A Better World - 04/18/11

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Today Mitchell interviews Jim Garrison, currently President of Wisdom University, a graduate school providing Masters and Doctoral degrees in the world's wisdom traditions.

Garrison also serves as President of the State of the World Forum, a San Francisco based non-profit institution created to establish a global network of leaders dedicated to creating a more sustainable global civilization. With President Gorbachev as its Convening Chairman, the Forum convenes leaders from around the world and a spectrum of disciplines to its annual and regional conferences; creates action-oriented strategic initiatives, and has catalyzed the creation of several independent organizations.

Jim Garrison's background is diverse: born in China of Baptist missionary parents, he grew up in Taiwan. He then Pepperdine University, University of Tel Aviv in 1972, and was magna cum laude in World History from Santa Clara University (1973). Later Jim received a double M.T.S. in Christology and History of Religion from Harvard Divinity School and a Ph.D. in Philosophical Theology from Cambridge University (1982).

Garrison was the founder of the Radiation and Health Information Service in 1978; founder of East West Reach in 1980 and served as Executive Director of the Esalen Institute Soviet American Exchange Program from 1985-1990.  In 1991, he founded the International Foreign Policy Institute with Eduard Shevardnadze. He founded and served as President of the Gorbachev Foundation/ USA in 1992, at the request of Mr Gorbachev, and which set the stage for the establishment in 1995 of the State of the World Forum. He joined Wisdom University in 2005.

Publications are The Plutonium Culture, The Darkness of God: Theology After Hiroshima,The Russian Threat: Myths and Realities, The New Diplomats, Civilization and the Transformation of Power andAmerica As Empire (Barrett Koehler/2004). His current book, not yet published, is on Climate Change and the Primordial Mind.

Today's show will focus on the subject of one of the most pressing issues of the day: man's relationship to his environment and how we can take the next needed steps to both mediate and prepare for climate change.