About us

Reset-Dialogues On Civilizations (Reset-DoC) is an Italian non-profit Association (since 2004), based in Rome. It promotes dialogue and intercultural understanding through public meetings both nationally, in Italy and at an international level, through publications and press work dedicated to more profound knowledge as well as the translation of notions and concepts from one into the other universe of understanding, from one into another culture - particularly between ‘East’ and ‘West’ in matters of culture, religion and politics. The Association was born in cooperation with the cultural Italian magazine Reset. We hope to become a reference point for all of those who want to go beyond the much-evoked clash of civilizations towards a pluralism in making. Our Scientific Committee is a network of intellectuals from different cultural backgrounds, who share the same liberal and humanistic values.

Read more about our intents

Reset - Dialogues on Civilizations Scientific Committee
Giuliano Amato (President), Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd (1943-2010), Katajun Amirpur, Abdullahi An-Na'im, Abdou Filali-Ansary, Seyla Benhabib, Giancarlo Bosetti, Fred Dallmayr, Silvio Fagiolo (1938-2011), Maria Teresa Fumagalli Beonio Brocchieri, Nina zu Fürstenberg, Timothy Garton Ash, Anthony Giddens, Vartan Gregorian, Lorenzo Guolo, Hassan Hanafi, Roman Herzog, Ramin Jahanbegloo, Jörg Lau, Amos Luzzatto, Avishai Margalit, Krzysztof Michalski (1948-2013), Andrea Riccardi, Olivier Roy, Otto Schily, Karl von Schwarzenberg, Roberto Toscano, Bassam Tibi, Nadia Urbinati, Umberto Veronesi, Michael Walzer.

Board of Governors
Giuliano Amato, Giancarlo Bosetti (Director), Nina zu Fürstenberg (President), Francesco Micheli (vice-president), Piergaetano Marchetti, Georg Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza (Honorary President).


RESET DIALOGUES (US) is an American nonprofit corporation (since 2009), operating exclusively for charitable, educational and scientific purpose within the meaning of section 501(c)(3).
President of Reset Dialogues (US): Joseph LaPalombara
Treasurer of Reset Dialogues (US): Caroline Gerry

Funding: The Association's activity and the web magazine are funded by the Swiss "Nomis Foundation" and other private donations. The web magazine has a contribution by Intesa San Paolo Bank and publicity/ sponsorization by Telecom Italy (until 2010) and Enel Italy (until 2011).

Support for Reset Dialogues (US) was provided in part by a grant from Carnegie Corporation of New York in 2011.


A webmagazine for all world tribes: WWW.RESETDOC.ORG

Resetdoc.org is a magazine, published every two weeks, specialized in issues related to intercultural dialogue in Italian, English and Arabic. The magazine also exploits the Association activities as well as the contributions of its scientific committee. The editorial staff is working in cooperation with the Italian Reset magazine and produce articles, book reviews, interviews and videos about cultural conflicts - addressing them from a political, philosophical and historical point of view –, the methods and contents of dialogue among civilizations, and human rights. Another relevant initiative is our Lexicon of Interculture. International media and press have been attentively following ResetDoC publications and the Foundations activities and events.


I libri di Reset/Marsilio: together with the Venice based publisher Marsilio we publish and translate several books every year dealing with the dialogue and comprehension.


Some International Events:

Cairo, Egypt 2006 Conference: “Beyond Orientalism and Occidentalism. Thinking Dialogue Among Civilizations”, papers were presented by the Italian Minister of Domestic Affairs Giuliano Amato, Former German Minister of Domestic Affairs Otto Schily, Fred R. Dallmayr, Charles Burnett, Dimitri Gutas, Jörg Lau, Karel Schwarzenberg, Bassam Tibi, and Egyptian intellectuals among whom Gaber Asfour, Hassan Hanafi, Emad Abu Ghazi, and Mohamed Salmawy. The meeting took place on March 4, 5 and 6, and was carried out in cooperation with the Egypt Supreme Council of Culture and the Italian Embassy in Cairo.

Unesco World Philosophy Day 2006 (Rabat) and 2007 (Istanbul): ResetDoc organized a round table during the Unesco World Philosophy Day first in Rabbat in Nov.06 on “Religious Revivals and Open Society”, with Fred Dallmayr, Alessandro Ferrara, Abdou Filali - Ansary and Giuliano Amato and then in Istanbul Nov. 07 on ”What is Secularism” with Giancarlo Bosetti, Alessandro Ferrara, Ramin Jahanbegloo, Faruk Birtek and Nina zu Fürstenberg.

