Former Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras has been appointed as a short-term, resident Policy Fellow of Harvard University’s Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies (CES) and The Center for Hellenic Studies (CHS) during the spring 2025 academic term.
“We are privileged to host Alexis Tsipras, who as prime minister participated in and witnessed some of the most decisive moments in Europe’s 21st-century history,” said Daniel Ziblatt, director of CES and Eaton Professor of the Science of Government at Harvard.
“The financial and refugee crises in the first part of this century continue to reverberate in our current moment. Mr. Tsipras’ presence on campus will allow us to learn from his experiences in high-level political negotiations contending with those challenges as well as from his efforts to offer an alternative to austerity and to facilitate the historic Prespa Agreement.”
Tsipras will spend the spring semester at Harvard
Tsipras — a civil engineer and proponent of anti-austerity measures — will spend the spring semester in Cambridge and at Harvard’s CHS campus in Washington D.C. According to the CES website, fellows use their public service experience to support academic research, deliver lectures, and work with students and faculty throughout the semester.
Past fellows include Metin Hakverdi — a member of the Committee for the Affairs of the European Union — and Sven Rahner, an official at the German Federal Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs.
CES was founded in 1969 at Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences and is the oldest university center devoted to the study of Europe in the United States. For more than a half century, the Center has promoted the interdisciplinary understanding of European history, politics, economy and societies at Harvard.
Harvard University’s Center for Hellenic Studies was founded in 1960. It was made possible by a grant of the Old Dominion Foundation, the predecessor of the Mellon Foundation. The gift was made “exclusively for the establishment of an educational center in the field of Hellenic Studies designed to rediscover the humanism of the Hellenic Greeks.” The Center’s administration was entrusted to Harvard University.
Tsipras resigned from Syriza leadership
Tsipras resigned from the SYRIZA leadership in June 2023 after the crushing defeat his party suffered in the Greek elections. The once-powerful SYRIZA won just 17.84 percent of the vote. “It is necessary to invent a new SYRIZA that will read the new challenges of the time and meet the expectations”, he noted.
He emphasized that he is proud of what his party has succeeded in and referred to the exit from the era of the bailouts and the Prespa Agreement.
Since he departed from the party, SYRIZA has been in disarray. His successor Stefanos Kasselakis has been ousted from the party. Opinion polls show that the party which governed Greece in the 2015-2019 period is now on single-digit figures.