Professor Glenn D. Paige Receives a Honorary Doctorate of Humanities from Jagran Lakecity University in Bhopal, India

CGNK Founder Glenn D. Paige received a Honorary Doctorate from Jagran Lakecity University on December 2 in Bhopal, India. The Honoris Causa was presented by Hon’ Chancellor Shri Hari Mohan Gupta in presence of Chief Guest Prof (Dr) N R Madhav Menon, Vice Chancellor Prof (Dr) Anoop Swarup and Dean Academics Prof (Dr) C A Gurudath. The Citation on the honour bestowed was read by the University’s Dean Academic’s Prof (Dr) C. A. Gurudath and Professor Paige’s Acceptance Speech was delivered in absentia by the University’s Vice Chancellor Prof. Dr. Anoop Swarup. The speech was applauded by a distinguished audience of around 1000 from all walks of life. The text of two documents follow:

The Citation

Professor (Dr.) Glenn Durand Paige, Honorary Doctor of Humanities
A pioneer in evoking interdisciplinary creativity to empower humanity with confidence that killing-free societies are possible. Author of Nonkilling Global Political Science, now in 30 translations, including Hindi and Urdu. Founder of the nonprofit Center for Global Nonkilling in Hawai’i, USA with mission “To promote change toward the measurable goal of a killing-free world by means of infinite creativity in reverence for life.” Now engaging 800 scholars in 400 universities in 83 countries in religions, sciences, humanities, arts, and professions. Jagran Lakecity University celebrates your scholarly journey from war veteran to global nonkilling political scientist and takes great pleasure in awarding you the degree of Honorary Doctor of Humanities.”

Professor (Dr.) Glenn Durand Paige’s Acceptance Speech

Distinguished Chancellor, and Members of Jagran Lakecity University Academic Council and Governing Body,
It is a great honour to receive the Honorary Doctorate from your esteemed institution, the Jagran Lakecity University. The legacy of its founders the Dainik Jagran Media Group, Jagran Social Welfare Society and its Chancellor Shri Hari Mohan Gupta have set up a remarkable network of educational institutions across India with ideals to create leaders who will shape tomorrow’s world with honesty, fortitude, hard work and vision in all spheres of human endeavor and existence.

Jagran in Sanskrit means Awakening. Awakening and Arise are two clarion calls world over for enlightenment through knowledge and action. Universities play an important role in a democratic and engaged society, especially in a society rapidly in transition from tradition to modernity, seeking to build new on the foundation of old and proven wisdom. In addition to providing job-driven training for a modern economy, universities also have responsibility for developing and broadening intellectual skills of their graduates who would be capable of making ethical choices.

My life-long work on research and education promoting Gandhian values has been about taking Mahatma Gandhi’s message of principled nonviolence beyond civil disobedience and social protests into the realm of social science and public policy. As a founder and Chair of the Governing Council of the Center for Global Nonkilling, a United Nations NGO, and as a social scientist my work has focused on developing the Nonkilling paradigm, aiming for a killing-free world as a measurable goal and ensuring that metrics of behavioral and social science methodology is available to evaluate and develop policies and programs for preventing global violence. Globally, we must use all intellectual, material and spiritual means at our disposal to achieve this next stage of nonkilling human revolution.

The objective of Nonkilling peace is unambiguous – peace which aims to stop killings without killing anyone. I described a Nonkilling Society in 2003 to be “a human community, smallest to largest, local to global, characterized by no killing of humans, and no threats to kill; no weapons designed to kill humans and no justifications for using them; and no conditions of society dependent upon threat or use of killing force for maintenance or change.”

Is a Nonkilling Society possible? A resounding “Yes!” is asserted in the Center for Global Nonkilling’s work. This is not a utopian vision. Nonkilling is aimed explicitly at actions for the betterment of fellow citizens, doing good through preventing injury/killing to self, others and group(s). The World Health Organization in its Report on Violence and Health in 2002 concluded that “violence is a preventable disease”, similar to the conclusion of Nonkilling Global Political Science. Through its Global Alliance for Violence Prevention, the Nonkilling Paradigm is becoming part of the public health policies of many nation-states. There is an opportunity for university such as Jagran Lakecity University to become engaged through leading-edge academic curricula and training programs of this new paradigm on prevention and reduction of suicides, homicides, capital punishment, and armed conflicts through new systemic processes involving serious anatomy of killing and cures, focusing on the imminent need for measurable indices of lives saved.

My sincere thanks to the Governors of the Jagran Lakecity University for awarding me this year’s Honoris Causa. I hope you will be able to incorporate the aspirations for a Nonkilling Global Society in the near future within the university’s diverse faculty and student body.

Ahimsa Parmo Dharma!