The New School for Social Research. Previously, he was a Professor of Anthropology at Rice University and of Comparative Literature at the University of Hong Kong. He has also served as the Director for the Center for Transcultural Studies since 1986. Professor Lee received his B.A. in psychology from The Johns Hopkins University, and an M.A. in Human Development and a Ph.D in anthropology from the University of Chicago. He has been the recipient of numerous grants, including Ford, Rockefeller, Luce, MacArthur, and Roosevelt Foundations, and was a Guggenheim Fellow in 2004. Professor Lee’s most recent publications are Financial Derivatives and the Globalization of Risk (with Edward Lipuma) and Talking Heads: Language, Meta-language, and the Semiotics of Subjectivity. He is the founding and executive editor for Public Planet Books and Public World Books. He is also currently directing The New School’s international programs and partnerships with a special focus on East Asia, and continues his research on the culture(s) of finance and the semiotics of subjectivity.

Anatoli Mikhailov is the founder and Rector of the European Humanities University. A highly respected expert on German philosophy, with specialties in phenomenology, hermeneutics and Martins Heidegger's work, he is a member of numerous academies and an editorial board member of several scientific magazines. Acknowledgment of his scientific merit reached a zenith in 2003 when he was awarded the French Palmes Academiques and in 2004 the German Goethe Medal. Mikhailov established European Humanities University in Minsk, Belarus, in 1992 in order to provide an alternative to the established education process inherited from the Soviet Union. After President Lukashenko took office in 1994, and especially after he began instituting "reforms" to consolidate his power, the university became a focal point of civic opposition. In 2004, the Lukashenko regime ordered the university shut down. Mikhailov was forced to leave the country and has been in exile in Vilnius since. The University was reopened in Vilnius in 2005 with EU help and is educating 270 graduate students in addition to a number of students that are taking long distance learning courses from the university.


Alan Ryan is Warden of New College, Oxford, and Professor of Politics at the University of Oxford. He was born 9 May 1940, and was educated at Christ's Hospital, Balliol College, Oxford, and University College, London. Elected a fellow of New College in 1969, he returned in 1996 to take up the Wardenship. He was made a Fellow of the British Academy in 1986. Ryan is a recognized authority on the work of John Stuart Mill, having contributed directly to the ‘Reversionary’ school, which led to a re-examination of Mill’s work from the 1970s. His academic work also takes in broader themes in political theory, including the philosophy of social science, the nature of property, and liberalism of the 19th and 20th centuries. Ryan has held positions at the Universities of Essex, Oxford, and Keele and Princeton Universities. He is a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books, the London Review of Books, and the Times Literary Supplement. He is widely regarded as a leading ‘public intellectual’ in the UK.

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