some we recommend coalitions of world record jobs creators can value most
his billion dollar investment into osun scholars announced at wef 2020 https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/newsroom/george-soros-launches-global-network-to-transform-higher-education
In 2017, the Open Society Foundations announced that Soros had transferred $18 billion of his fortune into an endowment that would fund the future work of the Foundations, bringing his total giving to the Foundations since 1984 to over $32 billion.
celebrating unique movements
his celebrations of fazle abed as 20th and most valued open society laureate
his 2009 response to the subprime crisis - linking in new curricula of bottom up economics Institute for New Economic Thinking
his founding of a university - central europe that moved to vienna nov 2019 from its origin in soros' place of birth budapest - the city that at the start of the 19th century nurtured the father of programmable computing john von neumann
his support of jim kim and paul farmer in taking partners in health across the world - first tb solutions for dissidents in rural jails - later as components supporting his concerns in africa for post genocide nations eg liberia, sierra leone south sudan
being the first big funder of village phones (bangladesh) for the poorest 1996 with the quadirs at legatum mit
his support of gorbachev in setting up a noble peace laureates summit hosted out of the club of rome
during apartheid 1979 his support for black youth in south africa
it is true that his open society movement has sometimes been hijacked by rights activists who cross the line of sustainable community building; it is true he made his money by betting against paper currencies where politicians were trying to hide their folie grandeur with printing money; it is true that the EU seems to have done the opposite of listen to him at key moments but as we enter what is likely to be the decade that determines our species sustainability mother earth and youth everywhere need more george soros' not less as far as we can map
He was one of the early prominent voices to criticize the war on drugs as “arguably more harmful than the drug problem itself,” and helped kick-start America’s medical marijuana movement. In the early 2000s, he became a vocal backer of same-sex marriage efforts. Though his causes have evolved over time, they continue to hew closely to his ideals of an open society.
some related supporters
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www.opensocietyfoundations.org › boards › global-board › member
Mark Malloch-Brown is a member of the Open Society Global Board.
Andrea Soros Colombel. Global Board Member · Patrick Gaspard. Global Board Member (ex officio) ... Mark Malloch-Brown. Global Board Member ...
www.eurasiagroup.net › people › mmalloch-brown
Lord Mark Malloch‐Brown is a former number two in the United Nations as well ... boards including the International Crisis Group, the Open Society Foundation ...
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George Soros experienced ethnic and political intolerance firsthand. Born in Hungary in 1930, he lived through the Nazi occupation of 1944–1945, which resulted in the murder of over 500,000 Hungarian Jews. His own Jewish family survived by securing false identity papers, concealing their backgrounds, and helping others do the same. Soros later recalled that “not only did we survive, but we managed to help others.”
“1944, the year of the German occupation, was my formative experience. Instead of submitting to our fate we resisted an evil force that was much stronger than we were—yet we prevailed.” —George Soros
As the Communists consolidated power in Hungary after the war, Soros left Budapest in 1947 for London, working part-time as a railway porter and as a night-club waiter to support his studies at the London School of Economics. In 1956, he emigrated to the United States, entering the world of finance and investments, where he made his fortune. In 1970, he launched his own hedge fund and went on to become one of the most successful investors in the history of the United States.
George Soros used his fortune to create the Open Society Foundations—a network of foundations, partners, and projects in more than 120 countries. Our name and work reflect the influence on Soros’s thinking of the philosophy of Karl Popper, which Soros first encountered at the London School of Economics. In his book Open Society and Its Enemies, Popper argues that no philosophy or ideology is the final arbiter of truth, and that societies can only flourish when they allow for democratic governance, freedom of expression, and respect for individual rights—an approach at the core of the Open Society Foundations’ work.
George Soros began his philanthropy in 1979, giving scholarships to black South Africans under apartheid. In the 1980s, he helped promote the open exchange of ideas in Communist Hungary by funding academic visits to the West and supporting fledgling independent cultural groups, as well as other initiatives. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, he created Central European University as a space to foster critical thinking—which at that time was an alien concept for most universities in the former Communist bloc.
