Leon Botstein, music director and conductor, scholar, and president of Bard College in upstate New York, had once thought that the Berlin Wall would never come down. And he found the revolutions surrounding 1989 "frightening" because they could lead to the ascent of unregulated capitalism and the release of suppressed nationalism. Botstein explains that democracy "is harder than people expected" and worries that we are spending too much time staring at our smartphones and "mesmerized by nothing" rather than finding meaning and value by our own activity.

Referenced in the interview: https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/college-behind-bars/