Bulletin #21

December 1995 - Vol. 6/No.2
New School for Social Research
65 Fifth Avenue, Room 404 & 423
New York, NY 10003
Tel: (212) 229 - 5580 - Fax: (212) 229 - 5894 - E-mail: BreuerI@newschool.edu

Director: Elzbieta Matynia
Coordinator: Ina Breuer
Associate and Bulletin Editor:Heshan de Silva Weeramuni
Assistant: Lidia Bialek

Table of Contents

Democracy's Ordeals

This issue of the Bulletin touches on some of the greater and lesser dramas unfolding in the new democracies within the region and beyond - dramas the outcomes of which will very much depend upon the reinforcement or even establishment of the conditions for responsible public discourse. This is what Mazowiecki hopes for in post-Dayton Bosnia. This is what one hopes will continue to be cultivated in Poland under its democratically elected post-Communist president. In Hungary the effective closing by the government of any public discussion on the role of cultural and educational institutions, as described in a letter from Budapest, is a disturbing manifestation of the broader problem.

But the very fact that the one contribution with more than a hint of optimism is the conversation with our recent South African guest, the poet/philosopher Kereopetse Kgositsile, may be reason enough to see some hope for the future of responsible discourse.

On that note we at ECEP wish our friends everywhere both personal well-being in the New Year and a world at peace.

* Shlomo Avineri, "The Right's Responsibility", The Washington Post, Nov. 24, 1995.

- Elzbieta Matynia

A Letter from Tuzla 
Blaine McBurney

The sixteen-hour bus trip to and from Tuzla wound its way through a great portion of government-controlled Bosnia and was itself illuminating. The enormity of the damage caused by almost five years of war was driven home by a seemingly endless vista of carnage and destruction. Village after village is abandoned with virtually every building and structure riddled with scores of holes, then blown up, and then burned. The once beautiful Muslim/Croat city of Mostar resembles photographs of Warsaw at the end of World War II; a horizon of gutted, burnt-out shells of buildings. The city is still bitterly divided between Croats controlling the west side of the Neretva River and the Muslim population struggling to survive amid the ruins of their bombed out eastern side. The Bosnian countryside is largely abandoned with mile after mile of pillaged farms and overgrown fields. This dismal spectacle was only occasionally relieved by scenes of relatively untouched towns and working farms.

Almost all this damage on the road to Tuzla was the result of Croat attacks on the Bosnian Muslims in 1993. Reports from participants who traveled through the Krajina region to get to the conference indicate that during their offensive last summer, the Croats were just as ruthlessly efficient in their "ethnic cleansing" of this largely Serb area; not a single building appears to have been left standing in the Krajina. Ironically, the Croat government has been unable to convince the Croat refugees living in camps outside Zagreb to return to the Krajina precisely because of this destruction. The physical damage to all these areas is enormous and will take a great deal to rebuild.

In Tuzla the mood of the conference was decidedly pessimistic. Most predicted only a pause in the fighting while all sides re-supplied and re-organized with the next outbreak most likely to occur in the Banja Luka region and/or the Brcko corridor just to the northeast of Tuzla.

However, in his address to the general session, Taduesz Mazowiecki chastised the audience for its pessimism. He argued that assuming the Dayton, Ohio meetings did produce a truce, the question now becomes the shape and form of future reconstruction efforts. In particular, would reconstruction aid channeled through three "state-lets" be real or fictive. The "nuts and bolts" of institution-building, including the control of reconstruction budgets, now becomes critical to the future viability of a democratic, multi-ethnic Bosnia. The key, concluded Mazo-wiecki, is the development of civil society, and aid must include institution-building in this area. If, over time, life can be relatively "normalized" on a day to day level and a variety of social and cultural links and relations between ethnic populations can be re-established and nurtured, then, in the long run, civil society retains its capacity to "crack open" hardened political arrangements.

Blaine McBurney, a former staff member and current Associate of the ECEP, teaches sociology at the State University of New York - Purchase and is a member of the HCA-USA.

[Please note, this report predates the Dayton, Ohio agreements - Ed.]

On-Line Democratic Public Policy Workshop Launched

The second part of the Workshop, to begin in the middle of the spring semester, will see the Fellows of ECEP present their research on policy questions in their home countries.

Friends and colleagues of ECEP are encouraged to participate in this Workshop through our e-mail address (weeramun @newschool.edu). We will be posting the transcripts of the weekly sessions of the Workshop for perusal on our Website and will also be e-mailing these same transcripts to colleagues of ECEP without access to the World Wide Web. The participants of our electronic series will also be invited to give presentations in the second part of the workshop.

