2022
CAMDEN CONFERENCE
EUROPE: CHALLENGED AT HOME AND ABROAD
February 25-27, 2022 | Camden, ME
- 10
Days
2022 CONFERENCE
EUROPE: CHALLENGED AT HOME AND ABROAD
February 25-27, 2022
The 2022 Camden Conference theme will be Europe today – what is happening and what we can anticipate. Europe’s leaders and citizens are facing pervasive economic, political and social challenges, some exacerbated by the global pandemic. How cohesive is the European Union? Where are populist movements headed, and where are democratic institutions under threat? What will happen to the European-United States bond as a new generation of leaders pursue their own agendas with Russia, China, and other countries? When can we rely on Europe, and can Europeans rely on us?
PLEASE NOTE/UPDATE! On December 30, the Camden Conference Board of Directors decided that the 35th annual conference, Europe: Challenged at Home and Abroad, will be will be an entirely virtual, live-streamed event. We had high hopes for coming together at the Strom Auditorium on the weekend of February 25-27, but the current COVID-19 pandemic conditions have made this decision necessary and prudent. Among the factors leading the Board to this decision were the sudden rise of the Omicron variant, continuing spikes in the Delta variant, and the chaos in air travel. So, we are going all-virtual in 2022 but look forward to getting back together in Camden in 2023.
We hope you will enjoy participating in the virtual conference from the safety and comfort of your home.
Registration for the virtual 2022 Camden Conference is now open!
SPEAKERS
Keynote Speaker
Stavros Lambrinidis
Stavros Lambrinidis is the Ambassador of the European Union to the United States, as of March 1, 2019. From 2012 to 2019, he served as the European Union Special Representative for Human Rights. In 2011, he was Foreign Affairs Minister of Greece. Between 2004 and 2011, he was twice elected Member of the European Parliament (MEP) with the Greek Social Democratic Party (PASOK). He served as Vice-President of the European Parliament (2009-11), Vice-President of the Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs Committee (2004-09), and Head of the PASOK Delegation (2005-11).
Between 2000 and 2004, he was Director-General of the International Olympic Truce Centre, an International Olympic Committee organization.
He served as Ambassador ad personam of the Hellenic Republic (1999-2004) and as Secretary-General of the Greek Foreign Ministry responsible for Diaspora Greeks (1996- 99).
Between 1988 and 1993, he was an Attorney at Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering in Washington, D.C., specializing in international trade, transactions, and arbitration.
He has received numerous recognitions for his work on human rights and privacy, including the Electronic Privacy Information Center’s “Champion of Freedom Award” in 2020 and the Boston Global Forum’s “World Leader in Artificial Intelligence Award” in 2021. He is a member of the President’s Council on International Activities at Yale University and a former president of the DC Bar Association’s Human Rights Committee.
Mr. Lambrinidis was born in Athens, Greece in 1962. He received his B.A. degree in Economics and Political Science from Amherst College (1984) and his J.D. degree from Yale Law School (1988), where he was also Managing Editor of The Yale Journal of International Law. He is a 1980 graduate of the Athens College High School in Greece. He is married and has a daughter.
Moderator
David Brancaccio
David’s work has earned some of the highest honors in broadcast journalism, including the Peabody, the Columbia-duPont, the Emmy, and the Walter Cronkite awards. His feature-length documentary film about economic alternatives entitled Fixing the Future was released in theaters nationwide in 2012 and is now available from Netflix, iTunes, and on-demand cable television.
He is author of a book about Americans applying their personal values to their money, entitled Squandering Aimlessly. David has a BA from Wesleyan
University and an MA in journalism from Stanford University. He is married to Mary Brancaccio, a poet and educator. He grew up in Waterville, Maine and also attended schools in Madagascar, Ghana, and Italy. He enjoys public speaking, moderating, bicycling and photography.
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 25
7:30PM OPENING REMARKS
KEYNOTE: “DEMOCRACY, THE GLOBAL ECONOMY, AND CLIMATE UNDER PRESSURE: IS TRANSATLANTIC DIPLOMACY ABLE TO SAVE THEM?”
