Eleven months ago, Barack Obama took office on the wings of a bold electoral campaign which promised to turn the fate of a country facing a waning economy and increasing international isolation. Indeed, “change” was the bold moniker and motto the campaign which swept him into office. Support for the man with such an unusual (for US standards) background was large both in America and abroad. The world awaited patiently for a distancing...

Over the last few years, Romania has faced a unique political problem, which has monopolized the public debate and forced the functioning of the state apparatus to grind to a halt time and again. This seemingly insurmountable issue is the conflict “between the Victoria and Cotroceni palaces”, i.e. the wrangling amid the two branches of the executive. This concealed the true discord amidst the prerogatives of the Legislative...

Turn-of-the-century and post-1918 Romania faced a number of challenges on the political, social and mental tiers. The nation-building project had before it an increasing number of hurdles, such as foreign intervention and an ethnically incoherent hinterland. Thusly, Romanian self-images pictured themselves as being engaged in an unending struggle with a heterogeneous, outside force, which boiled down to modernity itself. While seeking to...

Recently, the on-going media circus that grips public life in Romania stumbled upon a new subject: the University of Spiru Haret and its illegality. A few short weeks ago, the recently enointed minister of Education and Research, former rector of the Bucharest Politechnic University, saw fit to suspend the rights of the private university to issue diplomas. The decision affected a number of departments, which had their legal rights pulled,...

Upon hearing the term “fascism”, the lay reader’s normative reaction is to associate it with its main outward forms of manifestation in interwar Germany, and Italy, respectively. However, the latter were not the only incarnations of this phenomenon. They had significant contemporary off-shoots in almost all of Europe, whether be it the Falange in Spain or the Action Française. The region of Europe east of the Austrian Alps, nowadays...