After finishing a BA in history and philosophy I joined the Norbertine religious order (founded in the 12th century), but after two years of study was put out because I was "too pious"-don't laugh! I studied theology two more years in a diocesan seminary, but left without being ordained, having realized that I wanted the academic, not pastoral, life. I then did an MA at Marquette University (Milwaukee, 1954-55) in history, philosophy and literature, and worked on a Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin in the same areas (1955-57). 

In searching for a doctoral dissertation topic, I made the life-shaping choice to work on the "Una Sancta Movement," a movement of rapprochement between Catholics and Protestants in Germany starting post-World War I and exploding after World War II. Having married Arlene Anderson in 1957, I went to Germany to do research and while at the University of Tübingen (where our first daughter was born in the Frauenklinik) I also arranged to earn a degree (1959) in Catholic Theology (Sacrae Theologiae Licentiatus -- STL) from the Pontifical Catholic Theology Faculty, the first Catholic layperson to earn a degree in Catholic theology; today, of course, there are thousands of laypersons with Catholic theology degrees. 

We returned to the US in 1960, to teach at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, where Arlene noted that there was no periodical in America devoted to ecumenism -- and so, in 1963 we launched the Journal of Ecumenical Studies (JES), a scholarly quarterly devoted to dialogue, first intra-Christian, then inter-religious and finally inter-ideological (the core of the latter being Christian-Marxist dialogue).  Since 1966 I have been on the faculty of Temple University's Religion Department.  In addition I have served as visiting professor at Graz (Austria), Hamburg and Tübingen, Nankai University (Tianjin, People's Republic of China), Fudan University (Shanghai, China), and Temple University Japan (Tokyo). In 1978, I established the Institute for Interreligious, Intercultural Dialogue as an outreach arm of JES, which in the past twenty years has sponsored scores of lectures, conferences, seminars, books and more. 

Then in 1995, together with Ashok Gangedean, and others, I started the Global Dialogue Institute (GDI), which now is poised to bring my previous dialogue work, and that of Ashok, to a new global level, reaching out and linking the creativity generated in interreligious, intercultural dialogue to the opinion-shaping groups of world society -- business, education, law, communications, the arts, and others. We look forward in this work of Deep-Dialogue to the collaboration of all those who in any way are connected with GDI, or are touched by it. 

Len and Arlene Swidler's Resume can be visited at http://blue.temple.edu/~dialogue 

Harry Halloran, Jr.: A Profile 
by Lillian Sigal 
Harry Halloran, Jr., chair of the GDI Board and CEO of the American Refining Group, sees his life as a seamless whole. In his senior year at the University of Pennsylvania, he felt called to become a priest. After earning a B.S. in civil engineering, he entered an Augustinian seminary. After four and a half years at seminary, however, he was drawn towards lay teaching and religious studies, gaining a Masters degree in theology. In the course of his life journey, he shifted his career goals again -- to social work -- and became a Vista Volunteer in Maine. When his father became sick and he was needed in the family business, Harry's life took yet another turn, this time into the corporate world. When I asked Harry if he had any regrets about having to forsake his earlier aspirations, without hesitation, he said, "No regrets." He believes all his shifts fit together. For as he progressed in the business world, his earlier directions were brought back. The values he had sought to embody in his life work he made manifest in the commercial arena. Furthermore, serving on the boards of various educational enterprises, including GDI, has given him the opportunity to bring his life full circle. 

GDI's vision has been implicit in Harry's own vision for doing business. His oil refining business is one of the few pursuing environmental goals to use wind and other sources of renewable energy. Simultaneously with oil refining, he formed Energy Unlimited, Inc. for wind and other affiliated corporations converting biomass to biochemicals to replace petro chemicals. He is involved in some solar energy, but wind is more commercially viable, moving faster, and more competitive in much of the world. 

