Seyla Benhabib is the Eugene Meyer Professor of Political Science and Philosophy Emerita at Yale University and was Director of the Program in Ethics, Politics and Economics (2002-2008). She is the Senior Scholar in Residence at Columbia Law School and Senior Fellow at the Center for Contemporary Critical Theory at Columbia.

Professor Benhabib was the President of the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association in 2006-07, a Fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin in 2009, at the NYU Straus Institute for the Advanced Study of Law and Justice in Spring 2012, and at the German Marshall Fund’s Transatlantic Academy in Washington DC in Spring 2013. In 2009, she received the Ernst Bloch prize for her contributions to cultural dialogue in a global civilization and in May 2012, the Leopold Lucas Prize of the Evangelical Academy of Tubingen.  She holds honorary degrees from the Humanistic University in Utrecht in 2004, the University of Valencia in November 2010, Bogazici University in May 2012, Georgetown in 2013 and University of Geneva in 2017. She received a Guggenheim grant during 2010-2011 for her work on sovereignty and international law.  Professor Benhabib was awarded the Meister Eckhart Prize of the Identity Foundation and the University of Cologne in May 2014 for her contributions of contemporary thought.

Her books include: Critique, Norm and Utopia. A Study of the Normative Foundations of Critical Theory (1986); Situating the Self. Gender, Community and Postmodernism in Contemporary Ethics (1992; winner of the National Educational Association’s best book of the year award); with Judith Butler, Drucilla Cornell and Nancy Fraser, Feminist Contentions: A Philosophical Exchange (1994); The Reluctant Modernism of Hannah Arendt (1996; reissued in 2002); The Claims of Culture. Equality and Diversity in the Global Era (2002) and The Rights of Others. Aliens, Citizens and Residents (2004), which won the Ralph Bunche award of the American Political Science Association (2205) and the North American Society for Social Philosophy award (2004).  Another Cosmopolitanism. Hospitality, Sovereignty and Democratic Iterations, with responses by Jeremy Waldron, Bonnie Honig and Will Kymlicka based on her Tanner Lecetures was published by Oxford University Press in 2006. Dignity in Adversity. Human Rights in Troubled Times (Polity Press, 2011); Equality and Difference. Human Dignity and Popular Sovereignty in the Mirror of Political Modernity (Lucas prize Lecture in English and German: Mohr Siebeck Publishers, 2013), The Democratic Disconnect. Citizenship and Accountability in the Transatlantic Community (PDF format), with David Cameron et. al. (Transatlantic Academy, Washington DC, 2013 and Exile, Statelessness and Migration:  Playing Chess with History from Hannah Arendt to Isaiah Berlin (Princeton, 2018)

She has edited 8 volumes, ranging from discussions of communicative ethics, to democracy and difference, to identities, allegiances and affinities.  Migrations and Mobilities. Gender, Borders and Citizenship, edited with Judith Resnik of the Yale Law School (NYU Press 2009), was named a “Choice outstanding book.”  Toward New Democratic Imaginaries: Istanbul Dialogues on Islam, Culture and Politics, ed. by Seyla Benhabib and Volker Kaul, with a new introduction by Seyla Benhabib, Springer Verlag, November 2016.

Her work has been translated into German, Spanish, French, Italian, Turkish, Swedish, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Hebrew, Japanese, Chinese, Portuguese, and Persian.

She has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Science since 1996 and has held the Gauss Lectures (Princeton, 1998); the Spinoza Chair for distinguished visitors (Amsterdam, 2001); the John Seeley Memorial Lectures (Cambridge, 2002), the Tanner Lectures (Berkeley, 2004) and was the Catedra Ferrater Mora Distinguished Professor in Girona, Spain (Summer 2005).  She is also an Honorary Corresponding Fellow,  British Academy of Humanities and Social Sciences.

Between 2006 and 2011, Michael Ignatieff served as an MP in the Parliament of Canada and then as Leader of the Liberal Party of Canada and Leader of the Official Opposition. He is a member of the Queen’s Privy Council for Canada and holds thirteen honorary degrees.

Between 2012 and 2015 he served as Centennial Chair at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs in New York.

