The 2025 Gabby Awards – “Goddesses in our Mist”: Constructing class, cultural and gender identity in Greek America

[tentative thoughts on the announcement of The 2025 Gabby Awards – “Goddesses in our Mist” (June, NYC)]

Written with multiple audiences in mind, including of course researchers working on the question of gender, class, and ethnic intersectionality

I read about the upcoming 2025 Gabby Awards. This year the event centers on the “telling [of] a fascinating story of Goddesses in our Midst and recognizing a pantheon of 20 dynamic women from throughout North America our very own modern day goddesses who strive for excellence in all they do and work tirelessly to make the world around them a better place. We are telling a story of 20 ordinary women whose impact is EXTRAORDINARY.”

https://greekamerica.org/gabbyawards2025/?fbclid=IwY2xjawNc8RpleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHlW7ZhAErezFH6v_C3aaN6dkhqtWI42szZZXwgbSTJSrVqlTzm3ocw7csOgJ_aem_NGtzM1U2Vfly6SUARqtXiA

This is a black-tie event, the general individuals ticket costing $1,000. There are several titles of sponsors ranging from between the highest 250,000 (the Title Sponsor [one left]) to the lowest 5,000 (Bronze Sponsor). I have listened to speeches from past events celebrating a range of inclusions. But this caters exclusively to the Greek American professional middle/upper middle class and those who afford to aspire to belong to it.

 
I (re)read the values guiding the sponsoring organization of this event, the Greek America Foundation: its “firm mission [is] to emphasize ideals such as philanthropy, the pursuit of excellence and innovation — all core components of the Greek existence.” The now ubiquitous philotimo is also highlighted.

I recall the narrative that equates philotimo with the “Greeks doing the right thing” in history. The right thing for this class of Greek Americans is charity, philanthropy, the pursuit of excellence, philanthropy toward vulnerable populations in Greece.

 
What is this event all about? At the most basic level, certainly, the identity construction of a group around shared ideals. It brings together class (middle/upper middle), cultural identity, gender. An example of intersectionality, an academic would put it.

My thinking veers to certain Greek American realities––more accurately issues––that the introduction to this Gala refrains from addressing.

Soaring real estate prices hurting working class and lower-middle class Greek Americans, particularly in New York City where the gala takes place. (and benefitting multiple home owners and those in the real estate business.)

Intra-ethnic divisions along US political affiliation. I assume that the attendees represent a wide spectrum of party affiliations. Do they understand philotimo and philoxenia and doing the right thing in the same manner? An educated guess is they do not. What does making “the world a better place” mean for the various attendees? What is the price paid for this kind of construed unity?

 
I think of intra-ethnic exploitation, newly arriving immigrants in need being vulnerable to it. Also, of class-arrogance among nouveau rich Greek Americans toward their poorer relatives in the Bay Area, all well documented. Real practices do not correspond to the touted ideals.

As I noted, in the advertisement of the event we witness the normative construction of ethnicity/diaspora as shared ideals. At the same time, the narrative refrains from connecting the ideals it celebrates with real problems confronting sectors of Greek America. The event refrains from taking positions and working toward systemic solutions.

 
As it is often noted, to gain acceptance and appeal to members of the assimilated middle-class, ethnicity is depoliticized, hiding its internal tensions and conflicts, refraining from acknowledging socioeconomic hierarchies which charity might somewhat (and temporarily) alleviate but cannot (or is unwilling to) solve.
Reproducing dominant values (philanthropy, socioeconomic success, innovation, creativity, resilience, entrepreneurship self-determination) couched in cultural terms, ethnicity becomes yet another building block of assimilation, this time into middle-class interests which seeks to secure.

But an important step is due: probe carefully the cultural work of the honorees and explore what kind of nuances and complexities might bring to both the idealizations of the event and this initial commentary.

Yiorgos Anagnostou

May 8, 2025

The Production of Greek American Heritage

It was in the early 2000s when Steve Frangos gave a name to the then intensifying cultural phenomenon of grass roots activism to preserve community history and heritage. He called it “a new preservation movement.”

Since that time this activism has been burgeoning, the question of preservation propels all kinds of projects: production of oral histories and documents (production and not collection because the knowledge one gets about the past depends on who is interviewed, the questions asked, or the archives researched). There have been documentaries, workshops, the writing of histories.

