Martin Bútora

Honorary President of the Institute for Public Affairs (IVO), an independent public policy think tank established in 1997 in Bratislava. A sociologist by training, he was one of the founders of the Public Against Violence movement in Slovakia in November 1989 and served as a Human Rights Advisor to Czechoslovak President Václav Havel from 1990 to 1992. He was Slovak Ambassador to the U.S. (1990-1992) and has written and edited a number of books and studies on social transformation, foreign policy, and civil society, including IVO’s annual series, Global Report on the State of Society.