Editorial

Adam Wilkins, Reinhart Meyer-Kalkus

This will be the fourth issue of the newsletter for former fellows, edited by Adam Wilkins and Reinhart Meyer-Kalkus. It will be the last issue under their responsibility.
 
We started the Newsletter in November 2013. It was intended to help the Wissenschaftskolleg make better use of the enormous knowledge and expertise – and, yes, wisdom -- of its former fellows. Looking back at the contributions and responses of the fellows to the Newsletter, we feel that it has fulfilled its function. Indeed, it has intensified the dialogue with the fellows beyond their time at the Wallotstrasse, just as we had hoped it would. We are proud to have contributed to the Wissenschafskolleg in this way.
Now it is time for a new editorial team: Sonja Grund (Head of the Library and Secretary of the Fellows’ Club), Daniel Schönpflug (Academic Coordinator), and Katharina Wiedemann (Press and Public Relations). We wish them good luck and hope that they can bring fresh ideas and new elan to what we started.
 
This issue includes two articles by an American and a British biologist (Rob Page, fellow 2009/10 and Adam Wilkins, a fellow also in 2009/10) about the situation of the humanities today, though from different perspectives. This debate has been gathering momentum in the Anglophone world and has had resonances in discussions at the Wissenschaftskolleg in recent years. In addition, in this issue, you will find an article by the sociologists Alfons Söllner (1990/91) about the research on the exile of German scholars under the Nazi dictatorship and an article of Susan Rose-Ackerman (Fellow 2014/15) and Bruce Ackerman (Fellow 1991/92) about living and working at the Wissenschaftskolleg then and now.