With the Cold War over, he gradually expanded his philanthropy to Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the United States, supporting a vast array of new efforts to create more accountable, transparent, and democratic societies. He was one of the early prominent voices to criticize the war on drugs as “arguably more harmful than the drug problem itself,” and helped kick-start America’s medical marijuana movement. In the early 2000s, he became a vocal backer of same-sex marriage efforts. Though his causes have evolved over time, they continue to hew closely to his ideals of an open society.
Highlights of George Soros and the Open Society Foundations
Starting to Build a More Open World
Central European University Opens Its Doors
His giving has reached beyond his own Foundations, supporting independent organizations such as Global Witness, the International Crisis Group, the European Council on Foreign Relations, and the Institute for New Economic Thinking.
Now in his 80s, Soros continues to take an active personal interest in the Open Society Foundations, traveling widely to support our work and advocating for positive policy changes with world leaders, both publicly and privately.
In 2017, the Open Society Foundations announced that Soros had transferred $18 billion of his fortune into an endowment that would fund the future work of the Foundations, bringing his total giving to the Foundations since 1984 to over $32 billion.
“I believe that in philanthropy one should do the right thing, whether or not it succeeds.” —George Soros
Throughout Soros’s philanthropic career, one thing has remained constant: a commitment to fighting the world’s most intractable problems. He has been known to emphasize the importance of tackling losing causes. Indeed, many of the issues Soros has taken on—and he would be the first to admit this—are the types of issues for which a complete solution might never emerge.
“My success in the financial markets has given me a greater degree of independence than most other people,” Soros once wrote. That independence has allowed him to forge his own path toward a world that’s more open, more just, and more equitable for all.
https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/voices/q-and-a-forging-a-bond-between-locals-and-refugees
https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/voices/q-and-a-forging-a-bond-between-locals-and-refugees
For more information about George Soros’s activities that are separate from the Open Society Foundations, visit georgesoros.com.
Remarks delivered at the World Economic Forum
Davos, Switzerland, January 23, 2020
We live at a transformational moment in history. The survival of open societies is endangered and we face an even greater crisis: climate change. It is threatening the survival of our civilization. These twin challenges have inspired me to announce the most important project of my life here tonight.
As I argue in my recent book, In Defense of Open Society, in a revolutionary moment the range of possibilities is far wider than in normal times. It has become easier to influence events than to understand what is going on. As a consequence, outcomes are unlikely to correspond to people’s expectations. This has already caused widespread disappointment that populist politicians have exploited for their own purposes.
Open Society has not always needed defending as it does today. Some forty years ago, when I got engaged in what I call my political philanthropy, the wind was at our back and carried us forward. International cooperation was the prevailing creed. In some ways it prevailed even in the crumbling and ideologically bankrupt Soviet Union – remember the marxist’s slogan “workers of the world unite”? In contrast, the European Union was in the ascendant and I considered it the embodiment of the open society.
But the tide turned against open societies after the crash of 2008 because it constituted a failure of international cooperation. This in turn led to the rise of nationalism, the great enemy of open society.
***
In the middle of last year I still cherished some hopes that there would be another reversal towards international cooperation. The European parliamentary elections produced surprisingly favorable results. Participation increased by 8%—the first uptick since the Parliament was established. More importantly, the silent majority spoke up in favor of greater European cooperation.
But by the end of the year my hopes were dashed. The strongest powers, the US, China and Russia remained in the hands of would-be or actual dictators and the ranks of authoritarian rulers continued to grow.
The fight to prevent Brexit—harmful both to Britain and to the EU—ended in a crushing defeat.
Nationalism, far from being reversed, made further headway. The biggest and most frightening setback occurred in India where a democratically elected Narendra Modi is creating a Hindu nationalist state, imposing punitive measures on Kashmir, a semi-autonomous Muslim region, and threatening to deprive millions of Muslims of their citizenship.
In Latin America a humanitarian catastrophe continues to unfold. By the beginning of this year almost 5 million Venezuelans had emigrated, causing tremendous disruption in neighboring countries. At the same time, Bolsonaro has failed to prevent the destruction of the rain forests in Brazil in order to open it up for cattle ranching. In a further blow, the UN climate conference in Madrid broke up without reaching any meaningful agreement.
To top it all off, Kim Jong-un threatened the United States with its nuclear capabilities in his New Year’s speech and Trump’s impetuous actions heightened the risk of a conflagration in the Middle East.
(the editors of this blog do not agree with soros view of xi jinping holding out the hope that lee kuan yew was nearer the mark in population and other sustainability perspectives must be the hardest job in the world)
Let me now turn to another vexing topic, the relationship between the United States and China. It has become incredibly complicated and difficult to understand. The interaction between the two presidents, Donald Trump and Xi Jinping, provides a useful clue. Both face internal constraints and various enemies. Both try to extend the powers of their office to its limit and beyond. While they have found some mutually beneficial reasons to cooperate, their motivations are completely different.
President Trump is a con man and the ultimate narcissist who wants the world to revolve around him. When his fantasy of becoming president came true, his narcissism developed a pathological dimension. Indeed, he has transgressed the limits imposed on the presidency by the Constitution and has been impeached for it. At the same time, he has managed to gather a large number of followers who have bought into his alternative reality. This has turned his narcissism into a malignant disease. He came to believe that he could impose his alternative reality not only on his followers but on reality itself.
Trump’s counterpart, Xi Jinping, suffered a traumatic experience in his early youth. His father had been one of the founders of the Chinese Communist Party. He was expelled, and his son, Xi Jinping, grew up in rural exile. Since that time, the goal of Xi’s leadership became to reassert the Communist Party’s dominance over Chinese life. He called it the “Chinese dream” of a “rejuvenated” China capable of projecting its power and influence throughout the world. Xi Jinping has abolished a carefully developed system of collective leadership and became a dictator as soon as he gained sufficient strength to do so.
When it comes to their motivations, they are totally different, Trump is willing to sacrifice the national interests for his personal interests and he will do practically anything to win re-election. By contrast, Xi Jinping is eager to exploit Trump’s weaknesses and use artificial intelligence to achieve total control over his people.
Xi’s success is far from assured. One of China’s vulnerabilities is that it still depends on the United States to supply it with the microprocessors it needs to dominate the 5G market and to fully implement the social credit system that is a threat to open societies.
Xi Jinping also faces some impersonal forces like demographics working against him. The one child policy, in effect until 2015, created a shortage of both young workers and child-bearing women and a surfeit of old people. These trends are bound to get worse. The decline in the working age population is now relentless.
The Belt and Road Initiative has required giving large loans, some of which will never be repaid. China can ill-afford this because its budget deficit has increased and its trade surplus has diminished. Since Xi Jinping has centralized power in his hands, China’s economic policy has also lost its flexibility and inventiveness.
To make matters worse for Xi, the Trump Administration has developed a comprehensive and bipartisan policy towards China, which has declared that China is a strategic rival. This is the only bipartisan policy that the Trump Administration has been able to produce and there is only one man who can violate it with impunity: President Trump himself.
Unfortunately from an open society point of view, he is capable of doing so, as he has demonstrated by putting Huawei on the bargaining table with Xi Jinping.
***
With this background, let me put the tumultuous events since the beginning of this year into the proper perspective.
President Trump didn’t have a strategic plan when he authorized the launching of a missile that killed the leader of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, Suleimani, and an Iraqi pro-Iranian militia commander; but he has an unfailing instinct that tells him how his faithful followers would respond to his actions. They are jubilant. This made the task of the Democrats, who impeached him, extremely difficult. The trial in the Senate is shaping up to be a strictly pro forma affair because the Republican majority in the Senate is united behind Trump—although Chief Justice Roberts, who is presiding, may surprise us.
