In 2010, the Hertie School of Governance, LSE and Stiftung Mercator created a joint initiative to honour Lord Dahrendorf’s legacy as a leading sociologist and public intellectual with a passionate commitment to the European idea. It was initially focused on a series of high-level Symposiums that addressed contemporary issues in the European debate. The initiative has now grown into the Dahrendorf Forum, a place for bringing together academics and political practitioners and for stimulating critical reflection on Europe’s future.
The Forum takes its name from Ralf Dahrendorf (1929-2009).
Professor Dahrendorf rose to academic fame in post-war Germany as a leading social scientist with a wide range of interests in sociology and political thought. He entered politics in the late 1960s, becoming a Member of the German Bundestag in 1969. In 1970 he became a Commissioner in the European Commission. From 1974 to 1984 he served as Director of the LSE and was appointed to the House of Lords in 1993 as Lord Dahrendorf of Clare Market.
Writing in 1969, Dahrendorf famously defined the role of the public intellectual thus: “to doubt everything that is obvious, to make relative all authority, to ask all those questions that no one else dares to ask”. It is in this spirit that the Dahrendorf Forum promotes critical thinking on the public policy challenges that Europe faces. The Forum seeks to highlight those issues and perspectives that tend to be ignored or underrepresented – not for criticism´s sake but in order to move Europe forward.