PROF. PAUL ARTHUR
Paul Arthur is a distinguished scholar and practitioner in the field of international conflict resolution and the program director of the London-Amman Program at the Foundation for International Education. Having formerly been a professor of politics, he is emeritus director of the Graduate Program in Peace and Conflict Studies, and of INCORE (International Conflict Research Institute), both at Ulster University. He holds a BA and MSc from Queen’s University Belfast and a D.Litt. from the National University of Ireland. He has extensive media experience in Ireland, Britain, and the United States including two years spent working as an op-ed writer for the Irish Times as well as being Ulster Television’s regular political analyst.
SUSAN BLANKHART
Susan Blankhart served for nearly 15 years as an ambassador for the Netherlands and worked for 34 years at the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs where she spent time in numerous countries across all continents. After retiring from the government her mission has become to use her collected knowledge to address the global challenges of poverty, human rights and gender equality by building solutions and using the force of partnerships between civil society, (I)NGOs and governments.
PROF. LYNN DAVIES
Lynn Davies is emeritus professor of International Education at the University of Birmingham and co-director of the social enterprise ConnectFutures. Her interests are in education, conflict and extremism, and transitional justice approaches to education, and she has done research and consultancy work in a number of conflict-affected states. Her current work centers on developing and evaluating programs to counter radicalization as well as gang-related violence. She is author of the controversial book Unsafe Gods: Security, Secularism and Schooling as well as the prize-winning Education and Conflict: Complexity and Chaos. She is a recipient of the Sir Brian Urquhart award which is presented annually by the United Nations Association-UK for distinguished service to the United Nations.
DR. JONATHAN FANTON
Jonathan F. Fanton is president of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. He served as interim director of the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College from 2009 to 2014. He was president of The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation from 1999 to 2009 and was president of The New School for Social Researchfor 17 years. He had previously been vice president of planning at the University of Chicago. Dr. Fanton holds a Ph.D. in American history from Yale University, where he also taught and was special assistant to President Kingman Brewster. He is the author of Foundations and Civil Society, volumes I and II (2008), and The University and Civil Society, volumes I and II (1995, 2002).
PROF. SIMONE LÄSSIG
Simone Lässig is director of the German Historical Institute Washington DC, a position she has held since 2015. She holds a professorship in modern history at Braunschweig University, from which she is currently on leave. From 2006 to 2015, she served as director of the Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research. She has also been a visiting professor at St Antony’s College, Oxford, and the University of California, Berkeley. In 2021 she was awarded a Remarque Fellowship for New York University. After winning the 1996 Horst Spring Prize for the best book on Saxon history, she wrote a study on the embourgeoisement of German Jewry, which was awarded the 2004 German Historical Association’s biennial prize for best habilitation in history. Her main fields of research are modern Jewish history, the history of knowledge, digital history, and biography as a historical genre.
DR. GARY SMITH
Dr. Gary Smith is senior fellow and director emeritus of the American Academy in Berlin and has lived in Germany since 1986. He came to Potsdam in 1992 as founding director of the Einstein Forum. He was the first executive director of the American Academy in Berlin and held that position from 1997 until the end of 2014. Smith received his Ph.D. from Boston University for a dissertation on "Walter Benjamin's Idea of Beauty" and has taught on the philosophy of art and culture in Berlin, Boston, and Chicago. His publications include Benjaminiana. A Biographical Inquiry (with Hans-Georg Puttnies); Gershom Scholem. Between the Disciplines (1995) and Hannah Arendt Revisited: Eichmann in Jerusalem (2000).
FORMER MEMBERS OF THE ACADEMIC ADVISORY BOARD:
Henry H. Arnhold, Benefector of the Georg Arnhold Program
Anthony G. C. Arnhold
Julia Marton-Lefèvre
FURTHER MEMBERS OF THE BOARD OF THE GEORG ARNHOLD PROGRAM:
Once a year the Academic Advisory Board of the Georg Arnhold Program comes together for the annual board meeting. At this meeting the Advisory Board selects the Georg Arnhold Senior Fellow of the following year. In addition to the members of the Academic Advisory Board, Prof. Eckhardt Fuchs, Director of the Leibniz Institute for Educational Media, the program coordinators and representative of the Airbel Impact Lab of the International Rescue Committee (IRC) take part in this meeting.
