Boston Research Center for the 21st Century

PEACE, LEARNING & DIALOGUE NEWS: FEBRUARY 2008


In This Issue
BRC Public Dialogue
Ikeda Peace Proposal
Amir Hussain Interview
Forsberg-Boulding Dialogue


About the BRC E-Newsletter

The Boston Research Center is pleased to introduce our new, monthy e-newsletter, designed to keep you up to date with our activities in support of peace, learning, and dialogue.
 
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BRC Public Dialogue: "Understanding Death, Appreciating Life"
During the coming year, the BRC will hold a series of events exploring how our conceptions of death affect the way we live, individually and collectively. The first event, called "Understanding Death, Appreciating Life," is a public event to be held at the BRC on Wednesday, February 27, from 4:00 to 6:00 p.m. Mary Catherine Bateson will provide opening comments, and Harvard professors Harvey Cox, Nur Yalman, and Tu Weiming will offer reflections in a dialogue format. If you are in the Boston area, we hope you will attend. If not, you will be able to access stories on this and related events throughout the year at our website.

Learn more about the February 27 event

Read an interview with Mary Catherine Bateson in the BRC's Spring/Summer 2006 newsletter

Daisaku Ikeda's Peace Proposal for 2008
IkedaEach year, Buddhist philosopher, peacebuilder, and educator Daisaku Ikeda sends a peace proposal to the United Nations. A summary of the new proposal, called "Humanizing Religion, Creating Peace," has been posted at daisakuikeda.org. It provides not only a vision and plan for humanistic peacebuilding, but also serves as an outstanding introduction to the ideas and values that form the foundation of the work of the BRC. In fact, Ikeda founded the BRC after delivering a lecture at Harvard University, in 1993, that laid out many of the themes that are explored from fresh angles in the 2008 proposal.

Read a summary of Ikeda's 2008 peace proposal to the United Nations
 
Interview With Subverting Hatred Contributor Amir Hussain
Amir HussainA great interview with Amir Hussain has been posted at the website Busted Halo. Hussain talks about his book Oil and Water: Two Faiths, One God and the burden and opportunity of sometimes being the first Muslim that people meet. Hussain is an associate professor at Loyola Marymount University and contributed the chapter "Life as a Muslim Scholar of Islam in Post-9/11 America" to the 10th anniversary edition of the BRC-developed book Subverting Hatred: The Challenge of Nonviolence in Religious Traditions.

Read the Busted Halo interview

Read an excerpt from Amir Hussain's chapter in Subverting Hatred

Learn more about Subverting Hatred
 
From the Archives: Forsberg-Boulding dialogue on peacebuilding and the end of war
Boulding and ForsbergLast October, the world lost a stalwart advocate for peace, and the BRC lost a good friend, when Randall Forsberg passed away. To honor her intelligence and spirit, we invite you to read an online dialogue between Randy (right) and Elise Boulding (left), conducted in the aftermath of 9/11, in August 2002. This dialogue also serves as a follow-up to their book, Abolishing War, published by the BRC in 1998. Among her many accomplishments, Randy was the founder of the Institute for Defense and Disarmament Studies and was an inspirational leader in the nuclear freeze movement of the 1980s.

Read the Boulding-Forsberg dialogue

Explore Randall Forsberg's legacy at the Institute for Defense and Disarmament Studies
 

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