Programm

Sunday, Arrival

Monday,  5-7 pm and 9-10 pm  
The End of Hypocrisy?
Between 2016 and 2018, Ivan Krastev has worked on a project titled “Hypocrisy, Anti-Hypocrisy, and International Order.” We explored the mounting accusations of liberal hypocrisy—from outside and within the West. We asked: do such charges delegitimize the liberal order, or paradoxically reaffirm it by reasserting its moral vocabulary? Now, the landscape has shifted. 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?

Tuesday,  5-7 pm and 9-10 pm 
The Past as Future?
Another 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.

Wednesday, 4-7 pm 
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?

Wednesday, 9 pm
Concert, Denis Kozhukhin, piano 
“The people united are never defeated” by Frederic Rzewski – a set of varations on the famous Chilean protest song

Thursday 4-7 pm
And Where Do We Go from Here?
Closing panel and discussion 

Friday, Departure

Participants

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).
Jake Sullivan, Kissinger Professor of the Practice of Statecraft and World Order, Harvard Kennedy School; U.S. National Security Advisor (2021–Jan 20, 2025).
Jonathan White, Professor of Politics, London School of Economics; author of In the Long Run: The Future as a Political Idea (2024).
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).
Lea Ypi, Professor of Political Theory, London School of Economics; author of Indignity: A Life Reimagined (2025).
Leonard Benardo, Senior Vice President, Open Society Foundations; Director of 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).
Pankaj Mishra, Author and columnist (Bloomberg View, NYT Book Review, The Guardian, LRB, The New Yorker); author of The World After Gaza: A History (2025).
Pratap Bhanu Mehta, Political theorist and intellectual historian; Laurence Rockefeller Visiting Professor, Princeton; author of The Burden of Tolerance (2018).
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).
Stephen Walt, Robert and Renée Belfer Professor of International Relations, Harvard Kennedy School; columnist, Foreign Policy; author of The Hell of Good Intentions (2024).
Thomas Bagger, 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).