On 24 September, the 6th Annual Ikeda Peace and Harmony Lecture was held with some 1,100 people in attendance. This year, the lecture was held online for the very first time due to COVID-19 pandemic and was also streamed live via the University’s Facebook page.
Invited guest speaker was Mr Dipesh Chakrabarty, the Lawrence A. Kimpton Distinguished Service Professor of History and South Asian Studies at the University of Chicago, and also the recipient of the 2014 Arnold Toynbee Memorial Prize for his contribution to global history, amongst other accolades, who spoke passionately on the topic, “Living and Thinking Through the Current Pandemic: The Local, the Global, and the Planetary”. This topic drew much interest from the audience due to its relevance in the current times as it explores the various contributing entities to the current challenges that the planet is facing today, such as the current pandemic, climate change and issues amongst countries, and he concluded that youth will be the main game-changer to these various challenges.
At the session, the latest SGI Video “The Power of Encouragement” was screened as a prelude to the lecture. If you’ve missed it, you may catch the full video recording now here.
Amongst the guests present for the lecture included Dr Amaeerali Abdeali (President of the Muslim Kidney Action Association), Dr HM Saleem (Vice President of Jamiyah Singapore), Mr Ervad Rustom Ghadiali (Council Member of the Inter-religious Organisation of Singapore), Steve Luo from NorthEast Community Development Council, Steven Kor (Deputy Director from the Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth), Ms Charis Chan (Manager from the Red Cross), Kuek Yi Hsing and Foo Check Woo (The Spiritual Assembly of the Ba’hai of Singapore), Taibah Bte Ismail from the Assyafaah Mosque and Venerable Phra Goh of Palelai Buddhist Temple.
This is the 6th in a series of lectures that SSA has collaborated with the Singapore Management University (SMU) to honour SGI President Daisaku Ikeda and aims to fulfil President Ikeda’s untiring commitment of dialogue for peace. For the past 5 years, the series has invited distinguished speakers to address and discuss ways in which we can transform threat and difficulty into challenge, cooperation and growth.
Professor Elvin Lim, Dean of the Office of Core Curriculum (OCC) and Director of Wee Kim Wee Centre (WKWC) at the Singapore Management University shared this thoughts of the lecture:
“OCC and WKWC is delighted to be continuing our relationship with SSA and our common pursuit of promoting dialogue and understanding between the people of the world. Our first virtual Ikeda Peace and Harmony lecture continued in this tradition. Dr Dipesh Chakrabarty inspired us to awaken our planetary consciousness, to transcend a human-centric understanding of the globe and to adopt a more capacious and responsible understanding of the imprint of our actions on the planet and our place in it.”
