A participant poses a question to panelists at the UNYP 2010 Symposium. Photo by Cassidy Havens

By Cassidy Havens

“Yes we can” isn’t just a slogan.

A recent conference on the NYU campus in Prague demonstrated how ordinary individuals can play a role in preventing and resolving global crises.

NYU’s Richter classroom on the first floor Richtruv Dům was filled with academics, students, prominent Praguers, and everything in between for the University of New York in Prague (UNYP) 2010 Symposium on October 8.

The theme for the event was “Meeting Crisis with Wisdom: Charting our way forward in politics, business, finance, law and education.”

“Do we just like to talk or can we have an impact?” UNYP professor and conference organizer Bill Cohn asked the audience at the beginning of the symposium.

A resolution drafted for the symposium recognized that “many of the crises we now confront were preventable” and called for everyone present “to dedicate themselves to learning what has and continues to cause crisis situations and to assume personal responsibility to take what they deem as appropriate steps for improvement.”

“We all need to think together to solve problems,” Cohn said at the beginning of the law panel, which was followed by business and finance, politics, and education panels.

Panelists discussed issues ranging from the disputed 2000 US presidential elections to plagiarism in Czech schools. Each panel consisted of three to four professors, business leaders, or members of the community for the given topic, as well as a moderator. “We wanted the best people who had wisdom in their area,” Cohn said.

The panels were followed by question-and-answer sessions, with attendees encouraged to participate.

Roughly 100 people attended the symposium, according to Cohn, who said he hopes the symposium gave all of the attendees a curiosity for understanding what is happening in the world today and how all of these issues are interrelated.

“If it wasn’t so lovely outside today, I think there would have been even more of a turnout,” Cohn said. “[Nonetheless], there was a full room throughout the day, and there were good questions and comments.”

As for the UNYP 2011 Symposium, Cohn said that next year’s theme will likely be about the 10-year anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks in the United States and what we as a society have learned from them.

NYU hosted and co-organized the event in cooperation with the University of New York in Prague (UNYP), an accredited university that is partnered with the State University of New York. Also represented at the symposium were Empire State College; Charles University; Transparency International, an international organization which works to fight corruption; The New Presence, a local socio-political journal; and English-language weekly The Prague Post.

Among the panel members were Dr. Max Hilaire, who is chair of Morgan State University’s Department of Political Science and a two time Fulbright Scholar for Nigeria and Czech Republic; Monika Macdonagh-Pajerová, chairperson for YES for Europe, an association for young entrepreneurs, and spokesperson for the University Strike Committee during the Velvet Revolution; and Dr. Charles Webel, currently a professor at UNYP and a past Senior Fulbright Specialist who has taught at such universities around the world as Harvard University and the University of Rome.