Overview

Tues. Nov. 21 Elaine Zimmerman, "Policy as Craft and Theory"

Tues. Dec. 5 Monroe Price Media Policy

Tues. Dec. 12 David Gordon Economic Policy

Tues. Dec. 19 William Glaser Health Policy

Tues. Jan. 30 Jack F. Matlock, Jr. Constructing Foreign Policy vis-a-vis the former U.S.S.R.

Tues. Feb.6 Sherle Schwenninger Foreign Policy

Tues. Feb. 13 Ari Zolberg Marginalized Populations

Tues. Feb. 20 David Howell Labor Policy

tba George Hamilton Environmental Policy

tba Tina Rosenberg

Policy Questions in the Region

Tues. Feb. 27 - Tues. Apr. 2, Presentations by the ECEP Fellows

All meetings will take place at 12:00 p.m. in Room 212, 65 Fifth Avenue. For more information, please call (212) 229 - 5580. We are pleased to announce that this Workshop is coordinated by Belinda Cooper, Senior Policy Fellow at the World Policy Institute.

The Presidential Election: What Happened in Poland? 
Bogdan Bialek

Whatever led up to this event cannot simply be explained as a normal element of the revolutionary dynamic, even if the course of this revolution has been evolutionary, gentle, or even "velvety". The successive post-Communist victories in countries which have just liberated themselves from one-party hegemony have different causes and meanings.

In Poland, in contrast to other East and Central European countries, a post-Communist, Kwasniewski, confronted an unquestioned hero, strong personality, long-standing leader, and a major actor of the Polish and East European revolution. Walesa was and will remain a bright symbol of liberation and freedom. Furthermore, Poland is in better shape than the other countries which voted the former Communists back in: Polish reforms are more advanced, the state of the economy is better, demo-cratic structures and institutions are more stable and efficient, and the social and individual benefits resulting from the changes are more easily observed and more deeply felt.

I therefore regard Kwasniewski's victory as highly symbolic - as an ambiguous message full of nuances and latent meanings. These should be revealed so that we can learn something about the nature of the journey of both society and the individual from the confines of totalitarianism to the open space of a free world.

Although at the moment I only have a handful of impressions to work with, I would like to address the following question: Considering the result of the recent election, what can one say about the state of mind of the Polish people, who, for the last six years, have been painstakingly building a democratic state and a community of free people?

First, the Poles have had a taste of democracy and they like it. In the presidential election there was a record turnout of both candidates (17) and voters. Never before had so many (ca. 70% of eligible voters) wanted to express their views, trusting that their votes would make a difference. For better or for worse, Poles made use of the opportunity that democracy offers.

Second, for the first time in Poland's history, rightly or wrongly, a majority of society turned its back on history, and history, until now, had been as sacred for Poles as the Virgin Mary is for Catholics. Poles have announced to the world that the division into post-Communists and anti-Communists is an anachronism; that both the Solidarity movement - that celebration of "raised heads and straightened backs" - and the years of misery and hopelessness under real socialism are equally veiled in dense fog, so dense that the contours disappear and everything becomes one. It is no longer clear what has caused what. Is the existence of the post-Communists justified by the existence of the anti-Communists, or the other way around? Was Solidarity brought about by the general poverty, or the other way around? The majority of Poles have decided that the dichotomy of their immediate world built on emotions and sentiments, on wounds and banners, is tiresome. They have deci-ded instead that they now need more rational instruments to define their reality. One side of the electoral race was guilty of neglect, and lost. The other side pretended to have the required instruments, and won.

Third, for better or worse, it was the first time in their history that a majority of Poles had rejected their traditional reverence for individual heroism and chosen instead someone who gave all the credit for the changes to the very masses who had been silent and passive and then felt left out. Throughout the campaign Kwasniewski, up-dating the old Communist rhetoric, repeatedly rewarded the average citizen, even giving him credit for the Balcerowicz plan for economic reform. At campaign rallies Kwasniewski presented a stunning mix of soap-opera hero and star of "disco polo", a cheap version of country music invented in Poland a few years ago.

