Fellowship Year 2021: Security and Identity

The third year of the Sylke Tempel Fellowship program (2021) focused on the topic “Israel, Germany and the USA: Questions of Security and Identity for Policy Fit for the Future”.  In the USA, a new administration assumed office, in Germany and Israel, elections were held for the Bundestag and the Knesset, respectively, in 2021. In all three countries, people were facing an unknown future with concern. Not least due to the Corona crisis the need for security was great. At the same time, the yearning for orientation was growing and brought identity politics into focus. This year, our fellows critically addressed questions of identity and security politics.

The research topics of our 2021 fellows were:

  • Jakob Flemming: Political Theology in the USA, Israel and Germany
  • Dor Glick: Ideas for an effective culture of remembrance
  • Lisa Hänel: Critical Whiteness and Jewish Identity
  • Bastian Kaiser: How initiatives in Israel and Germany create new spaces for dialogue
  • Jonathan Kovac: National security concepts in Israel and Germany
  • Rebecca Mitzner: On the global significance of Jewish identity politics
  • Georg Reichel: Bundeswehr and Israel Defense Forces: Identities of the Armed Forces in Comparison
  • Lena Voelk: Anti-Semitic resentment in new far-right groups in Germany and the US
  • Isabel Weiss: Naftali Bennett and the Rise of the religious nationalism


Online Conference

Each year, the highlight of our fellowship program is the concluding conference, during which our fellows introduce their projects and experts discuss our topics.

This year’s concluding conference took place online on December 14, 2021.

Please find the conference program here.

Partner organizations
Our cooperation partners are the American Jewish Committee (AJC), the European Leadership Network (ELNET), the foreign policy magazine Internationale Politik (IP) and Women in International Security (WIIS.de).  The program runs under the auspices of former Federal Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel in his role as chairman of Atlantik-Brücke e.V. and former Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni.


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