The question of preservation inevitably raises an array of sub-questions: who decides what merits preservation? What heritages have been historically neglected or even censored? Why is it that some major projects to create a Greek American archive have not been supported by national organizations which celebrate heritage? Why some of our institutions with the stated mission to produce historical memory have been notoriously selective in their curation?

With the exception of a few scattered accounts, I have not seen a serious national discussion on these issues.

Preservation projects often attach value to their work by asking how the pasts they produce help answer the (identity) question “who we are”––which obviously can only be answered in the plural form. We cannot genuinely explore this question without openly engaging with the sub-questions I indicate above. Who are we when we routinely celebrate heritage but lack a substantive national policy and the allocation of funds for its (inclusive) research, documentation, analysis, and broad dissemination?

These were my thoughts a few nights ago while listening to the interview Meletios Poulopoulos, founder of the Greek Cultural Resources (https://greekculturalresources.org/index.html), gave for the Oral History Archives of the Hellenic American Project at Queens College, CUNY. Let us really listen to what Meletios is telling us (https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=1182953000332084&set=a.135519291742132). It should serve as the starting point for a broader conversation, action, and policy.

Yiorgos Anagnostou

September 25, 2025

Greek Diasporas: Cultural Activism and Self-reflection

An idea has been hovering in Greek America, Greek Australia, and Greek Canada: it is time for Greek diasporas to start speaking with each other, comparing experiences, similarities, and differences.

It is a beneficial conversation. It will focus on the issues the diasporas confront and deliberate, and contribute to self-understanding.

Why compare Greek diasporas?

The prevailing narrative largely views the “diaspora” exclusively with Greece as the hub, neglecting for the most part these issues. We need a comparative project focused on us.

Comparing diasporas presents vast challenges. Each diaspora (Greek Australia, Greek Canada) is internally diverse. It is one thing to grow up middle-class Greek in multiethnic Los Angeles and working-class in the close-knit ethnic communities in the largely homogeneous rural Ohio. Greeks in the province of Quebec, where the official language is French, negotiate their identity differently than those in the Anglophone province of Ontario. What is more, each diaspora is shaped by the ever-changing political, economic and ideological forces of its home society (say “white Australia policy” vs multicultural Australia).

Each diaspora, therefore, is a heterogeneous and dynamic phenomenon–not a monolithic entity; it needs understanding in specific contexts and the study of scattered archives. The comparative project is time-consuming and requires considerable human and material resources.

One way to tackle this complexity is to center research around a particular topic: language preservation, for example, which generates a great deal of interest; or histories of working-class experiences, relatively neglected today.

The limits of Greek America’s approach

The question I wish to focus on in this writing is most vocally expressed in Greek Australia and Greek Canada, and with less intensity in Greek America. It involves reflection on three interrelated issues. First, how does the community support learning of a diaspora’s multifaceted history and culture; second, how to promote creative expressions–via various media–of the diasporic and immigrant experience; and third, how to sustain a rigorous public sphere which disseminates and deliberates on the significance of this cultural output.

I call the interest in advocating these practices “diaspora cultural activism.”

In this conversation, I note that this cultural activism is not at the centre of Greek America’s priorities, a puzzling situation given the emphasis on paideia as a core value of its identity. I sketch a tentative answer with the following comparative aim in mind: How does cultural activism in Greek Canada and Greek Australia provide a model for those advocating it in Greek America?

Each diaspora, therefore, is a heterogeneous and dynamic phenomenon–not a monolithic entity; it needs understanding in specific contexts and the study of scattered archives.

I focus here on those conditions that have historically compromised Greek America’s commitment to genuine self-exploration. I identify four historical and cultural forces that have compromised this development.

Politics of pride and identity

To start with we have the cultural politics of ethnic pride. Like many European American groups, Greek America entered US multiculturalism via a celebratory narrative of socioeconomic success, pride in heritage and culture. Its self-representations tout the group as ethnoreligious and family-oriented. They aspire to be seen as model ethnics who have fulfilled the prevailing American ideology of bootstrap mobility.

Projecting this positive image matters more than acknowledging the actual social experience. Experiences such as intra-ethnic exploitation, ethnocentrism, significant support for the junta (by a group priding itself as the cradle of democratic principles), illegalities, consent of some demographics to racist segregation, interfered with the good name of the group. They were therefore excluded from public narratives. A commitment to historical understanding and recognition of its internal plurality was sacrificed in exchange for an idealised public image as a source of prestige to the group.