Compared with what it was six years ago, Polish society is a very different one today. Has Kwasniewski become a different politician, compared with the party apparatchik he was before 1989? I think that sooner or later Kwasniewski will disappoint people because he is a conformist and will try to satisfy everybody - causing first disappointment, then, as a result of the let-down, bitterness approaching fury. The question is, what will be the social consequences of this disappointment in Poland, and the political consequences in Europe? It will be good if they are minimal. Yet we must understand what happened in Poland in November 1995. It would be best if Kwasniewski himself understood it. Then it might turn out that Poles did make good use of democracy, adopted a healthier attitude towards their own history and experience, and abandoned for their on good their old notions of heroism and individualism.

Bogdan Bialek, journalist and publisher, until recently with Gazeta Wyborcza, is currently editor-in-chief of the new weekly, Tydzien. Its first issue is expected in March 1996.

Life's Truth Aesthetically Interpreted 
Greg Synder Talks With Keorapetse Kgositsile

Standing 5'5", with a huge smile and an impressive beard, Kgositsile looks older than his 57 years. But to those involved in the struggle for freedom in South Africa, as well as for artists and poets of the world, he is a man of immense stature. Born in Johannesburg in 1938, Kgositsile was forced to leave his country at the age of 23. At that time he was a reporter for the Johannesburg newspaper New Age. He left Africa for the U.S in 1962 to study literature and creative writing, attending quite a few universities, including the University of New Hampshire and the New School for Social Research. By 1969 he had received many literary awards including the Harlem Cultural Council Poetry Award and the National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Award. He received his Master of Fine Arts from Columbia University in 1971, the same year that saw the publication of one of his most well-known and important books, My Name is Afrika. At that time, as Gwendolyn Brooks wrote in the introduction to his book, Willie Kgositsile was "one of the finest black poets of today." Ethnographer Terry Williams remembers listening to Kgositsile read poems in smoky downtown jazz clubs and later as part of the Uptown Black Arts Movement, which Baraka had transplanted to Harlem from the downtown scene.

Though Kgositsile was becoming renowned as an activist and poet in New York, he returned to Africa in 1975 to teach at the University of Dar-es-Salaam in Tanzania. Had he not left at this time, he surely would have enjoyed a fame and acclaim equal to that of his contemporaries, Baraka, Brooks, and others. Kgositsile's return to Africa may have diminished his opportunity for fame and fortune, yet it shows his commitment to his people and his home. From 1981 to 1990 Kgositsile taught in Kenya, Botswana and Lusaka, Zambia. He was also one of the founding members of the ANC's Department of Education in 1977, and its Department of Arts and Culture in 1983, and its Deputy Secretary from 1987 to 1991. He also served as Vice-President in charge of Publications for the Congress of South African Writers (COSAW).

During the apartheid era Kgositsile's work was banned in South Africa. In 1990 however, the General Secretary of COSAW went to Zambia to ask Kgositsile for a manuscript so that COSAW could "unban" him. Kgositsile was unable to find the manuscript he had prepared and gathered up a random collection of poems which he rushed to the General Secretary who was waiting on an airplane to return to South Africa. This collection was published by COSAW in 1990 under the title When the Clouds Clear.

An important political theme of Kgositsile's activist poetry remains sites of struggle. He has given lectures on culture as a site of struggle, and has taught classes on poetry as a site of struggle. All of these struggles are carried out not in physical space but on a metaphoric level. For Kgositsile, it is more important how you address power, not where. This insight also yields some understanding of the experience of exile: because you are unable to directly challenge the oppression in your home, you are forced to develop places where this can occur.

I attended two lectures on Thursday, Oct. 12, and both times that Kgositsile spoke publicly, he criticized political struggles based on race alone and talked about the positive consequences that "opening" the A.N.C. had for South Africans. Artistic truth is also one of Kgositsile's mantras: he defines it in the introduction to his latest work, To the Bitter End (Third World Press), as, "life's truth aesthetically interpreted," and it is this quality that gives poetry its rhythm. Kgositsile has also recently published a book for aspiring poets, titled Approaches to Poetry, also by Third World Press.

*

Greg Snyder: In the introduction to To the Bitter End you say "Artistic truth is life's truth, aesthetically interpreted." In class yesterday you also said that poetic rhythm, meaning aesthetic truth, can also come from the risks of being engaged in the struggle. In some ways the struggle has changed; your existence is no longer threatened. How has this changed your work? This is a different question from, "What do you have to write about now that apartheid is over?"

Keorapetse Kgositsile: Yes, indeed. Though only one phase of the struggle is over, poetry and rhythm, as a theme of life change because of the demands of one's existence. Now if I say to my family that I will be home at 2:00 and I am late, they don't have to worry that I've been abducted or killed.

