At the 2025 World Expression Forum, a delegates debate the importance of political and social dynamics in an afternoon session, ‘Literacy: A Precondition for Democracy.’ Image: Publishing Perspectives, Porter Anderson
By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson
See also:
At WEXFO: IPA’s Prix Voltaire Names Dmitri Strotsev and Nadia Kandrusevich Laureates
Norway’s WEXFO Opens in Lillehammer: ‘The Cellular Level of a Democracy’
At Norway’s WEXFO: ‘Democracies Depend on Reading’
Norway’s World Expression Forum in a ‘Year of Resistance’
The IPA Prix Voltaire Announces Its 2025 Shortlist
Norway’s WEXFO: New Dates, Early Notes on 2025 in Lillehammer
‘Democratic Literacy’
Not for nothing did the World Expression Forum (WEXFO) place “Improve literacy in our societies” near the top of its conference-closing statement.
With its hundreds of attendees seated last week in Lillehammer, this program in its fourth year had reached what its founding CEO Kristenn Einarsson—chief of the International Publishers Association‘s (IPA) Freedom to Publish committee—called “our most significant to date.
“Democracy is burning beneath our feet,” Einarsson says, “and at WEXFO, there was a powerful sense of responsibility and enthusiasm to unite in resistance against authoritarianism. The conference also showed how this resistance is being mobilized across borders and generations—and that inspires us all.”
And in the first two paragraphs of the official statement released by the assembly, you can read the clearest statement yet of a newly recognized connection between the importance of “higher-level reading” and democracy’s future. The best phrase here may be the simplest. What’s being described in these first gutsy lines is a call for democratic literacy. The statement opens:
“World Expression Forum calls for resistance against authoritarian forces that undermine democracy and freedom of expression. Democracy is continuously under threat, and we (the undersigned) promise to strengthen our battle against disinformation, censorship and polarization–and improve literacy in our societies.”
The connection between “democracy is continuously under threat” and a demand to “improve literacy in our societies” came together with eye-widening force at WEXFO, as an entire afternoon was devoted to special sessions on Literacy: A Precondition for Democracy—an introduction to and exploration of a new pan-European “Dem Read” project being developed within selected school programs for its first phase by specialists at five core partners:
- Lillehammer’s World Expression Forum;
- Madrid’s Fundación Germán Sánchez Ruipérez;
- Mainz’s Johannes Gutenberg University;
- Oslo Metropolitan University (OsloMet); and
- University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, Škrateljc.
Miha Kovač speaks in the closing moments of the 2025 World Expression Forum in Norway, June 3: ‘In order to achieve this kind of literacy, we need to be able to maintain focus, to broaden that deep vocabulary, to express what we think, to be able to encounter more complex sentences with which we explain what we are thinking. We need to understand rules of logic, and we need to develop skepticism.” Image: Publishing Perspectives, Porter Anderson
‘Dem Read’: Here’s What It Is
- A connection is being made by scholars and educational practitioners between healthy democratic principles and a citizenry capable of “higher-level reading”—something well beyond the casual reading of social-media posts and entertainment genres of literature.
- “Higher-level reading” is a concept of focus, erudition, curiosity, and intellectual aptitude that provides the sort of critical thinking required for a population to construct and sustain a democratic context for itself.
- What the Dem Read project is doing is researching and developing approaches for selected voluntarily cooperative school programs to apply in developing higher-level reading—offering their students the means to achieve the sheer discernment needed for a successful appreciation and application of democratic principles, even as authoritarian energies loom over many of today’s democratic systems.
One of the core developers of the “higher-level reading” imperative, Slovenia’s Kovač is familiar to many Publishing Perspectives readers: He’s a publishing professor at the University of Ljubljana and the lead curator of the 2023 Frankfurter Buchmesse Guest of Honor Slovenia program.
World Expression Forum founding CEO and one of the drivers behind the new ‘Dem Read’ project, Norway’s Kristenn Einarsson. Image: Publishing Perspectives, Porter Anderson
Now, key figures including Kovač and WEXFO’s Einarsson and committed colleagues in several European centers of learning are formulating just how to test and refine the concept of higher-level reading, of “democratic literacy,” of a Dem Read movement among students to armor citizens of the world against the rising tide of tyranny seen on so many shores and borders today.
Here are some of the comments that Kovač made to the World Expression Forum assembly on June 3 shortly before the program’s world statement was put forward, and they carry a lot of importance for the world book publishing industry and its responsibilities.
He speaks of the scientific foundation on which the Dem Read drive must rest in order to prove its efficacy:
“What we need to face is that 26 percent of adults are below level-one literacy skills. And 40 percent of adults cannot solve simple problems in [some] countries. …We need to understand that we can build the knowledge only through testing our hypotheses—through accuracy of scientific theories until they’re proven that they’re wrong, and they all will be proven wrong at certain times because our ability to understand the world is limited with the way humans work. This works hand-in-hand with Democratic literacy.
“Of course, there is no need to persuade you that we need civil and human rights, which must be absolute and that rulers must be elected through competitive elections.
“But what matters is that winning in politics should be the same as in the science of truth-seeking: through fact-checking and through uncensored debates, and of course, through understanding that each of us does not have a monopoly on a final right, on what is true.
“We need to find compromises, and that’s my final point. In order to achieve this kind of literacy, … one of the ways is through higher-level reading, through the reading complex texts, which enhance our cognitive infrastructure.”
The World Expression Forum’s 2025 Closing Statement
‘Democratic literacy’: Miha Kovač speaks at the 2025 World Expression Forum in Norway, June 3. Image: Publishing Perspectives, Porter Anderson
Here is the full text of the closing statement issued from the stage after Kovač spoke on June 3 at Lillehammer.
“At the conclusion of the World Expression Forum in Lillehammer, 2 and3 June 2025, the forum delivers a clear message to all supporters of freedom of expression and democracy: World Expression Forum calls for resistance against authoritarian forces that undermine democracy and freedom of expression.
“Democracy is continuously under threat, and we (the undersigned) promise to strengthen our battle against disinformation, censorship and polarization–and improve literacy in our societies. We want to build on the cornerstones of free speech, freedom of the press, academic freedom, the right to publish, the right to act–and the right to disagree.
“We all need to be involved, and our responsibility is to involve all, especially those who are voiceless. At the heart of resistance are hope and creativity. And we have learned that even a tiny hope can be a ground to build on–especially in times of war and conflict.
“Being together at WEXFO is a seed we plant and nurture–using our different tools. And from there, change will come. Ordinary people create history.
“At WEXFO 2025 Imaan Mazari-Hazir was honored with the WEXFO Young Inspiration Award and the Belarusian publishers Nadia Kandrusevich and Dmitri Strotsev won the Prix Voltaire.
“Our promise is to learn bravery from those three in our common ongoing fight.”
Those who would like to sign the World Expression Forum conference statement can do that here.
More from Publishing Perspectives on issues of the freedom to publish and freedom of expression is here, more on the Prix Voltaire is here, and on the International Publishers Association is here. More on the World Expression Forum, WEXFO, is here.
Publishing Perspectives is the International Publishers Association’s world media partner.