Conference Highlights
On June 26th, 2019, Johns Hopkins University will co-organize the 2nd SNF Agora Institute Workshop as part of SNF’s monthly DIALOGUES series. The workshop, “Talking (and Listening) Across Divides”, will explore what experience and science can teach us about the requirements for productive dialogue and engagement. How can we open our minds to new, different, and conflicting ideas or values? How can we effectively communicate our own ideas or values in ways that allow others to hear us? How do we create environments that support meaningful and sometimes difficult conversations? What is happening in our brains during these interactions? This workshop will be led by a diverse group of scholars and practitioners whose research and work will help to shed light on how we might resolve, mediate, or even just consider, competing claims – essential work for any thriving democracy.
The SNF Agora Institute Workshop is taking place as part of the Summer Nostos Festival, an international multifaceted arts, sports and education festival organized by the SNF at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center.
Click here for a copy of the program.
Visit the Stavros Niachos Foundation (SNF) website for more information.
View highlights from “Talking (and Listening) Across Divides”:
Remarks by Hahrie Han
Inaugural Director, SNF Agora Institute
“What are the choices we can make about how to design the agora-like spaces in the institutions that we have, to make possible the democracy that we want?”
Lessons from Reconciliation in South Africa
“We have understood in South Africa that reconciliation is the intersection between the need for justice and the desire for peace.”
—Ebrahim Rasool, Former South African Ambassador to the United States
Building Coalitions and Consensus on Contentious Issues
“One of the most important things we can do is create environments where young people have an opportunity to build cross-racial, cross-cultural, and cross-national friendships.”
—Marc Morial, National Urban League
Perspectives on Refugee Integration
“Forced displacement is embodied at the cellular level. It’s literally encoded on your DNA in a way that is passed down to subsequent generations.”
—Mike Niconchuk, Beyond Conflict