Second, at play is the institutional marginalisation of Greek American studies. Though Greek America supported academic modern Greek Programs, the major mandate was the teaching of Greek language and modern Greek culture, not Greek American studies. A critical mass of scholars was drawn to the study of Greek Nobel prize poets and internationally celebrated writers rather than the immigrant experience. Greek American learning was sidelined in the academy in general and was marginalised in Modern Greek Studies programs. Diasporic self-understanding and the recognition of Greek American arts suffered major setbacks.

Third, in America, the ethnoreligious model of community organisation dominates, contrasting with the strong presence of secular communities in Greek Australia and Greek Canada. In conjunction with what sociologist Charles Moskos calls the Greek American conservative ethos–– with “even a trace of anti-intellectualism”–– the ethnoreligious community was hostile to experimental arts, expression of non-normative identities (LGBTQ), and new ideas in activism for social change (feminism, for example), among other initiatives. Denied a nurturing environment, Greek American artists and intellectuals turned their backs on the community as intellectual participants. A tradition of critical reflection never took root within the parishes.

Last but not least, Greek American intellectuals and artists have been an exiled minority. The normative emphasis on college education as the means for social mobility weakened Greek Americans in the arts, the humanities and the social sciences. Community conservatism displayed no patience with critical ideas and ideals. During the post-1960s immigration wave, there was no robust labour movement to nourish social critique. Some thinkers persisted, writing about neglected aspects of the immigrant experience, promoting Greek American learning in journals they created, while others, tired, turned into silence or left the country.

For all these reasons, Greek America has largely compromised its commitment to critical self-understanding, recognition of its multiplicity, and critical historical learning. It operates as an insecure minority that opts for positive caricaturing, denying its contradictions, faults, and innovative ideas, ultimately its human complexity.

Lessons from Australia and Canada

But an alternative paradigm has been emerging in Greek Canada and Australia. Communities advocate historical and cultural self-understanding, promoting this project via partnerships with universities. They fund the making of professional diaspora archives and their research. In the spirit of cultural democracy, books feature the internal diversity of the group, including stories previously taboo for families and communities. Diaspora artists are invited to present their work in community fora. Secular communities feature public talks about civic issues at the home society. Educators encourage high school children to craft their stories about growing up Greek Australian. Perhaps opening up school curricula to diaspora material is the next step, if this is not already happening?

Community leaders are aware of course, that historical education will produce knowledge which might be unflattering to the group. But their support takes a vital step toward liberating the diaspora from the tyranny of the model ethnic ethos of self-censorship. It puts in practice the ideals of paideia and democratic inclusion.

In this paradigm, we witness a radical redefinition of success, prestige, and pride. The reputation of diaspora Greeks is not based on sugarcoated images but actual civic and cultural contributions. Learning about the experiences of a group is also learning about the home society. Cultural activism in the diaspora enriches the literary, cultural and historical fabric of both the group and the home nation. Pride rests not on cultural myths but creative participation.

Cultural activism in practice

In Greek America’s effort to empower cultural activism, Greek Australia and Greek Canada offer valuable examples. This is not as straightforward as it might appear. The political landscapes and modes of multiculturalism in Australia, Canada, and the United States vary. The conditions for cultural activism in each diaspora are different. But if we are true to our ideals, the cause is worth fighting even in the most adverse of circumstances. Cultural activism is a work in progress, requiring considerable human and material resources as well as the fearless political will of leaders and institutions.

Note: This piece was published in the Greek Australian newspaper Neos Kosmos, August 16, 2025

Yiorgos Anagnostou 

On the question of Global Hellenisms and "a metropolitan center"

Thinking about Modern Greek Programs and academic units in Australia, Canada, France, Greece, UK and US among others being at the forefront of knowledge production about the Greek diasporas

Thinking of artists, authors, poets, translators connected with Greek heritage or culture and living outside Greece earning distinction for their work across the world

These plain facts obviously de-center the notion of Greece as the metropolitan center of "global Hellenism"

Modern Greek studies, it follows, are implicated in transnational networks and constellations beyond Greece as its center.

