UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova to speak at Yale on 'Culture in Crisis'

Irina Bokova, the ‎director-general of UNESCO, will give a lecture at Yale on Monday, April 11 titled “Culture in Crisis,” about confronting significant threats to the world’s cultural heritage. 

Her talk will be held at 7 p.m. in the Zhang Auditorium at the Yale School of Management. It is free and open to the public and part of the events being held on campus in conjunction with the eighth Global Colloquium of University Presidents.

As director-general of UNESCO — the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization — Bokova is leading the response to the destruction of UNESCO World Heritage sites in Syria, including the ancient city of Palmyra that was recently retaken from ISIS militants, as well as sites in Iraq and in other regions.

A native of Bulgaria, Bokova has led UNESCO since November 2009. She is the first woman to lead the organization and in 2013 won re-election to a second term as UNESCO chief.

Bokova advocates strengthening international cooperation and taking preventive measures to protect key world heritage sites from terrorism and looting.

“World heritage is built on the idea that there are cultural and natural heritages of universal value that we must protect together,” she wrote in a January column on the World Economic Forum’s website. “The destruction of Mosul, Nimrud, Alep or Hatra is not only a loss for Iraq and Syria — it is an attack on us all.”

Before joining the U.N., Bokova served as Bulgaria’s minister for foreign affairs, coordinator of Bulgaria-European Union relations, and ambassador of Bulgaria to France, Monaco, and UNESCO. She also served two terms in the Bulgarian Parliament, where she was an advocate for Bulgaria’s membership in the European Union and NATO, and participated in the drafting of Bulgaria’s new constitution.

The UNESCO director-general’s public address on April 11 is one of a series of public events from April 6–15 being held in conjunction with the colloquium, including a series of workshops on “Culture in Crisis” by the Yale Institute for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage and the Victoria & Albert Museum as a follow-up to a joint colloquium the two institutions held in London in 2015 under the patronage of UNESCO. Readers are invited to explore the full calendar of events posted on the UNGC website.

Readers can follow the conversation about the preservation of cultural heritage by using the hashtag#unite4heritage. Members of the media wishing to cover UNGC and related events are asked to register with the Yale Office of Public Affairs and Communications.