With the rise of populist right-wing groups in Europe, gender politics are in play. Increasingly and in what may be viewed as a counter-intuitive move, gender equality, has been taken up as a rallying cause by conservative groups, opening up new questions about the definition of gender and putting gender studies under attack. Kathrin Zippel and Myra Marx Ferree raised these issues in a recent workshop "Troubling Times for Gender Equality Politics."
When Sergey Lagodinsky, HKS ’03, recently gave the Guido Goldman Lecture on Germany at CES, the newly elected member of the European Parliament broached topics far beyond those of his adopted country to encompass Europe and the world at large. “I wanted to be part of German politics,” he said. “German society and German politics are still not sure what role they want to play in the world.” By running for office, he saw “a chance to be part of it, to join forces in looking for those new roles.”
