91 / 91 Fri, 07 Aug 2026 12:40:20 +0000 en-US hourly 1 /wp-content/uploads/2021/10/cropped-favicon-1-32x32.png 91 / 32 32 Planetary Arts: Cultivating a Unitive Vision for Innovation and Innervation /planetary-arts-cultivating-a-unitive-vision-for-innovation-and-innervation/ Tue, 04 Aug 2026 18:10:55 +0000 /?p=56050 In the years following the two catastrophic World Wars of the 20th century, a number of cultural initiatives were founded. The World Academy of Arts and Science, established in 1960 and our partner organization, the Club of Rome in 1968, have both aimed to bring whole systems and inclusive perspectives and approaches to global issues; respectively as a forum for the reflective interplay of arts and science and as a collaborative think tank 

In the decades since, the communities of WAAs and CoR have done much to address the global challenges of our times – but within a world whose collective mindset was not yet ready to take as seriously as did many of their co-founders and members, its inherent interconnectedness.

Without disputing the empirical evidence, both organizations have sought to countervail the still dominant worldview that emerged from the scientific revolution of the 17th to 19th centuries. In pursuing a limited focus on reductionism and based on the premise of a mechanistic universe, while undoubtedly enabling material progress, it evaded, for most of that time, recognition of whole-systems complexity and ruptured our perception and relationship to a deeper, more unitive understanding of life.

Its technological power drove the Industrial Revolution and, with its associated economics and governance hierarchies, led to colonialism, competitive race for resources, extractive exploitation and externalities of social costs and harms. Its systemic structures engendered the geopolitical schisms that bled into the WWII conflicts and remain unresolved, to others continuing to play out today.

Now, though, the unhealed fragmentations and consequential behaviors, in addition to conflicts, have resulted in an interlocking poly-crisis of existential threats, a deeper meta-crisis and trauma caused by a perceived lack of intrinsic meaning and, at their foundational root, a fallacious worldview of separation.

***

Worldviews are the lenses through which we see the world, and so, whether or not we are consciously aware of their tenets, they underpin our mindsets and frame what we allow ourselves to perceive.

Cultures act as the ‘ways of life’ through which we then live the beliefs, perceptions, and values of what we see. They are embodiments of our collective identities, social fabrics and communal cohesions.

Arts are then the multitude of creative expressions that shape a culture’s narrative and tell stories through and by invoking intellectual, emotional and experiential engagement.

Throughout history, new ideas have had the power to shift worldviews. And by changing the lenses through which we see the world, they have transformed cultures and inspired artistic imagination to cultivate vision and empower potential. 

Pioneering artists, such as those who helped establish WAAS, have also been at the vanguard of fledgling new ideas, helping to ignite sparks of potential into flames of emergence.

While transformational ideas stirred the Axial Age, Renaissance, Copernican, and Industrial Revolutions, it was the congruence between worldviews, cultures, and arts that embedded a transmuted perspective in the psyche of the societies that adopted them.

Although scientific discoveries and insights of the 20th and early 21st century have progressively revealed that a mechanistic worldview is fundamentally incorrect, they have as yet been unable to dislodge its collective hold and so the systems that it perpetuates. 

As co-founder of WAAS, Albert Einstein noted: “The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.” 

Given the unsustainability of our current global state, both our world and our thinking may be about to change and radically so.

***

Amidst the turbulence of the poly-crisis and realization of a deeper meta-crisis of meaning, scientific breakthroughs at all scales and across numerous fields of research are turning our prevailing worldview of separation on its head – and inside out.

Recognizing this emergent understanding, our partner organization the Club of Rome recently invited me to write an evidence-based discussion paper entitled The Unitive Science of a Living Universe1. Converging with universal wisdom teachings and Indigenous traditions, it asks: How might a more relational and interconnected understanding of the universe influence how we see and experience ourselves and our responsibilities to each other and our planetary home?

In positing that, foundationally, as did Einstein and other leading scientists and now supported by ever-increasing data, mind and consciousness aren’t what we have but what we and the whole world intrinsically are, the worldview described by unitive science is of a universe that is able to reconcile science and spirituality. In doing so, it also invites us to re-member that we are each unique and yet inseparable participants on inner and outer levels with our universe’s existential meaning and emergent potential.

In these pivotal times, through the myriad languages of creativity, WAAS’s initiative of a Planetary Arts Movement2 is envisioning a world where all forms of the arts join forces to co-create a culture of peace and secure the inclusive well-being of future generations.

Its mission profoundly aligns with this unitive perspective, narrative and vision. Together with a complementary Club of Rome paper entitled The Possibility of Transformation Through a New Humanism3, we invite inspirational and empowered engagement, planetary kinship and multidisciplinary leadership to harness the power of artistic expression. Through advocacy, networks and community actions we aim to awaken a shared purpose and cultural transformation, sparking creative and collaborative solutions that catalyze and lead to a flourishing planetary home for all life.

