Joschka Fischer, Germany's former minister of foreign affairs presented a public lecture entitled, "The Future of the Transatlantic Community: Is the 'West' Still a Viable Concept?," at 4:30 p.m. on Monday, October 23, 2006 in Dodds Auditorium, Robertson Hall, on the Princeton University campus. Fischer is a Senior Fellow at the Liechtenstein Institute on Self-Determination, the Woodrow Wilson School’s Frederick H. Schultz Class of 1951 Professor of International Economic Policy, and a fellow with Princeton’s European Union Program. He also has an appointment with the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City.  The event was co-sponsored by the Liechtenstein Institute on Self-Determination, the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, and the European Union Program. It was free and open to the public.
  
Fischer was appointed Germany's Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1998 during the administration of Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, fifteen years after joining that country's burgeoning Green party in 1982.  Upon his appointment as Hessian Minister of the Environment and Energy in 1985, he was the first German Green to assume a government post. From 1987 to 1991, Fischer served in various capacities in the Hessian State Assembly; served from 1991 to 1994 as Hessian Minister for the Environment, Energy and Federal Affairs; and from 1994 to 1998 he was Parliamentary Spokesman for the Green party in the German Bundestag, the national parliament.