This Director's Forum will feature Martin Bútora, Honorary President of the Institute for Public Affairs in Bratislava and former Ambassador of the Slovak Republic to the United States (1999-2003). Ambassador Bútora will deliver the keynote address at the 13th annual Czech and Slovak Freedom Lecture.

In the last few years and in the course of global crisis we have been observing growing authoritarian challenges to New Democracies in the Western Balkans. Such crisis changes the political landscape of the region resulting in an adaptation of political elites and modes of rule, and seeking for new tools to retain power and secure the legitimacy in the eyes of the citizenry. Vedran Dzihic, assistant professor at the Institute of Political Sciences at the University of Vienna, argues that current regimes in the Western Balkans increasingly seek answers to the political crisis by combining democratic with (newly) authoritarian practices and policies.

If you are gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender, where in the world do you belong? Today, the growing visibility and activism among those whose gender identity or sexual orientation is outside of the culturally accepted norms in Southeast Europe is coinciding with international and European pressures to protect sexual and gender differences as basic human rights.

Vasiliki Neofotistos discusses her recently released book, "The Risk of War: Everyday Sociality in the Republic of Macedonia," focusing on the ways middle- and working-class Albanian and Macedonian noncombatants in Macedonia's capital city, Skopje, responded to disruptive and threatening changes in social structure during the 2001 armed conflict.