The year of 2018 marks a special occasion — the Centennial of the founding of Czechoslovakia. The United States has many connections to this history, including hosting Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk and other prominent Czechs and Slovaks when they signed the Pittsburgh Agreement on May 31, 1918 – the first step towards the establishment of an independent Czechoslovakia. In 2018, we plan to celebrate the centennial of U.S.-Czech relations.
U.S. President Woodrow Wilson played a major role in the establishment of Czechoslovakia on January 8, 1918 when he gave a speech outlining a set of principles to end World War I. These “14 Points” included the right of ethnic groups to form their own states, and were the basis for the union of Czechs and Slovaks. In the first part of this discussion, we will look back on the major milestones of U.S.-Czech relations over the past 100 years.
We will consider in particular how President Václav Havel, the symbol of the Velvet revolution, launched a new era in U.S.-Czech relations with his speech to the U.S. Congress in 1990.
The second part of the discussion will be focused on the future of U.S. –Czech relations, including in security, foreign policy and commerce.
The panel will include:
Kryštof Kozák, Head of the Department of NorthAmerican Studies, Charles University
Milada Polišenská, Professor of history and international relations, Anglo – American University Prague
Jiří Šedivý, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Czech Republic
Petr Gandalovič, Ambassador, Permanent Representative to the OECD
Petr Kolář, Former Ambassador of the Czech Republic to the USA and Russia
Daniel Anýž, Comentator, Hospodářské noviny
The program will be in Czech.