***

In late 1512, Michaelangelo, a child of the Renaissance and co-weaver of science and spirituality, completed painting his masterpiece of the Sistine Chapel ceiling. At its center, the iconic image of the finger of God reaching to extend a divine spark to be imbued into the outstretched finger of Adam. It speaks to us over the centuries and at a moment when we can collectively awaken to realize our innately sacred nature and belonging.

Just as the Renaissance inspired both outer innovations and awakened expanded innervations, so now a unitive vision expressed through culture and arts empowers not only innovations of restorative and regenerative technologies but innervations that invite us into a (r)evolutionary new adventure of discovering what it means to be human.

References:

]]> Global Health Futures: ​Scanning the Horizon for Emerging Risk and Opportunity /global-health-futures-scanning-the-horizon-for-emerging-risk-and-opportunity/ Tue, 04 Aug 2026 16:26:22 +0000 /?p=56024

Online | August 14, 2026 | 11:00 CEST

Global Health Futures: ​Scanning the Horizon for Emerging Risk and Opportunity

An EXTRA Webinar (Existential Threats and Risks to All), an initiative of WAAS (World Academy of Arts and Science).

This webinar explores a broad spectrum of global health risks, asking: How do other existential risks – such as climate change, conflict, food crises, AI and inequality – impact on global health, what existential or catastrophic risks are arising within the health sector itself, and how prepared are we to cope with them?

While ‘Good Health and Wellbeing’ has been a top priority in the UN’s 2030 Agenda (SDG 3), the world is falling short of health targets according the WHOs recent report. As director Tedros Ghebreyesus notes, successes are uneven across regions and health systems are increasingly vulnerable to systemic shocks. Progress has stalled on reduction in mortality due to noncommunicable diseases, which remain the leading causes of death globally. Meanwhile, the COVID-19 pandemic caused about 22 million excess deaths, wiping out a decade of gains in life expectancy. And global development assistance for health has plummeted by 30-40 per cent in 2025. Reduced access to medicines for diseases such as HIV and to vaccines, as well as declining surveillance capacity leave us poorly prepared for the next outbreak. similarly has warned of growing vaccination gaps and outbreak risks, increased Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR), a mental health epidemic, a health workforce crisis and other threats.

Against the backdrop of these reports, Ana Maria Pareschev and Prof Thomas Reuter from the EXTRA will be hosting three world class health experts who will share with you their unique insights into emerging health risks, as well as opportunities through policy and technical innovation.

Moderators

Prof. Dr. Thomas Reuter, Chair, EXTRA
Prof., University of Melbourne; Trustee, World Academy of Arts and Science (WAAS)

Ana Maria Paraschiv, EXTRA
Founder, Ubuntu World

Speakers

Prof Andrew Haines, University of London
Professor of Environmental Change and Public Health at the Centre on Climate Change and Planetary Health, and was its director from 2001 to 2010. He is a founder of the ‘Planetary Health’ concept, arguing that earth system damage impacts human health. He was a member of the IPCC for three assessment reports, chaired the Scientific Advisory Panel for the 2013 WHO World Health Report, the Rockefeller /Lancet Commission on Planetary Health, the Lancet Pathfinder Commission on health in the zero-carbon economy, and the InterAcademy Partnership working group on climate change. He is chief scientific advisor to the pan-European Commission on Climate Change and Health, and received the Tyler prize for Environmental Achievement in 2022.

Dr Nabeel Goheer, PATH’s chief of Asia, Middle East, Europe Region
Nabeel is currently providing strategic leadership and overseeing program activities in PATH’s regional hubs in South Asia, Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe, Central Asia, China, and Western Europe. Before joining PATH, he held senior roles at the Commonwealth Secretariat, International Labour Organization (ILO), the World Bank, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and the Government of Pakistan.

Prof Stefan Brunnhuber
Stefan is medical director of the teaching hospital of Dresden and Salzburg University and chief physician in the department of psychiatry. He holds a chair in sustainability and social medicine at Mittweida University of Applied Sciences. He is a trustee of WAAS and member of the Club of Rome. He served for 10 years as Vice-chairman of the European Institute of Medicine, a member of several international working groups for the European Academy, at the EU Commission as political and corporate consultant and was a founding member of Alma Mater Europeae. He has expertise on the psychology of the anthropocene, risk analysis and new financial engineering. He was awarded the Federal K. Tschirra award in 2020.

]]> Solutions to Global Turbulence: Peace, Prosperity, and Freedom /solutions-to-global-turbulence-peace-prosperity-and-freedom/ Thu, 30 Jul 2026 14:07:51 +0000 /?p=55826

Online | September 8-11, 2026

Agenda
Concept Note

The unprecedented speed and increasing complexity of global social transition exceeds the understanding, national policies and the expertise of prevailing theories among the academics, strategists and diplomats at the local, national and global level. Without a deeper understanding of the forces at play, it is difficult to frame and implement effective responses.