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 26
8:45AM-10:15AM “CHALLENGES TO EUROPE WHOLE AND FREE”
10:15AM-10:45AM BREAK
10:45-12 NOON “ECONOMIC CHALLENGES”
12 NOON -1:30PM BREAK
1:30PM-3:00PM “US-EUROPEAN RELATIONS”
3:00PM-3:30PM BREAK
3:30PM-4:45PM “CONNECTIONS AND DISORDER”
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 27
8:45AM-10:30AM “EUROPE’S FOREIGN POLICY CHALLENGES”
10:30AM-11:00AM BREAK
11:00AM-12:15PM FINAL PANEL OF ALL SPEAKERS
SUGGESTED READING LIST
Bickerton, Chris. The European Union: A Citizen’s Guide. Pelican Books, 2016.
The European Union-its history, its politics and its role today.
Bindi, Federiga, Editor. Europe and America: The End of the Transatlantic Relationship. Brookings Institution Press, 2019.
An assessment of the consequences of the retreat of the US for the international order and Europe.
Bradford, Anu. The Brussels Effect: How the European Union Rules the World. Oxford University Press, 2020.
An argument that the EU remains an influential superpower that shapes the world in its image by promulgating regulations, elevating standards worldwide and leading to a notable Europeanization of many important aspects of global commerce.
LOGIN, JOIN, SUPPORT & REGISTER
EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITIES
The Camden Conference thanks teachers and students who attended the 34th annual virtual Camden Conference, THE GEOPOLITICS OF THE ARCTIC: A REGION IN PERIL, February 20 – 21, 2021.
Students who attended were invited to submit essays to our annual Bill Taylor Award Essay Contest. The winners are below.
The Camden Conference is approved for 1.5 Continuing Education Units for teachers!
TESTIMONIALS
The weekend couldn't have been better planned or managed. What a rich and charming experience it was.
….the speakers were all first-rate and were all lovely individuals, and Indira Lakshmanan was everything you could ask for in a moderator. The venue, the peripheral events, the flow of the programming, the questions we got from the audience – all of it was a delight. I think the format, especially, is something I might want to draw on for other conferences I'm involved in… In short, I've been to many, many conferences as this certainly rates as among the very best.
What a phenomenal and timely program. Every speaker and every panel hit it out of the park. While we were reviewing how much my wife and I learned over the weekend, I realized that the speakers themselves very likely learned or developed new ideas themselves. And since they have a far larger impact on the events of the day, their experience from the weekend may have even more value than ours. Thank you to the Camden Conference. Five stars to the Camden Conference organization.
I was impressed by the skills, background and range of speakers … I feel fortunate to have had the opportunity to attend such a conference.
I found this year’s Camden Conference to be absolutely amazing. For me, it was … one continuous increasingly gratifying experience from beginning to end. The panel members were all extremely knowledgeable in their areas of expertise. They were articulate and they all were extremely insightful. They truly were committed to helping all of us become better informed about this chaotic world we live in. The panel represented such a wonderful degree of diversity. More importantly is the fact that such diversity could have differing opinions and find common ground.
I found this the most relevant and meaningful Conference I’ve attended (and I’ve attended a lot). A wonderful, stimulating event in mid-winter Maine. I plan to attend the Conference annually.” Conference attendee
“The audience was very engaged, the questions were excellent, and it was very stimulating to hear people with diverse opinions debate with each other.
Camden is the next Davos!
Thank you again for inviting me to the Camden Conference, which was truly a wonderful experience. As I have told colleagues and friends everywhere, it was one of the best organized and best attended conferences I have ever spoken at. It was also, even more importantly, one of the most interesting. What a great cast of speakers. Please call upon me again if you think I will fit the topic of a future conference.
The conference, in my opinion was as good as I could hope for. It was wonderful. Such a terrific and credentialed and scholarly faculty. It was tremendous. And I learned a huge amount. I might not be so stupid when I hear talk about immigration and consider inserting my “two cents worth” - Thank you for a wonderful educational experience. Learning never hurts
…The Camden Conference just might be the best conference of its type in the United States.
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