The fourth Dialogue Nights of 2019 attracted fifty Boston-area university students and young professionals who were eager to talk about friendship and how it brings hope and courage to our lives. The big question that participants tackled was whether friendship can serve as an antidote to the kind of despair associated with climate change and other severe global crises. Click through to read an article on the event!
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A steadfast commitment to dialogue is first among our core convictions.
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Our signature event is the annual Ikeda Forum for Intercultural Dialogue.
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Members of our community offer perspectives on our core values.
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You can read about all Ikeda Center events at our Themes page.
Building Cultures of Peace Through Learning and Dialogue
Founded in 1993 by Buddhist philosopher, peacebuilder, and educator Daisaku Ikeda, the Ikeda Center's mission is to build cultures of peace through learning and dialogue. To that end, we host events, publish books, and produce original resources for our website. Upon our founding, Mr. Ikeda presented us with these mottos: "Be the heart of a network of global citizens. Be a bridge for dialogue between civilizations. Be a beacon lighting the way to a century of life."
Founding Lecture
Our founding lecture is called “Mahayana Buddhism and 21st Century Civilization.”
Read the lecture »
The Ikeda Center
Learn about the history, mission, vision, values, and people that shape our work.
Learn More »
Thinkers & Themes
Encounter essays, interviews, lectures, and articles on diverse facets of our work.
Explore »
What's New?
As part of its Education Fellows program, the Ikeda Center convenes a gathering in Cambridge halfway through each two-year cycle of the program. The current fellows, each of whom is doing doctoral work relating to some aspect of Soka, or value creating, education, are able to engage in dialogue with the program’s Advisory Council members about their progress on their respective research and dissertations.
In May, the Center hosted its second seminar for established and emerging scholars on the topic of dignity. On hand to lead a discussion on "Dignity Re-examined" were education professors Zeena Zakharia and Patricia Krueger-Henney from UMass Boston and Jason Goulah from DePaul University. They were accompanied by doctoral candidates from their respective programs. Click through for an in-depth article!
In June, the Ikeda Center hosted its first ever Movie Nights event. Attendees watched State of Pride, which featured YouTube star Raymond Braun traveling to various gay Pride celebrations around the US to get a sense for where the LGBTQ movement is today, fifty years after the momentous uprising at the Stonewall bar in New York City.
New to the Ikeda Center website is this in-depth interview with Winston Langley, Emeritus Professor of Political Science & International Relations at the University of Massachusetts Boston, where he served as Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs from 2009 to 2017. Throughout, he discusses how his vision for global peace based on the wholeness of life resonates with Daisaku Ikeda's vision for the same.
Ikeda Center for Peace, Learning, and Dialogue
396 Harvard Street, Cambridge, MA 02138
Phone: (617) 491.1090 Fax: (617) 491.1169