Media Releases

Munk School of Global Affairs to host a series of dialogues connecting Iranian youth inside and outside of Iran

March 4, 2014

TORONTO, ON – The Munk School of Glob­al Affairs at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to is pleased to present a series of inter­ac­tive con­ver­sa­tions that will take place in Berlin, Toron­to, Lon­don, and Sil­i­con Val­ley – all live online – dur­ing the first week of March 2014. These dis­cus­sions will bring togeth­er experts, thought- lead­ers, media, and entre­pre­neurs from the inter­na­tion­al Iran­ian com­mu­ni­ty togeth­er vir­tu­al­ly with youth inside Iran to share a broad range of views on Iran’s future.

Each of these events will be broad­cast live in Far­si and will address top­ics that specif­i­cal­ly mat­ter to Iran­ian youth: entre­pre­neur­ship, media and jour­nal­ism, infor­ma­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion tech­nol­o­gy, human rights and civ­il soci­ety, and more. Each of these dia­logue themes were informed by an online sur­vey con­duct­ed with over 19,000 Ira­ni­ans inside Iran.

The aim of this series is to facil­i­tate a dig­i­tal, transna­tion­al con­ver­sa­tion between young Ira­ni­ans both inside Iran and the glob­al Dias­po­ra com­mu­ni­ty. Iran­ian youth pos­sess a great deal of tal­ent and exper­tise, how­ev­er, geo­graph­ic and polit­i­cal con­straints ren­der it dif­fi­cult for these two groups to open­ly and eas­i­ly con­verse. These events are intend­ed to help open a wider plat­form for young Ira­ni­ans to engage in dis­cus­sion with their inter­na­tion­al coun­ter­parts on top­ics that mat­ter most to them.

Lever­ag­ing pop­u­lar social media plat­forms along with Psiphon’s cen­sor­ship cir­cum­ven­tion tech­nol­o­gy (orig­i­nal­ly devel­oped at the Munk School), the Glob­al Dialogue’s plat­form engages an audi­ence of over one mil­lion users inside Iran. Infor­ma­tion on the loca­tions and details on the events and pan­elists can be found on the Glob­al Dia­logue web­site at:  theglobaldialogue.ca

Visit the offi­cial web­site: theglobaldialogue.ca

How to watch:  theglobaldialogue.ca    OR   youtube.com/theglobaldialogue

Where to ask ques­tions / Share in the dis­cus­sion: Ask a ques­tion via Face­book, Twit­ter, or ask/vote anony­mous­ly via Google Mod­er­a­tor.

Twit­ter:                                             twitter.com/gdfilive

Face­book:                                         facebook.com/theglobaldialogue

Google Mod­er­a­tor:                         goo.gl/mod/Iccm

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For media enquiries, con­tact:

Sean Wil­lett
Chief of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions
Munk School of Glob­al Affairs
sean.willett@utoronto.ca