WATERVILLE, Maine — Colby College is hosting a three-day conference focused on Václav Havel, former president of the Czech Republic and champion of democracy, and how lessons from his lifetime can be used to respond to today’s world challenges.
The conference — called Havel and Our Crisis — is scheduled for Sept. 28-30 and will include a variety of roundtable discussions led by well-known speakers and a film screening of “The Art of Dissent” at the Ostrove Auditorium, plus a production of Havel’s “Audience,” a play published in 1975.
Havel, who was born in 1936 and died in 2011, was a Czech statesman, writer and dissident. He was chosen as post-Communist Czechoslovakia’s first president, and after the country split in January 1993, he became president of the Czech Republic.
The conference is a Maine college’s way of creating space for dialogue about pressing issues around the world. With the COVID-19 pandemic still lingering, radical tendencies growing and attacks on democratic institutions multiplying, western liberal democracy is not well, said Milan Babík, conference convenor. The conference seeks to respond, he said.
Events are a collaboration between Colby College and national and international partners, such as the Václav Library in Prague and Czech Center New York.
Babík, visiting assistant professor of government at Colby College, also noted in his event introduction that, internationally, core norms of sovereignty and self-determination are under assault with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The conference will revolve around Havel, who Babík called one of the 20th century’s greatest champions of freedom, democracy, human rights, European integration and trans-Atlantic cooperation.
“The aim is to take stock of his intellectual, political, and spiritual legacy and to search this legacy for solutions to the burning problems of our time,” he said.
Babík grew up in Šumperk, Czechoslovakia, and came to the United States in 1995.
Conference speakers will include Daniel Konrád, a Czech journalist and cultural critic; Miroslav Konvalina, a Czech journalist, radio host and public diplomacy figure; James Le Sueur, a cinematographer, filmmaker and historian; Wendy Luers, founding president of The Foundation for a Civil Society, a nonprofit established in New York and Prague in 1990 to support Czechoslovakia’s transition to democracy; Michael Žantovský, a Czech diplomat, politician, writer, translator and director of Václav Havel Library in Prague; and others.
The Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre will perform “Audience” at the Strider Theater.
Events are free and open to the public. An additional performance of “Audience” is scheduled for Saturday evening. For information, visit the college’s website.