On November 9, 1989 Americans tuned into the nightly news to watch anchorman Tom Brokaw’s reports from West Germany. The Berlin Wall was coming down after 28 years as a symbol of the Cold War between East and West. On November 11, 2014, in recognition of the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Wall, the European Union Center of Excellence and European Studies Center will host a roundtable panel of Pittsburghers who witnessed this momentous event. Audience participation is welcome.

*Director Andreas Voigt will attend the screenings of his films November 7-8. A discussion with the director will directly follow the screening. Popcorn and drinks provided.

Considered to be the most comprehensive documentation of events surrounding the 1989 Monday demonstrations in Leipzig, this film highlights the centerpiece of the citizens' movement that led to the fall of the Wall. As the only professional team able to film in Leipzig at the time, demonstrators were interviewed, as well as members of the citizens’ rights movement, officials and bystanders in East Germany’s peaceful revolution. Film Director Andreas Voigt will attend the screenings of his films November 7-8. A discussion with the director will directly follow the screening.

Hungarian tourism promoters in the 1930s gnashed their teeth in frustration at a sluggish domestic travel market. In their minds, Hungarians were disloyal and ungrateful tourists, ignorant of their country and therefore unwilling to spend their vacations "at home" rather than abroad. The solution, these promoters decided, was to appeal to Hungarians' sense of patriotism and guilt them into traveling. But in neighboring Austria, another post-imperial country with its own struggles to stimulate tourism, such arguments were nowhere to be found.

In this first 2014 installment of our Pizza and Politics Graduate Lecture Series, GSPIA's EU and the World Organization executive members talk about their experience interviewing policy-makers, EU civil servants, and visiting major institutions in Brussels and Luxembourg as participants in the EU in Brussels Program, co-sponsored by Pitt's EUCE/ESC & Graduate School of Public and International Affairs. Also learn about getting involved in the EU and the World Organization and about other opportunities for EU Studies at Pitt! PIZZA WILL BE SERVED!

The EUCE/ESC will be hosting the 2014 High School Model EU, which allows students the opportunity to participate in a simulation of a recent European Council meeting. For more information, please contact EUCE/ESC Assistant Director for External Affairs, Kate Bowersox, at kal68@pitt.edu.

Dr. Clark’s research focuses on European politics, the European Union, and comparative political behavior. More specifically, his research agenda seeks to empirically assess theoretical claims about the quality of democratic citizenship and governance in multi-level political systems such as the European Union. His lecture will highlight the state of the public’s knowledge about the European Union and how that knowledge influences voting behavior in European elections.

The centenary anniversary of the Great War has invited numerous commentators to make comparisons between the events leading up to the outbreak of war in 1914 and the current Ukrainian Crisis. This session of the EUCE’s virtual roundtable series asks experts to comment on these comparisons. Can we learn anything about effective conflict prevention from that earlier period? Or are such comparisons too facile, and deceptive? Public participation is welcome.

Panelists will include:

In 2005 Mark Leonard postulated, "Why Europe Will Run the 21st Century.” Ten years later, the EU has seen the rejection of European Treaty, stalled enlargement, the inability of European soft power to affect the Arab spring, a weak response to Russian dismantling of Georgia and Ukraine, and the Eurozone crisis. The rise of nationalist parties threatens the very integrity of the Union. In contrast, the ECB has responded to the crisis with concerted action, Croatia joined the Union as the 28th member, and the final institutional changes of the Lisbon Treaty are taking effect.

The colloquium aims to draw out the multiple meanings of "Afropean" at the intersection of aesthetic and political forms of expression of the African diaspora. Responses will be given by John Walsh, Department of French and Italian.