2009

November 23, 2009

Screening of BURMA VJ: REPORTING FROM A CLOSED COUNTRY The 83-minute screening was followed by a conversation with Czech journalist Pavel Vondra who who was in Burma right before the failed 2007 Saffron Revolution as well as Marie Havlínová, program officer for Burma Projects, the nongovernmental organization People in Need and Sabe Soe, director of the Burma Center in Prague. 

Burma VJ, which has won many documentary and human rights awards worldwide  (Sundance, Berlin Film Festival), is about clandestine video journalists inside Burma, a country run by a repressive totalitarian junta. The 2008 film, made entirely in secret on handheld cameras and secretly smuggled out of the country, reveals how these brave Burmese journalists risk their lives to film a growing 2007 revolution-peace-democracy movement among the monks, one that is eventually crushed. Their horrific fate is of course also the fate of the journalists. It is a film about the unquenchable desire for freedom in the face of violence, but also about journalism, and how without human rights, the lines between journalism and advocacy may blur.

--------------------

November 16, 2009

DEMOCRATIC CHANGES IN CENTRAL EUROPE 1989: THE CASE OF HUNGARY

- photographic posters exhibition

Opening talk and discussion with Deputy Head from the Hungarian Embassy

Iván Gyurcsík

For decades Hungary’s western and southern borders were blocked by the Iron Curtain. This physical border was dismantled in the spring and summer of 1989. The spectacular results of the change of government and Hungary’s Euro-Atlantic integration are documented in a series of photographic posters that follows Hungary’s transition into a democratic, Schengen state.

--------------------

November 3, 2009

Discussion with DAN BILEFSKY, the central and eastern Europe correspondent for the New York Times/International Herald Tribune and a former Brussels bureau chief for The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.

Mr. Bilefsky spoke about  the life of a foreign correspondent and how journalists abroad select, report and craft their stories. He is an expert in post-conflict Georgia and the former Yugoslavia and is also renowned for his many off-beat feature stories, such as why Spanish men take Viagra and the plight of Turkish women murdered by their fathers and brothers for the "crime" of dating.   

--------------------

October 13, 2009

Talk by MARKETA GOETZ-STANKIEWICZ - Professor Emerita, FRSC; The University of British Columbia, Department of Germanic Studies

Marketa Goetz-Stankiewicz has contributed some thirty essays on German, Comparative, Czech and Polish literature to books and periodicals, has written introductions to plays and theatre programs, and several of her essays have been reprinted in collections of literary criticism or translated and reprinted in other languages. In 1972 and 1992 she was awarded UBC Excellence in Teaching awards; in 1988 she received the order of the Ordo Scriptores Bohemici in Prague; in 1992 she was awarded the Boeschenstein medal of the CAUTG.

--------------------

October 7, 2009

Talk by a photographer GUEORGUI PINKHASSOV

Mr. Pinkhassov joined Magnum Photos in 1988. He works regulary for the international press, particularly for Geo, Actuel and the New York Times Magazine. His book, Sightwalk, explores individual details, through reflections or particular kinds of light, often approaching abstraction.

--------------------

September 30, 2009

"THE STORY OF 9/11 AND GROUND ZERO"

Guest lecture by an architect Jiří Boudník

Jiří Boudník immigrated to the U.S. from the Czech Republic 20 years ago. He studied arts and architecture at the renowned Cooper Union in New York. On September 11, 2001 he was working as a project engineer at a construction site near the Brooklyn Bridge when the hijacked planes smashed into the nearby World Trade Center. At that moment he decided to run to warn the rescuers of possible buildings collapse. He was among the first rescuers on the site. In the following weeks he created 3D models of Ground Zero that were used for searching for survivors and removing debris. He was part of the expert team hired by property owner Larry Silverstein, studying structural causes of the collapse.

