History of PWPA

Korea — Japan Dia­logue
The Pro­fes­sors World Peace Acad­emy (PWPA) was founded on May 6, 1973 in Seoul, Korea at a gath­er­ing of 168 Pro­fes­sors from Korea and Japan. The pro­fes­sors had held dis­cus­sions of his­tor­i­cal rec­on­cil­i­a­tion that polit­i­cal and reli­gious lead­ers had been unable to accom­plish. National chap­ters were formed in both Korea and Japan. The Rev­erend Sun Myung Moon thought that such dis­cus­sions were ben­e­fi­cial and gave it sup­port to con­tinue and expand on a per­ma­nent basis.
Annual Con­fer­ences in Asia
In 1974, the pro­fes­sors asso­ci­ated with PWPA held the first Inter­na­tional Con­fer­ence on World Peace (ICWP). This became an annual con­fer­ence in Asia, and con­tin­ues to focus annu­ally on Asia and the world.

Inter­na­tional Expan­sion
Through­out the 1970s the Asian mem­bers of Pro­fes­sors World Peace Acad­emy pro­moted the Academy’s work through­out the world. By 1979 there had been Pro­fes­sors World Peace Acad­emy meet­ings held in Europe, Amer­ica, and Africa. A chap­ter in the United States was formed under the lead­er­ship of Mor­ton Kaplan in 1979. In 1980 the Pro­fes­sors World Peace Acad­emy began to hold annual meet­ings attached to the Inter­na­tional Con­fer­ence on the Unity of the Sci­ences (ICUS). Then in 1982, Chung Hwan Kwak, the Chair­man of ICF, and Hugh D. Spur­gin, the Sec­re­tary Gen­eral of ICF, trav­eled to Africa, South Amer­ica, the Mid­dle East, and Asia to meet with pro­fes­sors and dis­cuss the for­ma­tion of chap­ters in their countries.

PWPA Inter­na­tional Formed
In Decem­ber 1983, the Rev­erend Moon called pro­fes­sors from sev­enty nations to Seoul, Korea for the First Inter­na­tional Con­gress of PWPA Pres­i­dents. Mor­ton Kaplan was cho­sen to serve as Pres­i­dent of the new PWPA Inter­na­tional net­work. On Decem­ber 18th, the founder pre­sented his vision for the Pro­fes­sors World Peace Acad­emy. After this meet­ing, an inter­na­tional office was estab­lished in New York. A pro­gram of inter­na­tional grants to the newly form­ing chap­ters of the Pro­fes­sors World Peace Acad­emy was spon­sored through the Inter­na­tional Cul­tural Foun­da­tion. Con­fer­ences were held on issues of cru­cial inter­est to dif­fer­ent nations and regions. Many chap­ters incor­po­rated and pub­lished proceedings.

Inter­na­tional Con­gresses
To develop the lead­er­ship of the Pro­fes­sors World Peace Acad­emy chap­ters, PWPA Inter­na­tional has spon­sored Inter­na­tional Con­gresses of PWPA Pres­i­dents every two years. The Sec­ond Con­gress stud­ied the Soviet social sys­tem, the Third Con­gress stud­ied Chi­nese soci­ety, and the Fourth Con­gress was an analy­sis of lib­eral democ­ra­cies. The Fifth Inter­na­tional Con­gress devel­oped sce­nar­ios for future soci­ety. The Sixth Inter­na­tional Con­gress was on “The Future of the Fam­ily.” The Sev­enth was on “Iden­tity and Char­ac­ter.” The Eighth will be on “The Impact of the Global Econ­omy on Soci­ety and Fam­ily.” These con­gresses pro­duced texts and ref­er­ence books which were sold com­mer­cially and also used by PWPA chapters.

Pub­li­ca­tions
PWPA chap­ters in Korea and Japan began with the pub­li­ca­tion of newslet­ters and jour­nals to sup­port their activ­i­ties. These were soon fol­lowed by the pub­li­ca­tion of aca­d­e­mic books in sev­eral coun­tries on an ad hoc basis. In 1983, Paragon House Pub­lish­ers was estab­lished to pro­duce qual­ity schol­arly books of the PWPA. In 1983, PWPA-USA founded the Inter­na­tional Jour­nal on World Peace.

World Uni­ver­sity Net­work
In 1992, PWPA Inter­na­tional began to imple­ment the goal of cre­at­ing a first class world uni­ver­sity sys­tem, where young peo­ple of all races and nation­al­i­ties can be edu­cated as world cit­i­zens and as pro­fes­sion­als able to grasp the needs of the global com­mu­nity. The hub of the net­work is the Uni­ver­sity of Bridgeport.