Bence Bari interviews Tamás Dombos, from the Hungarian LGBTQI organization ‘Háttér Society’ concerning the recently adopted Hungarian anti-LGBT measures, their transnational and historical background with respect to the global dynamics of acceptance, and homophobia between the Western and Eastern hemisphere.

In this interview, RevDem editor Michal Matlak interviewed Professor Julie Smith*, Baroness of Newnham, who is a Liberal Democrat parliamentarian in the British House of Lords. They discuss referendums, the causes and outcomes of Brexit, how the negotiation strategies of both the EU and UK could have been improved, the likelihood of the UK returning to the EU in the future, and how the COVID-19 pandemic has complicated post-Brexit evaluations.

In conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, Emily Levine (Stanford University) discusses key ideas in her new book Allies and Rivals: German-American Exchange and the Rise of the Modern Research University. Allies and Rivals is a transatlantic monograph that draws on extensive historical research and applies sociological theory to study how the academic social contract was repeatedly renegotiated in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The conversation addresses the rise of modern research universities and its alternatives, questions of meritocracy and democracy, academic freedom and hard compromises, the global exchange of ideas and academic innovation in the twenty-first century.

In this wide-ranging conversation occasioned by the release of his The Dream of Europe. Travels in the Twenty-First Century, Geert Mak discusses with Ferenc Laczo why he chose to write a sequel to In Europe. Travels Through the Twentieth Century; how interconnections have led to new tensions; how the European and the democrat in him have quarreled; how he traces undercurrents in society; and how important it is to understand the sources of despair.

In conversation with RevDem editor Robert Nemeth, Dean Starkman, senior editor at the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, talks about the Pandora Papers and how tax avoidance and secrecy endangers democracy.

Our assistant editor, Bence Bari interviews László Kontler, the research affiliate of the CEU Democracy Institute about the DI History Working Group project “History as Democracy”.