G.S: Yesterday you said that your poet-friend from Chicago, Sterling Plumpp, would not be able to write a blues poem about AIDS until after a cure is found. Is it possible now to write a blues poem about South Africa?

K.K: Yes, I think so.

G.S: Well, maybe actually you do write a blues poem, ending "Places and Bloodstains" with "what the voice brings back is a sad sad song."

K.K: Yes (laughing) that is true.

G.S: In "What Time is It?", the first poem in To the Bitter End, you wrote after having been home that "I am the man on his way home". What does it feel like to go home? Is Home always "where the music is"?

K.K: In a sense, but at the metaphoric level. It is good that you picked that up. When you are in exile, at first your memories fade or become blurred; then after a while they come back to you, clearly, and that is what you carry around with you. After those of us who were in exile returned, we had to adjust those memories which didn't fit with the actual surroundings, and some don't adjust. Some of the literature that has come out since the early 90's has dealt with the concept of home.

G.S: It seems that being forced to have a fixed picture of "home" is one of the consequences of exile. When you are involved with your home life you take it for granted that it's something that is always changing.

K.K: Yes, I think that is true.

G.S: Another one of the themes that I keep running into in your work is the concept of time. You've written, "Time is always NOW don't you know". You also talk about "Savages who even forge measures to try to control time." How is time a political concept?

K.K: Once you stop thinking about time in terms of hours, minutes, and days, time is always immediate, in the present, right?

G.S: Yes, but how do you engage the "Savages who even forge measures to try to control time."?

K.K: O.K. When what you do to make your life meaningful is upset by outside forces, your life takes on a certain immediacy, so that your present, past, and future are simultaneous; they are all NOW. You reclaim and assert your past in the present, and you fashion and embark upon your future now; in the present.

G.S: Time flows in all directions in your work. Ancestors speak and are spoken to because they all dwell in the same place and time. This concept of time is found in many traditional African religions. Is this one of the reasons why you think that you have been called an African priest by George Kent?

K.K: Yes, I think so, and also because of my role in the struggle as activist and poet.

G.S: Yes, but considering that this conception of time is anti-European, do you think that "African Priest" is an oxymoron?

K.K: In some ways, yes. It becomes a radical concept because you have chosen to live according to a different time frame, and as Cabral has said, this has to do with culture. A people's conception of time is also tied into their conception of history.

G.S: Turning to your interest in future generations, as you say "I am the children of the future." Are there any cultural and artistic youth movements in South Africa similar to Hip-Hop in this country?

K.K: Hip-Hop is very ancient; one of the oldest art forms in Africa, and continues to live. In the rural areas, for instance, with the young boys herding cattle. The biggest bulls from two herds of cattle meeting might decide to fight, or make like they were going to fight, and the young boys chant their praises, half-spoken, half-sung, a mixture of poetry and song, highly inspired and composed on the spot to encourage their bulls to win the battle. This, of course, would be in our indigenous languages.

G.S: You mean like freestylin' and the games of one-upmanship involved in MC battles?

K.K: Yes, Yes. But in urban areas there are serious problems created by cultural imperialism. For instance you will find youth wiped out by the worst filth from the outer trimmings of supposed youth culture from here. I'm talking about the most vulgar, the most violent, the most misogynistic of Gansta Rap that is part of the package from here to destroy our youth. On the other hand, at the height of armed struggle, for instance, the Toyi-toyi, which is a chant and a dance, a call-and-response war chant, was adopted from Zimbabwe. It is a cultural expression that was introduced through the army, Umkhonto we Sizwe, which became part of the living culture of resistance. It was not only adapted in South African townships and so on, it was sophisticated enough to be developed and honed into a most powerful mobilizing tool. It was performed at funerals, at weddings -everywhere people gathered- with an appeal that one could say quickly transformed the listener into a participant, instantly empowered. A few years ago, if you remember, just before Chris Hani was assassinated, when he was here in New York, just before he would speak at these public gatherings, whatever group of South Africans would be there would almost spontaneously, in reverence to him, start doing the Toyi-toyi and he just couldn't resist joining them.

G.S: Yeah, "Home is where the music is".

K.K: Yes, Yes.

G.S: How aware are you of your influence in African-American Hip-Hop? In view of the fact that The Last Poets, a direct precursor to Hip-Hop, named themselves after one of your poems, could it be that you have given indirectly "[a] spear to your [American] sons and daughters to pierce the enemy of [their] childhood games with".

