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04-14-25-Ronen-Steinke-Event-Audio-Recording--Edited---ss-04q.mp3
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ABOUT THE TALK
Germany keeps a domestic intelligence service unlike any other. In the name of shielding democracy from extremists, its "Bureau for the Protection of the Constitution" is mandated to spy even on opposition groups who operate entirely within the law.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Ronen Steinke is a German legal scholar and award-winning investigative journalist who works for Germany’s leading broadsheet newspaper, the SZ. His essays and books on issues of law and society have been discussed in The Guardian, Haaretz, Le Figaro and Asahi Shinbun.
After six years of research into Germany's domestic intelligence service, known as the Agency for the Protection of the Constitution, Ronen's book on this topic was a best-seller in 2023, sparking a wider debate in Germany, and was recently reviewed in the London Review of Books.
Ronen was educated at Bucerius Law School, Hamburg, and Temple University, Japan Campus, Tokyo, and holds a doctorate in international criminal law. From 2012 to 2013 he was a visiting scholar at Frankfurt University's Institute for Holocaust Research. Since 2023, he teaches at the University’s law school.
As legal affairs editor with Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ), Ronen frequently writes columns and essays on German politics and society, particularly on the rise of the extreme right. Along with a group of lawyers and scholars, he edits an annual report on right-wing extremism in Germany. In 2013, Ronen published the biography of the German-Jewish prosecutor Fritz Bauer, who secretly worked with the Mossad and brought Nazi war criminals to justice in the 1960s. The book, which received a preface by the President of the German Supreme Court, has been translated into five languages (US edition by Indiana University Press). Ronen's account of the story of Mohammed Helmy, the first Arab to be honored as Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem, has been translated into seven languages and was named book of the week by the Observer in 2021. Ronen’s book-length exploration of social injustices in the German prison system, published in 2022, has rekindled a wider debate on the need for criminal justice reform in Germany. As a result, the Bundestag recently eased rules on imprisonment for failure to pay a fine.