WAAS@65 charted the interwoven symptoms and consequences of global turbulence – in governance, economic inequality, peace and security, education, science and technology, climate and ecology, and culture – and identified their root causes and deep drivers. The conference also identified a number of high potential solutions to address the identified root causes of the turbulence which merit in-depth examination and development in order to render them into operable practical strategies.

This year’s WAAS@66 Summit builds directly on these findings to explore concrete, integrated solutions for global turbulence. Its objective is to transform the growing awareness of causes and solutions into practical strategies that can lead to action. The conference will be organised across three one-day civilizational themes – Peace, Prosperity, and Freedom – and four structural streams: scale of change, its global nature, human consciousness and societal transformation, knowledge and capacity enablers. The fourth day will close with a general assembly of the members of the World Academy.

Addressing Global Social Turbulence: Sources & Solutions – Report – Vol 1, 2025
]]> The World University Consortium Reawakens a Decades-Old Idea /the-world-university-consortium-reawakens-a-decades-old-idea/ Tue, 28 Jul 2026 22:21:21 +0000 /?p=55811 Almost two years ago, in the Yale University archives, I came across a slim teal-colored brochure embossed with a laurel-wreathed W and the words “The World University” (see the original brochure below). It has survived nearly six decades in a cardboard box, one of 56 boxes containing the archives of the 91. Its motto, stamped in miniature inside the wreath, reads Unity in Dispersity. Opening it today is a peculiar experience: the paper has yellowed, the typography belongs unmistakably to another era, and yet almost every debate on its pages could have been written today.

The 91 (WAAS) was founded in 1960 by figures who had watched knowledge outrun wisdom at catastrophic speed — among them Albert Einstein, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Bertrand Russell, and Lord Boyd Orr, the first Director-General of the FAO. From the beginning, its founders were committed to establishing a world university under the auspices of WAAS. The difficulty was never about ambition; it was definition. What, exactly, should such an institution like this be?

The brochure is the answer they arrived at. Its Declaration of Principles opens with a sentence of disarming simplicity: the idea of a world university is to foster the growth of knowledge and to cultivate enlightened judgment in all that concerns the needs and aspirations of humanity. What follows is a design document of remarkable foresight. The University would have no unalterable blueprint. It would supplement, not duplicate, existing institutions. Above all, it would refuse a campus. Today, we would call this being “in the cloud” or “virtual.”

That refusal was deliberate and, in 1968, close to heretical. A world university, the Declaration argues, must not become a religion with a Holy Place, nor an instrument of cultural imbalance. Rather than erect a single monumental headquarters, it would operate through dispersed “primary units” and “cooperating centers” around the globe — institutes, departments, schools, and programs already doing serious work, linked into a common framework. The founders were candid about why: the convenience of central officials favors centralization, and a grand edifice with a large staff flatters the self-image of those who run it. Better, they concluded, to strengthen the whole than to aggrandize the instrument.

The people assembled behind this idea reads like a census of mid-century intellectual life. Harold D. Lasswell of Yale chaired the Executive Committee. The Council included Linus Pauling, Robert M. Hutchins, Sir John Eccles, Hermann J. Muller, Albert Szent-Györgyi, Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis, and Choh-Ming Li. The first cooperating centers were as improbably specific as they were global: saline irrigation and water purification in Rehovot, microbiological engineering at the Karolinska Institute, fluctuating phenomena at the University of Florence.

The mechanisms proposed were equally inventive. Travelling Fellows would move between centers, carrying with them the questions specialists rarely ask of themselves — a legal scholar embedded among microbiologists to think through what that science would mean for public policy. Commissions would function as task forces on emerging or neglected problems. One anticipated the large-scale pollution of soil, water, and air. Another proposed a Commission on Genetic Engineering and Public Policy, observing that scientific advance in genetics was accelerating and that fundamental questions of public policy could not be deferred indefinitely. That was written more than half a century before the debates now unfolding.

Two priorities framed everything: security, meaning the elimination of war and of scarcities arising from food-population imbalance, and freedom, meaning the protection of wide areas of responsible choice from erosion by biological or cultural engineering.

Then history intervened. A world divided by the Cold War proved inhospitable to a transnational university without borders, and the detailed record of the World University in the decades that followed thinned to almost nothing. The idea did not fail so much as to arrive too early.

It returned in 2013, when WAAS and a group of partner institutions established the World University Consortium to pursue the same vision under contemporary conditions — accessible, affordable, quality higher education worldwide, built on a human-centered approach that shifts emphasis from specialized expertise to contextualized, transdisciplinary knowledge. The vocabulary had modernized; the argument had not changed.

