Objectives and participants

The Glion Colloquium brings together twenty to twenty-five leaders from renowned universities and university organizations, along with influential figures from business and government, to share and debate the latest developments in the governance and leadership of the world’s top research universities. The Glion Colloquium was launched in 1998 when Professor Werner Hirsch (University of California) and Professor Luc Weber (University of Geneva), along with other academics, prepared a statement “The Glion Declaration: the University at the Millennium” for the UNESCO World Conference on Higher Education in the 21st Century, held in Paris in October 1998.They are held once every two years, mostly in Glion, above Montreux, Switzerland.

Initially, the colloquium participants included highly respected academics and other leaders from Europe and North America. From 2007, the list of participants to the colloquium is being expanded to include leaders of some of the most prestigious academic institutions around the world. The limited number of top-level participants at the colloquium promotes a highly interactive and open framework of discussion.

The publications

The papers presented at each colloquium are published in a book which is presented to leaders of the world’s best research universities and is available for purchase to the wider public. The first book was co-published in 1999 by the American Council on Education through the Council’s publisher, Oryx press (now Greenwood), as well as by the International Association of Universities and their publisher, Pergamon Press. The subsequent volumes have been published by ECONOMICA in Paris and distributed by the Brookings Institution in Washington D.C. The volumes can also be purchased at Amazon.com. Since 2008, the books published by Economica in Paris and distributed by Brookings in Washington are also available online six months after their publication.

The supporting organization

The colloquiua are arranged under the auspices of the University of Geneva by the non-profit Association Glion Colloquium, which raises the necessary funds, organizes the meetings and produces all the publications.

The organizations commitee

The programme for each colloquium is organized by a different committee co-chaired by Professor Luc E. Weber (University of Geneva), Professor Werner Z. Hirsch (University of California, in 1998, 2000 and 2001), and, since 2003, Professor James J. Duderstadt (University of Michigan).

The main sponsors

The main sponsors of the Glion Colloquium have been the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation in California, University-industry relations of Hewlett Packard in California, the Ewin Marion Kauffman Foundation in Kansas, the State secretariat for education and research of the Swiss government, the University of Geneva, the Board of the (Swiss) Federal Institute of Technology (EPF), the Higher Education Funding Council for England, the Avina Foundation in Basle, Switzerland, the Fondazione San Paolo di Torino, in Italy, the Fondation Leenaards in Lausanne, Switzerland, Credit Suisse and Nestlé.