Youth Democracy Forum

The Global Liberal Arts Alliance  is joining with Deree-The American College of Greece as Education Partner for the prestigious Athens Democracy Forum (ADF) to be held in Athens, Greece, September 26  to October 3, 2026. The  Forum is organized by the Democracy and Culture Foundation in association with The New York Times and attracts a broad range of participants from around the world. Panels and workshops will emphasize the “Do” part of the Democracy and Culture Foundation’s Think-Talk-Do impact chain.

Today’s democracies were built for a different era. Their structures are rigid where agility is needed, reactive where anticipation is required, and designed for thoughtful deliberation in a world reacting to exponential shocks. The challenge is not simply to defend democratic norms, but to design democratic systems capable of learning, adapting, and delivering—linking democratic legitimacy to performance, equity, and long-term security. The 2026 Forum will confront this moment by asking a philosophical and operational question: Why democracy — and how must it evolve to be fit for purpose in the 21st century?

The 2026 Forum is scheduled to include sessions on The Economics of Security; Forecasting an Autocratic Europe; Labor Pains: What is the Future of Work?; Rise of the Middle Powers; New Tools of Diplomacy; Borderline: Migration in a Hostile World; Is Knowledge Still Power?; Supercharging Civic Engagement, and a series of short Tools for Democracy sessions.

Through a two-level competitive application process, 24 students from schools in the Global Liberal Arts Alliance were selected to participate in the Forum as student delegates. We aspire for the student delegates to make meaningful contribution to the Forum, to communicate their thinking and experiences both to their home campuses and to the Alliance, and to present a plan of action to their home institutions for addressing a specific challenge identified at the Forum.