Now, in 2026, WUC enters a new chapter. Its new Board has elected Alberto Zucconi as President and unanimously appointed Irina Bokova, former Director-General of UNESCO, as Honorary President.

These appointments follow the passing of Federico Mayor, whose visionary leadership and lifelong commitment to peace, education, human rights, and sustainable development profoundly shaped the Consortium. His legacy continues to guide WUC’s work to advance higher education as a catalyst for human development and global transformation. Bokova brings exceptional international leadership and a deep commitment to education, science, culture, and cooperation. At UNESCO she championed inclusive education, cultural-heritage protection, and the role of knowledge and innovation in building more peaceful, equitable, and sustainable societies — a record that aligns closely with WUC’s values, and the Board warmly welcomes her to this distinguished role.

The Board also announced that Ralph Wolff, former WUC President and a leading expert in higher-education quality assurance, has accepted the role of Director of Certification for the WUC Certification Program. Building on the seven Future of Education Conferences convened by WAAS and WUC, the program is progressing in India and now preparing to expand across all five continents.

To support that expansion, the Person-Centered Approach Institute (IACP) Department of Artificial Intelligence and Quantum Computing will develop an AI-powered chatbot to assist institutions and organizations applying for WUC certification. Beyond simplifying the process, it will help institutions embed WUC’s core values and quality-learning principles — critical thinking, human rights, human security, and student- and people-centered participatory learning.

A university with no campus, run from everywhere at once, was never a limitation the founders accepted reluctantly. It was the point — and with technology, AI and modern communications, it’s only now becoming possible to build.

]]> 2026 Newly Elected Members /new-fellows-of-the-world-academy-of-art-and-science-announced-2026/ Tue, 28 Jul 2026 16:46:18 +0000 /?p=55795 In July, WAAS announced the results of its 2026 elections. Six new Trustees were elected, while two Trustees were re-elected. The Academy also elected 25 new Fellows and six new Associate Fellows, and re-elected one Associate Fellow and seven Junior Fellows.

New Members of the 91 — 2026

Trustees

Ludvik Toplak

Ludvik Toplak

Rector, Alma Mater Europaea University (AMEU)

Elena Mustakova

Elena Mustakova

Educational & Organizational Consultant, Psychologist, Psychotherapist

Eden Mamut

Eden Mamut

Professor, Engineering Thermodynamics & Advanced Energy Systems, “Ovidius” University of Constanta

Phoebe Koundouri

Phoebe Koundouri

Re-elected as trustee
Professor, Athens University of Economics and Business; Senior Research Fellow, Peterhouse, Cambridge

Ivo Josipović

Ivo Josipović

President of Croatia (2010–2015); Professor Emeritus, University of Zagreb

Uroš Cvelbar

Uroš Cvelbar

Head, Dept. of Gaseous Electronics, Jožef Stefan Institute, Ljubljana

Isabella Bunn

Isabella Bunn

Research Fellow in Governance and Global Ethics, Regent’s Park College, Oxford

Stefan Brunnhuber

Stefan Brunnhuber

Re-elected as trustee
Medical Director, Diakonie Kliniken Zschadraß

Fellows

Kailash Satyarthi

Kailash Satyarthi

Nobel Peace Prize Laureate (2014); Founder, Bachpan Bachao Andolan

Judith Patricia Currivan

Judith Patricia Currivan

Cosmologist, Futurist; Co-founder, WholeWorld-View

Paul Dziatkowiec

Paul Dziatkowiec

Director of Mediation and Peace Support, Geneva Centre for Security Policy

Hakima El Haite

Hakima El Haite

President, World Association for Culture and Heritage

Gian Francesco Giudice

Gian Francesco Giudice

Head, Theoretical Physics Dept., CERN

Glenn Gaffney

Glenn Gaffney

President, G2 Consulting Solutions, LLC

Peter Galbraith

Peter Galbraith

Diplomat, Policy Advisor; Former US Ambassador and Senior UN Official

Yury Gogotsi

Yury Gogotsi

Distinguished University Professor & Bach Endowed Chair, Drexel University

Christian Hansmeyer

Christian Hansmeyer

Head of Research, Force for Good (F4G) Foundation

Maja Herman Sekulić

Maja Herman Sekulić

Vice President, International Academy of Ethics, India

Reyhan Huseynova

Reyhan Huseynova

President, Azerbaijan Future Studies Society

Jana Ilieva

Jana Ilieva

Full Professor of Law and Secretary General, University of Skopje

Ana Jerkovic

Ana Jerkovic

Professional Diplomat, Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs, Croatia

Feng Jiang

Feng Jiang

Professor & Chairman, Shanghai Academy of Global Governance and Area Studies

Klaus Mainzer

Klaus Mainzer

President, European Academy of Sciences and Arts

Ana Maria Paraschiv

Ana Maria Paraschiv

Founder, Ubuntu World

Marian Nkansah

Marian Nkansah

Professor of Chemistry, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology

