The Art for Peace Association is dedicated to preserving and presenting the artistic and life’s work of Sri Chinmoy. His humanistic and Renaissance-inspired vision sprang from the profound inner silence of meditation, which became for him an inexhaustible source of inspiration in all his many and varied activities. Sri Chinmoy (1931–2007) was a man of timeless spiritual wisdom who devoted more than forty years of his life to promoting peace and serving humanity around the world.
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Conductor Debashish Chaudhuri’s musical sensitivity and captivating interpretations reflect a unique blend of Indian and European cultural traditions. A native of Kolkata, India, he studied in India, the United States, Singapore, England, Italy and the Czech Republic, where he has lived for the past 20 years. He was the first Indian to study conducting at the Prague Conservatory. In 2004, he won first prize at the International Conducting Competition in Lausanne, Switzerland, and was a finalist in one of the world's most prestigious conducting competitions, held in Besançon, France.
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Alan Spence is a contemporary Scottish poet, playwright, novelist and author who has received numerous prestigious awards for his literary work, including the title of Edinburgh Makar, the McVitie’s Scottish Writer of the Year Award, the Glenfiddich Spirit of Scotland Award, the TMA Drama Award, and the Order of the Rising Sun, conferred by the Japanese government. He is Professor Emeritus of Creative Writing at the University of Aberdeen, where he founded the international book and arts festival WORD in 1999.
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Eric S. Petersen graduated from Brown University with a degree in American History and earned his law degree from the University of Chicago Law School. He currently practises as an attorney. Since 1993, he has devoted himself to an extensive study of the life and work of Thomas Jefferson, on whom he has lectured at numerous universities in the United States and abroad, including Charles University and the Prague University of Economics and Business, as well as at public institutions such as the United Nations in New York and the Senate of the Parliament of the Czech Republic.
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Michael S. Karlen worked at the Permanent Mission of Switzerland to the United Nations in Geneva and has served as Secretary-General of the non-profit organization Comprehensive Dialogue among Civilizations (CDAC) since 2005. The organization’s founder, Vladimir Petrovsky, served as Deputy Foreign Minister under Mikhail Gorbachev and later as United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs and Director-General of the United Nations Office at Geneva. As Secretary-General of CDAC, Karlen worked closely with Petrovsky and, in 2015, wrote a book about his life.
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After studying economics at the University of Madras, Alan Nazareth joined the Indian Ministry of External Affairs. Over the course of a 35-year diplomatic career, he served at Indian diplomatic missions in Tokyo, Rangoon, Lima, London, Chicago and New York. He served as Ambassador of India to Liberia, Burkina Faso, Togo, Egypt, Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador and Belize. After retiring from the diplomatic service in 1994, he founded the Sarvodaya International Trust, an organization dedicated to promoting Mahatma Gandhi’s ideals of truth, non-violence and service to humanity.
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