At the same time, Trump’s economic team has managed to overheat an already buoyant economy. The stock market, already celebrating Trump’s military success, is breaking out to reach new heights. But an overheated economy can’t be kept boiling for too long.
If all this had happened closer to the elections, it would have assured his reelection. His problem is that the elections are still 10 months away and in a revolutionary situation, that is a lifetime.
From an open society point of view, the situation is quite grim. It would be easy to give in to despair, but that would be a mistake. The public is beginning to be aware of the dangers of climate change. It has certainly become the top priority of the European Union – but we can’t count on the United States while Trump is in power because he is a climate denier.
There are also grounds to hope for the survival of open societies. They have their weaknesses, but so do repressive regimes. The greatest shortcoming of dictatorships is that when they are successful, they don’t know when or how to stop being repressive. They lack the checks and balances that give democracies a degree of stability. As a result, the oppressed revolt.
We see this happening today all around the world. The most successful rebellion so far has been in Hong Kong, but it comes at a great cost: it may well destroy the city’s economic prosperity. There are so many revolts going on in the world that it would take too long to examine each case individually.
Observing this torrent of rebellions, I can venture a generalization about the ones that are likely to succeed. They are typified by Hong Kong. It has no visibly identifiable leadership and yet it has the overwhelming support of the population.
I began to form this conclusion when I learnt about a spontaneous movement of young people turning up at rallies held by Matteo Salvini, the would-be dictator of Italy. They held up cut-out signs of sardines proclaiming “sardines against Salvini,” and explaining that there are many more sardines than sharks like Salvini, so the sardines are bound to prevail.
Sardines are the Italian variant of a worldwide trend led by young people. This leads me to conclude that today’s youth may have found a way to confront nationalist dictatorships.
I see another constructive force emerging worldwide: the mayors of major cities are organizing around important issues. In Europe, climate change and internal migration are high on their agenda. This coincides with the main concerns of today’s youth. Uniting around these issues could create a powerful pro-European, pro-open society movement. But it’s an open question whether these aspirations will succeed.
***
Taking into account the climate emergency and worldwide unrest, it’s not an exaggeration to say that 2020 and the next few years will determine not only the fate of Xi and Trump, but also the fate of the world.
If we survive the near-term, we still need a long-term strategy. If Xi Jinping succeeds in fully implementing his social credit system, he will bring into existence a new type of authoritarian system and a new type of human being who is willing to surrender his personal autonomy in order to stay out of trouble. Once lost, personal autonomy will be difficult to recover. An open society would have no place in such a world.
I believe that as a long-term strategy our best hope lies in access to quality education, specifically an education that reinforces the autonomy of the individual by cultivating critical thinking and emphasizing academic freedom.
30 years ago I set up an educational institution that does exactly that. It is called the Central European University (CEU) and its mission is to advance the values of the open society.
During these 30 years, CEU emerged as one of the hundred best graduate universities in the world in the social sciences. It has also become one of the most international universities, with students from 120 countries and a faculty coming from more than 50 countries. In recent years CEU gained a global reputation for defending academic freedom against Victor Orban, Hungary’s ruler, who is hell bent on destroying it.
CEU brings together students and faculty representing very different cultures and traditions who listen to each other and debate with each other. CEU has demonstrated that active civic engagement can be combined with academic excellence.
Yet, CEU is not strong enough by itself to become the educational institution the world needs. That requires a new kind of global educational network.
Fortunately, we also have the building blocks for creating such a network: CEU and Bard College in the US are already long-term partners. CEU is a graduate institution, and Bard an innovative, mainly undergraduate liberal arts college. Both have been supported by the Open Society Foundations and encouraged to offer a helping hand to other universities and colleges worldwide. Bard and CEU have developed an array of successful relationships in the less developed parts of the world.