Yao Ouyang Qiushi

Yao Ouyang Qiushi

Distinguished Professor, School of Economics, Zhejiang University

Stephen Yong-Seung Park

Stephen Yong-Seung Park

Professor of HR Management & Dean of International Affairs, Kyung Hee University

Ortwin Renn

Ortwin Renn

Affiliate Scholar, Research Institute for Sustainability, GFZ Helmholtz Center

Matthaios Santamouris

Matthaios Santamouris

Distinguished Professor, University of New South Wales, Sydney

Sergio Scapagnini

Sergio Scapagnini

Artist, Author, Film Maker and Social Worker

Gary Shapiro

Gary Shapiro

Executive Chair, Consumer Technology Association (CTA)

Daljeet Singh

Daljeet Singh

Director of International Affairs, Sunup Fusion Technologies Co Ltd

Emnet Woldegiorgis

Emnet Woldegiorgis

Professor and Director, Ali Mazrui Centre for Higher Education Studies, University of Johannesburg

Associate Fellows

Kiriti Prasad Choudhury

Kiriti Choudhury

Steering Committee Member, WAAS EXTRA Executive Committee Digital Transformation, IT Governance & Compliance Leader, Beximco Pharmaceuticals PLC

David Alexandre Ellwood

David Alexandre Ellwood

Mathematician & Theoretical Physicist; Exec. Committee, British Pugwash Group

Marta Nešković

Marta Nešković

Re-elected as Associate Fellow
Researcher, Science for Society and Human-Centered Sustainable Development

João Gabriel de Araujo Oliveira

João Gabriel de Araujo Oliveira

Associate Professor of Economics; Economist, World Bank

Izet Rađo

Izet Rađo

Full Professor, Faculty of Sports and Physical Education, University of Sarajevo

Kefyalew Wondimagegn

Kefyalew Wondimagegn

Professor, Bahir Dar University, Ethiopia

Junior Fellows

(All were re-elected)

Pooja Asokan

Pooja Asokan

Professor, Conscious Management Institute

Kehkashan Basu

Kehkashan Basu

Founder, Green Hope Foundation

Savitri Chandrasekaran

Savitri Chandrasekaran

Internal Medicine Trainee, University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust

Arthur Duforest

Arthur Duforest

Disarmament and Conflict Prevention Consultant, Inter-Parliamentary Union

Yunus Ibrahim Hussain

Yunus Ibrahim Hussain

African Research Councillor, Wheeler Institute for Business and Development

Imran Khan

Imran Khan

Director (Finance), National Electric Power Regulatory Authority, Pakistan

Leonid Shokh

Leonid Shokh

Journalist, Huxley Media

91 | July 2026
]]> Advancing the Global Peace Offensive and Global Compassion /advancing-the-global-peace-offensive-and-global-compassion/ Mon, 27 Jul 2026 23:17:01 +0000 /?p=55769 The 91 and the Satyarthi Movement for Global Compassion sign a Memorandum of Understanding — and, in doing so, highlight an important component that is essential for peace-building.

On July 24, 2026, an online event was held to sign a memorandum of understanding between Garry Jacobs, President of the 91 (WAAS) and Nobel Peace Laureate Kailash Satyarthi, founder of the Satyarthi Movement For Global Compassion.

YouTube Video

Donato Kiniger-Passigli, Vice-President of the 91, and President of the Global Peace Offensive Center opened and closed the proceedings. Nobel Peace Laureate, Kailash Satyarthi, he observed, spent a lifetime fighting the worst forms of labour and is now helping the World Academy confront the worst forms of war — a single arc, held together by one formula: conciliation, mutual concessions, and above all human compassion. The Global Peace Offensive rests on incremental, reciprocal, publicized steps that reduce distrust before conditions are ripe for conflict. What it has lacked is an account of the motivation that makes anyone take that first unilateral step. The memorandum signed that day hopes to take that first step.

Kailash Satyarthi, a Nobel Peace Laureate and founder of the Satyarthi Movement, who was recently welcomed as a Fellow of the World Academy, was blunt about what compassion is not. “It’s not an emotion, a virtue, or a synonym for kindness, sympathy, or empathy,” he explained. It is, in his framing, a disruptive, dynamic and transformative force — and the world needs it more of it. His diagnosis was sharper still: “We have laws, wealth greater than at any point in history, and a working knowledge of nearly every problem and roughly how to solve it. What we have is a gap between the problem solvers and the problem sufferers, and between what is spoken and what is done.”

Garry Jacobs, President and CEO of WAAS, responded by noting that the world needs positive peace, not merely the absence of war — food, health, education, freedom, economic opportunity, social justice, safe communities, human dignity, sustainable development. “That is our program, and that is your program,” he said. “Our goals couldn’t be more closely aligned.”