Harry serves on the boards of several academic institutions: the University of Pennsylvania Engineering School, The College of Commerce and Finance, Villanova University, the Shipley School, and the Academy of Natural Sciences. He is also a founding trustee of The Enlightened World Foundation, whose aim is to encourage for profit corporations and other institutions in solving the world's problems through goods and services. This organization is beginning to define socially responsible corporations and rate them on their impact on their employees and society as a whole. 

Has Harry tried to introduce the notion of Deep-Dialogue into his own workplace? In response to this question, Harry emphasizes that since the technology of Deep-Dialogue is still taking shape, teaching it to his employees has been premature. Nevertheless, dialogue is beginning to enter into business thinking and process. In fact, Harry is planning a workshop for his senior executives using GDI's materials as a tool to facilitate international dialogue. 

If in the public's consciousness business leaders are perceived as solely concerned with the bottom line of profit, Harry Halloran clearly shatters the stereotype. For Harry, the vision of his company is primary and profits secondary. Moreover, He believes that stereotype of CEO's is naive because he is not alone. Out of his vision there is room for softer values than the bottom line. Awakening to dialogue, he argues, is critical to communicating with people in general and in his company. Harry's career and civic path speak to his own awakening They also provide an inspiring and hopeful model for pragmatically blending one's deepest values and ideals with the mundane workaday world. 

Report on GDI Activities in 1998 
Leonard Swidler and Ashok Gangedean as Founder-Directors of GDI lectured on the "Relationship between Law and a Global Ethic" at the International Senate of the Union Internationale des Avocats at the annual conference of the Presidents of the  National Bar Associations of Europe in Vienna, February 21, 1998. 

• GDI co-sponsored with Haverford College under the leadership of Ashok Gangadean a "Peace Project" at Haverford College in  February, 1998, including Arun Gandhi, grandson of Mahatma Gandhi.
• IIID/GDI co-sponsored lectures on Jewish-Christian-Muslim dialogue on business and ethics by Leonard Swidler, Uli Kortsch, Ingrid  Shafer of GDI, as well as Racelle Weiman at GDI's invitation, at the Evangelische Akademie in Loccum, Germany, March  27-29, 1998.
• Leonard Swidler lectured for GDI in theannual conference of the Academy of Management on "The Cooperation of Business and Religion" in San Diego, August 9-10, 1998.
• Through Ashok Gangadean GDI sponsored one special presentation,  "Web-Delivered Introduction to Philosophy" and three panels at the World Congress of Philosophy, at Boston, August 9-12, 1998, on: "Critical Reflection on the State of Global Consciousness" (Ewert Cousins, Hazel Henderson, Robert Muller, Karan Singh),  "The Future of a Global Philosophy" (Ashok Gangadean, Jitendra N. Mohanty, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Martha Nussbaum, Tsenay Serequeberhan, Robert Thurman, Tu Wei-Ming), and "Is a Global Ethic Possible?" (Leonard Swidler, Krystyna Gorniak, Liu Shu-Hsien, Yersu Kim, Ram A. Mall, Ingrid Shafer) Also at the World Congress of Philosophy the newly formed World  Commission on Global Consciousness and Spirituality was inaugurated on August 10, l998.
• Since spring, 1998, a Deep-Dialogue Pilot Group has been holding highly successful interreligious dialogues in homes approximately every six weeks.
• Leonard Swidler visited the Congo for ten days in July to present the five-pronged GDI Project to several Ministers and other leaders. It was very well received, and is now waiting for funding approval.
• Extensive conversations were held with WHYY-TV, the local PBS station, about a nation-wide down-link program in the area of  business, ethics and dialogue. The GDI proposal was well  received and negotiations are proceeding.
• Leonard Swidler was approached by Sir Sigmund Sternberg of London (1998 winner of the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion) to invite GDI to work with him to found a global organization, "Business-Faith-Dialogue" (BFD), which will have a special relationship with GDI. BFD will gather some of the most prestigious business leaders of the world in order to foster ethics and dialogue in the corporate world. The organization of BFD is proceeding apace.
• The GDI Project on Israel and the Middle East was initiated at Haverford College October 2-8, and will continue in 1999 in Israel.
• Extensive conversations have been held with Haverford College about relating the College to GDI, including the co-sponsoring of an international meeting and conference of the "Global Commission on Consciousness and Spirituality" at Haverford College, fall, 1999.
• Detailed plans are being worked out by Howard Perlmutter, Leonard Swidler, Ashok Gangadean, and Uli Kortsch for a "Dialogue on Deep-Dialogue" to be held at Haverford College, January 13, 1999.
• Bosnia in Dialogue. Paul Mojzes, Academic Dean of Rosemont College, PA, and coordinator of this project, reports that theologians are working together to raise consciousness regarding religious tolerance. With financial support from various churches, counseling is being provided for people in interfaith marriages. Their ultimate goal is to establish a department of interreligious dialogue at the University of Sarajevo.

