Tuesday, June 10, 2025
6:00 p.m. - 7:00 p.m. CEST
Location: Villa Malta (Rome) La Sala
The post-liberal era is marked by intense antagonism and the devaluation of reason and truth into instruments of raging, often murderous, passions. The task of building community and re-establishing its ethical basis grows more urgent just as the ordinary means for it—awakened individual consciences, or belief in a better material future—become less adequate. With belief in progressivism diminishing, can social solidarity be rebuilt though invoking a shared history of frailty, cruelty, suffering, and mutual dependence? How is the legacy of Pope Francis—his words and his example—relevant to the task?
Participants
Thomas Banchoff
Thomas Banchoff is vice president for global engagement at Georgetown University, where he also serves as director of the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs and professor in the Department of Government and Walsh School of Foreign Service.
Nesrine Malik
Nesrine Malik is an acclaimed British Sudanese author and journalist known for her wide-ranging commentary on race, identity, politics, and international affairs. Her book We Need New Stories: Challenging the Toxic Myths Behind Our Age of Discontent (2019) critiques the narrative foundations of increasingly intolerant and authoritarian politics in Britain and the United States. Malik’s columns in outlets like the Guardian, New York Times, and Washington Post address topics ranging from Islamophobia and feminism to African politics, with deep insights into the ways colonial and postcolonial legacies shape our contemporary world. Malik received the 2021 Robert B. Silvers Prize for Journalism.
Pankaj Mishra
Pankaj Mishra is a renowned Indian author, essayist, and literary critic with a global readership. Two of his prize-winning books, From the Ruins of Empire: The Intellectuals who Remade Asia (2012) and Age of Anger: A History of the Present (2017), explore the history of colonialism and its enduring legacies in our contemporary global era. Mishra is also the author of two critically acclaimed novels: The Romantics (1999) and Run and Hide (2022). His columns and essays have appeared in The Guardian, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, and The London Review of Books, among other outlets. Mishra is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Accessibility
Please email globaldialogues@georgetown.edu by June 2 with any accessibility requests. A good-faith effort will be made to fulfill all requests made after this date.