Claus Offe
Doctor of Letters, Honoris Causa
At ANU's 20 December degree ceremony, distinguished social theorist Claus Offe will be awarded a Doctor of Letters, honoris causa, in recognition of 'his distinguished creative contributions in the service of society'.
Perhaps the most distinguished social theorist of his generation, Offe has made profound contributions to our understanding of capitalism, of democracy, and of the complex the relationships between them. For the past fifteen years, he has spent several weeks in alternate years at RSSS, latterly as Adjunct Professor of Social & Political Theory.
Claus Offe was born in Berlin in 1940. He took his doctorate from the University of Frankfurt, where he was Assistant to the famous philosopher Jürgen Habermas. Since 2006, Claus Offe has been Joint Professor of Theories of the State at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin, having previously served as Professor of Political Science and Sociology at three distinguished German Universities (Bielefeld, Bremen and Humboldt).
Offe is famous for his work on the crisis of the welfare state and the changing nature of employment; on democratization, civil society and new social movements; on how to do justice in societies in transition, and how to build public trust and civil society. There is great breadth to his scholarship:
He has held fellowships at the virtually all the major research centres in his subject: Institutes for Advanced Study in Princeton, Wasenar and Vienna; the Centre for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford; the Max Planck Institute at Starnberg; the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin; and the Collegium in Budapest. In 1994 Offe was elected a foreign honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. It is our honour for an honourary degree from ANU to be added to that list.
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