K.K: Yes. (Kgositsile says laughing, amused by the reference) Actually, you know, I have a daughter here in New York who writes a lot on Hip-Hop. Anyway, the thing about influence can be a little embarrassing. I was not aware of any influence I might have had on The Last Poets. At that time in the 60's when The Last Poets used a line of mine to name themselves, I didn't see it as influence; I just thought the line was appealing to them. But poets like Sterling Plumpp had here and there credited me with some influence. And at some point another South African writer and critic, Mbulelo Mzamne-perhaps I should add that I respect his work a lot- called me up and said he was working on a piece in which he was arguing that in many instances people would talk about how my work had influenced some aspects of African-American literature. I was also aware of many poems by African American writers dedicated to me, and also of quite a number of children named after me. How would I think of this influence? ...But that didn't come from my own observation; it came from what others have told me. I said it could be a bit embarrassing, but let me go to something else closely related to this. I can remember, on two different occasions, two American poets I respect highly. And when I say American here, I don't use it synonymously with the United States. Pablo Neruda from Chile and Martin Carter from Guyana. Both tall big men. I was young when I met both. I think I met Neruda first, when he was about to go blind... his eyesight was shaky then and we talked for a while and when he realized I'd grown up familiar with his work and liking it very much and how meaningful my meeting him was to me, he just broke down crying, and all he kept saying for a while was, if that is possible even in South Africa with apartheid and all, then we must be doing something fantastic. And his observation was very correct, because it was through the distribution of progressive underground literature that I was introduced to his work. And I said the second person was Martin Carter. This time I was working in a program organized by the Academy of American Poets. The Academy would send poets to different high schools in New York to help the teachers make sense in trying to teach literature, especially poetry. When I met him I had been trying to introduce his work in New York high schools. When we met and he found out how much I liked his work and what I have been trying to do with it, he just broke down crying. And I could also claim with confidence that I introduced a number of African-American writers and editors to his work in the 60's, for instance, Paula Giddings and Toni Morrison, who were both working for Random House at the time. So I was trying to say that this thing about how influential your work might be can be both flattering and embarrassing,... and moving.

G.S: I have to ask one more question. What do you think that Americans can do for South Africans?

K.K: You know that kind of question is always tricky. Let me think. First, if it is an act of solidarity not philanthropy, you do things with people you don't do things for them. To do things for them in a philanthropic sense is almost dehumanizing - not almost: let me not be apologetic, it is dehumanizing. So if one feels a sense of responsibility at the human level because some other human being is in need of certain specific things, then you help in the process of what those people are doing. So that, for instance, education is a burning issue now in South Africa; so if resources are available, or can be made available, then it means more South Africans would have access to that, and I would say that it is in the area of education then that we should mobilize. Provide scholarships, provide training in whatever area, although it's a tricky thing because in some areas people end up, how should I say, internalizing the values that come as part of the content of the education. But that is a chance we have to take.q

Keorapetse Kgositsile was the Fall 1995 Visiting Professor of Democracy at the New School. This Professsorship was supported by the G-Tech Corporation.

Greg Snyder, GF Liberal Studies student, is a former ECEP Staff Associate.

The University in Exile Revisited

Hungarian Higher Education Faces Heavy Cuts

Dear Elzbieta,

You asked us to submit some information concerning the recent unfavorable changes in our university. It is your belief that this information could shed light on deeper events in the contemporary post-socialist reality of Hungary, and perhaps on the basis of the information some general conclusions can be drawn as well.

The first freely elected government in Hungary declared a conservative ideological war against post-socialist intellectuals, accusing them of conformism and collaboration. This war divided the intellectuals and resulted in the emergence of a "Kulturkampf" between liberals and conservatives. Paradoxically the ideological warfare stopped short of any structural changes, and the government basically left intact the huge intellectual "latifundia" of a scattered system of higher education and heavily subsidized cultural institutions. Thus a redistribution of resources away from cultural institutions did not occur, while in the sphere of the economy, privatization and inclusion of foreign capital more or less resulted in a transition to market capitalism.

In the spring of 1994, a new socialist and liberal government was unequivocally approved. It was helped by the liberals and socialist intellectuals, who hoped that they would be rewarded for their persistence and support during the difficult year of "Kulturkampf". To everyone's surprise, instead of gratitude they got punishment. In March 1995 the government introduced a drastic measure aimed at reducing the deficit, and demanded substantial reductions in personnel and the technical costs of cultural institutions, first and foremost in higher education. The monetary dogmatism of these measures was apparent. The government has not even considered institutional changes or functional improvement. Instead the government cut equally the budget of all cultural institutions, no matter how well or badly the operated. In the universities professors had to be let go (20%), technical assistance was reduced, and operating costs were reduced to the threshold of operations. Telephones were disconnected, copying facilities ran out of paper, cleaning of offices stopped, and in winter, long "coal-breaks" are to be expected. In exchange the remaining faculty is supposed to work even harder without a salary increase, which, in fact, due to inflation, means a 25% annual real decrease in salaries.

