Welcome!

It is my pleasure to have you on my personal website! Please allow me to briefly introduce myself and my work:

I am a linguist and theologian who works on narratives of identity, politics, and religion, and liberal democracy, as well as secularism, pluralism, and cosmopolitanism. I served as a visiting scholar to both Harvard Divinity School and Harvard Center for European Studies in the academic years 2014-2017. Further I served as senior fellow at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, as a fellow at the Center for the Governance of Change at IE University in Madrid, as a senior research associate at Cambridge University’s Institute on Religion and International Studies, a senior advisor to the Berggruen Institute, and a honorary professor of ethics and theology at Leuphana University of Lüneburg in Germany.

Prior to my current engagement at Cambridge University I served as a fellow to the Center for Research in Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH). In the academic year 2017-2018, he was also invited as a visiting scholar to universities in Taiwan and Hong Kong. In East Asia I looked into the democracies in the region and how the cope with the rise of China.

For that last four years my work has been focused on narratives of identity, the future of the liberal world order, politics and religion, secularism, pluralism and cosmopolitanism. Believing that academic work should not only be dealt with from an ivory tower, I write essays and op-eds concerning my topics for international publications such as The New York Times and Neue Zürcher Zeitung. I also published my own personal online-outlet www.saveliberaldemocracy.com from 2016-2019. I am the founder of the debate-magazine The European, that I ran as its editor in chief from 2009 until 2015.

In January 2019 I became the founding editor in chief of the new magazine www.conditiohumana.io, an outlet on technology, AI and ethics.

This website aims to inform you about my academic and journalistic work. You can also book speeches, keynotes, and lectures through this platform and dive into my latest editorials and interviews.

Many thanks for your interest.

Sincerely,

Alexander Görlach

Explore:

Founder of Save Liberal Democracy

Saveliberaldemocracy.com is an online-magazine, launched at the end of 2016 featuring a series of interviews touching on the mechanics of what makes for a liberal democracy. The magazine aims to combate the populists in today's political arena. SLD has contributions from, amongst others, Noam Chomsky, Niall Ferguson, Francis Fukuyama, Steven Pinker, Danielle Allen and Vint Cerf.

Senior Fellow Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs

Alex, who is a Senior Fellow of the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, was interviewed by Stephany Sy in the Council's series "Ethics Matter" about the threats to liberal democracy nowadays and how to combat populists.

Author for the New York Times

In September 2016 Alex became an op-ed contributor to the The New York Times, where he comments on developments in contemporary Europe. The op-ed "Germany's War over a Word" reflects on the Abendland (Occident) as a slogan for Europe's far right to demonize Muslims and refugees. In "Why Islam Gets Second-Class-Status," he discusses the legal framework of non-Christian religions in Europe.

TEDx Talk on how to save liberal democracy

In his TEDx Talk "How we save liberal democracy," from July 2017, Alex lays out how populists and autocrats of our time deploy their divisive rhetoric and unleash despising policymaking in order to destroy the liberal democratic order. He also shows ways how we could tackle their wrongdoing and prevent them from prevailing.