An interview and mittagessen with Professor Andrei Markovits
A chat with my favorite and recently retired professor where we discuss German politics, American universities, and who will win the EUROs?
In my freshman year of college, I decided to take an introductory political science course on comparative politics. On the first day of the class, I walked into Angell Hall, eager to learn from Professor Andrei “Andy” Markovits, the Karl W. Deutsch Professor of Comparative Politics and German Studies at the University of Michigan. His eccentric energy, brilliant research, and warm nature in office hours has garnered him respect from many students, and he is regarded as one of the best professors at our university. Outside of his academic departmental home of Political Science, Markovits is an expert in many fields—sports, dog rescue, and the Grateful Dead, to name a few.
Students of Markovits know that he eschews using the technological assistance of a PowerPoint, instead delivering exceptional lectures mostly entirely from memory. He is an orator of the highest degree. I can’t help but notice his intellectual genius and resemblance to Albert Einstein. To me, he is the Einstein of political science.
Over the next twelve weeks, I sat in the lecture hall transfixed by his charismatic style of teaching and his voluble knowledge of political history. It was purely because of Markovits, that I elected to do a double major in political science as an undergrad and would go on to take two more upper level courses with him on sports and German politics.
In 2021, Markovits published his memoir entitled The Passport as Home: Comfort in Rootlessness. It tells the story of his early childhood in Timisoara, Romania, schooling in Vienna, emigration with his father to New York City, and academic career at the storied institutions of Columbia, Harvard, Wesleyan, UC Santa Cruz, and Michigan. The Passport as Home is my favorite memoir—maybe because I know its author personally, nevertheless, I’ve made everyone in my family read it and they too rave about it despite having never met Markovits.
In my last two weeks in Germany, I’ve had the pleasure of reuniting with my beloved professor and attending two UEFA EURO matches together. We experienced the jubilation of the EURO tournament at BVB Stadion Dortmund and I got to watch him lecture one last time as the Fußball Professor at the Technical University of Dortmund. After his lecture on “Women’s Football: From a minor matter to a driving force for social inclusion”, I interviewed Professor Markovits at his hotel over a lunch of polenta burgers and cappelletti, asking him questions from his memoir. If you’re familiar with Jesse Tyler Ferguson’s podcast, “Dinner’s on Me”, where he interviews celebrities at tasteful restaurants around Los Angeles, this is my version of that.
“I have made it my life's goal to visit all 50 states, not just touching down at an airport and moving on but spending a few days on the ground and seeing the sights” .
How far along are you in achieving your goal?
I’ve still never been to Arkansas, North Dakota, Montana, and Idaho. Now that I’m a freelance guy, I plan on going. I want to go to Little Rock and I was thinking of doing Idaho and Montana together.
What was the hardest point in your life? And how did you get through it?
Very simple. It was losing my mother. I was nine. Some would argue I haven’t gotten through it. I have a hard time with the act of saying goodbye, and I think this has to do with the loss of my mother.
Professor Markovits has joint appointments in Michigan’s Department of Political Science, Sociology, and German Studies. He’s published books on soccer (Offside: Soccer and American Exceptionalism), dog rescue (From Property to Family: American Dog Rescue and the Discourse of Compassion), and several on German politics. Especially in your later career, you’ve stayed at the boundaries of disciplines, which I really admire. You combined your research interests "By remaining detached from departmental expectations and disciplinary norms; by creating my own intellectual and academic niches." In other words, by being rootless. Should more professors be appointed as interdisciplinary faculty? What are the consequences of colleges placing professors in a single department? Is that restraining or productive for an individual?
It’s up to what your colleagues view as legitimate in your discipline. You are gauged for advancement in one department. Michigan prides itself on interdisciplinary-ism. My work has always been driven by substance, not methodology, not by political science. If that’s the case, you have tremendous freedom—predicated on having tenure. But it’s a very thin line. It works because I know deep down they [my colleagues] respect me as a scholar, and they know I’m smart. I don’t do it for a disciplinary legitimization.
Do you still hold that your most desired identity is that of being an American? Why or why not?
Totally. My memoir is really to my father and our emigration to the United States. When I talk about America I don’t mean the cornfields of Iowa or streets of Chicago. My America is ultimately the high power of academy—Columbia and the Center of European Studies at Harvard and Michigan belongs to that group. That is the America I ultimately adored. No matter how much I am loved and well known in Germany, it doesn’t allow me to love it. It was my father’s wish that I become American. The America of these high-powered, intellectual places that are also very open. I found my home in it, I found my niche.
“Every new idea for every new project—has happened on my lengthy walks with my goldens, whether on a beach, in a forest, or on a city's streets”.
Have your recent walks with Emma given you any ideas for your next project?
