Over 40 of the USA’s top law students will convene on this weekend for the third seminar of the Salzburg Cutler Fellows Program being held in Washington, DC. The two-day session, looking at the future of public and private international law, is being attended by students from ten of the top US law schools and will take place at the United States Institute of Peace and NYU Washington DC, with networking events at the Georgetown University Law Center and the Metropolitan Club. The two-day seminar is designed to illuminate career options, allow participants to present and critique ideas, and build networks to assist in making career choices. The Salzburg Cutler Fellows Program annually convenes students nominated by their law schools along with prominent judges, practitioners, and professors for a highly interactive exploration of leading edge issues in international law. The program, now it in its third year, is named after Lloyd N. Cutler, a Washington “Super Lawyer” as well as long-time Chairman of Salzburg Global Seminar. Lloyd Cutler (1917–2005) had a brilliant legal career. Founder of the Washington, D.C. law firm Wilmer Cutler & Pickering, and White House Counsel to two U.S. presidents, he fulfilled the calling of a public servant over his lifetime as he repeatedly accepted appointments in Democratic and Republican administrations and gave service to a vast array of charitable, educational, and legal organizations that he led and supported. Cutler was also a long-time champion of Salzburg Global Seminar, serving as chair of its Board of Directors for a decade. Believing passionately in the role that law plays in nation building, and in the ability of the law and legal experts to contribute solutions to the world’s most pressing challenges, Cutler was able to bring to Salzburg high court judges from around the world. In addition, he was personally committed to ensuring that promising young international lawyers, academics, and jurists had access at Salzburg Global Seminar to a rich variety of judicial traditions, international legal institutions, and the international legal community at large. It is in this spirit that Salzburg Global developed the Salzburg Cutler Fellows Program. This year’s session will again be chaired by Salzburg Global Fellow William Burke-White, Inaugural Director of the Perry World House, Deputy Dean and Professor of Law, University of Pennsylvania Law School. The program will include lectures on “the right to be forgotten,” international investment and trade negotiations, and the role of the lawyer in public service. John B. Bellinger III, Salzburg Global Fellow, former legal advisor to the US Department of State and National Security Council and now partner at Arnold & Porter LLP, will give the opening address, with a lecture also to be delivered by Salzburg Global board member and internationally renowned jurist Richard Goldstone, former chief Prosecutor of the UN International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. The Salzburg Cutler Fellows will also have opportunity to discuss their own research and opportunities for publication, as well as explore their personal goals and diverse avenues for law and public service with Michael Bahar, Staff Director and General Counsel to the Minority Staff of the House Select Committee on Intelligence and Navy JAG; former Deputy Legal Advisor to the White House; Alka Pradhan, Counterterrorism Counsel at Reprieve, US; Douglas Rutzen, President and CEO of the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law; and Tom Wyler, Senior Advisor for Trade and Investment, Office of the Secretary at U.S. Department of Commerce. Participating law schools at this year’s program are: New York University School of Law, Columbia Law School, Georgetown University Law Center, Harvard Law School, Duke University School of Law, Stanford Law School, University of Chicago Law School, University of Pennsylvania Law School; University of Virginia School of Law, and Yale Law School.

Category: SALZBURG IN THE WORLD, JUSTICE, LAW ACADEMY

Experts from so-called left and right-brained fields will be applying their minds in Salzburg in order to better understand what happens in the human brain during creative processes. Sponsored by the Edward T. Cone Foundation, the Salzburg Global session The Neuroscience of Art: What are the Sources of Creativity and Innovation? aims to create a collaborative international platform to identify and address emerging issues at the creative intersection of neuroscience and art. From February 21 to 26, 2015, an array of international experts based in countries including the UK, USA, Switzerland, Lebanon, China, Brazil, Argentina and Russia will gather at Schloss Leopoldskron. The diversity of the participants is also reflected in their professional backgrounds, including neuroscientists, artists, musicians, psychologists, journalists and scholars. Leading the session will be co-chairs Charles Limb, an Associate Professor of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery at the John Hopkins University School of Medicine and a Faculty Member at the Peabody Conservatory of Music and Gary Vikan, former director of the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland. As the topic of neuroscience of art is still in its infancy, the session will seek to identify further areas of needed research and explore how to apply the existing research results in practice, particularly in the areas of early childhood development, lifelong education, trauma therapy, and aging. The program builds on some of the themes explored in the 2012 Salzburg Global Fellows program held in Washington, DC Transcending Borders: The Intersections of Art, Science, Technology, and Society on a Global Stage as well as the 2011 Salzburg session Instrumental Value: The Transformative Power of Music which explored intersections of music and neuroscience and also highlighted music education as an important part of childhood development. “This is a very forward-looking and experimental session for us,” says Program Director Susanna Seidl-Fox.  “It is poised at the frontier of the research that is happening at the nexus of neuroscience and the arts.  We are bringing together visual artists, poets, musicians, a beat-boxer, a caricaturist, filmmakers as well as neuroscientists who are looking at these various artistic disciplines to learn more about the roots, sources, and processes of creativity. We will be asking:  Where does creativity come from?  How is this being studied?  What don’t we know about it?  What can artists and scientists learn from each other? What are the implications of this research for such fields as education, therapy, and early childhood development?” The five-day program will consist of panel discussions, plenary debates and working group discussions, as well as readings, performances, and open studios. Together participants will develop strategies to move the research agenda forward and to foster international exchange around this important field of inquiry. ###YOUTUBE_Zrb50O7H7-M### The Salzburg Global session The Neuroscience of Art: What are the Sources of Creativity and Innovation? is part of Salzburg Global’s long-running Culture and the Arts series. The session is supported by the Edward T. Cone Foundation. More information on the session can be found here: www.salzburgglobal.org/go/547. You can follow all the discussions on Twitter by following the hashtag #SGSculture.

