Bayerische Amerika-Akademie

We were truly delighted to welcome Dr. Michelle Zacks, Associate Director of our cooperation partner, Yale University's Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition, at Amerikahaus München yesterday. Michelle Zacks sat down with BAA-Director Prof. Dr. Katja Sarkowsky (Universität Augsburg) and the BAA's Managing Director Dr. Christoph Straub to discuss future pathways of our wonderful cooperation and to meet with previous and future fellows of the GLC-BAA Fellowship Program.

Since 2008, the GLC-BAA Fellowship Program has enabled doctoral researchers from Bavarian universities to realize short term research visits at Yale University and to participate in the activities of the Gilder Lehrman Center during their stay. The program is generously sponsored by the Yale Club of Germany.

Curious to get an impression of our fellows? Watch the talks of Sophia Hörl (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München) and Lisa Seuberth (FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg), who spent time at the Gilder Lehrman Center in 2025 and 2026, or learn more about Anna Lindmair (Universität Augsburg), who will join the GLC in 2027:
📺 Sophia Hörl: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jvZb8RfW3o
📺 Lisa Seuberth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LClh2G1AHjI
➡ Anna Lindmair: https://t1p.de/baa-glc-fellow-anna-lindmair

🙏 We extend a big thank you to Michelle Zacks for visiting us in Munich, and we greatly look forward to continuing and enhancing this fruitful and sustainable cooperation of our institutions!

💡 We look back on a highly successful, very timely, and thorougly intriguing 24th international BAA conference on 📣 "Free Speech: Promises, Meanings, Controversies:" The event, which took place July 9-11, 2026, at Amerikahaus München, included an opening discussion on the state of , two keynote lectures that engaged with assaults on free speech and gestured towards ways of reversing the free speech recession, a film screening and discussion on book bans, and four intriguing panel sessions that delved into a historicization of the First Amendment, free speech in American visual and literary culture, and sites where free speech is disputed.

📺 Curious to get an impression of the event? On the Amerikahaus YouTube-channel, you will find recordings of the opening discussion, titled "Free Speech in Jeopardy?," as well as the two keynote lectures by David Blight (Yale University) and Jacob Mchangama (Vanderbilt University).
➡️ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrrL1oxYKyo&

🫶 We are grateful to all panelists, speakers, chairs, respondents, and the entire organizing team for contributing to this thought-provoking and rich program! 🙏 Beyond that, we are extending a special "Thank you!" to our wonderful cooperation partners Stiftung Melior, Friedrich-Naumann-Stiftung für die Freiheit / Thomas Dehler Stiftung, and LMU Munich's Amerika-Institut, as well as to the German Research Foundation (DFG) for their support of the conference!

Today, we are kicking-off the 24th International Conference of the , which brings together scholars from both sides of the Atlantic to engage in discussions about various dimensions of our conference topic "Free Speech: Promises, Meanings, Controversies."

Join us at Amerikahaus München or watch the livestream of the opening discussion and the first keynote via YouTube!

Opening Discussion: "Free Speech in Jeopardy?"
📅 Thu, July 9, 2026, 12:45pm
👉 Further Information: https://t1p.de/free-speech-in-jeopardy
📺 YouTube-Livestream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrrL1oxYKyo

Keynote Lecture by Prof. Dr. David Blight (Yale University):
'Sanctioned Ignorance': The Assaults on Free Speech, Freedom of Thought, and Cultural Institutions in the United States
📅 Thu, July 9, 2026, 5:30pm (CEST)
👉 Further Information: https://t1p.de/blight-sanctioned-ignorance
📺 YouTube-Livestream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4TNq-MroEA

🙏 A special thank you to our wonderful cooperation partners Stiftung Melior and Friedrich-Naumann-Stiftung für die Freiheit / Thomas Dehler Stiftung and to the German Research Foundation (DFG) for their support of the conference!

In the second keynote address of this year's BAA Annual Conference, Prof. Jacob Mchangama (Vanderbilt University / The Future of Free Speech) will speak about "Free Speech at the Flashpoint: Promise, Recession, and the Transatlantic Rupture." The keynote takes place this Saturday, July 11, 2026, at Amerikahaus München and will be live-streamed online.

