View from Prague : The Expectations of World Leaders at the Dawn of the 21st Century

This work is the result of the Forum 2000 conferences initiated by Václav Havel and Elie Wiesel. The book is based mainly on the first five conferences which were held in Prague from 1997. The first essay written by Václav Havel deals with spiritual preconditions of the global survival of humankind, and the second one is the quintessence of Havel's views on the world which we have inherited as well as his views on our hopes for the future. The book closes with Havel's personal reflection on the deeper meaning and aim of the Forum 2000 meetings. Subsequent chapters analyze and interpret the ideas that were expressed by the speakers and interlocutors of the first five conferences in which they tried to identify and understand the primary issues facing mankind globally. Reflections deal with the main dimensions of globalization and with their synchronicities as well as asynchronicities based on the quintessences of the annual conference reports.

Tomáš Vrba is an editor, translator, journalist, and Professor at the New York University in Prague.

Jirí Musil is Professor of Sociology at the Central European University in Budapest and Warsaw and at Charles University in Prague. He was the first Academic Director of the Prague College of CEU. He is a member of the “Academia Europea” and “Academia Scientiarum et Artium Europaea” and a founding member of the Czech Learned Society. His main professional fields are urban and regional sociology and sociology of culture.