The president of Europa-Universität Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder) on the German-Polish border, Gesine Schwan is a political scientist and former candidate for the presidency of Germany. For the past thirty years, she also has been a professor of political science at the Free University of Berlin. Her principal areas of research are political philosophy, particularly Marxism and socialism, theories of democracy, and, more recently, problems of political psychology and political culture. Educated at Berlin and at the University of Freiburg, she received a Ph.D. in political science from the Free University in 1970 with a dissertation on Leszek Kolakowski. She was appointed an assistant professor of political science the next year and named a full professor in 1977. The same year, Dr. Schwan was made a member of the Commission for Fundamental Values of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), a post she continues to hold, having served until 1984 and then accepting re-appointment in 1996. Eight years later, she was the SPD and the Grüne (Green Party) candidate for president of her country, losing to Horst Köhler, the candidate in 2004 of the major parties. She was appointed to the presidency of the Europa-Universität Viadrina in 1999 and currently represents the German Government as coordinator for German-Polish relations. Dr. Schwan has been a fellow of the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, D.C., a visiting fellow at Robinson College, Cambridge, and a visiting professor at the New School for Social Research in New York. She is the recipient of the Federal Cross of Merits and the Federal Cross of Merits, First Class, of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, the Urania Medal for contributions to scientific national education, the Marion Dönhoff Award for international understanding and reconciliation, the annual award of the Berlin Foreign Press Association, the Pauline Staegemann Award given by the Committee of Social Democratic Women in Brandenburg, the Women in Europe - Germany 2005 Award, the Glos Wielkopolski Award, and the Tolerance Award of the Ecumenical Foundation in Warsaw. Co-editor of the political science journal ZPol, she has published numerous articles in scholarly journals and seven books, including The Social Critique of Karl Marx (1974), (with Alexander Schwan) Marxism and Social Democracy (1974), Socialism in Democracy (1982), Politics and Guilt: The Destructive Potential of Silence (1997), Anti-Communism and Anti-Americanism in Germany: Continuity and Change since 1945 (1999), Demokratische Politische Idenität: Deutschland, Polen, Frankreich im Vergleich (2005) and, most recently, Vertrauen und Politik: Politische Theorie in Zeitalter der Globalisierung (2006).