New School for Social Research (New York, N.Y. : 1919-1997). East and Central Europe Program
Dates
- Existence: 1990 - 1997
Historical Note
In 1990, in response to the revolutions of 1989, which saw the fall of the Berlin Wall and of communism across Eastern Europe, the Graduate Faculty at the New School (which was re-named NSSR in 2005) established the East and Central Europe Program (ECEP) "to assist regional efforts to revitalize scholarly life in the social sciences." ECEP emerged out of the Democracy Seminars, a semi-clandestine series of seminars on democratic politics and culture initially held in New York, Warsaw, and Budapest from 1984 until the mid-1990s, with Professor of Sociology and Liberal Studies Elzbieta Matynia overseeing the New York seminar at the time of ECEP’s establishment. In the spring of 1997, ECEP became the Transregional Center for Democratic Studies, to accommodate the expanding activities and scope of ECEP, with Matynia remaining as director.