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How (do) Europeans make democracy work?

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The Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies (CES) was honored to host an essay contest on Europe with the students in Professor Muriel Rouyer’s class at the Harvard Kennedy School, “Global Europe: Democracy, Policy and Governance” (DPI 431). Students were tasked with an unusual assignment: they were asked to pretend that, in a quest for new narratives, the European Union, the European Council of Research, and the Council of Europe, with the cooperation of a number of universities, have decided to open a writing competition on the topic : “(How) do Europeans make democracy work?” The format of this essay was entirely free and up to the authors, who were encouraged to creative in their writing.

CES is pleased to announce that the winner of the contest is Leah Schabas, with her creative and visionary short story written in the spirit of Voltaire, “The Case of the Cucumber.” Schabas is a master’s student at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, following a self-designed program of study – including cross-registering for Rouyer’s HKS course on Global Europe. Previously, she studied anthropology in the United Kingdom, her home country. Her research interests focus on the role of education systems both in shaping collective identities and adapting to how those identities may be changing in a globalizing world; issues of great salience to the European context.