While there were a large number of distinguished professionals, activists, artists, writers and even former prisoners of conscience mingling at this event, there is no such freedom of assembly in Iran.
They include such distinguished scholars and activists as: Harry Belafonte and Danny Glover Robert Reich, Stephanie Keltonn, Cornel West, and Jeffery Sachs; Bill McKibben, Ben Jealous and Michael Lighty; Tulsi Gabbard and Nina Turner; and Jane O'Meara Sanders, whose idea it was to launch TSI.
A tenured distinguished Professor, social activist, a columnist, advocate of progressive social policies, and founding member of the Five Borough Institute, he will be remembered for his passionate and sweeping contributions to education, research and the social welfare of working people in New York City and the nation.
Kailash Satyarthi is a distinguished children's rights activist in India and has won this year's Nobel peace prize jointly with education campaigner Malala Yousafzai.
Here is an intriguing proposition: a filmed encounter between scatterbrained film director Michel Gondry and the distinguished linguist and political activist Noam Chomsky.
The new prime minister, Mr Bakhit, has chosen a rainbow coalition of leftist unionists, seasoned establishment politicians, a former Muslim Brotherhood member, and two women, including distinguished women's rights activist Haifa Abu Ghazaleh.
Among those awarded with the distinguished honor were the activist group Concerned Student Collective 1950 at the University of Missouri and actor Jussie Smollett.
The distinguished British actor and activist Stephen Fry has already posted a public statement suggesting that Putin's anti-gay laws are eerily redolent of the early anti-Jewish laws of Hitler and the Nazis.
A passionate activist with a distinguished background in law, Crenshaw reels off cases of women killed by police officers in front of their families, friends or even cameras.
As distinguished TV presenter and opposition activist Leonid Parfenov observed in a much-discussed speech in 2010, news and current affairs programmes on Russian state TV primarily serve the purposes of the governing elite.
