An idea of the “West” created during the Cold War is fraying before our eyes. For the first time since 1945, some European leaders express a wish to chart a destiny separate from America. But continent-wide rearmament while the far-right surges does not seem to be the best way to preserve democratic values and advance European unity. What positive values can Europe, and Spain in particular, represent in the face of these political challenges?
Participants
Thomas Banchoff
Thomas Banchoff is vice president for global engagement at Georgetown University, where he also serves as professor in the Department of Government and the School of Foreign Service and director of the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs, which he founded in 2006. His books include The Jesuits and Globalization: Historical Legacies and Contemporary Challenges (2016, with Jose Casanova); Embryo Politics: Ethics and Policy in Atlantic Democracies (2011); Religious Pluralism, Globalization, and World Politics (2008); and Democracy and the New Religious Pluralism (2007). His essays have appeared in Commonweal, The Tablet, The Washington Post, and other outlets.
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.
José Casanova
José Casanova is one of the world's leading scholars in the sociology of religion and a senior fellow at Georgetown University's Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs, where he focuses on globalization, religions, and secularization. He is also professor emeritus at Georgetown University. His best-known work, Public Religions in the Modern World (1994), has been translated into Japanese, Arabic, and Turkish, among others. In 2012, Casanova was awarded the Theology Prize from the Salzburger Hochschulwochen in recognition of his life-long achievement in the field of theology.
Judit Carrera
Judit Carrera is director of the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona. With over 25 years of experience in the field of culture and international relations, Carrera has promoted European projects and collaborated with leading institutions across the continent. Before coming to the CCCB, she worked at UNESCO in Paris. Carrera is a regular contributor to the media and a member of literary juries and the boards of various academic and cultural institutions, both locally and internationally. In 2022 she won the Diffusion Award of the Setmana del Llibre en Català and was named Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture.