On February 4 and 5, 2020 Professors World Peace Academy, USA, together with the Universal Peace Federation and the Hyo Jeong Academy for the Arts and Sciences convened the four-part World Peace Academic Conference 2020 in Seoul, Korea.
Professor Joseph Terwilliger, American geneticist and professor of neurobiology at the Columbia University Medical Center and the New York State Psychiatric Institute.
Section 1 was for Physical and Natural Science, Section 2 for Political and Social Science, 3 for Religious and Theological scholarship, and Section 4 for Higher Education and University Presidents and administration.
All sections had fours hours of meeting time over the course of two days, comprising presentations from prepared papers, moderated panels, and question and answer segments open to participants.
Speakers of special note, presenting in prominent parts of the schedule included Drs.: Sun-Jin Moon, Modadugu Vinjay Gupta, Marc Vogelaar, and Chan-Yul Lee.
Professor Nicholas N. Kittrie, President of PWPA-USA and a dear friend and colleague, passed away December 9, 2019. He was 93. I initially became acquainted with him through the Professors World Peace Academy (PWPA). In 1984 I became Secretary-General and, in 1985, he became the President of the U.S. chapter. We became lifelong friends and worked together on many projects including International Journal on World Peace of which I became Editor in Chief and he was a Senior Advisor. Before reminiscing on our work together, I want to provide an overview of his distinguished life and career.
Early Life and Education
Nicholas Norbert Nehemiah Kittrie was born Nehemiah Kronenberg in Bilgoraj, Poland, on March 26, 1926. His youth was shaped by the rise of Hitler. In the 1930s, his family emigrated to the British Mandate of Palestine. His maternal uncle Leon (Leib) Felhendler, who he spent a lot of time with as a child, would later co-lead the October 1943 prisoner uprising from the Sobibor Nazi Death Camp. As a teenager, Kittrie served in the British Middle East Command as a personal aide for Orde Wingate, a Zionist British intelligence officer who pushed for the creation of Israel, while in Cairo in 1944-45. Wingate, a strategic genius, later became Major General and was a lifelong inspiration for Kittrie. Kittrie’s parents, who were British citizens, moved the U.S. in 1944.
Kittrie attended school at the University of Cairo in 1946 and the University of London in 1947 and earned LL.B. and M.A. degrees from the University of Kansas School of Law in Lawrence, Kansas in 1950 and 1951. This was followed by a prestigious fellowship at the University of Chicago School of Law. He was appointed as counsel to the United States Senate Judiciary Committee, through the sponsorship of Senator Alexander Wiley (Wis., R) to serve as Special Counsel to its Antitrust and Monopoly Subcommittee, chaired by Senator Estes Kefauver (Tenn, D). He received his LL.M and S.J.D (doctoral degree in law) from Georgetown University School of Law.
On October 27 the HyoJeong Academy of Arts & Sciences held its inaugural meeting in Europe. This Korean-based Academy, founded by Hak Ja Han Moon, sponsored the 28th International Symposium on Unification Thought under the title “Vision for the Unity of the Sciences and a HyoJeong World of Peace.” Dr. Thomas Selover, President of PWPA-International in Korea, chaired a PWPA Forum at the historical Maison des Polytechniciens in Paris.
PWPA-USA Secretary-General Gordon Anderson presented his thoughts on the future of PWPA to participants in HyoJeong Academy meeting at the Polytechnic Institue in Paris, France. Dr. Thomas Selover (behind) chaired the panel discussion.
Forum on Place for Peace and Understanding organized by Sir James Mancham International Centre for Peace Studies and Diplomacy
October 1-5, 2018.
Honorary Chair – Lady Catherine Mancham
Official Host – Vice President of Seychelles, H.E. Vincent Meriton
Greetings from Gordon L. Anderson, Editor-in-Chief, International Journal on World Peace, and Member of the Board of the James R. Mancham International Centre for Peace Studies and Diplomacy.