07/23/2025

Reflections on a Greek American Bibliography

I recently read with interest the entries under the section “The Greek Diaspora and Greek Emigration: Australia, Canada, Germany, and the United States,” in The Oxford Handbook of Modern Greek History. It was good to see the topic of migration and diaspora included in this volume and prestigious venue, even in a separate unit and this comparative modality.

Crafting an entry in the genre of handbooks is no small task. Authors are called to meander through a longue durée of time and somehow manage to do justice to multifaced historical trajectories. A century and more of history in some of our cases in less than 2,000 words. Achieving this representation requires a bird’s eye view of history, the power relations traversing through it, and intimate knowledge of its specifics to draw a meaningful survey bringing in conversation the general and the particular, the canonical and the unorthodox, the conventional and the innovative.

 
While reading “The Greek Diaspora and Greek Emigration” there were moments when I marveled at the authors’ dexterity to negotiate the challenges of the genre.

I was surprised though by the range of the bibliography and the scope of the recommended “further readings” of the Greek American entry. It cites several standard resources from conventional Greek American historiography (Theodore Saloutos, Charles Moskos,) but leaves out a host of publications which have been advancing the field since the 1990s toward previously uncharted research domains.

Going over the list, several missing scholarly contributions cascaded through my mind. They are books which

(a) were published by prestigious US University Presses

(b) opened new conceptual spaces, advancing the field in conversation with theories of diaspora, migration, subjectivity

(c) have been widely discussed by US diaspora and migration scholars

(d) have been extensively cited by prominent scholars and the next generation of researchers

(e) offer examples of powerfully written, sophisticated and innovative analyses of new research domains

There is also major articles or book chapters carving new directions for the field.

Those of us who know the field we automatically recognize these omissions. It is puzzling. But one of the major sources of power associated with this genre is to orient contemporary (and future) readers who are not familiar with the histories, debates, contributions of this field. It involves a gesture of power toward the making of a canon.

A comprehensive bibliography is of course not possible in this case due to the limitations of the genre. But the task (in fact the responsibility) is to come up with a more expansive pool of resources than the one offered here. To foreground the polyvocality of the field and its multifaceted directions.

I see that the volume is in Progress. I hope that the editors will take the step to rectify this one problematic aspect of the contribution.

 
https://academic.oup.com/.../chapter-abstract/523978577...

Yiorgos Anagnostou

July 11

Η Αόρατη Ελληνική Διασπορά – «Παγκόσμια ελληνική διασπορά» πέρα από εθνοτική καταγωγή

Η φίλη μου η Τ που μεγάλωσε στην Ελλάδα με την βοήθεια των μεταναστών γονέων της από την Αλβανία που μετανάστευσε στην Αμερική και που διαβάζει παθιασμένα ελληνική λογοτεχνία την οποία σπουδάζει. Ο φημισμένος μας γκλόμπαλ μπραντ Γιάννης που από την Αμερική υποστηρίζει υλικά την γειτονιά που μεγάλωσε. Ο γνωστός μου Κ με γονείς από Αιθιοπία, γεννημένος στην Πάτρα τώρα μετανάστης στο Λονδίνο που από μικρός καλλιεργεί τις (τώρα απέραντες) γνώσεις του για την Ελληνική μουσική και πειραματίζεται με πολυπολισμικες διασταυρώσεις.

Αυτοί οι τρεις άνθρωποι και άλλοι εκατό και χιλιάδες που οι βιογραφίες τους συνδέουν τις καταγωγές τους με την εμπλοκή τους και καλλιέργεια της ελληνική κουλτούρας -και σε σχέση με άλλες- έξω από τα σύνορα. Αυτοί που το αφήγημα της διασποράς ως ομογένεια όμως τους αποκλείει. Αποτελούν την αόρατη Ελληνική διασπορά.

Αυτά τα θέματα περιφέρονται στην σκέψη μου καθώς μελετώ πρωτοποριακά κείμενα από την δεκαετία του 1990 περί παγκόσμιου Ελληνισμού ως παιδεία. Πέρα από την ομογένεια λοιπόν, κάτι που είχα επισημάνει στο παρακάτω, και τώρα προσκαλεί συστηματική σκέψη προς ένα εναλλακτικό αφήγημα.

