The Athens Dialogues - An International Conference on Culture and Civilization

View All Press Releases

The Athens Dialogues New York Meeting was held on Saturday 17th April 2010 at 10.00 am. at the Onassis Cultural Center in the Olympic Tower, 645 Fifth Avenue in New York.

The purpose of the meeting was to familiarize eminent academics from New York with The Athens Dialogues, a major international and interdisciplinary conference that is going to take place in Athens on November 24-27 and will be the inaugurating event of the Onassis Cultural Center – Athens, a new multidisciplinary cultural space with the fundamental aim of presenting, projecting and encouraging contemporary Greek culture.

The 85 scholars and scientists from the broader New York metropolitan area who attended the meeting were invited to join the broader society of scholars around the world who are engaged in the Athens Dialogues Network, exchange ideas and questions, come to Athens to attend the Conference, and in general get actively involved in this ambitious project in the future.

His Eminence Archbishop Demetrios addressed the meeting and congratulated the Onassis Foundation and co-organizers of the Athens Dialogues on their initiative. The Ambassador of Greece to the UN Anastasis Mitsialis and the Consul General of Greece in New York Ambassador Aghi Balta were among the several distinguished guests.
The agenda of the meeting included presentations of:

• The main axis of the public benefit activities of the Onassis Foundation by the President of the Foundation Mr Anthony Papadimitriou

• The Athens Dialogues conference and its thematic sessions by the President of the Organizing Committee and former Rector of the National & Kapodistrian University of Athens, Prof. George Babiniotis,

• The organization of the Athens Dialogues, the Athens Dialogues Network, and the EUNIC competition by the academic coordinator of the conference, Dr Niki Tsironis,

• The Website of the conference and the e-journal in which the proceedings of the conference will be published by Professor Kenny Morrell from the Center for Hellenic Studies of Harvard University.

A special highlight of the meeting was the presentation of the “Quality of Life” thematic sessions of the Athens Dialogues by the Chairs of that session, Professors Dimitri Nanopoulos and Robert Harriss. In this presentation, those attending the meeting had the opportunity to see a paradigm of interdisciplinary cooperation of eminent scholars who, inspired by the classical tradition, seek new insights into major challenges of our times.

This post is also available in: Greek