Opportunities and Challenges for the 21st Century

Issue: Is there any way in which humanity can realize the apparently conflicting goals of prosperity, security, sustainability and social justice?

Topics:

• Characteristics of major global challenges and opportunities, stressing their interdependence and global linkages.
• Historical perspective reflecting the progress made so far and the need to move beyond the present short-term, sectoral, nation-centric approach
• Goals and issues that need to be answered by a new paradigm for global development.

Speakers:

• Ismail Seregeldin, President, Library of Alexandria
• Garry Jacobs, Chairman of the Board & CEO, WAAS
• Brief introductory remarks by the participants

Issues: How can global food security, full employment and abolition of poverty be achieved within a decade? How can the necessary financial resources be generated and mobilized to achieve the goals of global development?

Topics:

• Major challenges for achieving global prosperity
• Strategies for global full employment
• Need for new economic theory
• International financial system – criteria for an equitable global financial system
• Strategies to meet the global food challenge
• Social welfare in a counter-aging society

Moderator: Garry Jacobs

Report on Geneva conference

Issue: How can global living standards be raised to middle class levels without depleting or destroying the environment or depriving future generations of the capacity to sustain these achievements?

Topics:

• Major challenges for achieving sustainable development
• Sustainable strategies to meet global energy needs
• Equitable strategies for managing global resources
• The future of water – strategies to meet the challenge
• Reconciling global prosperity with long term sustainability

Moderator: Jakob Von Uexkull, President, World Futures Council, WAAS Fellow

Report on Geneva conference – Alexander Likhotal, President, Green Cross International

Issue: How can humanity fully tap the potential of a human-capital and social-capital based strategy for global development?

Topics:

• Major challenges and opportunities for development of human capital
• Strategy for universal primary & secondary education
• World University: global strategy for higher education
• The power of networks as social capital
• Organizing science & technology for global development
• Global strategy for a healthy humanity

Moderator: Dr. Aly Eldean Hilal, Professor of Political Sciences, Cairo University

Report on Geneva conference – Heitor Gurgulino de Souza, Member, WAAS Board of Trustees and former Rector, UN University

Issues: How can we evolve a global cooperative security system that permanently eliminates war and the threats posed by WMD? How can we design and implement system of global governance capable of implementing necessary measures to achieve the other five goals for the welfare and well-being of all?

Topics:

• Challenges of global governance
• Democratization of global institutions
• Evolution of global rule of law
• From competitive to cooperative security
• Disarmament

Moderator: Mutaz Qafisheh, Professor of Law, the Hebron University, Palestine, Israel and WAAS Fellow

Report on Geneva conference – Winston Nagan, Professor of Law, University of Florida, & Member, WAAS Board of Trustees

Issue: On what essential ideas, principles, values, strategies, policies, and institutional mechanisms should the new global paradigm be founded?

Topics:

• Values & Principles for a new paradigm
• Institutional Mechanism
• Next steps

Moderators: Ismail Seregeldin & Garry Jacobs

Speakers:

• Saad El Din Ibrahim, Professor of Sociology at the American University in Cairo and a prominent human rights activist in Egypt
• Jakob von Uexkull

Agni Vlavianos-Arvanitis

Agni Vlavianos-Arvanitis is a Visiting Professor of Bioethics at Panteion University, Athens, Fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science, Honorary Professor of St. Petersburg State Technological University for Plant Polymers, Active Member of the The Club of Rome, Founder and President of the Hellenic Chapter of the Club of Rome, Founding Member of the Middle East Division of Learning Without Borders, Member of the Hellenic National Commission for UNESCO, the Balkan Political Club, the Brussels-EU Chapter of the Club of Rome, the International Bioethics Society etc. She is also Commissioner on The Global Commission to Fund the United Nations, Founding Member of the Balkan Academy of Sciences, New Culture and Sustainable Development and Co-Founder of the International Science Foundation, Scholarship Trustee for the Hellenic Canadian Association. She has also served as Vice-President of the International Bioethics Society, Honorary President of the Association Members and Coordinator for the Mediterranean Region of the “Life in Space” project, and Vice President of the UNESCO-MAB Hellenic National Committee. She is a graduate of Columbia University’s Barnard College (B.A.), New York University (M.S.) and the University of Athens (Ph.D.)