 

And yet in our cultural evolution over millennia it has become painfully clear that one of the most urgent challenges facing humanity today is the breakdown of communication and human relations between diverse worldviews and perspectives. Our very welfare and survival now turns on our capacity to communicate effectively and relate in nonviolent humane ways with one another across and between worldviews. We know that violence of all sorts erupt when very different worldviews confront one another. And with the intensive globalization that has accelerated in the 20th Century bringing different worlds into increased direct interaction the problems of communicating nonviolently between worldviews is a key to our sustainability. So it was clear to me when I arrived at Haverford College as a beginning professor in l968 that the most important human problem I could focus upon was trying to resolve the complex issues of communication and relations between worlds. 

Over these three decades I followed the intuition that there must be a profound unifying principle and common ground between diverse worldviews. As I expanded my explorations into the foundations of consciousness into diverse eastern traditions of meditative thought I began to find hidden patterns and global trends in the evolution of cultures that I could not see before. 

As my inquiry rose to a higher global perspective across and between alternative cultural and religious traditions it became clear that humanity has been in a deep and painful evolutionary transformation from egocentric "minding" to a more mature reality oriented pattern of dialogic living. Over three decades this journey into the depths of the emergence of the dialogical revolution in the human condition reached a culmination in the publication of my twin volumes -- Meditative Reason: Toward Universal Grammar and Between Worlds: The Emergence of Global Reason. In these two volumes I attempt to clarify the missing fundamental Logos or Primal Unifying Power out of which diverse worlds are generated and held in mutual interaction. This fundamental Logos is at once the source of the formation of alternative worlds and also of the relations between worlds. This Logos is the generative principle that makes communication possible between very different worlds. And it is at the core of what Len Swidler and I now call Deep-Dialogue. The dynamics of Deep-Dialogue is a technology of living that transforms all aspects of our personal and corporate lives. And the Global Dialogue Institute (GDI) seeks to awaken the deep dialogical transformation in all aspects of our cultural lives. We invite you to join us in this vital and timely work. 

In 1999, Leonard Swidler and Ashok Gangadean will join Racelle Weiman and Yael Ben-Ami for for a Deep-Dialogue project planned for Israel. According to Dr. Weiman, Israel has recently  been inundated with assorted Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) methods and techniques. While many of them have great promise, they tend to limit themselves to economic, legal and social issues. Unlike Deep-Dialogue, they do not address the religious, cultural, and philosophical differences that so radically divide Israel. Contrary to the understanding of most observers outside of the Middle East, the major conflict in that region involves the secular vs. the religious world view. Decades of work by GDI partners in the fields of inter-religious, inter-ideological dialogue, philosophy, and global ethics make Deep-Dialogue uniquely suited to the needs of this region. The acknowledgment, respect, and acceptance of the "other" through Deep-Dialogue can build the groundwork for the common good within Israel and the Middle East. 

