Honorary Doctor 2011
- Francis Fukuyama - Foto: Lars Kruse / AU-Kommunikation
The social researcher the people in power listen to
On 9 September 2011, one of the most distinguished social researchers in the world was pronounced honorary doctor at Aarhus University. Francis Fukuyama is a professor of international studies at Stanford University and, for several decades, he has managed to combine the roles of researcher, adviser and political commentator. He achieved international renown in 1989 for an article that, three years later, became the epoch-making book The End of History and the Last Man. In this book, he argued that the end of the Cold War was also the final victory for democracy and the market over all other competing forms of society. Not in a way that democracy was invincible, but because this form of society was the only one that has proved to meet a universal human need for recognition. The democratic movement in the Arabic world has given new relevance to the book, and Professor Fukuyama was appropriately the first to revise and update some of its conclusions in the light of these new events.
Knowledge available
In the 1980s, Professor Fukuyama made his knowledge of democracy and state formation available as an adviser to the American government. Since the 1990s, he has been a prominent figure in the international debate on subjects such as globalisation, economic development, international relations, security and bioethics. He currently also works as a consultant for the Rand Corporation and the World Bank in connection with the development of sustainable institutions and states in third world countries.
Since 2009, Professor Fukuyama has been a visiting professor at Aarhus University, where he finalised his latest work The Origins of Political Order, which deals with the development of political institutions in different cultures. During his stay at Aarhus University, Professor Fukuyama has also acted as a catalyst for the exchange of ideas, partly by drawing attention to Danish conditions in the international academic debate, and also by helping to globalise the local debate in Denmark through his contact with colleagues, students and Danish journalists.
