Lecture
Europe under Trump: Challenges and Opportunities
- Date
- Wednesday 24 June 2026
- Time
- Address
-
Spui Campus
Spui 5
2511 BL The Hague - Room
- 4B.38
All welcome!
Since Donald Trump returned to the White House in 2025, the U.S. has become an active and open adversary of European liberal democracy. Most European politicians are struggling to acknowledge this new reality, responding to each individual challenge while neglecting the overall threat. Some Europhiles see Trump as the perfect opportunity to strengthen European democracy, by which they often mean the European Union.
However, Cas Mudde will argue that European democracy can only be strengthened if it (1) accepts the fundamental threat that the Trump regime poses to it; and (2) finally prioritizes liberal democracy (over the market and defense).
Cas Mudde is the Stanley Wade Shelton UGAF Professor of International Affairs and a Distinguished Research Professor at the University of Georgia (USA). He is a Universiteit Leiden alumnus and among the foremost scholars of far-right and populist politics, focusing particularly on party politics in Europe and North America.
He is currently working on three research projects: (1) “Rethinking the Far Right,” which builds on The Far Right Today; (2) “The Transformation of European Politics” (with Tarik Abou-chadi), under contract with Hurst; (3) and “Soccer and Democracy,” partly funded by the Open Society Foundation.
Dr. Mudde was elected a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) in 2022 and received an Honorary Doctorate from Södertörn University in 2026. He is a prominent voice in the public debate, being consulted by various non-state and state actors and interviewed by media around the world. He is a columnist for Aftonbladet (Sweden) and a regular contributor to The Guardian and VoxEurope.