2006 Media Releases
Tuesday, 15 August 2006
Premier launches La Trobe University Centre for Dialogue
“The violence that is raging in different parts of the world is a salutary reminder that dialogue is not a moral luxury but a practical necessity,” Professor Joseph Camilleri said today.
Professor Camilleri is the Director of the La Trobe University Centre for Dialogue which is to be launched tonight (Tuesday, 15 August) by the Premier, The Hon Steve Bracks, at the National Gallery of Victoria.
The Centre for Dialogue - the first of its kind in Australia - is of international and national significance. Strongly supported by the Victorian Government, the Centre will place Melbourne, and indeed Australia, at the cutting edge of the dialogue of cultures, religions and civilisations.
It is an initiative which La Trobe University believes can significantly contribute to this end through research, education and community engagement.
“Our work will be inter-cultural – exploring a great many religious and cultural traditions – and inter-disciplinary. It will bring together the insights of many disciplines, including cultural studies, religious studies, education, international relations, sociology, law, philosophy, history, and economics," Professor Camilleri added.
The Centre is supported by wide cross-section of educational, professional religious and community organisations, as well as by a wide range of scholars in Australia and internationally. This is reflected in the diverse membership of the Centre’s Advisory Board. Its Board of Management is headed by Elizabeth Proust, Chairman of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. She was until recently Managing Director for Esanda, and in the late 1990s Secretary of the Department of Premier and Cabinet in Victoria.
Master of ceremonies at the launch will be journalist and commentator Philip Adams, who will convey to the gathering enthusiastic messages of support received from numerous scholars and universities, religious leaders, as well as many foreign ministers and ambassadors, and both the present Secretary-General of the United Nations, Mr Kofi Annan, and his predecessor, Mr Boutros Boutros-Ghali.
The key aims of the La Trobe University Centre for Dialogue include:
• educational projects designed to promote inter-cultural/inter-civilisational dialogue in schools and universities
• research that addresses the challenges and opportunities presented by cultural, religious and political diversity and conflict
• community engagement across ethnic, religious and cultural divisions – locally, nationally, regionally and globally
• policy advice to governments, community organisations, and international agencies
• international networking.
The Centre aims to establish a Global Network for Dialogue, linking Melbourne with collaborating institutions in Naples, Oxford, Frankfurt, Moscow, Vancouver, Los Angeles, Hawaii, Kuala Lumpur, Manila, Jakarta, Shanghai, Nagoya, Jerusalem, Istanbul, Athens and Nicosia.
THE EVENING OF THE LAUNCH WILL ALSO BE THE OCCASION OF THE CENTRE’S INAUGURAL ANNUAL LECTURE TO BE DELIVERED BY DISTINGUISHED INTERNATIONAL JURIST, JUDGE CHRISTOPHER WEERAMANTRY, FORMER VICE PRESIDENT OF THE INTERNATIONAL COURT OF JUSTICE.
Renowned for his landmark judgments on the role of culture in international law, Judge Weeramantry has titled his lecture ‘The Dialogue of Cultures: Religions and Legal Systems - an Imperative of our Times’ (see details below).
Launch details: 7.30 pm, Tuesday, 15 August, Great Hall, National Gallery of Victoria, 180 St Kilda Rd, Melbourne.
INAUGURAL ANNUAL LECTURE
15 August 2006
Summary
THE DIALOGUE OF CULTURES, RELIGIONS AND LEGAL SYSTEMS:
AN IMPERATIVE NEED OF OUR TIMES
By Judge Christopher Gregory Weeramantry
Dwindling earth resources, instant electronic communication, burgeoning international travel and an increasing world population are among the factors forcing on us the realisation that we are one global family sharing a common planetary home. It is self-evident that we are increasingly becoming global citizens rather than citizens of this or that sovereign state, for no state is truly sovereign in this heavily interdependent world.
Though togetherness is the only prescription for human survival in this nuclear age we are a community torn apart with divisions, splintered into groups and festering with resentments, misunderstandings and hatreds. As Rabindranath Tagore so tellingly observed in one of his famous poems “The world today is wild with the delirium of hatred”.
Something is seriously wrong somewhere with our attitudes towards our fellow planetary citizens. The most compelling task of all the social disciplines is to examine why we permit the paradox of entrenching differences when unity is our burning need.
What is the cause? There has been a total breakdown of communication and of understanding. Each community, each religion, each nation is locked in within its own inherited compartments of knowledge and beliefs. Walls of separation prevent a vision of the modes of thought, the problems, the strengths and weaknesses of the other.
What will be the effect of neglect? The second line of the same poem tells us that we will be “increasing in anguish”.
What are the hindrances to understanding? The third line of the poem tells us that the path to a solution is “tangled with bonds of greed”.
Walls of separation and tangled bonds of greed separate cultures from each other and the rich from the poor.
Every culture, every religion, every legal system is a part of the universal inheritance of humanity and has so much richness to offer to all. Even within the same community, religious and legal systems function in isolation from each other with divisive walls preventing the inspiration of the former giving depth and insights to the latter.
Ever since the wars of religion not only have religions functioned in isolation from each other but even within a particular culture, religion and law have become things apart. Legal systems grow in rigidity without being tempered by the broadening perspectives of morality and religion, and without the benefit of comparative insights from other legal systems.
Urgent attention is therefore needed in the task of
• Increasing dialogue between cultures, civilisations and religions
• Seeking the enormous areas of confluence of cultures in place of current preoccupations with a possible clash of civilisations.
• Universalising our cultural inheritance
• Infusing educational systems from kindergarten to university with cross cultural perspectives
• Breaking down the formalism of law by reference to the broader principles lying behind legal systems
• Breaking down the isolation of legal systems by deriving comparative insights from others.
• Accentuating traditional concepts of duty, trusteeship and community as opposed to the modern concentration on rights, ownership and the individual
• Breaking down the barriers between East and West and North and South
• Drawing together the wisdom of all religions and infusing this wisdom into international law
• Seeking the common core of religious teachings on such issues as:
Ø The dignity of the human person
Ø The unity of the human family
Ø The conservation of planetary resources
Ø Environmental protection
Ø The elimination of waste
Ø The peaceful resolution of disputes
Ø The avoidance of force
Ø The emphasis on duties to the community to balance the emphasis on the rights of the individual
Dialogue at every level is the answer and the promotion of dialogue is the most vital need of our time.
For further information:
For media enquiries contact Dr Michális S. Michael, tel: (03) 9479 2140, or email: m.michael@latrobe.edu.au