📅 Sat, July 11, 2026, 11:30am (CEST)
👉 Further Information: https://t1p.de/mchangama-free-speech-at-the-flashpoint
📺 YouTube-Livestream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6x07TEkvFHo

When Vice President Vance accused European leaders at the 2025 Munich Security Conference of betraying shared values by restricting free speech, he transformed free expression from a cornerstone of common values into a transatlantic fault line. The provocation landed because the underlying crisis is real. We are living through a global free speech recession — one that implicates democracies as much as autocracies, and in which well-intentioned laws against hate speech, disinformation and digital harms increasingly erode hard-won freedoms to dissent and speak truth to power.

Drawing on his new book "The Future of Free Speech," Jacob Mchangama's keynote asks whether Western democracies can rediscover a shared commitment to the values both claim to champion.

The keynote lecture is part of the 's 24th International Conference, which focuses on the topic "Free Speech: Promises, Meanings, Controversies."

🙏 We are particularly grateful to our wonderful cooperation partners Stiftung Melior and Friedrich-Naumann-Stiftung für die Freiheit / Thomas Dehler Stiftung and to the German Research Foundation (DFG) for their support of the conference!

🎬 Next Friday, on the evening of the second day of the BAA Conference 2026, we will show the documentary film The Librarians Film (USA 2025), followed by a discussion with Martin Holtz (Universität Graz), Helga Frese-Resch (Verlag Kiepenheuer & Witsch), and Nicole Schneider (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München).

📅 Fri, July 10, 2026, 6:30pm (CEST)
📍 Amerikahaus München, Karolinenplatz 3, 80333 Munich
👉 Further Information: https://t1p.de/free-speech-the-librarians

The film screening and discussion is part of the 's 24th International Conference, which focuses on the topic "Free Speech: Promises, Meanings, Controversies."

🙏 We are particularly grateful to our wonderful cooperation partners Stiftung Melior and Friedrich-Naumann-Stiftung für die Freiheit / Thomas Dehler Stiftung and to the German Research Foundation (DFG) for their support of the conference!

"'Sanctioned Ignorance': The Assaults on Free Speech, Freedom of Thought, and Cultural Institutions in the United States" is the title of Prof. Dr. David Blight's (Yale University / Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition) keynote address at this year's BAA Conference. It will take place on July 9, 2026, at Amerikahaus München and will be live-streamed online.

📅 Thu, July 9, 2026, 5:30pm (CEST)
👉 Further Information: https://t1p.de/blight-sanctioned-ignorance
📺 YouTube-Livestream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4TNq-MroEA

In his keynote address, David Blight will place in historical context the many attacks by the Trump administration and their allies on historical practice in universities, museums, and at public historical sites. The title derives from Toni Morrison's Nobel Prize speech in 1993, where she warned about "statist control" of language, thought, and especially history. What is occurring in America is censorship of various kinds, open and subtle. It has affected the free press, the presentation of history and broader cultural and scientific knowledge in classrooms, museums, and in the public square.

Many efforts are underway to combat these assaults but often with meager resources. But the fight is not lost. Even as a great deal of damage has already been inflicted upon institutions and individual careers, it is no small task to seize control of a nation's heritage, history, and the creation of knowledge.

The keynote lecture is part of the 's 24th International Conference, which focuses on the topic "Free Speech: Promises, Meanings, Controversies."

🙏 We are particularly grateful to our wonderful cooperation partners Stiftung Melior and Friedrich-Naumann-Stiftung für die Freiheit / Thomas Dehler Stiftung and to the German Research Foundation (DFG) for their support of the conference!

Next week, the 's 24th International Conference takes place, focusing on the topic "Free Speech: Promises, Meanings, Controversies." Join us on Thursday, July 9, 2026, at 12:45pm at Amerikahaus München for the event's opening discussion on the question "Is Free Speech in Jeopardy?"

📅 Thu, July 9, 2026, 12:45pm
👉 Further Information: https://t1p.de/free-speech-in-jeopardy
📺 YouTube-Livestream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrrL1oxYKyo

Initially, and as a means of leading into the discussion, Vanessa Vollmann will perform a "counter dialogue" in which the composite characters are inspired by Plato’s Phaedrus-Socrates relationship, reflecting upon the development “From the Freedom to Speak to the Freedom of Speech” from a race-conscious and intersectional perspective.

