I was delighted and honored to have the following article posted in the Pathways to Family Wellness magazine Spring 2012 issue. The article, as printed in the New Edge Science section of the magazine, is available in pdf format.

 Pathways to Family Wellness is a non-profit quarterly print and digital magazine with a mission to support you and your family’s quest for wellness.

I call it “quantum consciousness”: the consciousness we access when we use the potential of our quantum-computer brains. The brain is a macroscopic quantum system, yet we use it as if it were exclusively a classical biochemical system. With its quantum-system functions, our brain can receive information not only from our eyes and ears, but directly from the wider world with which we are “entangled”–nonlocally connected. Insightful people throughout history, whether shamans or scientists, poets or prophets, have extensively used this capacity, innate to all human beings. Today it is widely neglected. This impoverishes our world picture, and causes a nagging sense that we are separate from the world around us.

I believe that quantum consciousness could be the next stage in the evolution of our consciousness–and that this evolution could be our salvation. Let me explain.

The first thing I ask you to note is that human consciousness is not static, fixed once and for all. It’s the product of a long evolutionary development, and is capable of further development. In the 50 thousand–year history of the species we proudly call homo sapien, the human body didn’t change significantly, but human consciousness did. And it can change again.

In a variety of “alternative cultures,” a new consciousness is already emerging. The members of these cultures–the green movement, the peace movement, the sustainable living movement, the movement of cultural creatives, and others–share similar social values and are open and interactive with the larger society; they don’t seek isolation or indulge in promiscuous sex.

They aim to rethink accepted beliefs and values, and adopt a more responsible style of living. They shift from matter- and energy-wasteful ostentation toward voluntary simplicity and the search for sustainability and harmony with nature.

A new consciousness is now struggling to be born. Does this mean that the consciousness of humanity itself is evolving? Some famous thinkers have said so. The Indian sage Sri Aurobindo spoke of the emergence of superconsciousness in ever more people, and this, he said, is the harbinger of the next evolution of human consciousness. In a similar vein, the Swiss philosopher Jean Gebser spoke of the coming of four-dimensional integral consciousness, rising from the prior stages of archaic, magical and mythical consciousness. The Canadian mystic Richard Bucke called the new consciousness “cosmic,” and in the colorful spiral dynamics developed by Chris Cowan and Don Beck, it’s the turquoise stage of collective individualism, cosmic spirituality and Earth changes. For philosopher Ken Wilber, these developments signify an evolutionary transition from the mental consciousness characteristic of both animals and humans, to subtle consciousness, which is archetypal, transindividual and intuitive, to causal consciousness, and then, ultimately, to “consciousness as such.”

Psychiatrist Stanislav Grof summed up the characteristics of the emerging consciousness as “transpersonal.”

There is remarkable agreement among these visionary concepts. Superconsciousness, integral consciousness, cosmic consciousness, turquoise-stage consciousness, and consciousness as such are all forms of consciousness that transcend the divide between you and me, the individual and the world, the human being and nature. If these thinkers are right, this kind of consciousness will be the next stage in the evolution of the consciousness of our species.

Quantum consciousness–QC–could perhaps be the next stage in the evolution of the mind of humanity, but why would it be our salvation?

The answer is simple common sense: because QC is a consciousness of directly intuited, felt connection to the world. It inspires empathy with people and with nature; it brings an experience of oneness and belonging. Quantum consciousness makes us realize that, being one with others and with nature, what we do to them, we do to ourselves.

Not only will QC make us behave more responsibly toward other people and the planet, it will also encourage us to join together to cope with the problems we face.

Most of us cooperate with members of our own families and communities. But cooperation has now become vitally necessary on the global level: It’s in all our best interest to cooperate with our fellows in the global community. Without such cooperation we’ll be hard put to overcome the global threats and problems that face us. Without cooperation we risk joining the countless species that became extinct because they couldn’t adjust to changed circumstances.

With dedicated and purposeful cooperation we can meet the challenges of human survival: We can have 7 billion or more people living peacefully and sustainably on the planet. We have the technologies, the skills and the necessary financial and human resources. Abject forms of poverty can be eliminated, energy- and resource-efficient technologies can be made widely available, water can be recycled and seawater desalinized, and sustainable forms of agriculture adopted. We can be more efficient and effective in harvesting the vast stream of energy that flows from the sun to our planet. And to finance these projects we would only need a small part of the enormous sums of money that we now commit to speculative, self-serving or downright destructive ends.

