Topics

The Past as Future?
A defining feature of the moment is the apparent disappearance of the future — as anything other than a journey to Mars. Instead, we navigate by analogy: the 1930s, the 1970s, even ancient Rome. But the question isn’t which analogy is “right.” It’s how these analogies work: how they shape our imaginations, decisions, and fears. As Pratap Mehta notes, while Western thinkers often interpret the current crisis as the collapse of liberal dominance, voices outside the West often see it as a renewed assertion of that very dominance.

The End of Hypocrisy?
We live in zero hypocrisy world. Power justifies itself by being powerful. Donald Trump is rarely accused of hypocrisy — and perhaps that’s part of his global appeal. In this new world of frankness, should we fear or welcome the vanishing of hypocrisy? And how might its disappearance relate to the apocalyptic tone that seems to characterize today’s Zeitgeist?

Does Liberal Democracy Deserve to Survive?
And what does it mean, really, to say democracy must be defended? Walter Bagehot once observed: “It is often said that men are ruled by their imaginations; but it would be truer to say they are governed by the weakness of their imaginations.” Is our commitment to liberal democracy a testament to the strength — or the poverty — of our political imagination?

Program

Sunday, 22 February Arrivals

18:30 Dinner

20:30 Concert, Denis Kozhukhin, piano 
“The people united are never defeated” by Frederic Rzewski – a set of variations on the famous Chilean protest song

Monday, 23 February

16:00 – 17:00  The World in Pieces: America in my mind
Walter Russell Mead, Stephen Holmes, Wolfgang Schmidt, Avril Haines

17:15 – 18:00 panelists in conversation with the public/Q&A

18:30 Dinner

20:30 – 22:00 Peter Sloterdijk in conversation with Alex Soros
 

Tuesday, 24 February

16:00 - 17:00 The World in Pieces: Europe in my mind 
Timothy Garton Ash, Ayse Zarakol, Yuri Slezkine, Thomas Bagger 

17:15 – 18:00 panelists in conversation with the public/Q&A

18:30 Dinner

20:30 - 22:00 Eva Illouz in conversation with Milla Mineva


Wednesday, 25 February

16:00 - 17:00 The World in Pieces: Israel in my mind 
Nathalie Tocci, Moshe Halbertal, Dan Diner

17:15 – 18:00 panelists in conversation with the public/Q&A

18:30 Dinner

20:30 – 22:00 Curtis Yarvin in conversation with Ivan Krastev 

Thursday, 26 February 

16:00 – 17:00 The World in Pieces: The future in my mind

Mark Leonard, David Runciman, Giuliano da Empoli, Leonard Benardo, Ivan Krastev, Dietmar Mueller-Elmau

17:15 – 18:00 panelists in conversation with the public/Q&A

18:30 Dinner

20:30 Concert by Ludovico Einaudi, piano

Friday, 27 February Departures

Please note that the exact program, participants & schedule are subject to change. We kindly ask for your understanding that we will not send separate notifications in the event of changes, but will keep this website up to date.
 

Participants in all discussions

Alexander Soros, Chair of the Board of Directors, Open Society Foundations.
Avril Haines, Former Director of National Intelligence USA, Former Deputy Director of the CIA.
Ayşe Zarakol, Professor of International Relations, University of Cambridge; author of Before the West: The Rise and Fall of Eastern World Orders (2022).
Curtis Yarvin, political blogger and software developer; founder of Tlon—the company behind Urbit; author of Gray Mirror: Fascicle I: Disturbance (2025).
Dan Diner, Professor Emeritus of Modern History, Hebrew University of Jerusalem; author of The Other War (2024; originally in German, 2021).
David Runciman, Honorary Professor of Politics, University of Cambridge; author of The History of Ideas: Equality, Justice and Revolution (2024).
Eva Illouz, Professor of Sociology, Hebrew University of Jerusalem and EHESS (Paris); author of Explosive Modernity (2025).
Giuliano da Empoli, political essayist and novelist, professor at Sciences Po Paris and founding chairman of Volta; author of The Hour of the Predator: Encounters with the Autocrats and Tech Billionaires Taking Over the World (2025).
Ivan Krastev, Chairman of the Center for Liberal Strategies – Sofia and Albert Hirschman permanent Fellow, Institute for Human Sciences, IWM Vienna; author of After Europe (2017) and co-author with Stephen Holmes of The Light that Failed (2019).
Leonard Benardo, Senior Vice President, Open Society Foundations; Director, The Ideas Workshop; Publisher, The Ideas Letter (TheIdeasLetter.org).
Mark Leonard, Co-founder and Director, European Council on Foreign Relations; author of The Age of Unpeace: How Connectivity Causes Conflict (2021).
Milla Mineva, Lecturer in Sociology, Sofia University; Program Director, Centre for Liberal Strategies.
Moshe Halbertal, Professor of Jewish Thought and Philosophy, Hebrew University; Gruss Professor of Law, NYU Law; author of The Birth of Doubt: Confronting Uncertainty in Early Rabbinic Literature (2020).
Nathalie Tocci, Director, Istituto Affari Internazionali; author of La grande incertezza: Navigare le contraddizioni del disordine globale (2024).
Peter Sloterdijk, Philosopher and cultural theorist; Professor Emeritus, University of Art and Design Karlsruhe; author of The Terrible Children of Modernity: An Antigenealogical Experiment (2025).
Stephen Holmes, Walter E. Meyer Professor of Law, NYU; Faculty Director, Reiss Center on Law & Security; co-author of The Light That Failed (2019).
Thomas Bagger, Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany to Italy; State Secretary, German Federal Foreign Office (2023–25); former Foreign Policy Advisor to President Steinmeier.
Timothy Garton Ash, Professor of European Studies, University of Oxford; Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford; author of Homelands: A Personal History of Europe (2023).
Walter Russell Mead, Distinguished Fellow, Hudson Institute; Wall Street Journal columnist; author of The Arc of a Covenant (2023).
Wolfgang Schmidt, former German Federal Minister and Head of the Federal Chancellery under Chancellor Olaf Scholz (2021–2025).
Yuri Slezkine, Professor of History, UC Berkeley; Senior Research Fellow, St Edmund Hall, Oxford; author of The House of Government (2017).