As The Fenwick Review’s newly appointed foreign correspondent, I’d like to introduce myself and the reasons that led me to take the pen, and in passing, offer a few words on the topics I would like to discuss in 2020.
Ever since graduating in 2006 I have stayed in close contact with Prof. Schaefer from the Political Science department whose classes on political thought I attended throughout my senior year.
In the course of one of our recent email exchanges in which Prof. Schaefer mentioned the Review’s continued publication, I playfully offered to act as a self-styled foreign correspondent, an offer immediately met with enthusiasm and encouragement.
As few weeks and several e-mail exchanges later, the Review editors and I agreed that I submit an article in The Fenwick Review’s last 2019 edition.
Ironically, I barely read the Review as a student at HC, nor did I read much of the Crusader (now The Spire) for that matter. My connection with HC is fairly dim, I didn’t attend all four required years, rarely went to any sporting events and aside from my favorite Holy Cross tea mug, don’t own anything with the color purple.
However, the time spent on the hill left a remarkable imprint on my life and it is my wish, via these letters from Europe I hope to send, not only to share some views and impressions of current events but also to give back to the HC community a symbolic and humble piece of the mind it helped create.
To this day, walking down the aisle of the old Fenwick building or those of the Dinand library count as the most privileged moments of my life, when as a young man (and a very average student at that) I was given the possibility of studying the great works of western civilization with mentors who had dedicated their life to pursuing knowledge and sharing it with others.
No modesty is spared when saying that studying Plato, Hobbes, Rousseau and Tocqueville left a durable imprint on how I view the world and accompany me to this day, thirteen years later.
I must warn the regular reader of the Review: I am not an ideologue and will not reason within the confined canons of a certain political dogma. As a foreign born American holding both American and German passports and currently living in Paris, my political orientation whilst conservative may still keep a liberal or social democrat streak in it.
Since I first spoke with the Review staff several months ago, I’ve debated what to write about and have come to narrow down a few topics which I hope to address in the upcoming 2020 Fenwick Review publications:
The Fall of the Berlin wall, 30 years after.
2019 marked the 30-year anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall. 2020 marks the 30-year anniversary of the slow and complicated integration of East Germany and former Soviet block countries into the so-called free market economy. I’m not going to dive into specificities of economic and political transition theory. More so, I will offer an account of what I have observed at hand of my wife and her family. Born in the Soviet Republic of Ukraine and raised in East Berlin, she experienced first-hand a change of systems. Her experience with planned Soviet economy and free-market capitalism and the European Union are the source of much debate at home.
European press coverage of the American elections.
This topic was easy to choose. While less nuanced than former elections, reading European coverage of American presidential elections is one of my favorites.
European identity and immigration
A much more complex topic, but one I am confronted with on a daily basis living and often traveling to large European capitals. The Syrian refugee crisis, south-to-north migration and post-colonial ties make European countries, Germany and France in particular, prone to intense debates about what constitutes European identity.
Mystery Interview
Conscious that I am writing for a conservative newspaper published for a liberal arts student body at a Jesuit College, I would like to interview a Jesuit scholar in Paris and discuss the state of education in France and its particular flavor of secularism, also called “Laïcité.”