ROBERT AXELROD

ROBERT AXELROD

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Former Consultant for the UN, World Bank & US Department of Defense
Professor Emeritus of Political Science & Public Policy at University of Michigan
National Medal of Science Award-Winner

I think the most critical thing is education for critical thinking. The ability to listen to a political argument or an argument of any sort, on COVID, for example, or climate change, and not necessarily understand the science behind that, but to understand how to evaluate the credibility of the speaker, how to evaluate the logic of the arguments and to see whether a conspiracy theory is behind this that has no grounding… And so I think what’s especially important in would be an educational in critical thinking.

BENH ZEITLIN

BENH ZEITLIN

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Writer, Director & Composer

I think it goes to this feeling of freedom, looking how freedom changes as you grow, being a very particular type of freedom that children have just by the nature of not having learned what the rules are. As we grow, we start to limit what we believe is possible. When you’re a kid, there isn’t a delineation between this is real, and this is my imagination. It’s all real. That’s your life experience.

JACQUES VILLEGLÉ

JACQUES VILLEGLÉ

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Artist & Grandfather of French Street Art

There was the war from ‘40 to ‘45 under the Fascists, so I didn’t have art training at that time. The painter Picasso, we knew the name, the artist who painted an eye in the place of a navel, that’s all I knew at the age of seventeen. I found a book published in 1926, the year of my birth, speaking of the painters Braque, Picasso and Miró. And then all the figurative painters at that time, Van Dongen…so it was a new style that I encountered there.

MARCIA SCHEINER

MARCIA SCHEINER

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President & Founder of Integrate Autism Employment Advisors

For autistic individuals, there’s really sort of two paths. There are those today, about 35% percent of 18 year olds with an autism diagnosis who do go on to college or some form of post-secondary education, and then those who don’t. Of those who don’t and want to work, there’s about a 55% unemployment rate. And those who go to college and then look for employment afterwards, there’s about a 75 to 85% underemployment rate. So you can see the unemployment rates whether you go to college or not are astronomical, but they’re even higher if you go to college, which is sort of counterintuitive.

PETER SINGER & ANANTHA DURAIAPPAH

PETER SINGER & ANANTHA DURAIAPPAH

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Human & Animal Rights Activists

“74 billion animals, according to the United National Food & Agriculture Organization, that we raise and kill each year on this planet. If we can’t make inroads into that and change attitudes to that, then I still have fears for where we are going.” – Peter Singer

GAVIN JAMES CREEL

GAVIN JAMES CREEL

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Tony & Olivier Award-Winning Actor, Singer & Songwriter

To not honor that we are all creative, beautiful, interesting deep, rich individuals. We’re not zeros and ones on a spreadsheet. We’re not scientifically explained. We are not mathematically judged. We are imperfect blobs of emotion and bone and spirit and life and when we come together there is nothing greater than the chemistry and the alchemy of musical theater… There’s a joy, there’s a bounce, there’s an effervescence that’s part of that music. I had a great teacher in college, the head of our program Brent Wagner said, 'With lyrics, I can tell you to open the door, but with music I can tell you how.’ Lyrics are information and music is emotion.

DR. FRANÇOIS CLEMMONS

DR. FRANÇOIS CLEMMONS

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Singer · Author
1st African American Actor on Children’s TV · Officer Clemmons on Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood

I always find it an ironic thing to think about the fact that Fred Rogers was colour-blind. He could barely tell a blue from a grey. I was young and to him I was a child and I certainly played the role of a child and he played the role of parent… He was profoundly patient.

JULIAN FLEISHER

JULIAN FLEISHER

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Jazz Singer, Writer, Radio Host & Producer

Over the years I’ve had a career as an actor, as a writer. I wrote books for many years. I’ve been singer, singer, songwriter, radio host… When I look at the whole drawing on the napkin, and I tried to ask myself–What unifies all of these things? And it came down to songs. Songs really are at the heart of all of these pursuits. Something about songs really matters to me. In the same people believe in Jesus Christ, and they can’t really get through the day without connecting with that figure. That’s how I am about songs. They are the fuel for me.

TAL HEVER-CHYBOWSKI

TAL HEVER-CHYBOWSKI

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Director of the Paris Yiddish Center (Maison de la Culture Yiddish) & Medem Library

A lot of people in my family and among my friends when they heard that I study Yiddish and that later made it my livelihood, they are very surprised. Yiddish? How come Yiddish? Why Yiddish? They even laugh sometimes, they are very surprised. And what I answer to them is that there is nothing surprising about the fact that I study or speak Yiddish. The real surprise, the real question that has to be asked is how come my parents, this last generation, didn’t speak Yiddish? Because, if you consider my family, for hundreds of years on all sides they spoke Yiddish.