Doha, Qatar – Media and Dialogue 2008 and 2009
February 2008: intellectuals, politicians and mass media experts discussed “Global Media between Dialogue and Clash. When Enemies Boost the Ratings” (in cooperation with Georgetown University Doha). The aim was analyzing the effects of TV on the understanding among peoples of different cultures, verifying the distortions brought about in the Other’s images by news fragmentation and dramatization, as well as political partisanship and prejudices, and, ultimately, identifying new proposals.
April 2009: “East and West: Women’s perception through Media’s eyes”, in collaboration with North -Western University.

Istanbul Seminars - Philosophers Bridge the Bosporus
The Istanbul Seminars are an annual highly academic early summer seminar organized in Istanbul (with Bilgi University) by ResetDoC where cultural and scientific thinkers in social sciences, political theory, sociology, legal studies and religion discuss our common future.

June 2008: “Postsecularism” - in response to the current political discussion surrounding Turkey, the seminar topic has been the role of religion in politics and the public sphere. How much religion can politics accept? asked Jürgen Habermas. Giuliano Amato, Andrew Arato, Benjamin Barber, Seyla Benhabib, Ian Buruma, Abdelmajid Charfi, Abdou Filali-Ansary, Hassan Hanafi, Alfred Stepan, Ayse Kadioglu and many other Turkish intellectuals lectured and discussed.

June 2009: “Religion, Human Rights and Multicultural Jurisdictions” - the second edition of the Istanbul Seminars was focused on multicultural and religious claims and their moral and legal implications. The Seminars followed different paths: from the debate on Islam in Europe among Turkish intellectuals to the confrontation with Tariq Ramadan, Nasr Abu Zayd and Avishai Margalit, Ayalet Shachar discussed the limits of religious freedom and the issue of apostasy while Nilüfer Göle reflected on cultural identity, group rights and the politics of memory with Armenian intellectuals. The tangled relations between religion, democracy and secularism have been analyzed by Michael Walzer, Ramin Jahanbegloo, Richard Bernstein.

May 2010: “Realigning liberalism: pluralism, integration, identities” - the third edition of the Istanbul Seminars analyzed the significance of the concepts of dialogue and integration in multicultural and religious societies. Zygmunt Bauman and Alain Touraine discussed on the Turkey/Europe issue. Fred Dallmayr and Abdou Filali-Ansary focused on the impact of religion: A dividing or uniting question? Nilüfer Göle spoke about her experience on learning pluralism through the resolution of conflicts and finally, Seyla Benhabib, Alfred Stepan, Stephen Macedo examined the issues of: human rights, pluralism and democracy, civic education and identity.

May 2011: “Overcoming the trap of resentment”- The fourth edition of Istanbul Seminars centered around the issue of Europe trapped by resentment and fear, a Europe dealing with new waves of immigration with hope but also with uncertainties arising from the uprisings in Arab counties. The Old Continent, overwhelmed by feverish incitement caused by lepenism as well as other localisms and anti-immigrant movements has been placed under observation by the South and the East (from the Maghreb to Turkey, lands of emigrants) but also by the West (the United States, a land of immigrants).

May 2012: "The promise of democracy in troubled times" - Democracy faces several challenges that are notably related to altered material conditions: Western democracies have to find new answers in the face of a severe economic and financial crises and an ageing population. Arab countries invest all their hopes in democracy in order to confront poverty and inequality as well as an unprecedented youth bulge. Which are the methods and limits of democratic participation and political deliberation in economics? Does the Arab Spring lead to more rights for women and citizens in the Arab world? How do claims to justice engage new forms of political responsibility, political judgment and leadership? Speakers 2012

16-22 May 2013: The Sources of Political Legitimacy. From the Erosion of the Nation-State to the Rise of Political Islam. Both the Western and the Muslim world are undergoing a phase of very important transitions that rise questions of political legitimacy. In Europe, the financial crisis has overthrown longstanding traditions of national sovereignty and it has eroded the social basis of democracy. The question Europe is facing is not only if supranational decision-making can have the same democratic legitimacy in the absence of a European nation, but also which institutions can establish and foster the democratic process. Also in the Arab world the nationalist paradigm has lost much of its attraction and has given way to a religious transformation of the public sphere. The issue is how religion, as a source of political legitimacy, comes to deal with such important values as pluralism, toleration and civil rights. Last but not least, on both sides of the Mediterranean governments are increasingly confronted with claims for social justice. Click here for info and registration form