I’m still obsessed with my project on national anthems. I’m not sure how I’d research it. That came through with Emma [my dog]. And I’m still interested in tattooing. But I don’t know how to research tattooing. With anthems, I suppose you have to watch YouTube videos? And the bigger question is, so what? It’s a wonderful detective story but I don’t know what the meaning is. The same with tattooing, which, tattoos are ubiquitous now. What I find fascinating about that is that it’s become completely as frequent with men as women. Which just wasn’t the case before. It used to be just bikers and various north Europeans, drunkards. Not normal folk. Now it’s everybody.
This year, having lived in Germany, I’ve gotten to observe the country and a lot of the things you wrote in the book or talked about in class came to me…which made me remember,
“Whenever I ponder why I became a German specialist, I remember Karl Deutsch’s dictum about the tasks of political and social science: ‘Andy, remember that we social scientists ought to be like pathologists, always studying illness and disease, never beauty and harmony’”.
And especially when I try to communicate to people back home why I love Germany, I’ve found that Germany’s beauty is precisely its recognition of its illness and disease. Take Berlin for example. Berlin carries such a heavy history. It knows itself to not be a pretty city. But it has done what few other cities have managed to achieve. Despite great upheaval it has absorbed one city into another. For all the problems of its past and future, this is an extraordinary feat for any city. Do you agree that Germany’s ability to reinvent itself, and rise from such turmoil is what makes it remarkable?
Let me dampen your remarks. First of all, I’m the first to congratulate and be in awe of the Bundesrepublik, its major achievements and its dealing with its past. Germany has done this more than any country, more than the US. So my answer is that it’s very impressive. But it didn’t do this out of its own volition. It did so because it was crushed and occupied and it had to do this. Which doesn’t make doing it less impressive, but it was done because the Germans didn’t want to do it, they were forced to do it. It was hoisted upon them. There was no reckoning where they saw the evil and they wanted to change.
It's unclear whether in fact it has been such a successful story. Let’s wait another 20 years and let’s see what the AfD (Alternative for Germany) does. The Germans have a saying, “Man soll den Tag nicht vor dem Abend loben.” Which roughly means “the day is not yet over until it’s night.” In other words, you shouldn’t count your chickens before they hatch. I’m not saying there will be Hitler again. But it’s unclear whether the negation of national socialism is as thorough as you, Kayla, implied. Let’s hope that it was as thorough and complete as we hope. Let’s talk again in 5 years.
So yes, to both of your questions, but with a caveat.
That’s why I think it’s a great time to be a German scholar and why I’m so interested in their politics. These ideas were implanted [in me] in your classrom, then I got to take them into the lab by spending the last year in Germany, and now I get to go home and share my findings.
What’s a Grateful Dead song you would recommend?
I’ve enjoyed “Stella Blue” this month and have had “Ripple” saved for a long time.
Oh beautiful. Those are beautiful songs. So you’re a ballad girl. Ripple is #1 in some ways. Musically, I recommend “Unbroken Chain.” It’s incredible, the patterns of change. It’s very sophisticated. I’m not really quite sure what they’re saying there…well I do, but…
“Black Peter” is a beautiful song, it’s very sad.
“Loser” is phenomenal.
“Sugaree” is a famous Garcia song.
There was actually a playlist to accompany Markovits’s memoir which I will share here:
8. Lastly, who do you think will win the Euro?
Germany. They’re playing at home. Home field advantage among team sports is the highest among soccer. It’s very high, I think it’s about 73 percent. And Germany is a good team. Anything can happen. It’s them or the Spaniards.
The Passport as Home reflects a life motto I have embraced in the last year of my life. Rootlessness is precisely what gives Markovits and I our roots. Accepting that where I live now might not be where I am in a year, and all these places where I’ve dropped seeds but never felt truly rooted, is what forms my identity. I’ve actually memorized my passport number from getting so much use out of it this year, which I surmise is proof that I too, live an unanchored and rootless life.
“Even though the term invokes loneliness and unhappiness, in my case "rootlessness" and "cosmopolitanism" embody a certain independence and agency, a sense of being orthogonal to the dominant culture, a tad askew, unaligned, disjointed, an outsider, an observer, a participant who, while not excluded from the group, manages to remain detached.”
Professor Markovits has been my utmost benefactor. Every good deed I have earned is a direct result of his inspiration, encouragement, or help. He has left an indelible impact on me, changing the trajectory of my life, inspiring me to become an academic. We share many loves: sports, our golden retrievers, and the University of Michigan. We both suffered from having to watch our teams, his Manchester United and my Tottenham Spurs, stumble in the Premier League this season. But we also both celebrated our Michigan taking home the national football championship this year. Like our academic careers, there are highs and lows. Even in my young—dare I say burgeoning career, I have already learned this lesson.
Not a day goes by where it’s not lost on me that I would not be here in Germany without Professor Andy Markovits. I would not have had this life transforming year without him. So it is so beautifully full-circle to me that I get to spend my final day in this country with my dear professor.
You can purchase Andrei Markovits’s memoir, The Passport as Home, on Amazon.com
Markovits, his dog Emma, and I at his Ann Arbor home last summer:
