| Summary: | The summary of the international conference "Between Past and Future: The Revolutions of 1989 and the Struggle for Democracy in Central and Eastern Europe" organized by CEU and the University of Maryland, held at CEU between 26th and 28th of March, 1999. A compact cassette documenting the entire event with excerpts from each panel and each speaker of the event. Josef Jařab (President and Rector of CEU) and Gábor Demszky (Mayor of Budapest) open the event, welcome the guests and deliver the introductory remarks. At the first conference panel entitled “1989 and Its Aftermath Through the Eyes of the Media” the participants were American and Hungarian print, television and radio journalist who covered the events in 1989. The panel was chaired by Kati Marton (author and journalist). The introductory remarks for this panel were delivered by former US Ambassador to Hungary Donald Blinken. The speakers were R. W. Apple Jr. (Chief Correspondent, “New York Times”), Barrie Dunsmore (Former Senior Correspondent, ABC News), James Carney (Political Correspondent, “Time Magazine”), Flora Lewis (Senior Columnist, “New York Times” Syndicate), Ambassador Richard Holbrooke (U.S. Special Envoy to Yugoslavia) and György Bolgár (Journalist and Broadcaster, Hungarian Radio). The media panel was followed by a debate between the journalists and the audience, including conference participants István Rév, Timothy Garton Ash and Tamás Gáspár Miklós. Keynote address in the evening was delivered by Ágnes Heller (Philosopher, New School University). The second panel entitled “The Present Significance of the Past” was chaired by Vladimir Tismăneanu (Professor at Maryland University) who was also an organizer and speaker of the conference. Speakers in this panel were Jacques Rupnik (Institute of Political Studies, Paris), G. M. Tamás (Georgetown University), Karol Soltan (University of Maryland), Daniel Chirot (University of Washington) and Sorin Antohi (Academic Pro-Rector at CEU). The third panel was entitled “Winners and Losers in the Great Transformations Since 1989.” The speakers are Adam Michnik (Editor, Gazeta Wyborcza, Poland), Martin Palous (Deputy Foreign Minister of the Czech Republic), Valerie Bunce (Professor at Cornell University), János Kis (Professor at CEU), Jeffrey Isaac (Professor at Indiana University) and Vladimir Tismăneanu (Professor at Maryland University). In the evening, the CEU Bookshop hosted a special celebration launch for “The Revolutions of 1989”, a volume edited by Vladimir Tismăneanu with the contributions of Adam Michnik, Timothy Garton Ash, Jacques Rupnik, Katherine Verdery and Jeffrey Isaac. Before the beginning of the forth panel, entitled “Vulnerabilities of the New Democracies” , its chairman John Lampe (Professor at the University of Maryland) read a letter from Ivan Vejvoda (Director of the Fund for an Open Society Yugoslavia) who could not be present at the conference. Speakers in the panel were Katherine Verdery (Professor at the University of Michigan), Gail Kligman (UCLA), Kazimierz Poznanski (University of Washington), István Rév (Professor at CEU and Director of OSA Archivum) and Miklós Haraszti (Hungarian Writer, Journalist and Professor). After the debate, U.S. Congressman Tom Lantos shared his thoughts on the issue of civility and consensus building in institutions of representational democracy. The fifth and closing panel was entitled "The New Europe: Prospects for Cooperation and Conflict” and was chaired by CEU Professor Alfred Rieber. The speakers were Karen Dawisha (Professor of Political Science at Miami University), Bartlomiej Kaminski (Associate Professor of Government at the University of Maryland), Ivo Banac (Croatian Historian and Politician), Ilya Prizel (Professor at John Hopkins University), Jeffrey Wasserstrom (Professor of History at the University of California), Irena Grudzińska Gross (Polish Historian and Professor) and Chairman Alfred Rieber. Finally, Oxford Scholar Timothy Garton Ash and the President of Hungary Árpád Göncz offer the closing remarks for the three days international conference held at CEU.
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