Sheri Berman

Biography

Sheri Berman is a professor of political science at Barnard College, Columbia University. Her research interests include European history and politics, the development of democracy, populism and fascism, and the history of the Left. Berman has written about these topics for a wide variety of scholarly and non-scholarly publications. Her most recent book is Democracy and Dictatorship in Europe: From the Ancien Régime to the Present Day (Oxford University Press, 2019).

During her time at the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies (CES), Berman will work on a book entitled The Political Consequences of Economic Ideas: Neoliberalism, the Left and the Fate of Democracy. This book analyzes the interconnections between the decline of the Center-Left, the rise of the populist right, increasing economic inequality and precarity, and growing democratic dissatisfaction and even decay, showing that all are rooted in the political consequences of economic, specifically neoliberal ideas. In her research, Berman focuses on the development of center-left parties in Western and Eastern Europe and the American Democratic Party and how their acceptance of “progressive neoliberalism” or “third-wayism” created major problems for democracy.

Berman holds an M.A. and a Ph.D. in government from Harvard University.

This information is accurate for the time period that the visiting scholar is affiliated with CES.

Affiliations

• Professor of Political Science, Barnard College, Columbia University
• Visiting Scholar 2024-2025, Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University