Far-Right France: Le Pen, Bardella and the Future of Europe

When: 12:00pm, Tuesday, April 21st

Where: Fayerweather Hall, Room 413

Chair: Adam Tooze, Professor of History, Columbia University

Discussants: Emmanuelle Saada, Chair of the French Department, Columbia University; Nadia Urbinati, Professor of Political Theory, Columbia University

This event is co-sponsored by: the European Institute, the Committee on Global Thought, the Technology Policy and Innovation Concentration (SIPA), Columbia World Projects, the Department of French, the Alliance Program, and the Maison Française.

Right-wing populists and nationalists have been sweeping into power across the world in recent years, from Brexit Britain to the US under Donald Trump, from Hungary with Viktor Orbán to Argentina with Javier Milei.

Is France likely to be one of the next countries to fall under the sway of the far-right, with incalculable consequences for its European neighbours and for the world? Since the 1980s, author and journalist Victor Mallet has observed the inexorable rise of the anti-immigration Front National – now the Rassemblement National – first under the late Jean-Marie Le Pen and now under his daughter Marine Le Pen, who recently anointed her young and charismatic protégé Jordan Bardella as successor.

Far-right France: Le Pen, Bardella and the Future of Europe explains how they began to dominate French politics and asks what happens next in a liberal democracy that was one of the founders of the European Union and is a crucial member of the Nato alliance confronting Russia.

Victor Mallet is a journalist, commentator and author with more than three decades of experience in Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Africa. He is now a senior editor on the FT's world desk, and his previous jobs include Paris bureau chief and Asia editor. He is the author of two books - River of Life, River of Death: The Ganges and India's Future; and The Trouble with Tigers: The Rise and Fall of South-East Asia - and he continues to write on geopolitics, the environment and the oceans.

Adam Tooze holds the Shelby Cullom Davis chair of History at Columbia University and serves as Director of the European Institute. In 2019, Foreign Policy Magazine named him one of the top Global Thinkers of the decade. Professor Adam Tooze teaches and researches widely in the fields of twentieth-century and contemporary history. From a start in modern German history with a special focus on the history of economics and economic history his interests have widened to take in a range of themes in political, intellectual and military history, across a canvass stretching from Europe across the Atlantic. His most recent book was Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World (2018).

Emmanuelle Saada is Professor of French and of History, Department of French Chair, and Director of the Center for French and Francophone Studies. Emmanuelle Saada’s main field of research and teaching is the history of the French empire in the 19th and 20th century, with a specific interest in law. Her first book, Les enfants de la colonie: les métis de l'Empire français entre sujétion et citoyenneté, was published in France in 2007 and translated in 2012 under the title Empire’s Children: Race, Filiation and Citizenship in the French Colonies (University of Chicago Press). Emmanuelle Saada is currently writing a historiographical book reflecting on French and European colonization as a history of the present. She is also working on a project on law and violence in Algeria and France in the 19th century. She has published several articles on colonial law, culture and politics as well as reflections on recent French debates in the social sciences.

Nadia Urbinati is Kyriakos Tsakopoulos Professor of Political Theory at Columbia University. She is a political theorist who specializes in modern and contemporary political thought and the democratic and anti-democratic traditions. She is the winner of the 2008-9 Lenfest/Columbia Distinguished Faculty Award. In 2008 the President of the Italian Republic awarded Professor Urbinati the Commendatore della Repubblica (Commander of the Italian Republic). In 2004 her book Mill on Democracy (cited below) received the David and Elaine Spitz Prize as the best book in liberal and democratic theory published in 2002. In 2020 her book Me the People (cited below) received the Capalbio International Prize. Professor Urbinati is the author of Me The People: How Populism Transforms Democracy (Harvard University Press, 2019); The Tyranny of the Moderns (Yale University Press 2015); Democracy Disfigured: Opinion, Truth and the People (Harvard University Press, 2014); Representative Democracy: Principles and Genealogy (University of Chicago Press, 2006), and of Mill on Democracy: From the Athenian Polis to Representative Government (University of Chicago Press, 2002). She has edited Carlo Rosselli, Liberal Socialism (Princeton University Press, 1994); Piero Gobetti, On Liberal Revolution (Yale University Press,2002).

For more info about the book, visit: https://victormallet.org/.

Non-CUID holders must register for tickets at least 24 hours in advance of the event, or campus access will not be guaranteed. Guest campus access will be sent to the email address provided on your registration. You must bring a valid photo ID to enter Columbia's campus, in addition to your tickets.

In case of entry issues, please email [email protected].

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