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Alexander Görlach is a Senior Fellow to the Carnegie Council in Ethics for International Affairs, a senior research associate at the Institute on Religion in International Studies at Clare College, Cambridge University, and an affiliate in the “In Defense of Democracy”-program by the F.D.Roosevelt Foundation at Adams House, Harvard University. Prior to those stints Alex was a visiting scholar and fellow at both, Harvard and Cambridge University.
His work is on narratives of identity, the future of democracy and the liberal world order, politics and religion. He holds PhDs in comparative religion and in linguistics. He teaches theories of secularism, pluralism and cosmopolitanism at the University of Lüneburg in Germany, and the role of media in liberal democracy at the University of Vienna. Alexander Görlach is a member of the European Academy of Arts and Sciences.
In 2017-2018 Alex lived in Taiwan and Hongkong, working on the future of democracy in the region amidst the rise of authoritarian China. His latest books reflect his work in East Asia: “Focus Hongkong — why the future of the free world is decided in China” and, forthcoming by Brookings Press “Homo Empathicus — On Scapegoats, Populists and Saving Democracy”.
Alex is the founder of the debate magazine The European that he also ran as its editor in chief from 2009 until 2015. He is an op-ed contributor to the New York Times and Neue Zürcher Zeitung. He further serves as columnist for Deutsche Welle and Wirtschaftswoche, Germany’s leading business magazine.
Updated October 2020