An appeal to public intellectual should have special resonance in Eastern and in Central Europe—a part of the world where former dissident writers and intellectuals have become presidents, ministers, and chairs of parliaments, and lawyers once persecuted for opposition to regimes have become chairs of constitutional courts and tribunals. As a matter of fact, Eastern and Central Europe have produced many great intellectuals, as evidenced by a quick check of the birthplaces of Nobel Prize winners. It is also a place where a distinctive social class, the intelligentsia, was considered to have a particular mission to govern the souls and spirits of nations in the name of Freedom and Justice. Where better then to debate the role of intellectuals in answering the big questions concerning democracy and freedom, and indeed in moving the world in that direction!