About

Curated & Moderated by:
Anna-Kynthia Bousdoukou

The Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) Dialogues is a platform that aims to develop new ways of thinking, build bridges of cooperation, and encourage creative public dialogue across geographic, social, and cultural limits.

58 Open discussions

23 Different locations

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17 Topics

Soundwaves of expression: how music shapes social consciousness

United in Division: What’s at Stake for the EU in the Face of Consolidating Far-Right Voices?

Beyond books: The many lives of libraries

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Through open discussions, live debates, opinions, topics and rich multimedia content, the SNF Dialogues foster the exchange of ideas, emphasizing the need for citizens to express themselves and communicate with each other, always rooted in the values of equity and diversity. Democracy, political values, global economy, social change, artificial intelligence, mental health and the future of our planet are some of the important issues that are addressed by the SNF Dialogues.

24 Opinions

Emotions in Politics

Sigal Ben-Porath

Contempt: The Overlooked Challenge of Our Time

Timothy Shriver

Public Libraries: A Quiet Force to Strengthen Democracy

Anthony W. Marx

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The SNF Dialogues are curated and moderated by Anna-Kynthia Bousdoukou, are held through the journalism non-profit organization iMEdD (incubator for Media Education and Development) and are free and open to everyone.

286 Dialoguers

Timothy Shriver

Chairman, Special Olympics International

To treat another with dignity is to recognize that no matter how much we may disagree and no matter how painful our relationships may have become, we can still recognize the worth of the other. Contempt demeans and destroys; dignity uplifts and heals.

Hahrie Han

Director of the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University

Democracy is something you do, not something you have. Right now, we are treating it like something we have.

Appears on:

19 Talking (and Listening) Across Divides,

33 The Interplay between Technology and Democracy: Pοtential and limitations,

37 Τhe Power of Dialogue,

55 Reconnecting in a Fractured Political Landscape,

58 Consumers or Citizens

Sigal Ben-Porath

Presidential Professor of Education & Director of SNF Paideia at the University of Pennsylvania

To preserve and strengthen our democracy we need to make room for emotions in politics, but not to give up our agency and our capacity to control the decisions that each of us makes.

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58 Consumers or Citizens

Anthony Marx

President of The New York Public Library

It is the symbolic power that people experience, of being welcome, without any papers, without any credentials, respected, in a space that is majestic. When I started this job, somebody said to me: ‘Oh that’s where the homeless go’. We should be proud of that, that’s where everyone can go: the Nobel laureates, the homeless, and everyone in between.

Appears on:

57 Beyond Books: How libraries can serve the public

Ares Kalandides

Urban scholar and Academic Advisor at New York University, Berlin

We need to understand libraries, books and knowledge as a public good. Public goods are under a very serious threat. And as an urban planner, I also see libraries as a public space. A public space does not need to be an open space. It can be, but that’s not the idea. The library has two characteristics; it’s open for everybody and it’s free, you don’t have to consume.

Appears on:

44 The Return to Public Space,

57 Beyond Books: How libraries can serve the public

Nicholas A. Christakis

Sterling Professor of Social and Natural Science at Yale Universtiy

We are unlikely to have another serious respiratory pandemic in the next few decades, but it could happen. And I suspect, we will forget all the lessons of the current one when the next one happens, just like this one we forgot all the lessons of the past ones.

Appears on:

28 Waiting to Connect

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SNF Dialogues. Diverse opinions, new ways of thinking