The series of workshops and seminars in Israel will be geared towards: 

• exposing Israelis from various sectors, backgrounds to Deep Dialogue
• identifying committed pools of interest in various sectors, both public and private
• developing a cadre of trainers and teachers that will initially apply Deep-Dialogue
• researching the response and effectiveness of initial and limited scope
• providing ADR experts in the Mid-East with the opportunity to learn a different tool

Dr. Weiman has taught for over a decade at the University of Haifa, where she specializes in courses on Interfaith and Inter-ethnic Conflict, and Holocaust and Genocide Studies. She lectures to professional organizations which include: clergy, police and military personnel, public administrators and journalists. She serves as a consultant in Canada for The League for Human Rights and the Commission on Human Rights. 
 
Yael Ben-Ami spearheads the programming on conflict resolution in the section on Education for Democracy and Coexistence within Israel's Ministry of Education. In 1995, she published the highly acclaimed handbook for educators entitled Conflict Resolution Without Violence. Currently in its second printing, it is used nationally in Arab and Jewish schools across Israel. Ms. Ben-Ami is a lead trainer for the C.R.E.A.T.E. Group. She has coordinated many projects devoted to understanding among religious and secular populations in Israel, Arab-Jewish dialogue, disenfranchised and underprivileged youth, and new immigrant populations. For the second year running, she leads workshops at Bar Ilan University on "Judaism and Democracy" for principals and teachers in both religious and secular schools. In 1996, she co-authored an educators' handbook that promoted religious tolerance entitled Polarization to Integration (In Hebrew, "Me Kituv Le Shiluv"). 
 
GDI and Public Administration 
In July, 1997, working with Thomas Lynch, GDI presented a three hour workshop prior to the national American Society for Public Administration (ASPA) conference in Philadelphia in order to encourage ASPA members to pursue ethical issues in a spirit of global dialogue. As a result of the workshop, several individuals volunteered to prepare articles for a new journal called the International Journal of Organization Theory and Behavior published by Marcel Dekker, Inc. 

GDI encourages individuals in professional fields to adopt a dialogic and global perspective. Professor Lynch, a member of the GDI board, hopes his efforts to introduce this set of values into the field of public administration will serve as a model for other professional groups. 

Along parallel lines, both he and his wife Cynthia presented a paper on spiritual wisdom at an organization theory conference in March, 1998, in Colorado Springs. Their approach links ethical decision making with the spiritual wisdom literature of the major religious traditions. Professor Lynch also presented a practical workshop on this approach to ethical decision making at the 1998 national ASPA conference in May in Seattle. 

GDI Website 
Please, take the time to explore our constantly expanding website at http://astro.temple.edu/~dialogue (where this newsletter is posted). In addition to assorted documents (such as several drafts of a global or universal ethic and a number of business codes of ethics), articles, and notices of current events, we provide a large number of links to related sites as well as a guest book for web-navigators to share thoughts. We don't link to other sites unless we are reasonably sure that their content will be helpful to our visitors, and we check the page regularly for broken links. The site is best viewed with a high resolution monitor and a fairly recent edition of Netscape Navigator or Microsoft Explorer. Other browsers (especially AOL) may not support some of the color effects. 

As a service of the Center for Global Ethics, a GDI subsidiary with its own web-page, we are also running an international e-mail discussion forum in the Temple University system. To subscribe, please send the following message (without subject) to: listserv@listserv.temple.edu: subscribe g-ethic your-first-name your-last-name 

If you have technical questions concerning the Website or Listserv forum, please contact Ingrid Shafer (ihs@ionet.net ). 
 
Toward Mutuality and Interconnectedness 
Global civilization is not a future possibility; it is a present-day reality. The key term at the edge of the twenty-first century is the term INTER -- a word that assumes a "both-and" ontology and alludes to the processes of life-giving, growth-enhancing mutuality and exchange -- in other words: the primacy of love! If we accept -- as many sociologists argue -- that stories and images are both causally and chronologically prior to religious, political, and social orientations, then the Internet and World Wide Web become both the messenger and the message of the story of creative and open-ended interconnectedness, a new language preparing the way for Deep-Dialogue! 
Ingrid Shafer