Category: SALZBURG IN THE WORLD, IMAGINATION, CULTURE

Fellows of the Salzburg Global session New Paradigms for Behavioral and Mental Health have called on the United Nation to make a "renewed global commitment to mental health." During the Salzburg Global program, it was recognized that the United Nations post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have a critical part to play in setting priorities for the development and investment in healthcare systems, prompting the 70 international healthcare policy experts, practitioners and service users, who attended the December 2014 session, to collectively draft their Salzburg Statement.  The Statement calls on the UN and its Member States to make a "renewed global commitment to mental health, with clear and specific targets and indicators, particularly with a focus on mental health treatment coverage, strengthening community health, outreach and peer support." Upon the issuing of the Statement, Salzburg Global Fellow and professor of community psychiatry at the Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London, Graham Thornicroft said: "As mental health problems contribute so much towards disability and mortality worldwide, it is right that the United Nations fully recognises this by agreeing strong mental health targets and indicators in the new Sustainable Development Goals." Paul Burstow, Salzburg Global Fellow, UK Member of Parliament and author of the UK government’s mental health strategy added: "Now is the time for the United Nations to fully reflect the impact of mental health problems worldwide by agreeing to clear and challenging mental health targets and indicators in the new Sustainable Development Goals." The Statement is now being shared with policy-makers and practitioners around the world.  You can read the statement in full below. Salzburg Global Statement on New Paradigms for Behavioral and Mental Health Care Recommendations of Salzburg Global Fellows   We, the participants of the Salzburg Global session New Paradigms for Behavioral and Mental Health Care (listed below): I. Recognize the central importance of mental health in the United Nations post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs); II. Accept the case for fully including mental health in the SDGs given: The global prevalence of mental disorders and psychosocial disabilities, with 1 in 4 people experiencing mental health problems in their lifetime;The excessive treatment gap in low- and middle-income countries, where often over 90% of people with mental disorders receive no effective treatment;The global under-financing of the mental health sector, and the critical shortage of mental health services;The breach of the universal right to health for up to 600 million people with mental illness across the world each year;The growing global impact of mental disorders and psychosocial disabilities, which contribute 23% of the total global burden of disease;The often long-lasting disability caused by mental disorders and psychosocial disabilities, and the high impact of the excess mortality, and suicide;The global crisis, of human rights violations, social exclusion, stigma and discrimination of persons with mental disorders and psychosocial disabilities;  III. Accept the importance of fully including mental health in the SDG targets and indicators, which will be necessary to provide reliable information, and measurable and comparable data, for policy makers, service providers, and service users, to enhance mental health systems and services worldwide; IV. Regret that, despite growing global awareness, until now there has been a lack of substantial progress in fully including mental health in the United Nations SDGs. We therefore call upon the United Nations, and its Member States, for a renewed global commitment to mental health, with clear and specific targets and indicators, particularly with a focus on mental health treatment coverage, strengthening community health, outreach and peer support. Download the Salzburg Statement as a PDF ###ISSUU_7215624/11181709### Signatories: Alvaro Aravena Molina, Community Mental Health Center Rinconada, Chile; Alvaro Arenas Borrero, Clinica La Inmaculada, Colombia; Ilirjana Bajraktari, Kosovo; Peter Bartlett, University of Nottingham, UK; Paulina Bravo, Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, Chile; Paul Burstow, House of Parliament, UK; July Caballero, Peruvian National Institute of Mental Health, Peru; Dawn Carey, Dartmouth Center for Health Care Delivery Science, USA; Joshua Chauvin, Canada; R. Chellamuthu, M.S.Chellamuthu Trust and Research Foundation, India; Trina Dutta, USA; Byron Good, Harvard University, USA; Shpend Haxhibeqiri, University Clinical Centre of Kosovo, Kosovo; Jonida Haxhiu, Institute of Public Health of Albania, Albania; Prince Bosco Kanani, Rwanda NGO’s Forum on AIDS and Health Promotion, Rwanda; Gloria King, Rainbow Healing, USA; Bernadette Klapper, Germany; John Lotherington, Salzburg Global Seminar, UK; Hafsa Lukwata, Ministry of Health, Uganda; Marie-Josee Maliboli, Rwanda Biomedical Center, Rwanda; Lisa Marsch, Dartmouth Center for Health Care Delivery Science, USA; Maria Elena Medina Mora, National Institute on Psychiatry Ramon de la Fuente Muniz, Mexico; Susan Mende, USA; Nancy Misago, Rwanda Biomedical Center / Ministry of Health, Rwanda, Martha Mitrani Gonzales, National Institute of Mental Health HD-HN, Peru; Anna Moore, UCL Partners, UK; Albert Mulley, Dartmouth Center for Health Care Delivery Science, USA; Gloria Nieto De Cano, Asociacion Colombiana Personas con Esquizofrenia y Familias, Colombia; Angela Ofori-Atta, University of Ghana School of Medicine & Dentistry, Ghana; Sally Okun, PatientsLikeMe, USA; Emmanuel Owusu Ansah, The Ministry of Health of Ghana, Ghana; Merritt Patridge, Dartmouth Center for Health Care Delivery Science, USA; Thara Rangaswamy, Schizophrenia Research Foundation (SCARF), India; Veronique Roger, USA; Rodrigo Salinas, Universidad de Chile, Chile; Ronald Stock, USA; Ezra Susser, Columbia University, USA; Graham Thornicroft, Kings College London, UK; Chris Underhill, BasicNeeds UK, UK; Jose Miguel Uribe, Colombia; Dale Walker, Oregon Health & Science University, USA; Peter Yaro, BasicNeeds Ghana, Ghana; Cynthia Zavala, Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, Chile; Ericka Zimmerman, University of Charleston, USA

