Yascha Mounk

Yascha Benjamin Mounk (born 10 June 1982) is a German-American political scientist and author. He is Associate Professor of the Practice of International Affairs at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C. In July 2020, he founded Persuasion, an online magazine devoted to defending the values of free societies.

As a freelance journalist, Mounk has written for the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, Slate, and German weekly newspaper Die Zeit, of which he had been co-editor since 2023.

Early life
Mounk was born and raised in Munich. His mother was Jewish and a socialist, and left Poland in 1969 after the purge of Jews from positions in the Communist apparatus. Much of his mother's side of the family had been killed in the Holocaust. He has said he felt like a stranger in Germany, and though German is his native language, he never felt accepted as a "true German" by his peers.

Mounk read history at Trinity College, Cambridge, and received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 2003. He then received a PhD from Harvard University in the United States, with the dissertation The Age of Responsibility: On the Role of Choice, Luck, and Personal Responsibility in Contemporary Politics and Philosophy. He remained in the US as a lecturer on government, and was named a senior fellow in the Political Reform Program at the think tank New America. Mounk became an American citizen in 2017.

Career
He was executive director of the Renewing the Centre team at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change. As a freelance journalist, he has written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, The Atlantic, Slate, and Die Zeit. Since April 2023 he is a member of the latter's editorial board.

He runs a podcast called The Good Fight.

In July 2020, he founded Persuasion, an online magazine.

In February 2024, the Atlantic cut ties with Mounk, and he was suspended from the editorial board of Die Zeit after journalist Celeste Marcus posted rape allegations. Mounk told the Washington Post, “I am aware of the horrendous allegation against me. It is categorically untrue.”

Political views
Mounk joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) as a teenager. In 2015, he resigned from the party, doing so by publishing an open letter to then-chairman Sigmar Gabriel. He cited the lack of helpfulness of German institutions to refugees, the passive attitude of SPD leaders and other parts of the party during the Crimea crisis in 2014, and the SPD's policy on Greece, which he called a "betrayal of the social democratic dream of a united Europe".

In a February 2018 interview published in Süddeutsche Zeitung, Mounk stated that he had changed his position on nationalism. He initially considered it a relic of the past that must be overcome, but he now advocates an "inclusive nationalism" to head off the threat of aggressive nationalism. On the German television newscast Tagesthemen, he stated that Germany is on a "historically unique experiment, namely to transform a mono-ethnic and mono-cultural democracy into a multi-ethnic one". In the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Mounk advised the "liberal camp" to adopt this inclusive nationalism, to foster a multi-ethnic and democratic society: "The key ... is the adoption of the populist demand that people and nations should again feel they have control of their lives or their destiny."

Books

 * The Identity Trap: A Story of Ideas and Power in Our Time Penguin Press, 2023
 * The Great Experiment: Why Diverse Democracies Fall Apart and How They Can Endure, Penguin Press (2022)
 * The Age of Responsibility – Luck, Choice and the Welfare State, Harvard University Press, 2019.
 * The People vs. Democracy: Why Our Freedom Is in Danger and How to Save It. Harvard University Press, 2018, ISBN 978-0674976825

Selected Articles

 * Universities That Don’t Understand Academic Freedom", The Atlantic (December 2023)
 * "Goodbye to the Prophets of Doom", The Atlantic (July 2023)
 * "The Great American Eye Exam Scam", The Atlantic (November 2019)
 * "What the New Sokal Hoax Reveals About Academia", The Atlantic (October 2018)
 * "The Undemocratic Dilemma", Journal of Democracy (April 2018)
 * "Echt Deutsch", Harper's (April 2017)
 * "How I Became An American", The New York Times (March 2017)
 * "Responsibility Redefined", Democracy: A Journal of Ideas (January 2017)
 * "Signs of Deconsolidation", Journal of Democracy (January 2017)
 * "What We Do Now", Slate (November 2016)
 * "Yes, American Democracy Could Break Down", Politico (October 2016)
 * "How Political Science Gets Politics Wrong", The Chronicle of Higher Education (October 2016)
 * "The Week Democracy Died", Slate (August 2016)
 * "The Danger of Deconsolidation. The Democratic disconnect", Journal of Democracy (July 2016)
 * "Pitchfork Politics", Foreign Affairs (August 2014)
 * "German, Jewish, and Neither", The New York Times (January 2014)
 * "German, Jewish, and Neither", The New York Times (January 2014)

Interviews and profiles

 * October 3, 2023 on Democracy Paradox podcast: Yascha Mounk Warns Against a Misguided New Ideology
 * September 12, 2023 in Pantsuit Politics: When Progressive Principles Undermine Democratic Goals with Yascha Mounk
 * 25 March 2018 on Deutschlandfunk.de: Demokratie in Gefahr? (0:29:06)
 * 17 February 2018 on Deutschlandfunkkultur.de: Der Prophet des Untergangs der Demokratie (0:29:54)
 * 15 February 2018 on Sueddeutsche.de von Sebastian Gierke: "Die liberale Demokratie zerfällt gerade"
 * April 2017 in The Chronicle of Higher Education: "Can Yascha Mounk Save Liberal Democracy?"
 * March 2017 in The Atlantic: "Containing Trump"
 * November 2016 in The New York Times: "How Stable Are Democracies?"