 
Δες, «O Γιάννης Αντετοκούμπο, ζωντανή μαρτυρία της αδυναμίας του όρου «ομογένεια» να εκφράσει τη δυναμική της διασποράς στην Αμερική».

https://booksjournal.gr/kritikes/koinonia/4707-i-diaspora-metaksy-kainotomias-kai-koinoy-topou

Γιώργος Αναγνώστου

Ιούλιος 11, 2025

A few thoughts about Greek transnational/diaspora studies and the next generation of researchers

Context

The last four months, amid global turmoil and regional devastation, I have been striving to continue my critical work on diaspora, in a project taking up the construction of “Global Hellenism.” I would have never advanced this work without the benefit of pioneering research achieved by scholars from the previous generation but also my contemporaries. Feeling a sense of gratitude and intellectual debt, my thoughts also veered toward the next generation in the context of the current state of the field of diaspora studies, still short of human and institutional resources. I felt compelled to share the following, initially intended as a conclusion to my writing (still in progress) with the community of modern Greek studies scholars and the broader public.

The Text

As I move toward concluding this writing, I think about the question of the next generation of modern Greek transnational/diaspora scholars. I recall the intellectual resources my generation inherited but also the challenges it confronted. I feel immensely grateful to those intellectual ancestors who produced quality scholarship, boldly taking risks to challenge canonical renderings of diaspora and "Hellenism," opening new routes for critical inquiry, raising the bar while freeing us to explore new research questions.

But I also remember, so viscerally, the embodied frustration about the vast knowledge gaps in the field due to the limited human resources and institutional power. As a result, a great deal of labor was necessary––excavating tunnel after tunnel it was exhausting––to be able to cross into new research frontiers.

The wide circulation of narrow and essentialist identity narratives in the public sphere also presented an impediment for advancing the field. Those of us working against this reductive cultural politics had to invest vast energies in demonstrating the self-evident reality of the diaspora as a heterogeneous field. It involved practicing scholarship as intervention, calling for inclusion of subjectivities, histories, and experiences not fitting normative simplifications. This critical work was urgent, we felt, to engage students, scholars of diasporas; also the public, community institutions. But in a weak and reticent diasporic public sphere this latter enterprise faced difficulties.

Though nation-centric narratives of diaspora still reign supreme in state and popular discourse, the critical corpus above was successful in carving alternative academic and public spaces for thinking and writing diaspora. Sectors in the academy cultivated it, graduate students were exposed to new ideas, a range of academic and popular journals were receptive. Though commanding a relative limited academic space, critical diaspora studies were effective in moving the conversation toward regional particularities, class and gender-specificities, silenced pasts, the making of bicultural selves, issues of ethnics and politics in cultural representation, transnational inquiries, diasporic citizenship, diaspora solidarities with vulnerable groups. There were significant gains, but a great deal of work remains to be done. Not everyone found critical self-reflection a compelling practice.

The next generation enters this field inheriting a significant corpus of work, but also still confronting major lacunas in knowledge. They do so while entering a market of limited academic opportunities in Greek diaspora studies at a time when critical scholarship finds itself under duress. The global tendencies of governments to tightly regulate multiculturalism and the simultaneous ascendancy of national historiographies and popular celebrations of heritage makes critical scholarship at best unpopular at worse undesirable and target of nationalist critique. Junior scholars embracing post-colonial projects are chastised in public as unpatriotic. Funding for such scholarship may be limited, magnifying opportunities for those who safely pursue complacent research. Once again, the next generation is confronted with cultural fronts which we thought, until recently, that we left behind. We now return to the struggle for asserting the value of diverse historiographies.

Greek diaspora studies carry limited academic capital and operate with limited human and financial resources. The Greek state and community organizations invest a great deal in promoting their own identity narratives but not in advancing a multifaceted public conversation by empowering reflective academic studies. In the diaspora governmental economy of positing diasporas as global players in advancing national interests, enhancing cultural prestige and status, knowledge production is hierarchical. Projects reflecting on improving “diaspora homeland” relations enjoy support by state and financial institutions vested in this relationship. Research that places limits in its critique of institutions enjoys great visibility while work interrogating dominant ideologies is still sidelined. This while spaces of critical freedom seem to be shrinking.

