By Lena Knieriemen, intern
From October 9th to October 10th, the Atlantic Academy had the pleasure to welcome Bruce Stokes to Kaiserslautern. Bruce Stokes is a visiting Senior Fellow at the German Marshall Fund and most recently co-authored two studies concerning the rebuilding of Ukraine after the war. He has had a distinguished career as a journalist and his professional work has included leading positions at the Council on Foreign Relations, Chatham House and notably as director of Pew Research Center's Global Economic Attitudes from 2012 to 2019.
His visit began with an interview conducted by Ilja Tüchter, a journalist and head of the RHEINPFALZ am Sonntag. Among the main topics of the talk were potential economic alterations after the upcoming presidential election on November 5th as well as an outlook on the future of Ukraine concerning financial aid and a possible reconstruction of the country after the war.
In the afternoon, Mr. Stokes gave a talk at Media:TOR in Speyer, in cooperation with Dr. Ukrow and Ms. Kiermas from the Medienanstalt Rheinland-Pfalz, which was held in person as well as live-broadcasted at the same time. The presentation, titled The U.S. Elections 2024: Campaigns and Polling in a Time of Complexity, focused on the presidential election, detailing the current “horse race” between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. Introducing a variety of polls on the public opinion on various polarizing topics such as Ukraine, Israel, abortion, climate change and more, Mr. Stokes’ informative and highly detailed presentation vividly illuminated the division of the American society on politics. He also cautioned how often emotion overrides reason in public opinion. He also described the crucial, even deciding role the Swing States are going to play for the election and that due to the closeness of the candidates in popularity no one should expect final results by the next day.
On Thursday, October 10th,, Michael Weis from the BurgGymnasium Kaiserslautern extended an invitation to talk to his tenth graders in political science on the topic of economy and trade, and naturally, the election and its possibly consequences for Europe. As Mr. Stokes put it: “The US gets to vote and the rest of the world has to live with it”. For the duration of an entire lesson, Mr. Stokes elaborated on the above-mentioned topics to a group of very attentive students, who afterwards came up with very clever questions on the topics discussed. This lesson was followed by a talk with the principal of the BurgGymnasium, Rüdiger Schneble.
The events were organized and accompanied by the Academy’s deputy director, Sarah Wagner. The visit of Mr. Stokes was made possible due to the U.S. Speakers Program of the U.S. Embassy Berlin in cooperation with Aspen Institute Germany and the Verbund Deutsch-Amerikanischer Zentren (VDAZ).
