PAUL LEVINSON

PAUL LEVINSON

Author of The Silk Code · The Plot to Save Socrates
Musician · Professor

Paul Levinson is an author, musician, and professor at Fordham University, where he teaches communications and media studies. His fiction and non-fiction work has been translated into 16 languages, and includes the sci-fi novels The Silk Code and The Plot to Save Socrates. Before his academic career, he spent much of the late 1960s and early 70s as a singer-songwriter, writing over 100 songs. He returned to music in 2020 with the release of his album “Welcome Up: Songs of Space and Time.”

REEM BASSOUS

REEM BASSOUS

Artist

The truth of the matter is that there are some people who are born to be creative and they're going to be artists. And the importance of fostering that is necessary, because if we each fulfill our purpose as humans, then society is better off for it. So in other words, if I had been anything else other than what I have become, I would have only been living up to half of my potential. And so that's really important to address that. I have a lot of students whose parents don't want them to be artists because it doesn't make money, but that means they're only living up to half of their potential because they're truly meant to be artists. And so society needs to shift this understanding on what is important.

CHRISTINA MOSSAIDES STRASSFIELD

CHRISTINA MOSSAIDES STRASSFIELD

Museum Director & Chief Curator · Guild Hall of East Hampton

I think that what you're doing is definitely offering a service to so many people and letting them explore various forms of creativity and how you can use that creativity to enhance the world. I don't mean it in a highfalutin way, but I think that art does influence the world on many different levels. On a daily level, but on a more global level.