In the current global dynamic, under dramatic changes whose implications are difficult to foresee, diasporas serve as tools for states, elites, and institutions to advance their political, economic and national interests. Identity narratives privilege certain modalities of practices––investments, political support, philanthropy, transfers of professional expertise, cultural preservation, empowering local institutions––while displacing others. Questions regarding poverty in the diaspora, struggles for coping with soaring real estate prices, inter-ethnic and intra-ethnic exploitation fall outside the purview of this discourse. Scholars face the task of addressing these issues. But how to advance this remapping when academic positions are scarce and globalization contributes to the proliferation of new collectives, initiatives, institutions, cultural expressions, discourses. Diaspora studies lack adequate resources to meaningfully keep pace with these new articulations.

What is it to be done? There are no easy answers. In this juncture, we will do well to once again remind ourselves that modern Greek studies *is* transnational modern Greek studies. Let us also note that questions of globality intensify and expand the scope of this field where diaspora studies indeed cross paths with modern Greek studies, a potentially powerful academic partner (in the context of a historically uneasy relationship). Scholars may wish to consider position papers and essays as ways of contributing, though this practice does not often translate into academic credentials. Tenured scholars are best positioned pragmatically for this kind of tactical interventions. We may wish to think of edited volumes on diasporic literature, archives, popular culture, civic activism, solidarities with persecuted or devalued demographics, the arts. Anthologies of poetry and short stories. Enter in dialogue with think tanks and journalists. One major fight is for continuing critical scholarship producing knowledge raising questions, generating debate. Let us keep reflecting on what we could further deliver to the field and offer to the next generation…

Yiorgos Anagnostou

July 4, 2025

Bibliography on Greek America (2024)

Once again since 2018 Ergon shares its annual compilation of academic and popular writings on Greek America for the benefit of a variety of communities (scholars, researchers, artists, journalists, cultural activists & producers, and the broad public).

Bibliography on Greek America (2024)
[with extensive references to Greece’s Strategic Plan for the Diaspora / Στρατηγικό Σχέδιο του ΥΠΕΞ για τον Απόδημο Ελληνισμό]

https://ergon.scienzine.com/.../bibliography-on-greek...

Ergon thanks Angeliki Tsiotinou for her invaluable work in compiling this bibliography.

ergon.scienzine.com

Bibliography on Greek America (2024)

This bibliography compiles publications on Greek America for 2024, in English and Greek.

Who Speaks for the Diaspora?

With the increasing governmental value of the diasporas (particularly the wealthy ones) we are seeing the expansion of a managerial class in the media, heritage organizations, institutions, the cultural service sector as well as the academy who have limited understanding of the histories and the complexities of the phenomenon but know enough (and also are adept at rehashing nation-centric ideologies) or will be producing enough to reproduce regulated meanings of the diaspora and in the process shrink the (already small) demographic who does the critical work of naming these phenomena and their connection with neoliberalism and the ruling of the dominant classes.

A note about academic diaspora studies and their public role

In the absence of relevant studies, we can only speculate about the reasons for the lack, or at best limited, institutional interest in supporting Greek diaspora studies.

 
But we can very well see the implications of this neglect, particularly in this historical moment when grassroots interest in heritage and identity accelerates. With limited human and other resources there is little what researchers can do, while some opt to strictly stay within the niche of their research interests. As a result, academic contributions for understanding and contextualizing grassroots identity narratives is limited, and in some areas non-existent.

 
To speak about a topic which is close to my heart and politics, understanding women’s struggles for equality. In the context of this year’s International Women’s Day, diaspora associations mobilized widely, paying tribute to diaspora women, recognizing their contributions, honoring trailblazers, granting awards––under the rubric of promoting the discourse of equality.

I have not fully followed the discourse, and I do not think there is yet academic essays or commentaries contextualizing its various iterations. I hope I am mistaken. Perhaps there will be in the future. But Greek diaspora gender studies has also few practitioners.

 
I would have loved to hear how these grassroots celebrations of women addressed working class women. Whether the discussion included various feminisms and intersections between gender, class, sexuality. Whether there were discussions of how the struggle for equality squares with the social organization of associations which still segregate gender. Whether there were expressions of solidarity with vulnerable women in demographics beyond the Greek diaspora, in the spirit of an outward ethos of diasporic citizenship.

The lack of support for diaspora studies has considerably compromised its contributions to the public sphere, to the detriment, I believe, to all diaspora citizens as well as those in Greece who value reflection and learning.

A broad conversation is due about our presence in the public sphere and the forms it might take.