Professors World Peace Academy
The Professors World Peace Academy (PWPA) "was founded in Korea and Japan in 1973 and expanded to an international organization in 1983 with funding from the International Cultural Foundation." "Today PWPA-USA, which also housed the PWPA International office from 1983-2000, publishes the International Journal on World Peace and has an affiliation with the University of Bridgeport. PWPA also supports the development of the New World Encyclopedia, which follows the mission of creating value-based knowledge for a world based on post-critical philosophy." [1]
- Morton A. Kaplan, Past President of PWPA International
"Kaplan was fervently devoted to Professors World Peace Academy and organized three groundbreaking international conferences related to world social systems. All these conferences were organized into about 12 committees with 90 expert scholars presenting papers. PWPA leaders from about 90 countries around the world participated and learned about different systems of governance and how they might advise their own countries. Several volumes of books were produced from each of these conferences.
- The first was “The Fall of the Soviet Empire,” held in Geneva, Switzerland in August 1985, six years before the system collapsed. For this conference, he selected Professor Alexander Shtromas, a former communist legal scholar trained at the University of Moscow, and emigrated to England in 1972. One member of the CIA who had attended privately, later said he believed that this conference not only accurately predicted the collapse of the system but helped outline ways that the collapse and transition to a new system could be peaceful.
- The second was “China in a New Era,” held in Manila, the Philippines, in August 1987. For this conference, he worked with Professor Ilpyong Kim, an Asian Studies scholar trained at Columbia University. This conference showed how China, under the leadership of Deng Xiao Ping, while keeping the Communist Party in control, abandoned central economic planning in favor of a better understanding of “the forces of production” and markets.
- The third was on the future of Liberal Democratic Societies in a post-communist world. This was held in London, England in August 1989. Kaplan chose Professor Edward Shils professor at Cambridge University and head of the Institute for Social Thought at the University of Chicago to help him organize this meeting. [1]
