George Soros Shares His Vision for CEU's New School of Public Policy and International Affairs

George Soros Shares His Vision for CEU's New School of Public Policy and International Affairs

CEU Founder and Honorary Chairman of the Board George Soros participated in the inaugural conference of CEU's new School of Public Policy and International Affairs (SPPIA) on April 24. He engaged in a conversation titled “A Global Public Policy School for the 21st Century – My Vision,” moderated by Leonard Bernardo, associate director of Open Society Foundations (OSF) and director of Open Society Fellowship.

Soros confirmed his hope that the school will train the next generation of global leaders to promote open societies, particularly those engaged in civil society organizations. He also discussed his idea to create close links between SPPIA and OSF, among others, in order to make the fruits of OSF’s intellectual labor widely available as public goods. 

Soros characterized many of the problems that OSF addresses as some of the world's biggest and most difficult. “If you do the thinking publicly and you convert it into a body of knowledge which is a contribution to the public good, and if you can also convert it into a curriculum that can be taught, that's really the interest that the Open Society Foundations and I have in the School of Public Policy,” Soros said.

Earlier in the conference, SPPIA’s Inaugural Dean Wolfgang Reinicke outlined the difficult context in which the school sets off, citing a number of major failures of public policy, and argued that addressing these challenges requires an entrepreneurial and innovative approach, which contextualizes knowledge and underscores the importance of learning from mistakes. Soros echoed his sentiments. “Part of critical thinking is a recognition that our understanding of the world in which we participate is inherently imperfect,” he said. “Nevertheless, we have to act. We have to make decisions understanding that we may be wrong. One could even take it a little bit further and say, practically, inevitably, you will be wrong and therefore you must be ready to correct your mistakes.”

Soros was instrumental in launching SPPIA in September 2011. Over the next 16 months, the school will concentrate on hiring its founding faculty, developing its flagship Master of Public Policy program and hosting a number of executive education seminars. SPPIA will welcome its first students in the fall of 2013.