Place: Pasadena, California.

Website: http://www.JIS3.org/symposium2011.htm

Contact name: Oskar Gruenwald, Ph.D., JIS Editor

“All friends,  colleagues, students, and admirers of Mihajlo Mihajlov are  cordially  invited to participate in a re-assessment of his life, work, and legacy  whose  significance reaches well beyond Tito’s Yugoslavia, the Balkans, and  Eastern  Europe. Mihajlov’s quest for democracy and human rights is an  inspiration for  all who strive for an open society, pluralism, and tolerance. An  indefatigable  human rights champion, Mihajlov’s example contributed to the rise of  dissent,  civic culture, and civil society which ushered in momentous changes  culminating  in the peaceful revolution in Eastern Europe and the demise of Soviet  rule.  Mihajlov’s first freedoms–speech, thought, press, assembly, association,   philosophical, political and religious persuasion–remain a continuing  challenge, East and West, North and South. Curiously, Mihajlov’s thought  offers  a conceptual bridge between Westernizers and Slavophiles, while his  universalism  helped him befriend dissidents of all ethnic groups. Indeed, Mihajlov’s  was a  universal message of individual freedom and social justice. His  undogmatic  spirituality and central conception of human dignity drew on Russian  religious  philosophy. The question arises: Can the quest for global democracy and  basic  human rights and freedoms be realized in a world of competing socio-economic,  political, and ethno-national interests and ideologies? Can equality be  reconciled with liberty? And, can science and technology be harnessed to  serve,  rather than enslave, humanity? “–Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies

Organized by: Institute for Interdisciplinary Research & International Christian Studies Association.

Photo Credit: Microsoft Clip Art