Alejandro Fernandez Gutierrez ’13M, a Fulbright Scholar in Arcadia University’s International Peace and Conflict Resolution master’s program,  was recently accepted to the Global Conference on Democracy, Human Rights and the Fragility of Freedom to be held at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, March 21 to 23, 2013. He is one of 25 individuals chosen from around the world to participate in the International Young Leaders Forum. He was selected for his essay on the topic of democracy, which he was inspired to write after taking “Conflict, Governance and State Building,” a course led by Alex Grigorev and Dr. Amy Cox that focuses on the Kosovo-Serbia conflict.

“I’ve been touched by the people of Serbia and Kosovo to write and apply to this conference,” says Gutierrez. “I read a lot about the conflict and I [have] come to understand that without democracy or freedom of speech, people can’t express what they’re feeling. [If left unsaid,] it can be explosive and then we have a conflict.” Read more.