The time has come for OSF to embark on an ambitious plan to build on this foundation a new and innovative educational network that the world really needs. It will be called the Open Society University Network or OSUN for short.
OSUN will be unique. It will offer an international platform for teaching and research. In the first phase it will connect closer together an existing network. In the second phase, we shall open up this network to other institutions who want to join and are eager and qualified to do so.
To demonstrate that the idea is practical, we have already implemented the first phase. We are holding common classes for students from several universities located in different parts of the world, sharing faculty and conducting joint research projects in which people from many universities collaborate.
OSUN will continue in the footsteps of CEU and Bard in seeking to reach places in need of high quality education and in serving neglected populations, such as refugees, incarcerated people, the Roma and other displaced peoples like the Rohingya. OSUN, is ready to start a massive “scholars at risk” program, connecting a large number of academically excellent but politically endangered scholars with this new global network and each other.
CEU is already part of a network of European universities of the social sciences called CIVICA, which is led by Sciences Po in Paris and includes the London School of Economics. CIVICA has won a competition sponsored by the European Union requiring members of the consortium to cooperate not only in education but also in civic and international outreach. OSUN through CEU and Bard has already pioneered in these fields and we hope that members of CIVICA will become interested in joining OSUN – creating a truly global network.
To demonstrate our commitment to OSUN, we are contributing one billion dollars to it. But we can’t build a global network on our own; we will need partner institutions and supporters from all around the world to join us in this enterprise.
We are looking for farsighted partners who feel a responsibility for the future of our civilization, people who are inspired by the goals of OSUN and want to participate in its design and realization.
I consider OSUN the most important and enduring project of my life and I should like to see it implemented while I am still around. I hope that those who share this vision will join us in making it a reality.
Thank you.
update nov 2020
osun is complicated- at least 20 days of my work this year spent studying it and zooms where i could - because ultimately its every interest george soros -both open society or investment funds - has ever had or at least where education becomes his legacy-
he announced a billion dollar extra funds for the world economic forum 2019 but then covid overtook- and there is a lot of internal jealousy - reading between the lines - happy to be wrong- about 25 economists like stiglitz dont like the idea that much future soros funding is going to education coalition instead of their silos within top uni like columbia uni - to add to this complication there are only very few usa/western economists who also understand engineering and humanising AI- and keeping their trust open among american vulture macroeconomists of the trump admin isnt simple
(france may be an interesting exception depending on which part of science po is connecting the 50 colleges named)
there are actually some 11th/12th grade school networks in the list eg bard microcollege- the founder of bard leon botstein also planted microcolleges up to 30 years ago - the idea is to offer youth who may have had their education interrupted the chance to prepare for college entrance in 2 year programs - so maybe a 20 year old does 11th and 12th grade at the microcollege -brooklyn which i have spent 40 days visiting is city epicentre of these experiments- there is also a special track for youth returning from prison which offers scholarships into bard- because of a failed attempt to help yunus in historically black college entrepreneur competitions i roughly know who's hbuc vice chancellor who- sadly 90% are more concerned with their staff welfare than helping youth form coalitions- after many mis-steps clinton global university may be turning the corner in including ai lives matter graduates in its epicentre - we will see because scotland is main partner of cgi 2020 and chelsea clinton's university office is in columbia university a place where i have friends in the engineering faculty as well as asian student union subnetworks
botsteins daughter clara is also trying to broaden this idea in washington dc system- finding a school which wants to have an extra 11th 12th grade branch - this may also tarhet eg artistic students who are brilliant at experiential learning
its worth studying LEON BOTSTEIN because ultimately he is bard for over 40 years its vc and and so in ny state the local vice chancellor soros has connected with - botstein has also founded a new york orchestra and wrote the book calling for a evolution in high schools jeffersons children 1997
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my suggestion- if it works for your teams - might be issue several one page concepts: examples
something with arizona at uni tech level - try and collect transcripts of president crow if anyone wants to see them
something on dual languages connecting martas world of bilingual service communities - fabrice jaumont at french consul to un is a huge player with marta and others on this