Heitor Gurgulino de Souza

Heitor Gurgulino de Souza, currently President of the Brazilian Chapter of the Club of Rome and a member of the Board of Trustees of the World Academy of Art and Science, recently retired as Vice President of the Club. Prof. Gurgulino de Souza was appointed to the Council of the United Nations University (UNU) in 1986 and was selected by the UN Secretary General as UNU’s Rector the following year. He served in Japan (1987-1991 and 1992-1997) in the truly global and interdisciplinary University, was a Special Advisor to the Director General of UNESCO (1988-1989) and Vice-Rector of UNILEGIS, of Brazil’s Federal Senate. He worked for 16 years as Rector of the Federal University of São Carlos, S. Paulo, and as Director of the Department of University Affairs in the Ministry of Education, Director of the National Research Council (CNPq) and, by Presidential appointment, was a Member of the Federal Council of Education, both in Brasilia. Earlier he was Professor Emeritus of Physics at the State University of São Paulo, Brazil, and conducted research work in the Department of Physics at the Universities of Kansas (USA) and S. Paulo, and worked in the Department of Scientific Affairs at the Organization of American States in Washington, DC (USA) and helped set-up its large Regional Programs of Science and Technology.

Gerald Gutenschwager

Gerald Gutenschwager, Professor Emeritus, School of Architecture, Washington University in St. Louis, MO, USA; Scientific Fellow, Department of Regional Planning and Development, University of Thessaly, Volos, Greece. Formal education and experience have focused on research, education and administration in relation to planning, international development, urbanization, and health. These concerns have prompted investigations and experiments in social theory,planning theory, educational gaming and simulation, social change, time budgets, the political economy of health and the philosophy of social science.Additional research has focused on modernism and postmodernism as expressed in social theory, urbanism and architecture. Practical work experience has ranged from a city planning department in the U.S. (Chicago) to an extensive tenure with public and private agencies and offices overseas in Athens, Greece.Teaching experience has ranged from junior high to graduate school and with students from all of the continents over a sixty year period since the 1950s. Publications include numerous articles, reviews and presentations, as well as two books: The Political Economy of Health in Modern Greece (1989), Athens, Greece: The National Center of Social Research (in Greek), and Planning and Social Science; a Humanistic Approach (2004). Lanham, MD: University Press of America, also published in Greek by The University of Thessaly Publications, Volos, Greece.

Robert Horn

Robert Horn is a Visiting Scholar at Stanford University. Robert Horn, who was originally trained as a political scientist, has a special interest in public policy strategy, organisational learning, and knowledge management, and art.  He founded and was, for 20 years, CEO of an international consulting company, Information Mapping, Inc.

Today, he concentrates on “Social Messes” (aka “Wicked Problems”). He pioneered dealing with such messes through interactive visual analyses with task group workshops using large, visual “Info-Murals” on such issues as global climate-change, energy security, nuclear-waste-disposal, NASA’s research, and mega-flu pandemic.

Horn is a visiting scholar at Stanford University’s Human Science and Technology Advanced Research Institute (H-STAR), and has taught at Harvard and Columbia and consulted for clients such as Boeing, Dupont, AT&T, HP and other Global 1,000 companies as well as the British Foreign Office and the UK nuclear waste disposal agency.  He is a member of Global Business Network and a fellow of the World Academy of Arts and Sciences and the International Futures Forum. He has received lifetime achievement awards from two international research organizations.

He is also the initial explorer of the semantics of putting words and visual images together in his book, Visual Language: Global Communications for the 21st Century.

Garry Jacobs

Garry Jacobs is Chairman of the Board of Trustees, World Academy of Art & Science; Managing Editor of Cadmus Journal; and Vice-President, The Mother’s Service Society, a social science research institute based in India. Earlier, Mr. Jacobs served as Executive Director and Member Secretary of the International Commission on Peace & Food. He is a researcher, author and consultant on the process of economic and social development as well as a management consultant to firms in a wide range of industries in the USA, Europe and India on strategies to elevate corporate values, accelerate growth, and improve profitability. He is co-author of several books and more than 100 articles on the process of corporate growth, economic and social development, psychology, peace, security and international affairs. Mr. Jacobs was elected to the Academy in 1995 and has also served as the chairman of the Strategic Planning Committee and chairman of the Committee on Peace & Development.

