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What does it mean to be a public intellectual today—and who’s listening? How do thinkers, creatives, and cultural voices influence public life in North America and Europe, particularly in Germany?
1014 Deutschland e.V. and the Walter De Gruyter Foundation came together with Peggy Piesche, Jeff Peck, and Timothy W. Ryback for a discussion moderated by Irene Kacandes exploring how public intellectuals have shaped democratic societies in the past—and how their role is evolving amid growing polarization, social media, and political shifts.
Are freedom of speech and open debate still thriving on both sides of the Atlantic? Have topics like gender, racism, and antisemitism become harder to discuss publicly? And what’s at stake for our media, academic and cultural institutions? How is the public intellectual defining its role in this changing landscape?
Biographies
Peggy Piesche is a Black literary and cultural scholar, born and raised in the GDR. She leads the "Political Education and Plural Democracy" department at the Federal Agency for Civic Education in Gera, focusing on intersectional transformation and memory, on linking diversity, intersectionality and decoloniality (d_id), and on racism-critical political education. Since 1990, she has been a member of ADEFRA e.V. (Black Women in Germany). She is part of the academic team Diversifying Matters, which carried out the Berlin consultation for the UN Decade for People of African Descent in 2018. She has also served on various advisory boards, including the current Equality Monitoring Board on anti-Black Racism and Equality for People of African Descent in Berlin. She is passionate about feminist community-based educational work and creating a dedicated educational centre for this.
Jeff Peck is currently President of the Friends and Sponsors of the German-American Fulbright Program in Berlin. Previously he was Professor and Dean of Arts and Sciences and Vice Provost for Global Strategies at Baruch College/ City University of New York.
He has also taught in North America at Georgetown University, the University of Washington, York University, and the University of Toronto, and in Germany at Humboldt University and the Free University of Berlin.
His research crossed the boundaries of literary studies, history, and anthropology, focusing on majority and minority identities in Germany, particularly on the relations between Germans and Jews
More recently, he has been applying his work on diversity to his involvement in international education and exchange.
Timothy W. Ryback is co-founder and director of the Institute for Historical Justice and Reconciliation in The Hague. Previously, Ryback served as deputy secretary general of the Académie Diplomatique Internationale in Paris, and as vice president and resident director of Salzburg Global Seminar in Salzburg. Concurrent with his administrative work, Ryback has written on the intersection of history and politics for numerous publications, including The Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and the Financial Times. Ryback is author of several books on the
National Socialist era, most recently, Takeover: Hitler's Final Rise to Power (Knopf 2024). In 2025 Ryback has offered a series of articles in The Atlantic online magazine examining Hitler's systematic efforts to dismantle the constitutional processes and frameworks of the Weimar Republic.
Irene Kacandes was educated at Harvard University, Aristotle University (Thessaloniki) and the Freie Universität (Berlin). Until 2024 she was the Dartmouth Professor of German and Comparative Literature at Dartmouth College. Author or editor of nine books, her most recent publications include Let’s Talk About Death (Prometheus, 2015) and Eastern Europe Unmapped (Berghahn, 2017). Her reflection on her paternal family’s fate in Occupied Greece, Daddy’s War (Nebraska, 2009, 2012), proposed a new genre, the paramemoir, for the study of personal material. Just released is the edited volume On Being Adjacent to Historical Violence (De Gruyter 2022). Kacandes has held a number of top positions in international professional organizations, including the presidency of the German Studies Association and of the International Society for the Study of Narrative. She also runs a book series on “Interdisciplinary German Cultural Studies” at De Gruyter, Germany.
What does it mean to be a public intellectual today—and who’s listening? How do thinkers, creatives, and cultural voices influence public life in North America and Europe, particularly in Germany?
1014 Deutschland e.V. and the Walter De Gruyter Foundation came together with Peggy Piesche, Jeff Peck, and Timothy W. Ryback for a discussion moderated by Irene Kacandes exploring how public intellectuals have shaped democratic societies in the past—and how their role is evolving amid growing polarization, social media, and political shifts.
Are freedom of speech and open debate still thriving on both sides of the Atlantic? Have topics like gender, racism, and antisemitism become harder to discuss publicly? And what’s at stake for our media, academic and cultural institutions? How is the public intellectual defining its role in this changing landscape?
Biographies
Peggy Piesche is a Black literary and cultural scholar, born and raised in the GDR. She leads the "Political Education and Plural Democracy" department at the Federal Agency for Civic Education in Gera, focusing on intersectional transformation and memory, on linking diversity, intersectionality and decoloniality (d_id), and on racism-critical political education. Since 1990, she has been a member of ADEFRA e.V. (Black Women in Germany). She is part of the academic team Diversifying Matters, which carried out the Berlin consultation for the UN Decade for People of African Descent in 2018. She has also served on various advisory boards, including the current Equality Monitoring Board on anti-Black Racism and Equality for People of African Descent in Berlin. She is passionate about feminist community-based educational work and creating a dedicated educational centre for this.
Jeff Peck is currently President of the Friends and Sponsors of the German-American Fulbright Program in Berlin. Previously he was Professor and Dean of Arts and Sciences and Vice Provost for Global Strategies at Baruch College/ City University of New York.
He has also taught in North America at Georgetown University, the University of Washington, York University, and the University of Toronto, and in Germany at Humboldt University and the Free University of Berlin.
