The Athens Democracy Forum is an annual event that takes place in Athens, Greece, over September 16-18, 2018. It is organised and hosted by the New York Times, and brings together its senior journalists with international business leaders, policy makers, and a broad variety of experts to debate and discuss the current state of democracy with a focus on new solutions. This year, students from universities of the Global Liberal Arts Alliance (GLAA) had the chance to attend the Forum and to be a part of debates, student presentations and workshops about its diverse themes in the three days leading up to it. Ragini Rao Munjuluri, in her third year as an undergraduate, represented FLAME University at the Forum.
Prior to their arrival in Greece, the 21 attending students were split into five groups to deliberate on the themes of the Forum: The Allure of the Illiberal, When Technology Collides with Citizenship, Identity, Diversity and Inclusion, The Business of Business. ADF is also closely associated with the Sustainable Development Solutions Network, for which each student was allotted a Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) to research in the run-up to the Forum.
Ragini, a student of Public Policy and International Studies, chose workshop themes based on her own interest in questions of development in India, and the larger developing world. She worked with the 4th SDG: Quality Education and the Allure of the Illiberal. These are areas of great personal interest to her, and which are of great relevance in the South Asian context. For these themes, she made presentations and a working paper for fellow student delegates, and later discussed them at the Forum itself.
On the final day of the Forum, the New York Times also hosted a panel on youth political participation and generation gaps, " Bridging the Generational Gap". Based on their participation over the preceding three days of student dialogue, Ragini and another student of the GLAA delegation were selected to represent the youth perspective. They were joined by Thulisile Nomkhosi Madonsela (Advocate for the High Court of South Africa; law trust chair in social justice and law professor at Stellenbosch University) and Radosław Sikorski (a senior fellow at Harvard University; Poland’s Minister of Defence from 2005 to 2007, foreign minister from 2007 to 2014, speaker of the Polish Parliament between 2014 and 2015). The session was led by Serge Schmemann (member of the editorial board of The New York Times).
During the six days, Ragini sought to bring more attention to India and other young, multicultural democracies, and in particular, to the relationship between democratic institutions and development. It was also a chance to explore the city of Athens, engage with students in similar fields from around the world and lay the foundations for more international student engagement on contemporary concerns about democracy.