Between 2014 and 2016 he was Edward R. Murrow Chair of the Press, Politics and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School.

Michael Ignatieff was until recently the Rector and President of Central European University in Budapest. He stepped down at the end of July 2021, to stay as a Professor in the History Department.

Aryeh Neier is President Emeritus of the Open Society Foundations. He served as President of the Foundations from 1993 to 2012. He was Executive Director of Human Rights Watch of which he was a co-founder in 1978. Neier served with the American Civil Liberties Union for fifteen years, including as national Executive Director from 1970 to 1978. His most recent book is The International Human Rights Movement: A History. A revised edition was published by Princeton University Press in 2020.

Neier was born in Nazi Germany in 1937. He was an infant refugee with members of his immediate family to England in 1939.

After graduating with a degree in Economics from Manchester University in 1982, Osman Kavala took over the management of Kavala Group companies. Dedicated as he was to running the family business, Osman Kavala was also deeply attuned to cultural forces affecting Turkey. In response to the oppressive atmosphere in the aftermath of the military coup on September 12, 1980, he had contributed to the foundation of İletişim Yayınları (İletişim Publishing House) in 1983 with the goal of inspiring positive social change.  The mission of İletişim Yayınları was to carry out effective, extensive and popular publishing activities that served the  democratization and civilization process in the country. In the following years, objectives such as acknowledgement of cultural diversity, dialogue on arts and culture and cultural collaboration became the cornerstones of initiatives he took part in and supported.

After partaking in relief activities in the aftermath of the 1999 earthquake, he quit his position in the business world and dedicated himself to work in the field of civil society for the betterment of all. He became one of the important actors in Turkey’s developing civil society activities during the 1990s, working in a variety of civil society organizations and projects. In 2002, he decided to focus his work  on arts and culture and founded Anadolu Kültür together with a team of like-minded individuals from the arts, business world, and civil society. The group’s objectives included enabling the production, viewing and sharing of arts and culture in Turkey, supporting local initiatives, emphasizing cultural diversity and rights and strengthening local and international collaborations. Anadolu Kültür aimed for creating a culture of peace in the society by their projects.

In the belief that a civil arts and culture initiative would serve dialogue and peace after the severe conflicts of the 1990s, Anadolu Kültür founded the Diyarbakır Arts Center (Diyarbakır Sanat Merkezi - DSM) as its first local initiative. Over time DSM became a place where artists from Istanbul and European cities visited and met local artists to design collaborative projects; a center that was open to everyone.  It also became an important platform through which individuals willing to make art in Diyarbakir could get professional support and make connections. Kars Arts Center (Kars Sanat Merkezi), another initiative that was founded in 2005, became the sole multi-purpose hall in the city. It served as a center for cultural communication and activities for individuals not only from Turkey, but also from Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan until it closed its doors in 2009.

Other projects in Anatolian cities began mainly in Antakya and Çanakkale and spread through the inclusion of cities such as Eskişehir, Gaziantep, Van, Batman and other cities. Since 2004, projects that were conducted in a variety of cities in collaboration with local administrations and arts and culture actors were intended to support arts and culture programs of municipalities and augment the role of civil initiatives in determining urban politics. In the same period, Anadolu Kültür organized arts and culture workshops for prisoners, and work produced in these workshops were exhibited and shared in the form of a publication.  

 
In 2010, during preparations for the negotiation process for Turkey’s accession to the European Union, Anadolu Kültür diversified its work to include projects to create connections between European and Anatolian cities. The objectives of these projects were to support the cultural environments in cities other than İstanbul, and to create cultural bridges between these cities and Europe in order to contribute to the European Union process of Turkey. The TANDEM program, carried out since 2011, supported long term collaborations between cultural administrators from Turkey and European countries. Participants from more than twenty cities in Turkey met with their European partners and developed projects together. BAK project, which started in 2012, brought together youth from different regions in Turkey and they worked together on collaborative artistic projects along with advisors. Anadolu Kültür, through its own centers and projects such as TANDEM, BAK and New Film Fund provides opportunities to many  arts and culture producers from Turkey to enable their projects. Another center that was founded under Anadolu Kültür in 2008 is DEPO in Tophane neighborhood. DEPO with its accessible and flexible structure aims to meet the need for an independent art space that is not commercial and open to critical voices in the Istanbul arts and culture scene.