Category: SALZBURG IN THE WORLD, SUSTAINABILITY, HEALTH

Culture needs to be “mainstreamed” into peacebuilding activities – this was the leading recommendation from a meeting of culture and conflict resolution experts held in Brussels in November 2014. The one-day seminar entitled Culture and Conflicts: The Case of Ukraine was a follow-on event from the Salzburg Global session Conflict Transformation through Culture: Peacebuilding and the Arts and a collaboration between Salzburg Global Seminar, More Europe and hosts, the European External Action Service (EEAS).    The seminar was supported by the EU and its Instrument contributing to Stability and Peace (IcSP), with a view to providing a better understanding of the culture-conflict nexus through the lens of the conflict in Ukraine. The goals of the gathering were to discuss ways in which culture can contribute to or mitigate conflict and to formulate recommendations for policy-makers.   The following six cultural operators were invited to share their work and experience with the EEAS staff: Anya Medvedeva, Communications Director, IZOLYATSIA, Platform for Cultural Initiatives, Donetsk, UkraineElena Tupyseva, Director and Co-Founder, TsEKh, Moscow, RussiaHjalmar Jorge Joffre-Eichhorn, Founder, Theater for Dialogue, Kiev, UkraineOksana Forostyna, Executive Editor, Krytyka; Journalist & Writer, Kyiv, UkraineTina Ellen Lee, Artistic Director, Opera Circus, Dorset, UKYaroslav Minkin, Founder, Stan Art Group; Poet, cultural innovator and civil activist, Lugansk, Ukraine Salzburg Global Vice President and Chief Program Officer, Clare Shine, and More Europe director Sana Ouchtati presented a concept note on culture and conflict, and Ronan Mac Aongusa from the European Commission introduced the IcSP.  The presentations were followed by intensive, interactive discussions among all the participants, with several common threads emerging:  culture as a soft, peaceful tool to address hard, serious challenges and transform seemingly stale, “dead-end” conflict situations; culture as a tool to mobilize and engage the wider population; culture as a means of stimulating dialogue, communication, and eventually understanding; the risks connected to the use and abuse of culture and cultural identities; and the need to integrate culture into general EU policies to make better use of its positive potential.  Three main recommendations developed by the seminar participants included: The need to mainstream culture into peacebuilding activities,The need to revise EU granting mechanisms and procedures in this area to make them more flexible, reactive, and culturally sensitive, and to reach wider audiences, particularly through projects focusing on education and youth, andThe need for enhanced engagement with stakeholders, including artists and cultural activists. The full report of the event is available to download Salzburg Global would like to express its particular gratitude to the six cultural operators who contributed their time to participating in the seminar in Brussels.  Photos taken by Salzburg Global Seminar can be found on our official Facebook page. Additional photos of the Brussels event taken by session participant Yaroslav Minkin can also be found on Facebook. 

Category: SALZBURG IN THE WORLD, IMAGINATION, CULTURE