Cooperation on the global level is a new requirement in the history of our civilization, and we are not prepared for it. Our institutions and organizations were designed to protect their own interests in competition with others; the need for them to join together in the shared interest has been limited to territorial aspirations and defense, and to economic gain in selected domains. The will to cooperate in globally cooperative projects that subordinate immediate self-interest to the vital interests of a wider community is still lacking in the political and economic domains.

When all is said and done, the fundamental need of our time, the precondition of creating a peaceful and sustainable world, is the spread of a new and more evolutionarily adaptive consciousness—the quantum consciousness of oneness and belonging.

Forms and intimations of the new consciousness are already emerging in the world, but they haven’t yet reached the mainstream. When QC becomes mainstream, humanity will have reached a higher stage of maturity. It will have become a species that has not only the technologies and the skills, but also the wisdom and the will, to survive in the world it has itself created. 

Vienna as a strong and traditional hub of the current cybernetics and systems sciences in Europe

After 40 successful years a relaunch of the international research meeting occurs.

From the 10^th to 13^th of April, 2012, the 21^st European Meetings on Cybernetics and Systems Research take place at the campus of the University of Vienna.

More than 150 contributions from international scientists are dealing with the global challenges of our time. Technical, biological and social systems are at the focus. Current research wants to understand complexity, to be able to work with it in order to face the global challenges and opportunities. Transdisciplinarity, mutual learning and research with each other, is the basis of radical innovations. Here, the symposia offer a variety of theoretical and practical reflections on topics such as Systems Thinking, Agent-Based Modeling, from biology to IT and bio-informatics, Urban Design, complexity and management, innovation management and social responsibility of business, to management of complex disaster operations, and a strong focus on effective, vibrant and resilient organizations and crisis management.

The European Meetings on Cybernetics and Systems Research will create a strong European hub for the international systems science in Vienna. Based on a 40-year tradition a new culture of knowledge networking with a focus on two major aspects will be developed. On the one hand, once again the roots of the systems science will be cultivated in Vienna, in the sense of strengthening and deepening the knowledge. And on the other hand, the current social relevance will be illustrated by illuminating the impact and the practical applications of systems science.

In doing so the promotion of young scientific talents and the opportunity to network with the living founders of the systems science are in the foreground. To reach this target the Bertalanffy Center as the organizer sponsors a contest for outstanding research by graduate students.

Starting 2012 the participants of the European Meetings will present the core of their jointly developed knowledge in a publication for the general public after the meetings.

A number of worldwide recognized scientists are welcomed in Vienna 2012

In 2012 the famous philosopher of science, systems theorist and futurist Ervin Laszlo holds one of the keynote lectures at the EMCSR 2012. In his lecture he deals with the topic of coherence in nature and the problem of human systems, which are the only biological systems that cannot exhibit this quality. Péter Csermely, professor at the Semmelweis University, Budapest, illustrates in his keynote, what we can learn in crisis management of biological networks. The European Meetings are also looking forward to welcome the great French philosopher Edgar Morin as a guest, and Merrelyn Emery, one of the pioneers of organizational development who will hold the traditional Ashby Lecture.

The future of the European Meetings on Cybernetics and Systems Research

Starting 2012 the European Meetings on Cybernetics and Systems Research will also set a strong focus on promoting young researchers. The EMCSR understand itself as a platform for graduate students to strengthen the future of systems science in Europe again. This year a prize endowed with 1000 Euro is sponsored by the Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science. It will be awarded to a young scientist for an outstanding research. Participation in this competition was open to all doctoral students from technical, natural scientific and social disciplines.

Full of tradition – the history of the European Meetings on Cybernetics and Systems Research

With the upcoming conference the EMCSR celebrate its 40^th anniversary. In 1972, the EMCSR offered for the first time a forum for discussion of converging ideas and new aspects of different scientific disciplines. The EMCSR was co-founded by the Austrian Society for Cybernetics studies, chaired by Robert Trappl, which established the Austrian Institute for Artificial Intelligence in Vienna too. Since then every two years senior scientists meet in Vienna to present in workshops and symposia their latest research results and discuss the rapid developments in our society.