This 8 minute video greeting recounts Sir James’ distinction between “politician” and “statesman.” It also emphasizes the distinction between negative peace and positive peace, indicating negative peace relates to security and positive peace to human happiness. Negative peace involves legal guarantees of rights that come from government, while positive peace requires motivation, skills, and responsibilities that come from the cultural and economic spheres.
Note: The author of this article, who resides in Europe, believes it is important to promote discussion in the US about smaller steps of conflict reduction such as divided family contacts, increased economic cooperation, and other forms of citizen and private sector exchanges.
Korea: An Olympic Truce: Time for Concerted Non-governmental Efforts
Rene Wadlow*
The holding of the Winter Olympics in South Korea from 9 to 25 February followed by the Paralympics 9 to 18 March may be an an opportunity to undertake negotiations in good faith to reduce tensions on the Korean Peninsula and to establish, or re-establish, forms of cooperation between the two Korean governments.
Such negotiations in good faith would be in the spirit of what is known as the “Olympics Truce”. Truce in classic Greek meant a “laying down of arms”. A truce was usually announced before and during the Olympic Games to ensure that the host city was not attacked and athletes and spectators could travel safely to the Games and return to their homes.
In 1924, Winter Olympics were added to the Summer Olympics which had been revived earlier in an effort to re-establish the spirit of the Classic Greek games. At the 2000 Sydney games at the opening ceremony, South and North Korean delegations walked for the first time together under the same flag. Today, with greater tensions, there needs to be more than symbolic gestures. There needs to be real government-led negotiations to reduce tensions. In addition to the two Korean States, the USA, China, Russia, and Japan are “actors” in the Korean “drama.” Continue reading →
Morton A. Kaplan, Past President of PWPA International and Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus at the University of Chicago, passed away September 27, 2017. He was 96.
Morton A. Kaplan presiding at the Liberal Democratic Societies conference in London, 1989.
Kaplan, a WWII veteran, became famous in the field of international relations with the publication of his 1957 book System and Process in International Politics. Committed to the creation of a peaceful and stable international order, Kaplan sought ways to develop good relations and trust in the international system of states. His views were often critical of political realists who only promoted strategic self-interest and the unbridled wielding of power.He was a wide-ranging scholar integrating concepts from philosophy, linguistics, systems theory, and physics. Kaplan’s most recent book Transcending Postmodernism, co-authored with Inanna Hamati-Ataya, was published in 2014
Kaplan was fervently devoted to Professors World Peace Academy and organized three groundbreaking international conferences related to world social systems. All these conferences were organized into about 12 committees with 90 expert scholars presenting papers. PWPA leaders from about 90 countries around the world participated and learned about different systems of governance and how they might advise their own countries. Several volumes of books were produced from each of these conferences. Continue reading →
The Centre is named after the late Founding President of Seychelles Sir James Mancham
Victoria, Seychelles – International Centre for Peace Studies and Diplomacy named after the late Seychelles Founding President Sir James Mancham has been officially inaugurated on Eden Island, near the capital Victoria.
The Centre was originally Sir James’ idea and for the past couple of months has been developed by the University of Seychelles, the Mancham Family and an international group of diplomats and businessmen.
The official launch was attended by Seychelles Vice President Vincent Meriton, former President of the country James Michel, Minister of Health and former Foreign Minister Jean-Paul Adam, Foreign Secretary Ambassador Claude Morel, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs Barry Faure, members of Seychelles Parliament, diplomats, businessmen and many friends and allies of Sir James Mancham. Continue reading →
JAMES RICHARD MANCHAM (1939-2017), Founding President of Seychelles and member of the editorial advisory board of International Journal on World Peace, passed away on January 8, 2017. He will be missed by the people of Seychelles, our staff, and many others.