Alberto Zucconi, Chair of the Board of WAAS, noted that in psychology, the variable that best predicts whether a working relationship succeeds is the working alliance, and the principal component of a working alliance is common purpose and shared value. On that evidence, he argued, the new partnership is scientifically well-founded.

Jonathan Granoff, President of the Global Security Institute and WAAS Trustee, who has worked alongside Satyarthi at Nobel Peace Laureate Summits made the case for children. “The worst victims of the world’s wars and of market insensitivities are children, and undeveloped leaders are often those who were once children themselves and lacked a compassionate environment during the years that mattered. Shifting the paradigm from war and militarism to human security therefore begins with them,” said Jonathan. Of Kailash he offered this insight: “He has consistently been a voice that builds bridges where others want to build tunnels.”

WAAS Executive Director Ketan Patel, argued that compassion cannot remain the property of movements and summits: without it we will not progress as a species, which means it has to become a core human value taught to children and adults alike, in every walk of life. Former member of the Irish Parliament, Denis Naughten, highlighted the urgency in technology, suggesting that for young people entering careers in the age of artificial intelligence, compassion may be the North Star that carries them through — with consequences unfolding over decades, not daily news cycles. WAAS Secretary-General Janani Ramanathan, who is based in India, where the bulk of Kailash’s work is done, welcomed the new program and looked forward to supporting the work of colleagues already doing the important groundwork of the Satyarthi Movement for Global Compassion.

WAAS Vice-President Aleksander Zidanšek, who is also Deputy Director of the Global Peace Offensive Center, closed the conversation with a profound insight. “Physicists,” he said, “are known for making weapons; here is an opportunity to do something good for peace. Justice for children does not arrive on its own — someone has to live for it — and the Peace Offensive begins from the same premise: peace is not a matter of waiting for the right conditions but of actively and systematically pursuing them.” He extended an invitation to visit Maribor in Slovenia, where the Global Peace Offensive is headquartered.

Other witnesses to the signing of this memorandum were Irina Bokova, former Director General of UNESCO, Amb. (ret.) Francis M. O’Donnell, a Member of the United Nations Advocacy Community, and Grant Schreiber, General Manager of the 91.

The gap in building peace is not knowledge. It is the will to close the distance between those who can solve and those who suffer. The signing of the memorandum (below) is a first step in trying to close this gap.

]]> Dialogues With the Past: Timeless Wisdom For Contemporary Peacebuilding /dialogues-with-the-past-timeless-wisdom-for-contemporary-peacebuilding/ Fri, 17 Jul 2026 16:49:28 +0000 /?p=55537

Dialogues4Peace | 25-27 October 2026 | Athens, Greece

In a time of global division, environmental strain, and moral uncertainty, the call for peace has never been more urgent. Yet true peace cannot be achieved through politics alone — it must be rooted in wisdom. The Dialogues4Peace World Series invites scholars, thinkers, and practitioners to rediscover the timeless principles of harmony, balance, and justice found in ancient civilizations — from Greece, Egypt, China, and India to Israel and its biblical wisdom, as well as Indigenous and spiritual traditions across the world.

In a world engulfed by polycrisis — from war and climate disruption to distrust in institutions and the erosion of shared values — this conference invites thought leaders and citizens alike to reimagine peace for the 21st century through the wisdom of antiquity. Building on recent findings from the 91 and the European Academy of Sciences & Arts it seeks to explore how archaeology, ancient wisdom, and cultural heritage can illuminate pathways toward a sustainable and secure future.

This first conference will examine how classical philosophies, ethical systems, and cultural heritages can inspire practical strategies for peacebuilding, education, intercultural dialogue, and sustainable living in the 21st century. Central to the discussion is the moral logic of Nemesis — the timeless Greek lesson that hubris leads to downfall — a message that resonates deeply with today’s breakdown of global cooperation and social trust.

Participants are invited to share insights that bridge ancient knowledge with modern challenges, turning historical reflection into contemporary transformation. Through the integration of scientific insight, ethical reflection, and cultural memory, Dialogues4Peace aims to chart actionable strategies for transforming the current turbulence into a conscious social evolution — one that restores balance between human progress, planetary stewardship, and enduring peace.

Join us in shaping a new global dialogue — where the wisdom of the past lights the path toward a more humane and peaceful future.

]]> Linus Pauling: A Mind for Matter, a Heart for Mankind /linus-pauling-a-mind-for-matter-a-heart-for-mankind/ Mon, 29 Jun 2026 01:27:16 +0000 /?p=55318 Linus Pauling was born in Portland, Oregon, in 1901, the son of a druggist who died young and a mother who struggled to keep the family afloat. He paid his own way through Oregon Agricultural College with laborer’s wages, published his first paper — on the crystal structure of molybdenite — before he had finished his doctorate, and arrived at the California Institute of Technology in 1925 to begin a thirty-eight-year residency that would remake the science of matter itself.