The current event is organized by the Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science, supported by the Austrian Computer Society, and in cooperation with the world’s leading organizations of cybernetics and systems science: the International Federation for Systems Research, the International Society of Systems Sciences, International Academy for Systems and Cybernetic Sciences, European Union for Systemics, World Organisation of Systems and Cybernetics, Hellenic Society for Systemic Studies, Sociedad Espanola de Sistemas Generales, Ukrainian Synergetic Society, Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research, Giordano Bruno Global Shift University and the Change the Game Initiative.

Web: http://www.emcsr.net

Facebook: http://tinyurl.com/78mra7h

Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/emcsronline

Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/emcsr/

Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/emcsr

EMCSR 2012 Interview Partners

We support you in making appointments with the interviewee of your choice. The following list is a selection of possible topics and people. If you have any special requests, please contact us. During the conference, we constantly create picture material of the presenters and participants. We provide you this material at your disposal.

Keynote-Speaker

Ervin Laszlo, Hungary

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ervin_Laszlo

Peter Csermely, Hungary

http://www.linkgroup.hu/petercsermely.php

Merrelyn Emery, Canada

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merrelyn_Emery

PhD Award Participant

Jessica Dylan Foley, Ireland

http://www.jessicadfoley.com/

System Sciences & Evolution in the natural sciences and the humanities

Gerhard Hanappi, Austria

http://www.econ.tuwien.ac.at/hanappi/

Werner Callebaut, Austria

http://www.kli.ac.at/werner-callebaut

Johannes Preiser-Kapeller, Austria

http://oeaw.academia.edu/JohannesPreiserKapeller

System Sciences & Applied Cybernetic Thinking

Ray Ison, UK

http://rayison.blogspot.com/

Ranulph Glanville, UK

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranulph_Glanville

Manfred Füllsack, Austria

http://homepage.univie.ac.at/manfred.fuellsack/

System Sciences & Applied Systems Thinking

Eva Gatarik, Czech Republic, Austria

http://research.fh-ooe.at/de/staff/29984

Nikitas Assimakopoulos, Greece

http://www.hsss.gr/eng/index.html

System Sciences, Complexity & Management: from innovation to social responsibility

Gerald Steiner, Austria

http://www.wcfia.harvard.edu/node/6687

Zdenka Ženko, Slovenia

http://zaposleni.epf.uni-mb.si/zenko_z/default.aspx

Helena Knyazeva, Russia

http://eng.iph.ras.ru/knyazeva.htm

Systems Science & research system of urban systems

Caterina Padoa-Schioppa, Italy

http://europaconcorsi.com/authors/69234-Caterina-Padoa-Schioppa

Jens Martin Gurr, Germany

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jens_Martin_Gurr

Christian Walloth, Germany

https://www.xing.com/profile/Christian_Walloth

System Science & Self-Systems – Information systems from biology to IT (bioinformatics)

Carlos Gershenson, Mexico

http://turing.iimas.unam.mx/~cgg/

Sander van Splunter, Netherlands

http://tbm.tudelft.nl/index.php?id=30955&L=1

System Sciences & Management of organizations in times of crisis

Andrée Piecq, Belgium

http://www.giros.be/Andree-Piecq

Alexandre Makarovitsch, France

http://main.csregistry.org/tiki-view_tracker_item.php?itemId=377

System Science & Design of effective organizations

Markus Schwaninger, Suisse

http://www.alexandria.unisg.ch/persons/Markus_Schwaninger

Raul Espejo, UK

http://www.syncho.com/People.html

System Sciences & vibrant and resilient organizations

Daniela Freudenthaler, Austria

http://www.designforumlinz.at/designforum-linz/mitglieder/f/daniela-freudenthaler.html

Alexander Laszlo, USA

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Laszlo_%28scientist%29

Thomas Fundneider, Austria

http://www.tfc.at/de/About/principal.html

Violeta Bulc, Slovenia,

http://www.vibacom.com/page.php?22#VioletaBulc

Thomas Wallner, Austria

http://research.fh-ooe.at/staff/18659

The Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science (BCSSS)

Realising the global challenges of today and the resulting need for systems theory in 2004, the BCSSS was founded with the aim to inspire the development of systems science. The Center works to advance scientific research in the field of systems thinking and by doing so, revisits General System Theory (GST) as founded by Ludwig von Bertalanffy and others. The focus is the reassessment of the theory in the light of today’s global challenges and to illuminate the course of development systems science has taken since. The Research Center cooperates with every person or organisation supporting the same aim. It also owns the Ludwig von Bertalanffy archive and possesses a collection of publications of the systems movement.

