International Symposium 2022: Meaning of Freedom

The symposium Democracy in the 21st century: Meaning of Freedom was held at the representative premises of the Velkopřevorský palác of Prague on September 24th, 2022. Watch the event after-movie below.

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For many of us, freedom is the fundamental legacy of the revolutionary year 1989. Breaking free from the authoritarian regime that denied it to us for several decades. Since then, we have become accustomed to freedom and take it for granted. Some of us don’t even remember what it was like not to be able to express our opinions publicly or to travel abroad. Others never even experienced that time. Yet we still hear more and more voices calling for restrictions on certain freedoms. Indeed, restricting freedom can be a powerful but short-sighted tool in the fight against some of the evils that currently afflict us. Moreover, the very term “freedom” is increasingly being usurped by populists and extremists who use it to score cheap political points. Unfortunately, it is not infrequent that they completely distort its meaning. Probably all of us would agree that freedom is an absolutely indispensable part of democracy. Yet we may not always agree even with our loved ones on whether freedom should have boundaries, and where exactly those boundaries lie. Often we are not even able to clearly define what this freedom is and what is its purpose. The important thing is that it is this freedom, freedom of expression, that allows us to have a public discussion about it.

Speakers & Lectures

• David Greene, Electronic Frontier Foundation: Freedom of Expression at the Digital Chokepoints

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• Henrik Sætra, Østfold University College: AI and Big Data’s Threefold Threat to Liberty

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• Frank Furedi, University of Kent: Frank Furedi: Why is Democracy Always Under Threat

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• Karel Janeček, Institute H21: Karel Janeček: World at the Crossroads of History - How to Find Common Ground

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• Jacob Mchangama, Justitia: Jacob Mchangama: The Free Speech Recession and How to End It + a book launch

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• John Vervaeke, University of Toronto: John Vervaeke: Democracy and the Relevance Realization of Distributed Cognition

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