What Pauling did, in essence, was teach chemistry to see. Borrowing the new language of quantum mechanics from Sommerfeld, Bohr, and Schrödinger, he explained why atoms hold together at all. His electronegativity scale gave chemists a number for an atom’s hunger for electrons; his valence bond theory and his 1931 papers on the nature of the chemical bond reorganized the discipline around the geometry of molecules. By 1954 the Royal Swedish Academy had awarded him the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work. Along the way he had described the alpha helix coiling through proteins, identified sickle-cell anemia as the first “molecular disease,” and laid groundwork so fundamental that Francis Crick would later call him the father of molecular biology.

A lesser figure might have stopped there, content to be ranked among the greatest chemists since Lavoisier. Pauling could not. He had spent the 1940s close enough to the atomic project to understand exactly what physics had handed the generals, and in the aftermath of Hiroshima he refused the comfortable silence available to a celebrated laureate. With his wife and closest collaborator, Ava Helen, he began to speak — first to citizens’ committees, then to the world — about radioactive fallout, about strontium settling in the bones of children, about the genetic damage that open-air testing scattered indiscriminately across the planet. He marshaled data the way he marshaled molecules, and in 1958 he carried to the United Nations a petition signed by more than 9,000 scientists demanding an end to nuclear tests.

The personal cost was real. His passport was withheld. The FBI took an interest. The California Institute of Technology, uneasy with its most famous and most inconvenient professor, offered no celebration when the second prize came — in October 1963 the Nobel committee named Pauling its Peace laureate — making him the only person in history to hold two unshared Nobel Prizes. On the very day the award was announced, the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty entered into force. The argument he had made with statistics had become international law.

This is the type of person and work that the 91 (WAAS) was built to attract The Academy was founded in 1960 by scientists and thinkers who had watched humanity acquire the means of its own extinction and resolved to do something about it. Einstein was called its spiritual father; J. Robert Oppenheimer, Bertrand Russell, and Joseph Rotblat were among the minds who shaped its founding concern — that science, unmoored from ethics, could become an instrument of annihilation. WAAS was conceived as an informal world association answerable to the highest scientific and moral standards, a forum where knowledge could be weighed against conscience independent of borders and prevailing orthodoxies.

Pauling belonged in that company as naturally as carbon belongs in a chain. His name sits among many of the Academy’s most distinguished Fellows, and his archive at Oregon State University preserves his WAAS certificate of membership dated 1983 — a quiet document hidden among his hundreds of honors. The World Academy’s pressing question at the time was precisely the question of Pauling’s career: what does the person who understands the structure of matter owe to the people whose lives that knowledge can save or end?

He was a rare figure who answered it from both sides of his own mind. The same rigor that let him read the angles of a hydrogen bond let him read the epidemiology of fallout; the same refusal to accept received wisdom that produced valence bond theory produced, later, his stubborn and sometimes mistaken crusades over vitamin C. WAAS exists for exactly that synthesis — for the conviction that the artist, the scientist, and the moral actor are not separate citizens but one person, and that the deepest discoveries carry the heaviest obligations.

Pauling died in 1994, at age 93, leaving some 400,000 pages of work behind him. The Academy he joined still convenes around his founding premise: that understanding the world is only half the task, and that the other half — caring what becomes of it — is the part that makes a scientist whole.

]]> From Global Vision to the Classroom: How Human Security for All Took Root in India /from-global-vision-to-the-classroom-how-human-security-for-all-took-root-in-india/ Sun, 28 Jun 2026 17:00:51 +0000 /?p=55304 When the 91 (WAAS) launched Human Security for All (HS4A) in partnership with the UN Trust Fund for Human Security, the campaign’s first task was to carry a single idea — that real security means food, health, dignity, a livable planet, and more — into the rooms where the world’s decisions get made. It reached the floor of the world’s largest technology show, the halls of the Inter-Parliamentary Union, and the stages of COP28, generating nearly 4.9 million impressions and persuading global institutions to adopt human security as their own theme.

India is where that idea met its largest audience.

READ THE FULL REPORT HERE

Numbers released in the most recent HS4A India report, for 2024–25 and 2025–26, show a consistent and broad application of human security to young learners. Implemented by the SpellBee International Foundation for Human Excellence (SIFHE), supported by SpellBee International, and guided by WAAS, the project has translated a global framework into a working model of teaching. Its “Classroom to Communities” (C2C) approach builds students’ fluency in listening, speaking, reading, and writing by using human security themes as the raw material for expression, anchored to a library of 60 observance-day booklets spanning environmental conservation, peace, health, human rights, and responsible citizenship.

