Preface

The event that precipitated the writing of this book was an invitation, extended in the fall of 1994, to be the second Georg Simmel Guest Professor at Humboldt University.

I accepted the invitation immediately, and was honored by it in several ways. First, it was an honor to come to Humboldt University, whose name is synonymous with traditions of academic excellence and innovation in higher education—traditions that still inhere in universities the world over. Second, it was an honor to be there at a special moment in the life of that university, which, after a long season of unwanted and undeserved intellectual degradation, has entered the period of revitalization that history owes it. Third, it was an honor to be in the shadow of Georg Simmel, one of the true fathers of sociology, though we do not always give him proper credit. Finally, I was personally honored—and humbled—in being chosen to deliver the Simmel lectures, and I would like to record my gratitude to those who had a role in bringing me there. In particular, I thank Professor Hans-Peter Müller of the sociology faculty, who extended the invitation, organized my stay in Berlin, was a model host, and commented insightfully on and improved the lectures.

My wife, Sharin, and I lived in the Humboldt University guest house for a month in May and June of 1995, the period set aside for the lectures. It could not have been a finer location—immediately across the river Spree from the Bode and Pergamon museums. We were not far from the Reichstag either, where Christo and his armies were preparing to drape that building in its ambivalently regarded shroud. We also lived within a short walk of the Unter den Linden, as well as the Friedrichstrasse, now populated by hundreds of cranes and bulldozers, as the former East Berlin continues its remarkable transition. Humboldt University, too, is undergoing an accelerated transition as it moves forward aggressively to take a place of leadership in German higher education anti simultaneously confront the dozens of ambiguities and ambivalences that its liberation and growth have occasioned. Colleagues were not too preoccupied, however, to extend us the warmest hospitality during our stay. Everything about that month made it an engaging and enjoyable interlude in life.