The BCSSS wants to bring different research approaches in dialogue and provide a platform for discussions. Even non-systemic scientists should be made clear the value of the systemic approach in terms of the global challenges of today.

The BCSS

•    administrates the archive of Ludwig von Bertalanffy and makes it open to the public.
•    administrates also other collections which are of interest to the systems movement.
•    carries out and supports research projects in the field of systems sciences.
•    carries out and supports scientific activities like lectures, workshops, conferences and international co-operations of scientists interested in General System Theory and related fields.

The BCSSS is member of the International Federation for Systems Research, represented by its President Wolfgang Hofkirchner. The Scientific Council has internationally distinguished scientists such as Mario Bunge (Canada), Klaus Kornwachs (Germany), Ervin Laszlo (Hungary), Gerald Midley (UK), Edgar Morin (France), and Rainer Zimmermann (Germany) among its members. The Bertalanffy Center is located in Vienna.

Wolfgang Hofkirchner

Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science

c/o Technische Universität Wien

Favoritenstraße 9-11/187

1040 Wien, Austria

Mail: wolfgang.hofkirchner@tuwien.ac.at

Web: http://www.bertalanffy.org

Public & Media Relations by B original

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Barbara Marx Hubbard, visionary and evolutionary leader, is hosting a very special Birth 2012 event: Conception Day 2012. Celebrate and activate the Birth 2012 campaign nine months toward our planetary birth day! A live telecast from Los Angeles, California will take place on March 22, 2012. Watch from your home, office, or live gatherings worldwide. The event will include special messages from the Birth 2012 “Welcoming Committee”: Neale Donald Walsch, Jean Houston, Michael Beckwith, Jack Canfield, Lynne Twist, James O’Dea, Lynne McTaggart, Ervin Laszlo, Rinaldo Brutoco, Oscar Miro-Quesada, Dot Maver and Ashok Gangadean.

The Memnosyne Foundation presents distinguished speaker Francisco de Paula León Olea on March 23rd 2012 at the Latino Cultural Center in Dallas, Texas. Francisco will discuss his past accomplishments in the arts, economics, literature and his newest role leading the Giordano Bruno GlobalShift University – International Academic Board, composed of Nobel Prize winners, former heads of state and spiritual leaders drawn from the Club of Budapest as well as outstanding scholars from culturally diverse religious, political and economic traditions, in an effort to bring a first rate education to those who couldn’t afford it in the past.

I’ll be visiting and speaking at the Findhorn community September 29 - October 5.

The Giordano Bruno GlobalShift University is the first online university to make high-quality fully accredited university education accessible to young people in all parts of the world. It held its Founding Congress at the Budapest Historical Museum in the Royal Castle of Hungary on the 9^th of September 2011 and will open for enrollment on the five continents as of 2012.

The open letter to the young people and the Covenant adopted by the University indicate the University’s commitment to young people, and its resolution to offer a program of education that empowers them to be self-reliant and productive members of society, as well as effective architects of a world that is sustainable and peaceful, and free of the barriers and subordination that often constrain the lives and the opportunities of young people today.

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE YOUNG PEOPLE OF THE WORLD

You, the young people of the world, are the movers and shakers, the music makers—the most privileged people who ever walked the Earth. For the first time in history, one generation—your generation—holds the key to the greatest challenge our species has faced since it proudly named itself homo sapiens. This is the challenge of change—of profound, timely, and conscious change.

Privilege entails responsibility. You have the privilege to meet the challenge of timely and conscious change, but you also have the responsibility that goes with the privilege: the responsibility of taking an active part in promoting this change.

To live up to this responsibility you need to understand the nature of the problem and its possible solution. Why do we, the human family, face the challenge of change? And what can you, your generation, do about meeting the challenge? There is a straightforward answer to both these questions.

We face the challenge of profound and timely change because the world your fathers and forefathers have created is not sustainable. “Unsustainable” means that if the world doesn’t change, it will break down. It cannot keep going as it is.