New Delhi (India),October 2010 – International Conference: “Cultural and Religious Pluralism: The Muslim Minority in the Indian Democracy. East-West Comparison”
The Conference focused on multiculturalism and the relation between majorities and minorities within a State. Theoretical and political aspects of the multicultural challenge in liberal states have been be presented together with more empirical issues, such as: how to reconcile dress code and religious symbols in social life, the role of media, and gender issues. Speakers were among others: Rajeev Bhargava, Nilüfer Göle, Dipankar Gupta, Ramin Jahanbegloo, Tejbir Singh, Shoma Chauduri, Roberto Toscano, Giovanna Melandri, Benjamin Barber, Ruchira Gupta.

New York December 9th 2011 - The Background of Xenophobia: Cultural and political roots of anti-immigrant fanaticism in Europe and United States - The conference was held at the Institute for Public Knowledge, New York University. Among the speakers Seyla Benhabib, Benjamin Barber, Ian Buruma, Jytte Klausen, and Giancarlo Bosetti.

28 March - 2 April 2012 - NYU, Yale, Columbia
New York University - March 28 2012- Democracy for Women: The promise and the risk of arab political change
Columbia University - March 29 2012 - Expanding and Shrinking Areas of Liberty: Morocco, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt and Syria
Yale University - April 2 2012 - Arab democracy and women. A Moroccan Perspective on Gender Politics and Law Reform
Speakers included: Seyla Benhabib, Nouzha Guessous, Joseph LaPalombara, Andrew March, Radwan Masmoudi, Tarek Masoud, Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro, Alfred Stepan.

Tunis 25 June 2012 - Pour un lexique du dialogue: Les promesses de la démocratie entre réformisme civil et réformisme religieux
The conference was held at Académie Tunisienne des Sciences, des Lettres et des Arts Beit al-Hikma. Among the speakers: Paolo Branca, Francesca Corrao, Hichem Djait, Ikbal al Gharbi, Mohamed Haddad, Sebastiano Maffettone, Mohsen Marzouk, Radwan Masmoudi.

18-20 October 2012 - Venice-Delhi Seminars
In cooperation with the Cini Foundation in Venice and Padua University, ResetDOC held a seminar about Cultural differences in times of economic turbulence. Social tensions, cultural conflicts and policies of integration in Europe and India. Speakers from India, Europe and the United States have analyzed the challenge that cultural differences and composite growing minorities are presenting to European democracies in times of financial turbulence, and Indian society’s intense pluralist experience during this phase of extremely rapid growth, while still dealing with dramatic poverty, ethnic differences and acute inequality.

8-9 November 2012 - Orientalism Revisited
From colonial prejudice, to post-colonial resentment, towards a new season of dialogue? Speakers have discussed a topic that has gained new meaning with the Arab Spring. Although the famous dispute between Edward Said and Bernard Lewis belongs to another age, it is interesting to now explore whether and how reciprocal prejudices and misperceptions have endured, especially when we look at the European (and other) views of post-revolutionary developments. Indeed, the new season of hope opened by a political change seems able to overcome both the ethnocentric view of Europeans on the one side and postcolonial resentment on the other side. A new, fairer relationship based on dialogue among equals may be within reach. Re-reading and re-examining Orientalism and postcolonial studies has helped us to define this new relationship.

In Italy we introduced intellectuals and philosophers to a wider audience, by organizing their presence in many events:
Mohamed Arkoun (1928-2010), Nasr Abu Zayd (1943-2010), Nilüfer Göle, Seyla Benhabib, Lance Bennett, Ramin Jahanbegloo, Abdolkarim Soroush, Timothy Garton Ash, Carlos Thiebaud, Navid Kermani, Avishai Margalit, Jürgen Habermas, Ernst- Wolfgang Böckenförde, Nadia Urbinati, Claudio Magris and many others have given lectures in festivals, theatres, universities and seminars.


ResetDoC's publications in English:
Some elaborated contributions to the first and the second edition of the Istanbul Seminars have been picked up in “Special issue: Postsecularism and multicultural jurisdictions” published in Philosophy &Social Criticism, an international, inter-disciplinary journal, vol. 36 nos 3-4 March&May 2010. The contributions to the third edition have been published in spring 2011. Contents available on http://psc.sagepub.com, May 2011 issue (4).

ResetDoC has conceived and created a special issue of the Indian magazine Seminar (May 2011) about "Minorities and Pluralism, an East-West Comparison." You can read the online version or order the paper version on www.india-seminar.com.