The University of Erfurt (German: Universität Erfurt) is a public university located in Erfurt, the capital city of the German state of Thuringia. It was founded in 1379, and closed in 1816. It was re-established in 1994, three years after German reunification. Therefore it claims to be both the oldest and youngest university in Germany. The institution identifies itself as a reform university, due to its most famous alumnus Martin Luther, the instigator of the Reformation, who studied there from 1501 to 1505. Today, the main foci centre on multidisciplinarity, internationality, and mentoring.The university is home to the Max Weber Center for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies, the Gotha Research Center for Cultural and Social Scientific Studies, and the Willy Brandt School of Public Policy.The Gotha Research Library, which has one of Germany's largest collections of early modern manuscripts, is part of the university. The University Library is also the keeper of the Bibliotheca Amploniana, a collection of nearly 1000 medieval manuscripts collected by the scholar Amplonius Rating de Berka (c.1363–1435), who was a former Rector of the university.
How do new technologies influence public attitudes towards redistribution and social protection? This question, already much discussed for the OECD world, is underexplored for many middle-income countries (MICs). We argue that the politics of compensation under digital disruption reflects the underlying uncertainties of social protection in such contexts. Where informality is high and administrative capacity is limited, compensation demands may extend beyond monetary transfers to include jobs and job-related policies. We provide four pieces of evidence from an original survey in Ghana to substantiate this claim. Cross-sectional models show that both objective exposure to routine tasks and subjective fears of automation increase support for government intervention, with larger and more consistent effects for job creation than for monetary redistribution. A priming experiment yields modest average framing effects, but suggests that information can make risk more consequential for those who are already exposed. We then show that responsiveness to technological risk is higher among lower-skill respondents for job creation, whereas higher-skill respondents react more strongly towards redistributive demands when routine exposure is salient. Finally, open-ended responses indicate that people prioritize digital skills training and enabling infrastructure as practical routes to securing work. Our findings suggest that digital transformation reshapes the politics of compensation in MICs in ways that differ from standard OECD expectations, with implications for how technological change may widen inequalities within and across country income groups.
This paper examines how Germany's far-right and Querdenken movements adapted their communication strategies in response to evolving societal crises, including the COVID-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and the energy crisis. While prior research has explored how radical actors mobilized via Telegram during the pandemic, less is known about their strategic adaptations as the crisis landscape shifted in 2022. Using the framework of discursive opportunity structures, this study analyzes the agility of these movements in responding to new crisis contexts, emphasizing Telegram's role as a minimally moderated platform with broad reach potential. The analysis draws on a manual content review of 8852 messages from 151 German radical Telegram channels collected throughout 2022. Findings reveal distinct adaptation patterns: while far-right groups pivoted from pandemic-related narratives to broader geopolitical and economic themes, Querdenken maintained a predominant focus on pandemic grievances. Offline mobilization also diverged, with the energy crisis driving more protest activity than the Ukraine war. These results underscore the differential ways in which radical movements leverage digital platforms like Telegram to sustain mobilization across changing discursive landscapes, contributing novel insights into the strategic flexibility and persistence of protest movements.
Political polarization affects the social trust and norms upon which democracy is built. In a pre-registered study using a representative sample of the United States (N = 1000), we investigated how two conceptualizations of truth interact with political polarization over democratic principles on both sides of the political spectrum. Specifically, we examined how two forms of epistemic relativism—epistemic subjectivism and sociopolitical constructivism—relate to partisan polarization between Republicans and Democrats, democratic values, and policy attitudes. Beliefs reflecting higher epistemic relativism were associated with lower support for democracy and trust in electoral results. Moreover, we identified two subgroups on each side of the political divide (17
During the late 1970s, US conservatives launched concerted attacks against affirmative action, defaming the policy as "reverse racism". As chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, William J. Bennett led these campaigns. In a well-publicized skirmish with Clarence Thomas, then head of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Bennett made his case against affirmative action. Neither man supported affirmative action and while they seemed to advocate for "colorblindness" in hiring and college admissions, they eroded institutions created to protect civil rights. This article understands conservatives' resistance to affirmative action as a strategy to defend their "property interest in whiteness". Legal scholar Cheryl I. Harris has theorized "whiteness as property" against the backdrop of debates over affirmative action in the 1990s and her concept allows for an analysis of how conservatives opposed affirmative action and undermined civil rights, a dynamic that is still unfolding today.