Alexander Likhotal

Alexander Likhotal  is the President of Green Cross International. He holds doctorates in Political Science from the Moscow State Institute for International Relations (1975) and in History from the Institute of World Economy and International Relations, USSR Academy of Sciences (1987). In addition to an academic career as a Professor of Political Science and International Relations, he served as a European Security analyst for the Soviet Union leadership. In 1991, he was appointed Deputy Spokesman and Advisor to the President of the USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev. After Mr. Gorbachev’s resignation, Professor Likhotal served as his advisor and spokesman and worked at the Gorbachev Foundation as the International and Media Director. Having joined Green Cross International in 1996, he is actively involved in furthering sustainable development agenda.

Winston Nagan

Winston Nagan is the Sam T. Dell Research Scholar Professor of Law, University of Florida, Levin College of Law, Gainesville, Florida, Founding Director, Institute for Human Rights, Peace and Development and Fellow, Royal Society of the Arts. Prof. Nagan is a member of the Board of Trustees of the World Academy of Art and Science and the Editor-in-Chief of Eruditio Journal, an e-journal published by the Academy. A member of the Editorial Board of Cadmus Journal, Winston Nagan is also the International Editorial Advisor for the Journal of Law and Politics. He served as Chairman of Amnesty International USA (1989-91) and as a member of the Board (1986-92). He also served as President of Policy Sciences Center, Yale Law School (1986-1991) and on numerous groups of international experts on issues related to human rights, biodiversity, indigenous rights, and traditional knowledge. Winston Nagan is an alumnus of the University of South Africa, where he did his B.A (Law), Brasenose college, Oxford, where he got an M.A (Juris), Duke School of Law where he did LL.M. and later Yale School of Law, where he obtained his Doctorate degree in law.

Ruben Nelson

Ruben F. W. Nelson is Executive Director of Foresight Canada – a Canadian not-for-profit dedicated to nurturing the practice of the next generation of strategic foresight at a high professional level. He is Canada’s most experienced teacher and practitioner of strategic foresight and futures research. In 1960, he Co-Chaired what may have been the first formal futures conference in Canada. In 1976, he was one of the founders of the Canadian Association of Futures Studies, and subsequently its third President. He has served as Treasurer and a member of the Executive Board of the World Futures Studies Federation. His primary research interest is in the long evolution of human consciousness, cultures and civilizations. He is particularly interested in the emergence, flowering, decline and transformation of the modern/Industrial form of civilization and the possibility of the emergence of a truly post- modern/Industrial form of civilization. His formal training is in philosophy, political theory and theology.

Ljudmila Popovic

Mila Popovich is a young scholar associated with the University of Colorado at Boulder, whose doctoral work focuses on the issues of woman’s migrations and subjectivity within globalization processes. She is a Junior Fellow at the World Academy of Art and Science, where she serves on board of the Membership Communications Committee. She is an Associate Expert on Gender Issues and Humanities within the Seventh Research Framework Programme at the European Commission. Additionally, Popovich is an Associate Editor for the “International Journal of the Humanities,” and a member of the Editorial Board of the “Journal of Women’s Entrepreneurship and Education,” of the Institute of Economic Sciences, Belgrade. Equally invested in the critical work as well as creative, she has published on a range of interdisciplinary topics such as international cinema, nationalism and women’s issues, new economic paradigm and global crisis. On the creative side, she has been publishing poetry both in her native Montenegro and in the U.S., as well as performing as an international dance artist. As an activist, Popovich is engaged in the environmental and women’s issues in her resident community of Denver, Colorado.

Mutaz Qafisheh

Mutaz M. Qafisheh is a Professor of International Law and Legal Clinic Director, Hebron University, Palestine. He holds a PhD in International Law, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva. He is a practising international lawyer, advising a number of international organizations, including the UN and the PLO. He has formerly worked as Human Rights Officer, UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva, Beirut and Ramallah; Regional Director, Penal Reform International, Middle East and North Africa, Amman; Director, Security Sector Reform, Birzeit University; Director, Legal Education, Palestinian Law Schools, Jerusalem; Legal Advisor, Palestinian Parliament; Co-Founder, Human Rights Program, Al-Quds-Bard Honors College, Jerusalem and New York. His twenty-five studies include: Palestine Membership in the United Nations: Legal and Practical Implications (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2013); The International Law Foundations of Palestinian Nationality (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2008); ‘Article 1D: Definition of the Term ‘Refugee,’’ in A. Zimmermann, ed., The 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol: A Commentary (Oxford 2011); ‘The Dilemma of Legislative Reform in Line with International Standards on Gender Equality in the Islamic World: The Case of Palestine’, International Journal for Legislative Drafting and Law Reform  (London 2013); ‘The Ability of the Palestinian Legal System to Secure Adequate Standards of Living: Reform or Failed State Duty,’ Asian Journal of International Law (Cambridge 2013).

