Socrates Seminar
Aspen Institute España will host a Tech & Society Socrates Seminar from May 21 to May 23, 2026 in Málaga, Spain in collaboration with US Aspen Institute Socrates Program. The Seminar titled “Governance of AI in Europe” will be moderated by Leigh Hafrey, Author, Journalist and Technologist. The seminar will bring together a group of 20 participants from diverse sectors of civil society. This seminar is a part of the 2026 Tech & Society Program held in collaboration with Fundación Telefónica.
The Socrates Seminar is a collaborative endeavor for participants from different fields. Participants are asked to contribute their understanding of and reactions to carefully selected readings, with the guidance of moderators who are experts in their sector. Participants develop an understanding of the reading material and formulate responses to the issues that they cover at the roundtable meetings. The seminars provide stimulating dialogue, values-based introspection, and dynamic debate that serves to enhance participants’ leadership capabilities.
Leigh Hafrey
He is a Senior Lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Since 1991, Hafrey has worked inprofessional ethics, with a focus on ethical leadership, teaching courses at Harvard Business School and MIT Sloan, and consulting with professional practitioners in the United States and abroad. At MIT Sloan, he teaches in theMBA program and Leaders for Global Operations, forwhich he moderates a mandatory two-year leadership course. He has also taughtin MIT’s Industrial Liaison, MIT-China Management Education, Master of Finance, Management of Technology, Nanyang Fellows, Sloan Fellows in Innovation andGlobal Leadership, Supply Chain Management, and System Design and Management programs. Since 1996, Hafrey has moderated the Aspen Institute’s Seminar in Leadership, Values, and the Good Society and other seminars sponsored by the Institute in the U.S. and abroad. From 1993 to 2010, togetherwith his wife, Sandra Naddaff, Hafrey was a co-Master of Mather House, one of the 12 residential complexes in Harvard College. The Mather community brings together400 undergraduates; 100 faculty, administrative, and alumni fellows; and dozens ofadvisory and other staff. A former staff editor at The New York Times Book Review, Hafrey has published reporting, essays, reviews, interviews, and translations in TheNew York Times and other American and European periodicals. He serves on the editorial advisory board of Philosophy of Management (U.K.) and the Journal of Business Ethics Education (U.S.). His publications on business and management include a quarterly column for IPA’s Business Today (2007-09); cases and blogs forMIT Sloan; a book on how people use stories to articulate ethical norms, The Story of Success: Five Steps to Mastering Ethics in Business (2005); and War Stories:Fighting, Competing, Imagining, Leading, an essay on business alternatives to aculture of war in today’s America (2016) Hafrey holds an AB in English from Harvard College and a PhD in comparative literature from Yale University.
TECH & SOCIETY
This program, co-organized with Fundación Telefónica, has become the leading forum in Spain for reflection on the major issues raised by advances in digital technology and its influence on such diverse areas as human relationships, politics, education, the economy, and medicine.
Aspen Institute España
The Aspen Institute España Foundation was established in 2010 to promote leadership inspired by civic values and to address critical issues for the future of society. Every year it organizes more than seventy debates, seminars and conferences on leadership and values, the digital future, sustainability, democracy, geopolitics and the economy.
The President of Aspen España is Javier Solana and its Secretary General is José M. de Areilza. The project is supported by fifteen Spanish companies and a large network of alumni. It is part of the international network of Aspen Institutes, present in more than twelve countries, and collaborates in a special way with The Aspen Institute in the United States. This philanthropic institution was founded in 1950, among others by José Ortega y Gasset, to train leaders in all sectors of society with a humanistic vision and a connection to civic and democratic values. Today it is recognised as one of the most influential think tanks in the world, with more than fifty ongoing programmes in the fields of public policy and leadership.
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