Buchpräsentation von Dr. Marietta van der Tol: „Constitutional Intolerance: The fashioning of ‘the other’ in Europe’s constitutional repertoires“

Dekanatssitzungsaal, Karl-Rahner-Platz 1, 1. OG

This lecture discusses what the impact far-right politics has been on the structures of constitutional law in Europe, specifically with reference to the protection of religious, ethnic, and sexual minorities. The lecture queries the constitutional practices and repertoires that they have engaged to express intolerance, as well as their historical antecedents, and explores how new forms of intolerance are shaped by the quality of democracy. The lecture offers examples from across the liberal-illiberal divide: France, the Netherlands, Hungary, and Poland. It highlights that vulnerability towards intolerance is inscribed in the structures of the law and is not merely inherent to either liberalism or illiberalism, as is often inferred.

Presentation: Dr. Marietta van der Tol (University of Cambridge)
Responses: MMMag. Dr. Johannes Augustin, BSc MA (Innsbruck), Prof. Dr. Franz Gmainer-Pranzl (Salzburg)
Moderation: Ass.-Prof. Mag. Dr. Michaela Quast-Neulinger MA

Dr Marietta van der Tol is Landecker Lecturer at the University of Cambridge, and Senior Postdoctoral Researcher at Trinity College, Cambridge. Her key-publications include the book Constitutional Intolerance (CUP 2025), the special issue ‘What’s ethnicity got to do with it?’ with Dr Elisabeth Becker in Ethnic and Racial Studies, and ‘Secularisation as the fragmentation of the sacred and of sacred space’ with Prof Phil Gorski in Religion, State, Society. Marietta convenes the Political Theologies Conference Series at Oxford.