More than 1.5 million brochures have carried the HS4A message into homes, reaching an estimated 4.5 million readers. Over 100,000 students were engaged, 28,600-plus took part in weekly fluency sessions, 1,601 submissions were formally recognized, and 218 top performers were honored for their articulation on issues of national and global importance. The program touched 1,000-plus schools across 17 states, mobilized 6,000 educators, and trained 8,600 parents — underpinned by more than 21,000 hours of design and delivery work.

What gives the India chapter its significance is the bridge it completes. Where the global campaign moved leaders, India moves learners — and through them, families and entire communities. WAAS Fellows and experts brought their disciplines directly to teachers, while a collaboration with IIM Calcutta extended capacity building to heads of institutions.

The next phase aims higher still: 1,000 schools and 100,000 engaged students within three to five years, with international expansion under discussion across Asia, the Middle East, South America, and Africa. From a phrase coined in a 1994 UN report to a child in an Indian classroom speaking confidently about the world she wants to build — that is the distance HS4A India has begun to close.

]]> Presentation of the Holy Land Confederation (HLC) Plan: A Two-State Solution for Israel and Palestine. A Novel Framework for End of Conflict /gpoc-talks-holy-land-confederation-hlc-plan-a-new-framework-for-peace/ Sat, 27 Jun 2026 06:52:54 +0000 /?p=55665

Collaborators

Online | September 7, 2026 | 2:00 PM CET

Global Peace Offensive Center (GPOC) TALKS: Inaugural Edition

Presentation of the Holy Land Confederation (HLC) Plan: A Two-State Solution for Israel and Palestine. A Novel Framework for End of Conflict

The Global Peace Offensive Center (GPOC), in partnerships with the 91 (WAAS), Alma Mater Europaea University (AMEU), and the European Academy of Sciences and Arts (EASA), and in collaboration with the Institute for Cultural Diplomacy (ICD) and the Global Security Institute (GSI), is proud to announce the first in a special series of “GPOC Talks”.

This inaugural session presents the Holy Land Confederation (HLC)—a comprehensive plan developed bilaterally to enable a sustainable two-state solution. The authors, Dr. Hiba Husseini and Dr. Yossi Beilin, will present a framework designed to facilitate the negotiations for the end of conflict through a confederal structure. This model preserves the individual sovereignty of both Israel and Palestine while fostering joint cooperation, and the sharing of natural resources. They propose a very novel approach to reciprocal residency rights, and an open Old City of Jerusalem.

Event Details

  • Date: Monday, September 7, 2026
  • Time: 2:00 PM CET
  • Duration: 2 Hours (including Q&A through chats).
  • Format: Online Webinar (Live stream via YouTube)

Registration

Registration is required to participate and to receive the webinar link together with background documentation.

Opening Remarks & Moderation

  • Donato Kiniger-Passigli — President, GPOC; Vice President (Social Sciences & Humanities), WAAS

Keynote Presenters

  • Dr. Hiba Husseini — Former Chair of the Legal Committee to Final Status Negotiations between the Palestinians and Israelis.Managing Partner of Husseini and Husseini and a legal advisor to the peace process since 1994, Dr. Husseini chaired the Legal Committee for Final Status Negotiations. An expert on the rule of law and Jerusalem, she serves on the boards of Al Quds University and MEPPA. She holds advanced degrees from Georgetown, GWU, and Sorbonne.
  • Dr. Yossi Beilin — Former Minister of Justice of Israel; Leading “Architect” of the Oslo Accords & the Geneva Initiative.A former Minister of Justice and a key architect of the Oslo Accords and Geneva Initiative, Dr. Beilin has held numerous senior ministerial roles. He is the founder of Beilink International Affairs, a Global Distinguished Professor at NYU, and the author of “The Path to Geneva” and “Touching Peace.”Discussants
  • Jonathan Granoff — President, GSI; WAAS Trustee
  • Isabella Bunn Senior Advisor, Foundation, Oxford Analytica; WAAS Trustee
  • Mark Donfried — Director, ICD

    Q&A

Closing Remarks

  • Garry Jacobs — President & CEO, WAAS
  • Ludvik Toplak — Rector, Alma Mater Europaea University; Director, GPOC
    • Klaus Mainzer — President, EASA; President, Scientific Committee, GPOC

About the Holy Land Confederation

The Holy Land (HLC) stands as a landmark initiative that, in conformity with the GPOC mandate, leverages innovative frameworks and facilitated dialogue to resolve complex conflicts and build a more peaceful, just world.

Rather than a substitute for sovereignty, the HLC is a practical solution designed to facilitate a permanent two-state agreement between Israel and Palestine. It moves away from the traditional ‘divorce’ model of total separation, proposing instead a model of ‘cohabitation’ rooted in mutual understanding and cooperation.

Resources

  • Read the Plan:
  • Speaker Profiles: |
  • Watch:

CONTACT US

For inquiries or comments, contact the Global Peace Offensive Center at peace@worldacademy.org

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