Anadolu Kültür also carries out projects that are geared towards children facing difficult life conditions. The photography workshop for children that was held after the 2011 Van earthquake, educational projects for Ezidi refugee children and books that are prepared for Syrian refugee children in two languages are some of the prominent projects in this realm.

In order to develop regional collaboration between civil society actors and promote a culture of understanding and peace, Anadolu Kültür worked on and supported a variety of projects such as Armenia-Turkey Youth Symphony Orchestra, Speaking To One Another project that brings together youth from Armenia and Turkey for oral history studies, Armenia-Turkey Cinema Platform and concerts such as “Gomidas is 140 Years Old” and “In Memoriam”.

Another area in which Osman Kavala works is cultural heritage. In the realm of the cultural heritage, he contributed to the foundation of Association for the Protection of Cultural Heritage (Kültürel Mirası Koruma Derneği - KMKD). This foundation conducts field research and publishes reports on the preservation of mobile and immobile entities under threat, and on their restoration according to the original standards.

Osman Kavala’s main focus of work, Anadolu Kültür, celebrated its 15th anniversary in 2017. In addition to his work with Anadolu Kültür, Osman Kavala is also a founding member, board member and on the advisory board of many civil society organizations such as Open Society Foundation (Açık Toplum Vakfı), Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation (Türkiye Ekonomik ve Sosyal Etüdler Vakfı – TESEV), TEMA Foundation, History Foundation (Tarih Vakfı), Diyarbakır Political and Social Research Institute (Diyarbakır Siyasal ve Sosyal Araştırmalar Enstitüsü – DİSA), Turkish Cinema and Audiovisual Culture Foundation (Türkiye Sinema ve Audiovisuel Kültür Vakfı – TÜRSAK). As his curriculum vitae clearly evidences, Osman Kavala has dedicated his life toward building a civil and just society.

 
Osman Kavala is an individual who is sensitive to our country’s challenges and has tirelessly worked to bring people with different perspectives together in dialogue to address local and international conflicts. This dialogue both lays a foundation and charts a course for positive real world change based on peace and human rights. His work is culturally constructive, focused on building a better future for all citizens. 

 
For detailed information about Osman Kavala's civil society activities, see Civil Society Activities page. (Source)

Beyza Yazgan is a Turkish pianist. She started her doctoral studies at Warsaw Chopin Academy of Music (The Erasmus Program) and completed her degree at Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University State Conservatory with Prof.Hulya Tarcan in Istanbul. Following her doctoral degree, she earned a “Professional Studies" diploma from Mannes School of Music-The New School in Yuri Kim's studio with a full scholarship by Koç Holding (Aygaz and Tofaş / 2018).

Beyza won the first prize at the International Edirne Young Musicians Competition (2002), Success in Education Award-hosted by Koç Holding (2013), Josef Fidelman Contemporary Music Performance Award (2018), First prize at the 8th Metropolitan International Piano Competition (NYC / 2019) and First prize on solo piano and best chamber music performance award at the International Music Academy Competition in Italy (Castelnuovo di Garfagnana / 2019).

She has performed numerous times as a soloist and has toured her native Turkey giving solo recitals. She has also organized and performed benefit recitals at the British and Italian Embassies in Istanbul to fundraise and bring awareness for childhood cancers and for Syrian refugees. More recently, she performed in Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, Abrons Art Center for New York Electroacoustic Music Festival and at Teatro Alfieri in Italy.

Beyza has taken part in masterclasses by world renowned artists Gary Graffman, Oxana Yablonskaya, Richard Goode, Vladimir Feltsman, Boris Berman, Jeffrey Swann, Rolf Plagge, and Solomon Mikowsky. Her self produced debut album 'To Anatolia: Selections from the Turkish Five’ has been released by Bridge Records in 2021. Besides playing and improvising on the piano, Beyza also draws illustrations. Her latest animation ''Şu Yamaçta' has been chosen as an official selection at ‘Short to the Point’ and ‘Canlandiranlar Film Festival’. She currently lives in Brooklyn.