Global Dialogue Prize awarded to Mohammad Khatami and Dariush Shayegan

ILNA-Mohammad Khatami

Iran’s former president Mohammad Khatami and Iranian philosopher Dariush Shayegan are the recipients of 2009 Global Dialogue Prize.

ILNA reports that the prize will be awarded to these Iranians in January of 2010 at Aarhus University in Copenhagen.

The Global Dialogue Prize was established in 2009 to promote the importance of intercultural understanding in the modern world and to acknowledge the research done in this area. The organizers of the award have announced that until 2017 they will award a prize biannually to researchers, journalists and independent organizations across the world, active in the area of intercultural dialogues.

Mohammad Khatami is the originator of the concept of “Dialogue Among Civilizations” which has gained international recognition. Based on this concept, the United Nations named the year 2001 as the year of Dialogue Among Civilizations. Khatami introduced the idea of dialogue between civilizations as a counterpoint to Samuel Huntington’s theory of the Clash of Civilizations.

Dariush Shayegan

Dariush Shayegan is a contemporary Iranian philosopher whose has written a number of studies in comparative philosophy mostly in French. He is the founding director of the Iranian Centre for the Studies of Civilizations.