something relevant to us livesmatter teens or11th/12th grade
or indeed anything that might fit especially in experiential learning modes
in some cases we can get an association in time to name on portal application
in some cases we can say association coming
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there is a part b- most of the deciding partners are western - however in south asia there is brac university -with the worlds largest ngo partnerships as life work of fazle abed -
one of my neighbors tutors for schwarzman as well as being unescos adviser of transnational graduate challenges - so he will interview some of the colleges eg soas to see what their practice reach can be
also one african university in ghana whose role is education system of next billion children in africa assuming africa doubles in pop by 2050- partners in it include a dean at berkeley who has remit across colleges - reason is the founder of this african university made his graduate project founding a university about 15 years ago- he had also made a living at microsoft and was awarded the main wise laureate 2017 when marta and i attended- the president of ghana also co-chairs the main sdg eminent adviser committee to un
although soros open society networking is strong in his own way in central europe and linked with the gorbachev and rome founded annual summit of nobel peace laureates - some asian neighbors on europe side- his network is pretty bare for two thirds of people who are asian- or worse where his open society has offices in some nations - they get taken over by political activists not trans-border sustainability builders- in a world moderated by fake media the two are very different creatures
this is why i am concerned with history of where fazle abed at bangladesh and with many asian ambassadors, and soros first started brainstorming 2012 why university coalition was their legacy- soros made sir fazle one of his biggest open society laureate prizes - at the same time as the prizing giving a major economics summit was hosted by soros- at the same time paul farmer of Partners in Health
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dropped in- of brac's colleges health for the poorest co-founded with unicefs james grant is asia's leading cholera expert network, as it is for infant nutrition first 1000 days and regions most efficient immunization network in association with gates; by 2005 all of soros gates jim kim and paul farmer had found each others village capabilities in health for the poorest, and had linked in with david fraser the past vice chancellor of swarthmore -an epidemiologist
sadly though this extraordinary bupapest summit 2013 was soros last gift to his birthplace budapest before politics turned nasty- ceu has been moved to vienna where it can link in to this un-city with ban ki-moon in residence for both climate adaptability and student civic engagement
as mentioned, soros also chairs a relatively closed society of around 25 eminent economists around him in new york -and they straddle his dual interest philanthropy, investment fund - but from bard who has one brilliant sdg economist who previously coordinated unctad in new york - the indication is the soros economists and the university network dont talk to each other much, and when it comes to top grade technologists the only ones i have so far found are at arizona state or in various asian universities - singapore, korea, japan that sir fazle chatted to before cancer took over
chris macrae
osun call for concepts says its partners are:
Colleges and Universities Al-Quds University/Al-Quds Bard American University of Beirut American University in Bulgaria American University of Central Asia Arizona State University Ashesi University Bard College Bard College at Simon’s Rock Bard College Berlin Bard Early Colleges Birkbeck, University of London Center BRAC University Central European University European Humanities University Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva National University of Political Studies and Public Administration, Romania Sciences Po SOAS, University of London Universidad de los Andes University of the Witwatersrand
Bard Prison Initiative Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs Chatham House Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen Institute for New Economic Thinking Parami Institute Princeton Global History Lab Rift Valley Institute The Talloires Network University of California, Berkeley Human Rights
actually there are informal partners - eg roosevelts family whose ny state country side property as a tourist site and a hi level retreat with bard- eleanors book -tomorrow is now - on social actions expectations for american youth has just been republished
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other notes - various associates are inviting anyone whose work may connect with glasgow cop26 to tell us so we can either connect you with adam smith scholars, or bangladesh friends in glasgow sir fazle's alma mater, or if thing work connect bbc nature with cop26 as well as host fringe zooms
japan has just said it wants to publish my fathers biography of john von neumann- quite remarkable because von neumann alumni study 2 main things - nuclear as well as computing and through yale brain science
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previously
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