The open meeting with Andrey Ilyich Fursov

On March 18, the team of the project “Dialogues about the East” held the first open meeting this year with A. Fursov – a famous historian, social scientist, academician of the International Academy of Sciences. This event was devoted to evaluating the role of oriental studies and history in the system of social sciences.

The “Dialogues about the East” project again returned to offline on March 18, organizing the first meeting this year in the HSE building on Staraya Basmannaya. More than 80 people, interested in the topic, from different parts of Russia participated in the event.

Students and teachers with A. I. Fursov together were able to discuss the most essential issues for any historian and orientalist such as the place of history and oriental studies in the system of public knowledge and prospects for their development. During the meeting the participants had an opportunity to understand better the origins and evolution of modern social sciences and comprehend why they are not capable to solve the challenging problems that modern society faces now.

The second part of the meeting was not less fascinating rather than the first one. This part was a wide-ranging discussion of A. Fursov with the audience on such topical issues as the prospects for studying orientalism in the 21st century, modern problems and deficiencies of the Bologna system, the causes of imperfection of market competition, the role of events in Ukraine in the system of the global struggle for power, resources, information etc.