The Aspen Seminar

The Aspen Seminar, held in English and in collaboration with The Aspen Institute, followed the same format as the previous session in Como. Participants included Aspen Junior Fellows, Ordinary and Sustaining Members of Aspen Italia, Friends of Aspen and young leaders from several different countries. The varied provenance, age and professions of participants made for a particularly lively discussion. Participants, inspired by the reading of twenty-one different extracts from classic and contemporary texts, focused on universal values and their relationship with modern decision-making. Participants read from Creonte, Hobbes and Hernando de Soto; they considered Machiavelli’s Medieval admonitions, recent Hutu cruelty in Rwanda and current DNA research. This edition of the Seminar too included a brief production of Sophocles’ Antigone, inspiring further discussion of ethics and leadership.