One of the major focuses of the Karmapa’s third trip to the United States will be connecting with university communities. Campus visits will include Harvard University, Princeton University, Stanford University, University of Redlands, University of Wisconsin-Madison and Yale University. At each of these universities, the Karmapa has been asked to deliver a lecture on topics ranging from environmental justice to compassionate use of technology to Buddhist perspectives on gender.
Most of the universities are setting aside seats for the general public. For information about the lecture topics and about securing a ticket for those lectures, see our schedule page.
His Holiness the Karmapa will not only take the podium as a lecturer himself at the universities. He will attend classes, participate in informal dialogues with students as well as faculty, and meet with neuroscientists, environmental scientists and professors in a wide range of disciplines.
The university tour reflects the Karmapa’s interest to seek out opportunities for sustained interactions with university students. He has engaged with groups of students at a number of Indian universities and with Tibetan student groups in India. In 2011, 2013 and 2014, the Karmapa held several meetings lasting several weeks with students from Europe and North America.
Based on the first of these interactions, he authored The Heart Is Noble: Changing the World from the Inside Out. A new book is in preparation based on the second set of interactions with American university students, focusing on living interdependence in our era of technological connectivity and emotional disconnection.