2024 Ikeda Forum | Imagining A World Where Peace Is Possible
Join us for our 20th annual Ikeda Forum for Intercultural Dialogue on Saturday, November 2, from 1 - 3:30 pm ET. Named after Center founder Daisaku Ikeda in honor of his untiring commitment to dialogue, this signature event brings scholars from diverse disciplines and backgrounds together to investigate the peacebuilding potential of key ideas drawn from Buddhist humanism. This year’s forum, “Imagining A World Where Peace Is Possible: Engaging Daisaku Ikeda’s Ideas on Dialogue, Youth Empowerment, and Nuclear Disarmament,” features presentations by three speakers: Dr. Lauren Leigh Kelly of Rutgers University, Emma Pike of Lex International, and Dr. Eben Weitzman of University of Massachusetts Boston. Employing the lenses of dialogue, conflict resolution, education, youth empowerment, and nuclear disarmament, they will explore how we can imagine and create a world where peace is possible.
The inspiration for the forum is found in these words of Mr. Ikeda: “Imagination is the wellspring from which hope flows. It is the power of imagination, the power to imagine different realities, that frees us from the mistaken notion that what exists now is all that will ever exist, and that we are trapped inside our problems.”
The forum will also include a pre-event reception with food, icebreaker activities, small group discussions and reflections, a musical performance, and more.
Free admission. Pre-event reception with food begins at 12:30 pm. For everyone’s health and safety, we ask the following: Should you have any COVID-like symptoms, or are not feeling well, we kindly look forward to seeing you at a future in-person event!
Speakers:
Lauren Leigh Kelly is an Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Education at Rutgers. She is also the founder of the Hip Hop Youth Research and Activism Conference, an annual intergenerational learning symposium co-designed and facilitated by high school and undergraduate BIPOC youth. Prior to joining the faculty at Rutgers, Lauren Kelly high school English for ten years in New York where she also developed courses in Hip Hop Literature and Culture, Spoken Word poetry, and Theatre Arts. Her current research focuses on critical literacy, Black feminist theory, Hip Hop pedagogy, youth critical consciousness, and the cultivation of youth agency and activism towards the imagining and building of our collective social futures.
Kelly’s work has been nationally recognized, including receiving the 2023 Nasir Jones Hip Hop fellowship at Harvard University, the 2023 Teachers College Columbia University Early Career Alumni Award; the 2023 Rutgers University Presidential Fellowship for Teaching Excellence; the 2022 National Academy of Education/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship, the 2021 Save the Kids Hip Hop Activism Scholar-Activist of the Year Award, and the 2020 American Educational Research Association Writing and Literacies Special Interest Group Steve Cahir Early Career Award.
She is the author of Teaching with Hip Hop in the 7-12 Grade Classroom: A Guide to Supporting Students’ Critical Development through Popular Texts, published by Routledge and co-editor of the Bloomsbury Handbook of Critical Hip Hop Pedagogy.
As an undergraduate studying International Relations, Emma Pike was deeply moved by Daisaku Ikeda’s philosophy of peace as a pursuit that begins within each individual, eventually writing her thesis on Ikeda’s philosophy as a model for peace in the nuclear age. As a peace educator and specialist in global citizenship education, Emma is a firm believer in the central role that education plays in building a more peaceful and equitable world for all. Emma holds a Master of Arts in International Relations from the University of St Andrews, a Master of Arts in Development Education and Global Learning from the UCL Institute of Education, and a Master of Education in International Educational Development from Teachers College, Columbia University. In her current role at Lex International, she focuses on strengthening the role of international law, particularly in nuclear disarmament and regulation of autonomous weapons systems. She also engages in public education on these topics, highlighting the power that each individual person holds to effect positive change.
Eben A. Weitzman, Ph.D. is a social and organizational psychologist specializing in the resolution of conflict. Professor Weitzman does organization development, equity and inclusion, and conflict resolution work with organizations in the public and private sectors, including in education, government, law enforcement, social services, business, and labor, in the US and abroad. He has engaged in building interfaith understanding, collaboration and peace in Nigeria with the USAID-funded Tolerance project; among teenagers in Israel/Palestine with the NGO Ultimate Peace; and between federal law enforcement agencies and the Muslim and Sikh communities in Massachusetts through the BRIDGES project. He was the founding Chair of the Department of Conflict Resolution, Human Security, and Global Governance, and long-time director of the Graduate Programs in Conflict Resolution at the University of Massachusetts Boston, where he is also a Senior Faculty Fellow at the Center for Peace, Democracy and Development.
What is the Ikeda Forum? The annual Ikeda Forum for Intercultural Dialogue explores connections between life affirming philosophies deriving from literary, cultural, and educational traditions in the East and West. It is named after Center founder Daisaku Ikeda in honor of his untiring commitment to dialogue as the surest path to peace.