Moderated by Gerlinde Groitl (Universität Regensburg / Institute for Security and Strategy), Mirjam Zadoff (Munich Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism), Reymer Klüver (Süddeutsche Zeitung), Stephen D. Solomon (New York University), and Vanessa Vollmann (Universität Passau) will then discuss free speech as a lived and contested practice.

🙏 We are particularly grateful to our wonderful cooperation partners Stiftung Melior and Friedrich-Naumann-Stiftung für die Freiheit / Thomas Dehler Stiftung and to the German Research Foundation (DFG) for their support of the conference!

: Join us in two weeks from today at Amerikahaus München for the 24th International Conference of the ! 📅 From July 9-11, 2026, scholars from Europe and North America working in various academic disciplines, will come together to discuss topics surrounding freedom of speech and the First Amendment.

👉 Further information & full program: https://t1p.de/BAA-Conference-Free-Speech

💡 The program will feature a virtual keynote lecture by the historian and Pulitzer Prize winner David Blight (Yale University) as well as a keynote lecture by the legal scholar Jacob Mchangama (Vanderbilt University).

In an opening discussion, moderated by Gerlinde Groitl (Universität Regensburg), we will bring together Vanessa Vollmann (Universität Passau), Mirjam Zadoff (Director, Munich Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism), Reymer Klüver (Süddeutsche Zeitung), and Stephen D. Solomon (New York University).

🎬 On the evening of the second day, we will show the documentary film The Librarians Film (USA 2025), followed by a discussion with Martin Holtz (Universität Graz), Helga Frese-Resch (Verlag Kiepenheuer & Witsch), and Nicole Schneider (LMU Munich).

🙏 A special "Thank you!" to our cooperation partners Stiftung Melior and Friedrich-Naumann-Stiftung für die Freiheit / Thomas Dehler Stiftung!

📣 Spread the word & see you in two weeks!

We are delighted to announce the publication of a new edited volume in our book series "Publications of the ," titled " : Politics, Practices, Representations." The publication is available both in print and in open-access and was edited by Linda Hess, Sylvia Mayer, Katja Sarkowsky, and Christoph Straub.

➡️ Learn More: https://t1p.de/new-baa-volume_environmental-citizenship
📖 Access the Book: https://t1p.de/Environmental-Citizenship

"Environmental Citizenship" is an intervention in a growing body of scholarship that seeks to redefine what it means to be a citizen – not merely of a nation, but of a planet. The contributions to this collection frame environmental citizenship as a plural, relational, and deeply political practice that, as its history unfolds, must continually reckon with its own exclusions in order to imagine sustainable and more just futures.

The timely volume presents proceedings from the BAA annual conference 2023 and other contributions on the topic. We are deeply grateful to all authors for their wonderful contributions and for the excellent collaboration with Universitätsverlag Winter, where the "Publications of the Bavarian American Academy" appear.

🎓 From June 1 to 8, 2026, the 's 14th Summer Academy took place in Tutzing and Augsburg, giving participants and faculty members an opportunity to engage with the topic "North American Narratives of Crisis and Repair, Past and Present." The international summer school brought together 15 (post-)doctoral researchers working in 🇨🇦 Canada, 🇩🇪 Germany, 🇵🇱 Poland, 🇷🇴 Romania, 🇪🇸 Spain, and 🇺🇸 the United States and 10 faculty members, also from both sides of the Atlantic.

💡 We look back on an incredibly rich and rewarding academic and cultural program. The program's keynote lectures, the participants' project presentations, and our discussions allowed for a nuanced examination of various dimensions of North American crisis and repair narratives. Beyond the academic program, the event included a hike to Andechs Monestary, a visit to Buchheim Museum in Bernried, and two city tours in Augsburg that gave our participants an opportunity to learn about the Fuggerei – the world’s oldest existing social housing complex – as well as the city's long history of water management. Browse the full program: https://t1p.de/Program_Summer-Academy-26

🫶 We are immensely grateful to all participants and faculty members for their productive contributions and the supportive atmosphere. A very special "Thank you!" goes out to Universität Augsburg and to the the team of the Akademie für Politische Bildung in Tutzing for their invaluable support and for hosting us in this beautiful space at Lake Starnberg!

Find more impressions of the event at https://t1p.de/Impressions_Summer-Academy_26