by Mitch Bogen
Special to the Tribune
In 2025, the Ikeda Center for Peace, Learning, and Dialogue is building on its commitment to engage peace scholars, graduate students, youth leaders and researchers in key aspects of peacebuilding and dialogue, centering on Daisaku Ikeda’s philosophy of peace.
Alongside our established programs—including the annual Ikeda Forum for Intercultural Dialogue, Dialogue Nights, Global Citizens Seminar and Indigo Talks—we are pursuing exciting initiatives focused on specific activities within the quest for global peace.
In May, the Center will host one such initative: a three-day conference, in collaboration with partner organizations including the Soka Institute for Global Solutions, focusing on nuclear disarmament education. This will continue the momentum from the gathering held last year that featured the participation of school-age disarmament activists.
The year’s first initiative took place in late January, when 12 students from Soka University of America (SUA) traveled to Boston for a three-day series of events exploring the challenge and promise of interfaith dialogue.
The students were participants in a Learning Cluster led by Professor Tetsushi Ogata that studied human betterment through the practice of religion. On their first day, they attended a panel discussion, hosted by the Center and moderated by Dr. Ogata, on the topic of interfaith exchange and peacebuilding.
The panel featured five scholars: Deina Abdelkader of the University of Massachusetts Lowell, Daniel Aldrich of Northeastern University, Mamfatou Baldeh of Harvard University, Andrea Bartoli of the Sant’Egidio Foundation for Peace and Dialogue and Joshua Snyder of Boston College.
Though panelists represented three distinct faith traditions—Islam, Christianity and Judaism—each shared the experience of claiming as their own the traditions they were born into, questioning those aspects that divide us and promoting those that unite us.
The panelists cited several practices that will strengthen not only interfaith relations but relations among all people. For example, Dr. Snyder recommended the cultivation of “moral imagination,” which enables compassion for and connection with others, thus advancing creative coexistence.
On the days following the panel discussion, the SUA students visited Boston College for exchanges with students in the Faith, Peace, and Justice program and participated in an exchange organized by Mosaic: Interfaith Youth Action, focused on religion, differences and the power of dialogue.
Throughout the year, the Center will continue to heed our founder’s call to “lead the effort to create spiritual sanctuaries of life-affirming dialogue.”
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