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SGI News: Global activities for peace, education and culture

Toward a Global Perspective

Participants in the Toda Institute conference  [Photo ©Seikyo Shimbun]

From May 25 to 27, the Toda Institute for Global Peace and Policy Research sponsored an international conference in Madrid, Spain, in collaboration with the Iberian-American Foundation and the Spain Chapter of The Club of Rome. Some 60 scholars from 29 countries gathered to discuss "Creating a Global Civilization of Dialogue and Peace." H.R.H. El Infante Don Carlos de Borbon-Dos Sicilias, President of the Iberian-American Foundation, opened the conference, and Dr. Ricardo Diez-Hochleitner, honorary president of The Club of Rome, delivered the keynote speech. Former UNESCO Director-General Federico Mayor Zaragoza spoke on "What Is a Culture of Peace?" on May 27. 

The Toda Institute initiated the PEACE project in 2005, focusing on Peace, Education, Arts, Culture and Environment. The new project is a comprehensive study for resolving regional conflicts and building a system of global peace based on human dignity. Key research areas include: antiracism, democratization in the South Caucasus, the digital divide, music for peace, peace journalism, and political Islam and authoritarian democracy in Southeast Asia. Toda Institute Director Majid Tehranian underscored the difficulty of resolving the issues facing the world today if we limit our thinking to the framework of the nation-state and called for the creation of a global civilization for coexistence from a transnational perspective.

On April 11-15, the American Education Research Association (AERA) held its annual meeting in Montreal, Canada, bringing together 11,000 educators, researchers, counselors and behavioral scientists from 53 countries.

On April 13, a symposium "Educating Global Citizens: International Perspectives," was held at the meeting, based on Educating Citizens for Global Awareness, a new book published by the SGI-affiliated Boston Research Center for the 21st Century (BRC). Dr. Nel Noddings, professor emerita of child education at Stanford University, is the book's chief editor. Published by Columbia University's Teachers College Press in January 2005, Educating Citizens for Global Awareness has so far been adopted as a textbook at five U.S. universities. At the symposium, four educational experts from China, the U.S.A., Canada and the Netherlands spoke, and Dr. Noddings responded. 

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