Maxim Botstein

Max Botstein is the Fritz Stern Fellow at the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College. He studies the intellectual history of modern Europe, with a focus on the development of higher education and democratic thought. His dissertation, “Democracy and the University: America and the Reconstruction of West German Higher Education, 1945-1966” (Harvard University, 2023), examined the postwar efforts to reform German universities and the debates over the role of education in the new German democracy. His research interests include the transatlantic intellectual exchange between the United States and Europe, the interplay between intellectual debates and bureaucratic institutions, and the relationship between politics, society, and culture.