--------------------

May 20, 2009

THE GLOBAL ECONOMIC CRISIS - TIME OF DESPAIR OR OPPORTUNITY? Thoughts on the crisis from a wider perspective

Debate organized in coopeation with Oxford and Cambridge Alumni Society Czech Republic

Speakers:

 Prof. Tomáš Halík, Lecturer at the Charles University and President of the Czech Christian Academy

Prof. Michal Mejstřík, Lecturer at the Charles University and Member of the NERV (National Economic Council of the Czech Government)

Doc. Vladimír Benáček, Senior researcher at the Institute of Sociology of the Academy of Sciences, Lecturer at the Anglo-American and the Charles University

Radek Špicar, MPhil., Director for External Affairs, Škoda Auto

Ondřej Kopečný, Deputy Director of Glopolis, Prague Global Policy Institute

Chaired by:

--------------------

May 18, 2009

Reading of TOMÁŠ HALÍK's book PATIENCE WITH GOD

- in coopeating with Forum 2000 Foundation

--------------------

April 16, 2009

THE COMMUNIST TAKEOVER IN FEBRUARY 1948: Circumstances and Personalities

Guest lecture by Jan Drabek 

Jan Drabek was born in Prague in 1935; he came to Canada in 1965, after 17 years in the U.S., India, Austria, and Germany. He received a B.A. in English literature from American University in Washington, D.C. He taught high school in Vancouver for 10 years during the 1960s and 1970s, then wrote fiction and non-fiction until 1989. Since 1990, he has been working for the Foreign Ministry of Czechoslovakia and then of the Czech Republic as an ambassador to Kenya, advisor to the Minister and Chief of Protocol. In the late 1990s he served as the Czech ambassador in Tirana, Albania, but has now returned to Vancouver where he devotes all his time to writing, both in English and Czech. He is the former President of the Federation of B.C. Writers.

--------------------

March 20, 2009

Achievements and Failures of Civil Society in Central Europe – Twenty Years after the Fall of Communism

PIDEC Annual Conference

The chief aim of this conference was to discuss both the role of civil society before 1989 in eroding communist regimes in this region and the role of civil society today in strengthening democracy. The role of non-political social movements is an important issue not only in post-communist societies but also in developed Western democracies. Where do we stand today? And what is the future of civil society?

PROGRAM

8:30 – 9:00      Registration

9:00 – 9:05      Conference opening, welcome note by Jiri Pehe, Director of New York University in  Prague

9:15 -  9:45      Key note speech by Martin Palouš, the Czech Ambassador to the United Nations and a leading dissident before 1989.

9:45 - 11:15    PANEL 1: Dissident movement and the impact of civil society on the fall of communism

Listen to the MP3

Monika MacDonagh Pajerova, Chairperson, Yes for Europe (Ano pro Evropu)

Martin Butora, Honorary President, Institute for Public Affairs, Bratislava

Jan Machacek, Journalist, former dissident, musician, member of the underground band Plastic People of the Universe

Jan Urban, New York University in Prague

moderator: Jiri Pehe, Director, New York University in Prague

11:15 – 11:30  Coffee break

11:30 – 13:15 PANEL 2: Civil society today, twenty years of development, the impact of civil society on the quality of democracy

Listen to the MP3

Sona Szomolanyi, Professor of political science, Department of Political Science, Comenius University, Bratislava

Karel Müller, New York University in Prague

Zora Butorova, Senior Research Fellow, Institute for Public Affairs, Bratislava

moderator: Salim Murad, University of South Bohemia, České Budějovice

13:15  Closing Remarks by Jiri Pehe, Director, New York University in Prague

 

Document Actions

• • --------------------
    March 12, 2009

  • WAR OF THE WORLD? Is a Nonviolent Strategy a Viable Alternative to the Global War on Terrorism?

Guest lecture by Charles Webel, Ph.D. - director of Peace, Conflict Resolution & Environmental Studies, University of New York in Prague and Fulbright Senior Specialist in Peace and Conflict Studies.

--------------------

February 23, 2009

 MY BROTHER'S KEEPER? THE EUROPEAN UNION AND THE MIDDLE EAST

Our experts discussed the role of the EU in fostering peace and prosperity in the Middle East and what the EU is doing right - and wrong - in the region.

with