Public Lecture "Why Does Albania Need Public Intellectual"

The public lecture on the topic "Why Does Albania Need Public Intellectual"is already added to the range of the important activities of our Center “CRLDS”. This lecture was held in the premises of Hotel Doro City, on April 16, 2015, at 11:00 by Dr.GezimAlpion. Dr. GezimAlpion is a lecturer at the University of Birmingham and he is ofAlbanian origin.

This activity was a combination of two sections: "Public Lectures" and "Meet Albtalents".

The participants in this activity, who came from different fields, since the topic of the lecture was comprehensive and of public interest, attended this very interesting lecture for about 2 hours. The lecture was conceived in two parts: 45 minutes the developmentof the topic by Dr. Alpionand the other 45 minutes for questions, answers and discussion.

It is worth mentioning the high number of students, who were part of the audience. They showed high interest in the subject and they got engaged in the discussion with numerous questions.

In this public lecture, GezimAlpion focused mainly on the importance of intellectuals in the development of society. Firstly, Alpion stopped on the role of thinkers and intellectuals in the West during the European Renaissance and Enlightenment. This was followed by a brief description of the influence of some 'autobiographical' writers, such as D. H Lawrence, James Joyce and James Baldwin, and researchers such as Charles Wright Mills and Edward Said, on him as a student in Egypt and England (1985- 1997) and on his scientific and creative publications.

After this, in the lecture was discussed the historical context in which Max Weber expressed the controversial concept of 'value-free' Social Sciences / Sociology.  By referring to C.W. Mills, Pierre Bourdieu, E. Said, Noam Chomsky and Zygmunt Bauman, then the attention went to the treatment of concepts like 'sociological imagination', and 'public intellectual', and also in the analysis of their role in social and human sciences in western democracies since the late 1950s.

In the end, Dr.Alpion made a brief analysis of the efforts of intellectuals such as Faik Konica, Fan S. Noli, and GjergjFishta to create the 'national consciousness', from the last quarter of the 19th century until the declaration of Independence, to create the challenges of intellectuals in various stages of the Albanian state, including their engagement in politics, ending with some thoughts on the situation of higher education in Albania.

The treatment of the topic by Dr. Alpion was done in a very attractive and original way and maybe this was the reason why the attention of the audience was high. The audience was very interested in the lecture and this interest was demonstrated throughquestions and serious participation in the discussion.

After this first swallow we are optimistic and we believe and hope that the number of participants in such collaborations is going to be bigger in the future.