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15th Annual Czech and Slovak Freedom Lecture: Slovakia’s Road to Freedom and Democracy

Pavol Demes will discuss Slovakia’s road to freedom and democracy

Date & Time

Friday
Nov. 14, 2014
12:00pm – 1:00pm ET

Location

6th Floor, Woodrow Wilson Center
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Overview

Pavol Demes (1956) is a well-known Slovak expert on international relations and civil society, author, and photographer.  Prior to the Velvet Revolution, Demes was a bio-medical researcher at Comenius University in Bratislava. He is a graduate of Charles University in Prague. After democratic changes in 1989, he was co-founder of the Slovak Academic Information Agency-Service Center for the Third Sector—a leading NGO in the country—and served in the Slovak government, first at the Ministry of Education and later as Minister of International Relations (1991-92) and Foreign Policy Advisor to the President of the Slovak Republic Michal Kovac (1993-97). In 1999, he was awarded a six-month public policy research fellowship at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington D.C. From 2000 until 2010, he was the Director for Central and Eastern Europe of the German Marshall Fund of the United States based in Bratislava. Now he is non-resident senior fellow with GMF US and external advisor to the Slovak Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Since 2014, he has had his own program on international relations and diplomacy on an Internet TV of the Slovak Press Agency. He published several books and numerous articles. Demeš has served on boards of domestic and international non-profit organizations, among others: the European Foundation Center, European Cultural Foundation, European Council on Foreign Relations and the European Endowment for Democracy. He played an important role in the EU’s civil society development program in Slovakia and democratization efforts in the Balkans and Eastern Partnership countries. Demes was also the recipient of the following awards: The EU-US Democracy and Civil Society Award (in 1998), the USAID Democracy and Governance Award (1999), Royal Dutch decoration Knight of the Order of Orange Nassau (2005), Yugoslav Star of First Class (2005), South East Europe Media Organization Human Rights Award (2009), and the Medal of Honor from the Friends of Slovakia (2011).

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Speaker

Pavol Demes

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Hosted By

Global Europe Program

The Global Europe Program addresses vital issues affecting the European continent, US-European relations, and Europe’s ties with the rest of the world. We investigate European approaches to critical global issues: digital transformation, climate, migration, global governance. We also examine Europe’s relations with Russia and Eurasia, China and the Indo-Pacific, the Middle East and Africa. Our program activities cover a wide range of topics, from the role of NATO, the European Union and the OSCE to European energy security, trade disputes, challenges to democracy, and counter-terrorism. The Global Europe Program’s staff, scholars-in-residence, and Global Fellows participate in seminars, policy study groups, and international conferences to provide analytical recommendations to policy makers and the media.  Read more

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