Global Dialogues

On June 9-10, 2025, leading novelists and public intellectuals gathered at Villa Malta in Rome for the second Georgetown Global Dialogue (GGD). Launched in Washington, DC, in April 2024, GGD is an inclusive, international conversation about innovative ways forward in a divided world that features leading thinkers from the Global South. 

Organized in partnership with the Vatican Dicastery for Culture and Education, GGD Rome featured leading novelists, including Zadie Smith, Hisham Matar, and Juan Gabriel Vasquez, in conversation about the legacy of Pope Francis, five years after his 2020 encyclical devoted to the theme of human fraternity, Fratelli tutti.

By opening up to the reader a broader view of the grandeur and misery of human experience, literature teaches us patience in trying to understand others, humility in approaching complex situations, meekness in our judgement of individuals and sensitivity to our human condition. - Pope Francis, 2024

Over the course of twelve sessions over two days, speakers explored how literature can help us to see the persistence of cruelty, the pervasiveness of suffering, and the possibilities for fraternity across deep divides. Specific conversation topics included the role of emotions in literature, the globalization of cultural production in an unequal world, maintaining intellectual community at a time of political fragmentation, and literature as a counter to the the worship of technology and power and as a reminder of our shared frailty as human beings.

An American institution with an international horizon, Georgetown is firmly committed to the pursuit of the global common good and the open exchange of ideas in a spirit of mutual recognition and respect. - Thomas Banchoff, Vice President for Global Engagement and GGD co-convener.

Among the speaker in Rome were four GGD Fellows, who also participated in the GGD launch last April—Mohsin Hamid, Ranjit Hoskote, Nesrine Malik, and Ece Temelkuran. In the run up to the gathering the fellows participated in a series of webinars and online forums on key topics explored in Rome, including (re)imaginging human fraternity and resisting technological utopias. 

At the close of two days of rich conversations, Indian author and GGD co-convener Pankaj Mishra noted the importance of ongoing dialogue that cuts across religious-secular divides. “We are adopting a very basic language, a very powerful, eternal, language of solidarity, of compassion and sympathy,” he said. 

Recordings of GGD Rome sessions will be posted soon at https://globaldialogues.georgetown.edu. 

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