2011: Philip D. Murphy, “Still True: Ask Not What Your Country Can Do For You. Ask What You Can Do For Your Country”

Philip D. Murphy, “Still True: Ask Not What Your Country Can Do For You. Ask What You Can Do For Your Country”

Berlin Mosse Lecture
https://mosselectures.wisc.edu/berlin/

Thursday, 27 October 2011, 19:00 CET

A version of this lecture was published in Elisabeth Wagner, Klaus R. Scherpe, ed. Staatsbürgerschaft/Citizenship. Rechtliche, Soziale, Kulturelle und Politische Grenzwerfe. Mosse-Lectures an der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (Berlin: Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, 2013), 136-143. See table of contents below.

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Sponsored by:
[mosse] LECTURES an der humboldt-universität zu berlin
The Mosse Foundation
Global Mosse Lecture Series
Fritz Thyssen Stiftung
Institut für deutsche Literatur
Humboldt University

Lecture Series Description: Citizenship and Citoyenneté were a promise of the emerging revolutionary and democrat-ic nation states. How can such ideas and values be kept alive today under the conditions of globalization, migration and cultural difference? In the present debates feelings of uncertainty and anxiety arise in the attempt to defend the consent of citizenship against the dynamics of migration and the aspirations of cultural and ethnic minorities. A grey area has developed between citizenship granted by the constitution and the process of socialization beyond the limits of ethnic, religious, social, and political communities. State power and civilian violence – on the Indian subcontinent under the BJP government, but also within the European community – endanger civil society and its rights of the constitution. Facing these realities, what measures are necessary to make the general public aware of the rights and wrongs of granting citizenship, balancing the commitment of equality, religious freedom, political participation and cultural diversity on the one hand, and the different claims of identity from a world not conforming with western standards on the other? How should we conceive of a European citizenship and its rights, and imagine a »citizenship of the world«?

Philip D. Murphy was Ambassador of the United States of America in Berlin, studied at Harvard and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. He was previously Senior Director at Goldman Sachs and National Finance Chair of the Democratic National Committee from 2006 to 2009.