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Censorship stifles; inquiry liberates.

Censorship stifles;
inquiry liberates.

On the first anniversary of Hamas’s attack on Israel, join the Zurich Salon to debate Israel and anti-Semitism. Get your tickets here. Our brilliant panel consists of Thomas Fazi, Dominik Feusi, Stefan Ziegler and Daniel Ben-Ami. Is anti-Semitism on the rise? Are pro-Gaza protesters really apologists for Hamas or is...

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Past events

The Zurich Salon is proud to present Sandy Starr in our first debate of the year on Artificial Intelligence. Get your tickets here. From algorithms to AI: how do we know humans and machines are different? Humans have used algorithms – a certain kind of well-defined procedure that accomplishes a...

A Battle of Ideas Satellite Event with Nikos Sotirakopoulos, Elena Louisa Lange, Timandra Harkness & Marko Kovic Nestlé, the food and beverage giant, vigorously promotes sustainable practices, but it has also been linked to environmental degradation and resource overexploitation. Meanwhile, distinguished investment bank and financial services firm UBS promotes gender...

In Conversation with Frank Furedi and Alfred de Zayas. We may be witnessing the birth of a new nation tied together by bonds forged in the fire of armed resistance to foreign aggression. The importance of borders, long derided as an old-fashioned remnant of bygone ideologies, has reasserted itself. A...

Details Energy is becoming ever more expensive. Heating our homes, fuelling our cars, and the goods we pay for are all rising in price because of the shortage of cheap and available energy in Europe. Some point to the war in Ukraine as the proximate cause of this shortfall, as...

The Covid-19 pandemic and our society’s response to it affected all of us deeply. People died , social life was put on hold, parliaments shut down, the economy suffered, we even worked from home. It represents a remarkable event in the history of the 21st century. But not all are...

Manche meinen, digitale Währungen wie Bitcoin bieten uns die Möglichkeit, uns von der Kontrolle staatlicher Institutionen und traditioneller Finanzsysteme zu befreien und die Macht des Geldes in die eigenen Hände zu legen. Sie könnten dazu beitragen, Vertrauen in traditionelle Finanzinstitutionen und Währungen zu verringern, und damit den Weg für ein...

They say growing older is mandatory, while growing up is optional. Young people these days seem to opt for long periods of dependence upon the money, bed and board of their parents. Adults tend to divest youngsters of various responsibilities by taking care of as many aspects of their lives...

In 2020 the NZZ abolished a regular column by the author and journalist Milosz Matuschek, allegedly because he questioned the severity of the Covid pandemic. Twitter and Facebook deleted posts by the Swiss journalist Philip Gut that were critical of the government’s reaction to the Covid pandemic. A reggae concert...

In a rapidly changing world, debating ideas matters more than ever. The Battle of Ideas Zurich festival provides a unique forum to discuss the big issues of our time. Speakers include Professor Dr Gerhard Schmitt debating do we need an urban revolution, Ronnie Grob debating the threat posed by populism,...

Join us at the Denkfest, organised by the Swiss Freethinkers, on Sunday 5th November, to discuss and debate, among other things, whether CRISPR is the printing press of biology and to ask if we need to rethink intelligence in an era of AI. The four-day Denkfest runs from Thursday 2nd November until Sunday the 5th, 500 years...