Dialogue Institute Founder/President, Leonard Swidler, and Executive Director, Rebecca Mays, spoke at the Fifth Songshan Forum on Chinese and Other World Civilizations, held October 27-30, 2016 in Dengfeng, Henan, China. They also both attended the first and third Forums, held in 2012 and 2014 respectively.
Funded by the Institute for Advanced Humanities Studies (IAHS) at Peking University, under the direction of New Confucian scholar, Tu Weiming, this year's international forum was guided by the theme of "Transformation and Innovation: Toward a Dialogical Civilization."
Professor Swidler was one of three keynote speakers to address the gathering of 2,500 scholars and business people (see picture below). He spoke on "Laudato Si," Pope Francis' encyclical critiquing consumerism and irresponsible development, and calling for swift and global action to confront environmental degradation and global warming.
Rebecca Mays delivered a paper on Teilhard de Chardin's "Omega Point"—as illustrated by the film "Journey of the Universe," produced by the Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology.
As a result of the Forum, the DI has renewed discussions with Professor Weiming, a longtime friend and colleague of Professor Swidler's (see video below), and IAHS about the possibility of holding a joint conference on business and ethics—with scholars and business people from China, Germany and the United States—in the next few years.
March 8, 2012: A "dialogue on dialogue" between Leonard Swidler and Tu Weiming at the Institute for Advanced Humanistic Studies, Peking University.