Ismail Serageldin

Ismail Serageldin is the Director of Library of Alexandria, and also chairs the Board of Directors for each of the Library’s affiliated research institutes and museums. He serves as Chair and Member of a number of advisory committees for academic, research, scientific and international institutions and civil society efforts which includes the Institut d’Egypte (Egyptian Academy of Science), US National Academy of Sciences (Public Welfare Medalist), the American Philosophical Society, TWAS (Academy of Sciences for the Developing World), the Indian National Academy of Agricultural Sciences and the European Academy of Sciences and Arts. He is former Chairman, Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR, 1994-2000), Founder and former Chairman, the Global Water Partnership (GWP, 1996-2000) and the Consultative Group to Assist the Poorest (CGAP), a microfinance program (1995-2000) and was Professor of the International Chair Savoirs contre pauvreté (Knowledge Against Poverty), at Collège de France, Paris, and Distinguished Professor at Wageningen University in the Netherlands. Dr.Serageldin has also served in a number of capacities at the World Bank, including as Vice President for Environmentally and Socially Sustainable Development (1992-1998), and for Special Programs (1998-2000). He has published over 60 books and monographs and over 200 papers on a variety of topics including biotechnology, rural development, sustainability, and the value of science to society.

Jakob von Uexkull

Jakob  von Uexkull is a Fellow, World Academy of Art & Science; Chair, World Future Council. He is the founder (1980) of the Right Livelihood Award, often referred to as the ‘Alternative Nobel Prize’. He is a co-founder (1984) of The Other Economic Summit and a past Member of the European Parliament (1987-9) where he served on the Political Affairs Committee. He is a patron of Friends of the Earth International and a member of the Global Commission to Fund the United Nations. He served on the UNESCO Commission on Human Duties and Responsibilities (1998-2000). He has also served on the Board of Greenpeace, Germany, and on the Council of Governance of Transparency International. He lectures widely on environment, justice and peace issues. He is also a recognised philatelic expert with publications including ‘The Early Postal History of Saudi Arabia’ (London, 2001).

Professor of Political Sciences, Cairo University, Ex-member of the Shoura Council. He chaired the Political Science Committee of the Supreme Council of Culture, member of the board of Directors, the National Center for Social Studies and editor in chief of the quarterly journal Al Nahda (Renaissance). He served as Egypt’s Minister of Youth (1999-2004), Dean of the Faculty of Economics and Political Science, Cairo University (1993-1999) and Director of the Center of Political Studies and Research at Cairo University (1986-1993). He was a member of: the UN Special Experts Group on Disarmament and Development (1979-1980), the ACLS/SSRC committee on the comparative study of Moslem Societies (1988-1991), Council of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, IISS (London) for nine years (1983-1992) the UN Expert group on the Economic Aspects of Disarmament and the UN Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDER) (1991-1992). He was a visiting professor at the American University in Cairo, Calgary Univ., Univ. of California at Los Angeles, and Princeton Univ. His publications in English include: Islam and Power, Egypt and the great powers, Islamic Resurgence in the Arab World, The future of the Arab Nation, Egypt’s Economic Potential, and Foreign Policies of the Arab States.

Saad Eddin Ibrahim is a Professor of Sociology at the American University in Cairo and a prominent human rights activist in Egypt. Ibrahim founded the Ibn Khaldun Center for Development Studies in Cairo and the Arab Organization for Human Rights. He has been criticized for accepting international funds to promote civil society and election monitoring in Egypt, and for suggesting that the United States should condition its aid to Egypt on improvements in the country’s human rights record. Ibrahim is currently working with the Arab Democracy Foundation in Doha to promote philanthropy and Arab investment in development. In this interview, Ibrahim speaks about his involvement in the promotion of human rights and civil liberties in Egypt. He also shares how Islam has impacted his work and the work of others in human rights development.

Nadine Mourad Sika is an assistant professor of political science at The American University in Cairo, Egypt. Before joining AUC, she was visiting scholar at the Political Science Institute of the University of Tübingen in Germany and assistant professor of political science at the Future University in Egypt. She is currently consultant to the UNDP; a member of the Board of Directors of Partners in Development, an independent Egyptian think tank; and a contributing author to International Democracy Watch’s “First International Democracy Report” in 2011. Dr. Sika received a Ph.D. in comparative politics from the University of Cairo.