2026 Ikeda Forum | A New Vision of Global Citizenship: Reimagining Education in an Age of Division
Join us for our 22nd annual Ikeda Forum for Intercultural Dialogue on Friday, September 25, at 7:00 pm titled, “A New Vision of Global Citizenship: Reimagining Education in an Age of Division.” This year’s forum will feature a panel discussion with Dr. Timothy McCarthy and Dr. Gabrielle Oliveira of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, moderated by Mr. Bhuvan Ravindran, Nature & Climate Policy Professional and Founder of ARGO.
The panelists will examine key ideas from Daisaku Ikeda’s 1996 address at Teachers College, Columbia University and discuss their enduring relevance to education and global citizenship in today’s increasingly divided world. This year marks the 30th anniversary of this landmark lecture where Ikeda presented a Buddhist vision of global citizenship and emphasized the important role education should play in fostering global citizens who can create a more peaceful world.
The forum will also include a pre-event reception with food, icebreaker activities, small group discussions and reflections, and more.
Free admission. Pre-event reception with food begins at 6:30 pm.
Panelist & Moderator Bios:
Timothy Patrick McCarthy is an award-winning scholar, educator, and human rights defender who has taught at Harvard University since 1998. At the Graduate School of Education, he is founding faculty chair of The B.R.A.V.E. Institute and core faculty in the Equity and Opportunity Foundations Curriculum, Online Master’s Program in Education Leadership, and Higher Education Concentration. At the John F. Kennedy School of Government, where he was the first openly gay faculty member and still teaches the school’s only course on LGBTQ+ matters, he is founding faculty chair of the Global LGBTQI+ Human Rights Program at the Carr-Ryan Center for Human Rights and faculty affiliate at the Center for Public Leadership. Dr. McCarthy is also Chair of the Research Cluster on Global LGBTQI+ Human Rights at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. A historian of politics and social movements, he has published five books, most recently Reckoning with History: Unfinished Stories of American Freedom (Columbia University Press). Twice named one of Harvard Crimson’s “Professors of the Year,” Dr. McCarthy has received many awards for his commitment to students, including the 2019 Manuel C. Carballo Award, the Kennedy School’s highest teaching honor. In May 2020, amidst the COVID pandemic, Kennedy School graduates chose him to deliver the faculty address (“Precedented Bravery”) at their virtual Class Day ceremony, and HGSE graduates selected him to deliver the 2023 Faculty Commencement Address (“Brave Awakenings in an Age of Bullies”). A respected leader in the LGBTQ+ community, he was a founding member of Barack Obama’s National LGBT Leadership Council, gave expert testimony to the U.S. Pentagon Comprehensive Working Group on the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and to the Parliament of the Czech Republic on the legalization of marriage equality, was part of the first-ever LGBTQ delegation from the United States to Palestine and Israel, and was a 2023 honoree in Portraits of Pride, a public art installation that showcases “leaders and luminaries of the LGBTQ+ community in Massachusetts.” That same year, he was also honored with the Evelynn M. Hammonds Award for Exceptional Service to LBGTQ+ Inclusion at Harvard. He is Board Chair emeritus and the longest-serving board member for Free the Slaves, a leading global NGO in the fight against modern slavery and human trafficking, and is a longtime advisory board member and creative collaborator with the Tony Award-winning American Repertory Theater. He also serves on the boards of the Clemente Course in the Humanities, Men4Choice, Boxser Diversity Initiative, and Pangyrus. Dr. McCarthy graduated with honors in History and Literature from Harvard College and earned his M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. in History from Columbia University.
Gabrielle Oliveira’s research focuses on immigration and mobility — on how people move, adapt, and parent across borders. Her expertise includes gender, anthropology, transnationalism across the Americas. Merging the fields of anthropology and education through ethnographic work in multiple countries, Oliveira also studies the educational trajectories of immigrant children. She is the author of Motherhood Across Borders: Immigrants and their Children in Mexico and in New York City (NYU Press). The book has won the inaugural Erickson and Hornberger Book Award by the University of Pennsylvania’s Ethnography Forum and the award for book of the year by the Council of Anthropology and Education. Her new book, and the subject of the presentation today, Now We Are Here: Family Migration, Children’s Education, and Dreams for a Better Life published by Stanford University Press in 2025 won the AERA Book of the Year award for 2026.
Gabi has been engaged in studying Latin American migration to Massachusetts and has extensively focused on how immigrant children and families navigate newfound educational systems amid a global pandemic. She has worked closely with teachers in dual language programs whose students are Brazilian working to understand what the constraints are in educational practices in and out of classrooms. Gabi was a Radcliffe Fellow in 2024-2025 where she worked on third book manuscript based on research in the north of Brazil with immigrant children in public schools. Her publications can be found in journals like Anthropology and Education Quarterly, Diaspora, Indigenous, and Minority Education, Bilingual Research Journal, TESOL Quarterly, Teachers College Record, AERA Open, Global Studies of Childhood, among others.
Originally from São Paulo, Brazil, Gabi received her M.A. and Ph.D. from Teachers College, Columbia University in New York City. She was the recipient of the National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation Dissertation Award and Postdoctoral Fellowship. A co-founder of a group called “Colectiva Infancias” her team has won a grant from the National Geographic Foundation to assemble a public-facing website on the stories of immigrant children who migrate within the Americas. She has appeared in multiple media vehicles including the BBC, Univision, TV Globo, NPR, and the New York Times.
Bhuvan Ravindran is an environmental lawyer and policy professional with nearly eight years of experience. From 2018 to 2021, he practiced civil and environmental litigation, challenging faulty environmental impact assessments for nuclear, mining, and infrastructure projects. As a Policy Analyst at the Council on Energy, Environment, and Water (CEEW) from 2021 to 2024, he co-authored long-term climate and energy policies for Rajasthan and Maharashtra, conducted policy research to support implementation of the India Cooling Action Plan, and prepared ministerial briefs for India’s COP delegations. He also taught courses on climate, biodiversity, and energy policy for a Master of Law program at WWF India–Jindal Global Law School.
In summer 2025, Bhuvan worked at the Center for Large Landscape Conservation in Montana, he worked on strengthening legal and financial frameworks for ecological connectivity across bioregions. He completed a Master in Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School as a Roy Family and President John F. Kennedy Fellow, where he also served as a Research Assistant at the Belfer Center’s Arctic Initiative.
Bhuvan currently works at Pacific Environment, assessing and mitigating the risk of ship strikes on whales in the Arctic Ocean. Alongside this, he is building ARGO, a startup working to catalyze finance for biodiversity protection around the world. His work is guided by a commitment to advancing a nature-positive world—reviving ecosystems, restoring connectivity, and embedding biodiversity in global policy and decision-making.