To the satisfaction of the government, the response of the faculty was submissive. After a short period of outrage and timid protest, the faculty of the universities and colleges dutifully followed governmental orders and committed "hari-kiri". In this respect our Institute of Sociology at ELTE was an exception. We decided to save our faculty and instead of firing we approved a 20% reduction in salaries. On the other hand our Institute, just like other departments and units of the higher education system, did not raise the problem of institutional reform, and did not challenge the competence and leadership of department heads, Deans, or Rectors. No effort was made to evaluate the dysfunctions of the higher education system. No viable alternatives with roots in non-profit institutions, non-governmental institutions, or foreign resources have been discussed.

Such discussion would have served not just the interests of restructuring and perfecting the system of higher education as a whole, but would have directly served the students who receive less and less. No small consolation was the fact that as part of the cost-saving program of the government, from the beginning of the 1995-1996 academic year university students in Hungary have to pay tuition fees of $15 per month. This is ridiculously low compared with the needs of the institutions, but quite high compared with the quality of their training and low standard of living.

This is where we stand. The discussion concerning the role of culture and the status of cultural institutions, including the universities, in an allegedly post-socialist market economy, is not likely to be continued.

Sincerely,

György Csepeli and Antal Örkényq

Prof. György Csepeli and Prof. Antal Örkény are co-directing the Ethnic and Minority Studies Program at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest.

Notes

IN DECEMBER:

Wednesday, December 13

Serhiy Ivaniouk, the Rector of Kiev-Mohyla Academy, Kiev, will speak on Ukrainian Education in Transition: Policies and Initiatives, at 6:00 p.m., Wolff Conference Room.

Tuesday, December 19

William Glaser, Distinguished Scholar at the New School's Graduate School of Management, will speak on Public Policy on Health, at 12:00 p.m., Room 212.

More info.? Call 212/229-5580.

ECEP is now on the Net!

The East and Central Europe Program now has a website on the World Wide Web of the Internet. The ECEP has also put on-line its recently launched Democratic Public Policy Workshop. The ECEP's Internet website, through the New School's Homepage (http: //www. newschool.edu/ centers /ecep.htm), has a great deal of information on the Program and we welcome you to explore our offerings. We provide an extensive history of our development and goals, the past seven Bulletins to read, addresses of the Democracy Seminar sites, details about our annual Cracow Democracy & Diversity Summer Graduate Institute, details of our Fellows Programs, and other information on all facets of our involvement in the area.

Meetings

Anna Schwarz, Professor of Cultural Studies, Viadrina University, Frankfurt (Oder), Germany; Claus Offe, Professor of Political Science, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany; Hans-Peter Muller, Professor of Sociology, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany; Brian Kemple, Executive Director, Soros Foundation Kazakhstan; Lyaila Ivatova, Associate Professor of Political Science, Kazakh State National University; Dr. Nurlan Amrekulov, Executive Director, Intellectual Resources Foundation of Sustainable Development, Almaty; Dr. Marek Gawecki, Ambassador of Poland to Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan; Leonard Klein, Regional Director, Counterpart Consortium, Almaty; Janos Kis, Chair, Political Science Department, Central European University; David Rogers - Deputy Director, Soros Foundation, Kyrgyzstan; Akylbek Saliev, Director, International Institute for Strategic Studies under the President of the Kyrgyz Republic; Edan Karabaev, Deputy Rector, Kyrgyz-Russian Slavic University; Isaev Kusein, Professor of Philosophy and Dean of Sociology, Bishkek University of Humanities; Almajan Mambetova, USIS Bishkek; Lidiya Imanalieva, Deputy Head, Department of American and Europe, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Bishkek; Balzhan Suzhikova, Vice-Rector for International Relations, Almaty State University; György Csepeli and Antal Örkény, Co-Directors, Ethnic and Minority Studies Program, ELTE, Budapest; George Hamilton, Executive Director, Institute for Sustainable Communities; William Glaser, Distinguished Scholar, GSMUP, The New School, and many, many more.