NEWS

Written by Dr. Elizabeth Guran, FOS Board Member The Ukraine War and its impact on democratic societies was the topic of the final Student Summit sponsored by Friends of Slovakia and its partners at Matej Bel University in Banská Bystrica, Slovakia, and Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. Over 60 students from Matej Bel University, […]

This report was prepared by Dr. Elizabeth Guran, chair of the FOS Committee on Academic Exchanges. The Friends of Slovakia (FOS) International Student Summits are off and running! Two successful virtual summits were held in 2021 and a third summit will occur in April 2022. All three events address the theme, “Challenges of Democracy.” The […]

Friends of Slovakia hosted a webinar of leading experts who reviewed the most important political, social, economic, and foreign-policy implications of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine for Slovakia and beyond. 

Friends of Slovakia co-sponsored a webinar in collaboration with the Slovak American Society of Washington DC (SASW) featuring Professors Kevin Deegan-Krause and Tim Haughton who discussed their recently published co-authored book, The New Party Challenge: Changing Cycles of Party Birth and Death in Central Europe in which they examined the emergence of new parties and […]

FOS is thrilled to announce the launch of an exciting new program that aims to foster understanding, engagement, and friendship between university students from the United States and Slovakia. This unique initiative has been developed by the FOS Student Exchange Committee led by Dr. Elizabeth Guran (committee chair), and supported by other committee members including […]

November 2019 marked the 30th Anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent events that brought freedom from communist domination to many countries of the former “Soviet-bloc.”  In Czechoslovakia, public demonstrations, spearheaded by student movements, sparked the relatively peaceful downfall of the communist government and began the country’s “return to the West,” […]

On Tuesday, November 12, 2019, a forum titled Velvet @ 30: A Legacy to Uphold was held at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. The forum was co-sponsored by the Czech and Slovak Embassies in collaboration with Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service.  The event featured welcoming remarks by Joel Hellman, Dean of the Walsh […]

FOS Board members and others in the Washington foreign policy and Slovak-interest communities participated in a roundtable featuring former Slovak Ambassador Martin Bútora and his spouse, sociologist Dr. Zora Bútorová.  The ambassadorial couple served in Washington, DC from 1999-2003 and had a significant impact on Slovak-U.S. relations, as well as opening Slovakia’s new embassy building […]

On September 23, 2019 the Center for European Policy Analysis held its annual ‘CEPA Forum’ in Washington DC entitled, Transatlantic Anniversaries: Legacies and Unfinished Business.  FOS, as it has for several years, served as a co-sponsor of this prestigious event, which represents the major U.S. policy forum focusing on Central and Eastern Europe.  Among the speakers […]

At a conference held on July 17-18 in Washington, the Atlantic Council, a major U.S.-based foreign policy think tank, and GLOBSEC, a Bratislava-based security and foreign policy think tank, announced a collaboration to address current issues focusing on the central European region. At the two-day conference entitled, The United States and Central Europe: Celebrating Europe […]