I first met Sir James Mancham in October 2001 in New York. It was less than a month after the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center towers and the International and Interreligious Federation for World Peace had organized a conference on Global Violence: Crisis and Hope to which we had both been invited to speak. Many of the speakers were urging the United States to refrain from the preemptive invasion of Iraq, which would violate established just war theory. Our friendship led to me publishing his book War on America Seen from the Indian Ocean through Paragon House. Continue reading →
by Gordon L. Anderson, Secretary General, PWPA-USA
I was asked by the newly appointed chair of PWPA in Korea, Dr. Thomas Selover for some reflections on possible future PWPA Conferences. First I would like to congratulate Dr. Selover on this appointment. Now for a few remarks on how I see some major concerns:
Systems approach vs. a strategic approach. In moral terms, this often breaks down into concern for the whole vs. self-interest (strategizing to accomplishing one’s end). Today almost all public policy is based on individual and group self-interests competing over, and strategizing to acquire, public money. Partisanism prevents using public money for the purpose of the whole. Our big PWPA Congresses examined social systems: the USSR system, the Chinese System, and Western Democratic societies. It is important that both the needs of the whole and individuals are addressed. Systems analysis should ensure that both are met.
Principles of sound governance. The Divine Principle, authored by PWPA’s Founder, Rev. Moon, is based on spiritual principles. He made some observations that provide clues to how principles of governance need to be considered. For example, the relationships of the political, cultural, and economic spheres function as organs of the body (the human biological system), with each social sphere performing a role as an organ of the larger social system. I discussed five main principles necessary for good governance in my book Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, Version 4.0 (2009). These are principles I believe were implicit in the understanding of the U.S. founders, when they drafted the U.S. Constitution, that are nearly always violated by new legislation passed by both the U.S. government and individual states today.
Evolution of social consciousness. This involves the question of how societies rise and decline so that they can be guided within principled bounds to rise and avoid collapse. We are publishing an article on this topic titled “Seven Phases of Social Development: Politometrics Instead of Political Alchemy” by PWPA Professor Akmal A. Gafurov in the March 2017 issue of International Journal on World Peace. One could argue that the Ten Commandments emerged as a level of social consciousness of the principles of behavior towards one another required for more freedom to emerge. However, today we have social institutions and spheres based on urbanization and large populations. There have been no set of principles instilled in social consciousness related to social institutions and bureaucracy, which is one reason I wrote my book, hoping to promote some discussion of this.
Issue-oriented policy. I think most the issues people talk about, environment, education, constitutions, overpopulation, nuclear power and weapons, space travel, economic equality, war, and peace, etc., fall under the umbrella of the above points. They are all things that fit in a context and can’t be fully studied as things in themselves. Conferences by PWPA on such topics, need to be discussed as parts of a complex system, the way weather predictions cannot be accurate without seeing the interconnection of a wide array of variables. For example, linear political arguments that tie ocean rise to carbon combustion by humans, without an interconnection to earth’s albedo in the arctic ocean, sunspot activity, the absorption of heat by solar panels, and thousands of other factors will inevitably lead to faulty policy decisions. Linear arguments in complex systems are a modern form of religious dogma and not real science.
Innaguration of PWPA-Nepal Chapter, March 25, 2015
On March 25, 2015 the chapter of PWPA was boosted in Nepal at the Hotel Yak and Yeti, with more than 500 guests in attendance. The chapter was launched with the support and efforts of the Universal Peace Federation. The assembly was addressed by Nepal’s minister of education, Hon. Chitralekha Yadav, Professor Dr. Suresh Raj Sharma, founding vice chancellor of Kathmandu University and patron of PWPA-Nepal, Professor Dr. Madhav Prasad Sharma, former vice chancellor of Tribhuvan University and president of PWPA-Nepal, and Professor Dr. Tulsi Prasad Pathak, outgoing PWPA president. Distinguished representatives of the Universal Peace Federation, and the newly formed Teachers Association for Research of principles (TARP) also spoke on this occasion.
PWPA is highly appreciative of the work or Dr. Robert Kittel, longtime UPF and PWPA representative in South Asia, for his efforts in organizing and reporting on this activity.
