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Nel Noddings Interview

Nel Noddings is Lee L. Jacks Professor of Education, Emerita, at Stanford University, and past president of the National Academy of Education, the Philosophy of Education Society, and the John Dewey Society. Known for her work on the ethics of care, her many books include Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education. A former public school mathematics teacher and a mother of ten, Dr. Noddings’ work is grounded in richly lived experience.

She talked with Ikeda Center publications associate Mitch Bogen in July 2013 about her...

Quote of the Week: 9-16

September 2013 marks the twentieth anniversary of the Ikeda Center, founded in 1993 as the Boston Research Center for the 21st Century. In 2003, to mark the 10th anniversary, founder Daisaku Ikeda sent a message to confirming the ongoing primacy of open dialogue, even during — actually, especially during — the violent aftermath of 9/11. In that message he said:

"Since the tragedy of September 11th two years ago, many people have been suffering from intense anxiety and fear, imagining that such a 'clash of civilizations' may soon occur on a...

Quote of the Week: 9-9

Dr. Sarah Wider of Colgate University delivered the keynote talk at the 3rd Annual Ikeda Forum for Intercultural Dialogue (September 2006). The theme of the Forum was "Emerson and the Power of Imagination." During her remarks Dr. Wider explained:

"If we want to make imagination feel at home, generosity shows us the way. How else can imagination thrive but in the place where welcoming comes first and where judgment feels no need to speak? Finally feels no need to be. Open hearted, open handed, open minded, equivalent to the expansiveness...

Harding-Ikeda Dialogue Now Available!

America Will Be!
Conversations on Hope, Freedom, and Democracy

By Vincent Harding and Daisaku Ikeda

Join historian Vincent Harding (left), a friend and adviser to Martin Luther King Jr., and Buddhist leader Daisaku Ikeda as they engage in a thrilling cross-cultural dialogue illuminating the historic events of the American civil rights movement. The movement’s victories, say the authors, expressed a profound vision of freedom, equality, and nonviolent social change that can and should guide our modern experiments in democracy. Above all, the message of...

Quote of the Week: 9-2

During our 20th anniversary year, friends of the Center are contributing reflections connecting their work with our core convictions. Former dean of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government Joseph Nye offers thoughts on our first conviction: Dialogue and Mutual Understanding Are Inseparable and Needed More Than Ever. Professor Nye tells us:

"In the past, I have written about the importance of soft power, the ability to get what one wants through attraction and persuasion than coercion or payment. Soft power is a 'two way...

The Opposition King Faced

[Posted by M. Bogen: 8-30] In our previous post, we cited Vincent Harding's belief that the "true significance" of Dr. King's dream was that "he held on to it in the midst of harsh opposition." A few examples of the nature of this opposition can help us grasp how great the triumph of the movement truly was.

1) Last Sunday (8-25), "Meet the Press" rebroadcast the interview they did with with Dr. King and NAACP executive secretary Roy Wilkins just a few days before the March, now among the most hallowed events in U.S. history. At the time...

Quote of the Week: 8-19

From Helen Marie Casey's report on Janne Benyus's 2004 talk exploring the concept of biomimicry:

Life thrives, the author reminded her audience, in surprising ways. If we are diligent students of Nature, we can learn to clean without detergents, to color without dyes, and to operate pumps, fans, propellers, mixers, and turbines without friction. We can learn to make objects adhere without glue, and we can learn what the abalone has to teach us so that we can make ceramics as tough as the mother-of-pearl of the abalone. We can learn to make fiber optics that self-assemble. If we...

Quote of the Week: 8-12

“There comes a time when you hit a wall in life and you decide you’ve got to make a choice about whether you’re going to go forward and make a difference, or be still.”

Today's quote is from the Reverend Gloria White-Hammond's January 2005 talk called "I Am My Sister's Keeper." Delivered as the Harriet Tubman Lecture on Human Rights, it was part of the Women of Courage Lecture Series, cosponsored by the Boston Research Center for the 21st Century (now the Ikeda Center) and the Wellesley...

Quote of the Week: 8-5

Vito Perrone: "What if our children and young people learn to read and write but don't like to and don't? What if they don't read the newspapers and magazines, or can't find beauty in a poem or love story? What if they don't go as adults to artistic events, don't listen to a broad range of music, aren't optimistic about the world and their place in it, don't notice the trees and the sunset, are indifferent to older citizens, don't participate in politics or community life, and are physically and psychologically abusive to themselves?

"And what if they leave us intolerant, lacking in...

Quote of the Week: 7-29

"One other very important point I want to make here is that war is not inherent in human beings. We learn war and we learn peace. The culture of peace is something which is learned, just as violence is learned and war culture is learned. So we are engaged in an enormous learning process for the whole planet. The new community-based ways of teaching and learning which draw on the people of the community to teach and have the children moving in and out of a school room and into the community, learning to appreciate all the resources of that community — that's the start of a peace culture....

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America Will Be!Conversations on Hope, Freedom, and Democracy

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America Will Be!
Conversations on Hope, Freedom, and Democracy