A lecture by Timothy Garton Ash to mark the 15th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the election of the 44th President of the United States.

Timothy Garton Ash's new book Free World: America, Europe and the Surprising Future of the West will be published in the United States on November 9, the day the Berlin Wall was breached in 1989. He is a Professor of European Studies at Oxford University and a Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. His previous books include The Magic Lantern, his eyewitness account of the velvet revolutions of 1989, The Polish Revolution: Solidarity, The File: A Personal History, In Europe's Name: Germany and the Divided Continent" and "History of the Present.

In the context of the Iraq Wars, references to totalitarianism multiplied across the political, cultural, and intellectual spectrum. For every equation of Saddam with Hitler, another followed projecting the Nazi past onto the American present. While the end of the most recent war has led to the macabre discovery of the Iraqi killing fields, some German intellectuals have drawn the conclusion that American moral authority has come to an end. Current politics aside, the first question we hope to raise involves the legitimacy of this proliferation of the term totalitarianism, either directly or through rhetorical invocations of features of Europe in the thirties and forties: appeasement politics, firebombing, attacks on civilians. A conservative usage of the term might restrict it to the regimes of Hitler and Stalin; alternatively, it could be utilized as an analytical tool for multiple political phenomena of the late twentieth century (and beyond). We want to explore the consequences of these different strategies through a reflection on the term itself and its appropriation in various venues.

While these questions can and should be pursued with regard to many national histories, the German experience with totalitarianism in the twentieth century is particularly intriguing. The Weimar Republic witnessed the rise of both Communist and National Socialist movements, with revolutionary aspirations, in the wake of which, ultimately, two dictatorial political systems followed. To be sure, the two cases are not symmetrical; the GDR was unthinkable without Russian occupation and the Cold War. Nonetheless, large segments of the German population lent their support to both regimes, at times with enthusiasm and at times under duress. While the collapse of the Nazi regime led eventually (if not quickly) to a critical discourse on the past, a parallel scrutiny of the Communist era has not yet developed to the same extent. In light of the renewed totalitarianism discourse, a review of this past seems more urgent than ever. We are interested in examining the Communist experience in relationship to National Socialism, with regard to both similarities and differences, and in terms of philosophical, historical, and literary/cultural frameworks.

On May 1 the European Union has taken ten new countries on board. The second biggest economy in the world now consists of 454 million people in 25 countries with an overall gross domestic product of 9.600 billion EURO.

Agreement on a European constitution seems imminent in June, thus "deepening" the integration after the biggest ever process of "widening". The consequences of both events are also bigger than ever. What are the choices ahead of the European Union that is also voting for a new Parliament in June, the only supranational Parliament on the globe? And moreover: What might be the implication of an enlarged and more assertive European Union for transatlantic relations, most notably in foreign and security affairs? In light of the past Internal Western Cold War on Iraq, this issue is of more concern than ever.

Ludger Kuehnhardt, Director at the Center of European Studies (ZEI) at Bonn University and currently Visiting Professor with Stanford's International Relations Program will discuss current developments in the European Union and their transatlantic implication.

As part of his visit to the West Coast of the United States, Norwegian Minister of Foreign Affairs Mr. Jan Petersen will speak at Stanford University. The Foreign Minister will speak about the role Norway is playing in facilitating peace and reconciliation processes in Sri Lanka, the Middle East and Africa. Furthermore the Foreign Minister will focus on security policy, including Norway's involvement in international operations in Afghanistan, the Balkans and Iraq.