Take a look around you. Summers are getting hotter, winters milder, storms more violent, the extremes more pronounced, the variations more unpredictable. A little less cold could be a good thing in many climes, except that global warming also means that less rain is falling on productive lands; that forests are dying; that water-tables are dropping, and that, because ice is constantly melting into the Arctic and Antarctic oceans, sea levels are rising the world over.

How long before thousands of millions will be pressed below the level of bare subsistence? Before hundreds of millions will be driven from their homelands by hurricanes and floods? Before whole cities and entire islands will be submerged?

Global warming and the resulting climate change are just one of several “unsustainabilities” in today’s world. Urban overcrowding, the breakdown of the health of vast populations, violence born of intolerance, and war waged to secure short-term economic interests are among the many threats to life and wellbeing on this planet. We of the older generations have impaired the vital balances of nature; balances that are needed to sustain your life, and the life of myriad other species. Now you, the younger generation, must correct our errors and repair the damage.

We are now seven billion humans on the planet. How many of us will survive the next ten years? The next five years, or the next three? And if some of us go under, how will the rest manage, given our interdependence and our proneness to resort to violence to assure our short-term interests? If the world continues its downhill slide, and if the mindset of the rich and powerful doesn’t change while there is time, there will be a holocaust from which no one will emerge unscathed.

The answer to the question of why we must have timely and profound change in the world should be clear. We either change, or we go under.

But what can you, today’s young generation, do to create the required change?

The answer to this question is straightforward as well. You need to take to heart two wise sayings, by two of the wisest people who ever lived on this planet. Albert Einstein said, you can’t solve a problem with the kind of consciousness that gave rise to the problem. And Mahatma Gandhi said, be the change you want to see in the world.

Take Einstein’s insight first. You need to develop a new consciousness, adopt new thinking. This means not just acquiring more data, more information, mere additions to the current kinds of knowledge. It means new knowledge, a new way of thinking. Some call it a new paradigm.

The new paradigm is in active development. It is variously called the holistic paradigm, the integral mode of thinking, or the systemic view of the world. Its main and decisive feature is that it doesn’t fragment the world in order to understand it. It doesn’t reduce the diversity we experience to one or two factors for the convenience of analyzing it. The “analytic approach” can provide sound technical knowledge, but not true understanding. It’s the knowledge of the specialist, who knows more and more about less and less. Specialized knowledge, the knowledge of the technician, while good for specific applications, fails when it comes to coping with the whole in which that application occurs. It cures the illness, but loses the patient.

The knowledge of mainstream society is fragmented, and it’s not only fundamentally incomplete, it’s fundamentally misleading. Things in the world are not separate, independent of one another. As cutting edge scientists now realize, all things in nature are connected; and in the final count all things are what they are because of and through their connections.

Sound knowledge takes into account the connections. It perceives the forest and not only the trees. Trees are an organic part of the forest, and you cannot truly know a single tree in the absence of having an idea of the forest in which that tree is growing.

We live in an organic world, and our knowledge must be organic: whole and integral. Such knowledge is available. It’s the knowledge you need to live up to the challenge of changing the world, of consciously changing today’s unsustainable, moribund world into a sustainable and viable world. The Giordano Bruno GlobalShift University is committed to gathering such knowledge, to bringing together the people who develop it and who can effectively deliver it.

Consider now Gandhi’s advice. Why is it important to “be” the change you want to see in the world? Is changing yourself the way to consciously change the world around you?

The answer is that it is indeed. In a critically unstable system even small “fluctuations” can provoke major transformations. You have heard of the “butterfly effect.” The popular story is that when a monarch butterfly flaps its wings in Southern California a storm develops in Outer Mongolia. The tiny air current created by the butterfly grows and grows, until it changes the pattern of weather on the other side of the globe. This is entirely possible, although the actual origin of the term is different. It refers to the shape of the “chaotic attractor” that meteorologist Edward Lorenz discovered in the 1960s when he tried to model the world’s weather. This attractor, a mathematically generated modeling device, has two “wings” where each wing models one path in the evolution of the world’s weather. Lorenz found that even tiny alterations in the factors that influence the weather can make for a sudden, and initially unpredictable, shift from one of the wings of the “butterfly” to the other—from one global weather-pattern to another.