His research crossed the boundaries of literary studies, history, and anthropology, focusing on majority and minority identities in Germany, particularly on the relations between Germans and Jews
More recently, he has been applying his work on diversity to his involvement in international education and exchange.
Timothy W. Ryback is co-founder and director of the Institute for Historical Justice and Reconciliation in The Hague. Previously, Ryback served as deputy secretary general of the Académie Diplomatique Internationale in Paris, and as vice president and resident director of Salzburg Global Seminar in Salzburg. Concurrent with his administrative work, Ryback has written on the intersection of history and politics for numerous publications, including The Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and the Financial Times. Ryback is author of several books on the
National Socialist era, most recently, Takeover: Hitler's Final Rise to Power (Knopf 2024). In 2025 Ryback has offered a series of articles in The Atlantic online magazine examining Hitler's systematic efforts to dismantle the constitutional processes and frameworks of the Weimar Republic.
Irene Kacandes was educated at Harvard University, Aristotle University (Thessaloniki) and the Freie Universität (Berlin). Until 2024 she was the Dartmouth Professor of German and Comparative Literature at Dartmouth College. Author or editor of nine books, her most recent publications include Let’s Talk About Death (Prometheus, 2015) and Eastern Europe Unmapped (Berghahn, 2017). Her reflection on her paternal family’s fate in Occupied Greece, Daddy’s War (Nebraska, 2009, 2012), proposed a new genre, the paramemoir, for the study of personal material. Just released is the edited volume On Being Adjacent to Historical Violence (De Gruyter 2022). Kacandes has held a number of top positions in international professional organizations, including the presidency of the German Studies Association and of the International Society for the Study of Narrative. She also runs a book series on “Interdisciplinary German Cultural Studies” at De Gruyter, Germany.
What does it mean to be a public intellectual today—and who’s listening? How do thinkers, creatives, and cultural voices influence public life in North America and Europe, particularly in Germany?
1014 Deutschland e.V. and the Walter De Gruyter Foundation came together with Peggy Piesche, Jeff Peck, and Timothy W. Ryback for a discussion moderated by Irene Kacandes exploring how public intellectuals have shaped democratic societies in the past—and how their role is evolving amid growing polarization, social media, and political shifts.
Are freedom of speech and open debate still thriving on both sides of the Atlantic? Have topics like gender, racism, and antisemitism become harder to discuss publicly? And what’s at stake for our media, academic and cultural institutions? How is the public intellectual defining its role in this changing landscape?
Biographies
Peggy Piesche is a Black literary and cultural scholar, born and raised in the GDR. She leads the "Political Education and Plural Democracy" department at the Federal Agency for Civic Education in Gera, focusing on intersectional transformation and memory, on linking diversity, intersectionality and decoloniality (d_id), and on racism-critical political education. Since 1990, she has been a member of ADEFRA e.V. (Black Women in Germany). She is part of the academic team Diversifying Matters, which carried out the Berlin consultation for the UN Decade for People of African Descent in 2018. She has also served on various advisory boards, including the current Equality Monitoring Board on anti-Black Racism and Equality for People of African Descent in Berlin. She is passionate about feminist community-based educational work and creating a dedicated educational centre for this.
Jeff Peck is currently President of the Friends and Sponsors of the German-American Fulbright Program in Berlin. Previously he was Professor and Dean of Arts and Sciences and Vice Provost for Global Strategies at Baruch College/ City University of New York.
He has also taught in North America at Georgetown University, the University of Washington, York University, and the University of Toronto, and in Germany at Humboldt University and the Free University of Berlin.
His research crossed the boundaries of literary studies, history, and anthropology, focusing on majority and minority identities in Germany, particularly on the relations between Germans and Jews
More recently, he has been applying his work on diversity to his involvement in international education and exchange.
Timothy W. Ryback is co-founder and director of the Institute for Historical Justice and Reconciliation in The Hague. Previously, Ryback served as deputy secretary general of the Académie Diplomatique Internationale in Paris, and as vice president and resident director of Salzburg Global Seminar in Salzburg. Concurrent with his administrative work, Ryback has written on the intersection of history and politics for numerous publications, including The Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and the Financial Times. Ryback is author of several books on the
National Socialist era, most recently, Takeover: Hitler's Final Rise to Power (Knopf 2024). In 2025 Ryback has offered a series of articles in The Atlantic online magazine examining Hitler's systematic efforts to dismantle the constitutional processes and frameworks of the Weimar Republic.
Irene Kacandes was educated at Harvard University, Aristotle University (Thessaloniki) and the Freie Universität (Berlin). Until 2024 she was the Dartmouth Professor of German and Comparative Literature at Dartmouth College. Author or editor of nine books, her most recent publications include Let’s Talk About Death (Prometheus, 2015) and Eastern Europe Unmapped (Berghahn, 2017). Her reflection on her paternal family’s fate in Occupied Greece, Daddy’s War (Nebraska, 2009, 2012), proposed a new genre, the paramemoir, for the study of personal material. Just released is the edited volume On Being Adjacent to Historical Violence (De Gruyter 2022). Kacandes has held a number of top positions in international professional organizations, including the presidency of the German Studies Association and of the International Society for the Study of Narrative. She also runs a book series on “Interdisciplinary German Cultural Studies” at De Gruyter, Germany.
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