PATON MILLER

PATON MILLER

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Artist & World Traveler

When we moved back to Hawaii and lived on Molokai. I was teaching at the Kalaupapa Leprosy Colony, we had no money. And I was spearfishing, not for sport, but to get food for my family. And it was a beautiful time of our lives. We were so poor, but we were not poor. Poor is a state of mind. We were without money, but we were having so much fun.

SHIMON SCHWARZCHILD

SHIMON SCHWARZCHILD

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Environmental Activist
Founder Assisi Bird Campaign & Action for Nature

I witnessed being totally rejected and not only witnessed, I remembered as a ten-year old all the children would go to a class in eugenics that I was not allowed to go to. I remember the insults that children learned against Jews while I was still in Germany. And I’m one of the lucky Jews who managed to leave.”

EDMAR CASTANEDA

EDMAR CASTANEDA

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Jazz Harpist

The harp or the instrument that I play is a traditional instrument from Colombia (I’m from Bogota, Colombia). We have traditional music there called Janetta music. It’s the music from the plains of Colombia and Venezuala. It’s like the cowboy music… I met the harp when I was seven years old. That’s the first time I saw this instrument. I was like–Wow! I knew I was born to play the harp that day!

PETER SINGER

PETER SINGER

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Most Influential Living Philosopher
Author · Founder of The Life You Can Save

I would like young people to recognise that they are part of a long tradition that has been trying to the make the world a better place. A tradition that goes back as far as we have recorded history, that there are people who tried to–like Socrates, but also like Buddha and many other figures in different cultures–think more about how we ought to live and tried to live in accordance with their thinking. Tried to do good in the world and that’s a traditional they can be part of. This generation really does hold the future of the planet in its hands.

CAROLYN WATERS BROE

CAROLYN WATERS BROE

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Founding Conductor of the Four Seasons Orchestra
Principal Violist of the Scottsdale Philharmonic

I feel that the earth is like a classroom for soul growth and we’re put here to overcome challenges, and we may be working on something like humility or compassion or love of humanity. The challenges might be something like war or cancer. Everybody gets a challenge to work on in their lives, but they also get a great gift to help them through those challenges. You just have to know how to use those gifts.

GEORGE MANGINIS

GEORGE MANGINIS

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Academic Director of the Benaki Museum

If we are to use a few words to characterise the Benaki, we can say it is the only museum in the world that presents Greek culture from the history to the 21st century, and culture seen holistically, so not just fine art, but also applied arts and historical documents, literature, photography, and architecture. It’s a very inclusive perception of art, but also in relation to global art and world cultures.

AVRA SIDIROPOULOU

AVRA SIDIROPOULOU

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Author & Artistic Director of Athens-based Persona Theatre Company

Unless it starts from within you, then you’re not going to set the same amount of investment. So there are moments when I feel I’m suffocating within the limits of those roles I have to play, and sometimes I feel like I’m failing them all. I’m always on the lookout for the next thing to quench the desire to create.

JOHARY RAVALOSON

JOHARY RAVALOSON

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My books tell the story of Madagascar, its legends and mysteries, the insular island, its nature and the history of contact with the other, with other people. I wanted to show that Madagascar is inhabited. Westerners discover Madagascar in history books (through Marco Polo, then Diogo Dias in 1500). I wanted readers to discover the humans who live there, with their contradictions and complexities. I just wish to write in the stories of the world, my part of bricks. I am part of the world, too.

BARBARA BAERT

BARBARA BAERT

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Winner of the Francqui Prize
Art Historian and Professor

My work never avoids large-scale questions. My work links knowledge and questions from the history of ideas, cultural anthropology, philosophy, and in some measure also from psychoanalysis, and shows great sensitivity to cultural archetypes and their symptoms in the visual arts.

JANE OHLMEYER

JANE OHLMEYER

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Erasmus Smith's Professor of Modern History at Trinity College Dublin
Director of the Trinity Long Room Hub, Trinity’s research institute for advanced study in the Arts & Humanities

In fact, some of the biggest issues of the contemporary world can be better understood through the prism of the Arts and Humanities because these disciplines have important things to say about every aspect of human existence. The list is endless but some pressing examples that come to mind are terrorism and war; migration and multi-culturalism; security; privacy and freedom; environmental and digital issues; and mental and physical well-being. The Arts and Humanities both celebrate and challenge the expression of the human condition in its numerous manifestations and place human values at the centre of our world.

T.C. BOYLE

T.C. BOYLE

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Writer

All artists are seeking to create a modified world that conforms to their emotional and artistic expectations, and I am one of them, though, of course, as we grow and age those expectations are continually in flux. [...] Yes, like all of us, I have experienced disillusionment with the limits of human life and understanding.