The fact is that a chaotic system—and the world’s weather is such a system—is supersensitive and inherently unpredictable. But not only the world’s weather is chaotic: so is the world’s economy, the world’s financial system, and the world’s natural environment. All these systems have now been pushed to the edge of chaos, and as a result they have all become supersensitive. Butterfly effects are coming about in them.

You, the young generation of our chaotic times, are precisely positioned to be the butterfly that creates the crucial effect. You were born at exactly the right time: at the time when the world around you is becoming open to change.

It’s hardly possible to create real change in a stable society: it has powerful defenses against it. There is a simple reason for this: those who hold the reins of power fear change—it may divest them of their privileges. Whether they are politicians, business leaders, or ecclesiastical, educational, or social authorities, the powerful, unless they are exceptionally open and wise, do everything in their power to maintain the status quo. They try to “excommunicate” those who want change— not literally, as the Church did in the Middle Ages, but by modern means: by ignoring the agents of change, and if ignoring them is not feasible, then by discrediting, ridiculing, and isolating them.

This is not an insurmountable problem for you, today’s young generation. The dominant forces in the world still resist change, but they no longer have the power to resist it effectively. Contemporary societies are no longer stable; they suffer from multiple crises—economic, financial, and ecological, even social and cultural crises. They are approaching a condition of chaos, and in a condition of chaos new thinking can spawn new behavior and lead to effective innovation. Even small groups and seemingly minor initiatives can catalyze major change.

There was chaos in the human world in the past as well, but it was local, and the opportunity to change was likewise local. Today’s chaos is global, and the opportunity it brings is also global. Failing to seize it would be not just the height of stupidity: it would be a crime against humanity.

The bottom line is this. The world needs timely and effective change: a global shift. Your generation is uniquely positioned to bring about that shift. The Giordano Bruno GlobalShift University is committed to make available to you the new-paradigm thinking you need to evolve your consciousness, develop new thinking—and change yourself so you can change the world.

The Giordano Bruno GlobalShift University’s COVENANT WITH THE YOUNG PEOPLE OF THE WORLD

Whereas

The world we and our fathers and forefathers before us have created is no longer sustainable; it either breaks down in chaos and anarchy or breaks through to a more sustainable, equitable and peaceful world;

Whereas

The choice between breakdown and breakthrough is yet to be decided, and it is likely to be decided ultimately by the young people who are now reaching maturity and will soon be entering positions of responsibility in society;

Whereas

It is the task of higher education to bring relevant information and knowledge to young people, and relevant information and knowledge embraces today the information and the knowledge on the basis of which young people—and people who are young in spirit, whether young or old—can evolve the wisdom and the determination to become conscious and responsible architects of a new world;

and Whereas

The Giordano Bruno GlobalShift University, being a global online university aspiring to reach young people and people young in spirit the world over, is in a unique position to provide the information and the knowledge on the basis of which people can develop the wisdom and the determination to become conscious architects of a more sustainable, equitable, and peaceful world.

The Giordano Bruno GlobalShift University now resolves to enter into this covenant with the young people of the world

To do its utmost to provide the scientific and humanistic concepts and insights that can empower young people and people young in spirit to evolve the new thinking and the new consciousness Einstein said is needed to solve the significant problems of our time, so that they may become conscious and dedicated architects of a sustainable, equitable and peaceful world, as well as responsible and productive members of their family, their community, and the community of all life on Earth.

In the fulfillment of this Covenant, The Giordano Bruno Globalshift University resolves to

challenge and put on trial the doctrines, the structures and the institutions that create artificial barriers between peoples, nations and cultures, and subordinate the great majority of the people to the economic, political and doctrinaire interests of a political, economic, or cultural minority, just as the ecclesiastical authorities and institutions of the late 16^th Century had put on trial Giordano Bruno for refusing to subordinate his insights and his convictions to their authority.

*****************************

The University pledges to implement this Covenant with the Young People of the World in all its educational offerings, including its degree and continuing education programs, and the seminars and symposia associated with them.

As a guest speaker at the World Cultural Forum in China, it was an honor to address the closing session. Themed on “Dialogue and Cooperation for World Harmony and Common Development”, the First Conference of the World Cultural Forum (Taihu, China) was held last May in Suzhou City, Jiangsu Province. Participants from over 20 countries and regions reached a consensus on encouraging dialogues and communication among different cultures and civilizations.