Following the Chinese invasion and occupation of Tibet in 1950 and the large scale popular revolt against the Chinese invaders in 1959, the Dalai Lama along with one hundred thousand Tibetan refugees fled across the Himalayas to India and other neighboring countries.

            In India, the Dalai Lama drafted a democratic constitution, formed a Tibetan government-in-exile, and began to establish the institutions that would form the basis for a new Tibetan society: schools, hospitals, orphanages, craft co-ops, farming communities, institutions for the preservation of traditional music and drama and monastic institutions.

            Today Tibetans are one of the best-settled refugee groups the world has known and are looked to as primary examples of "Engaged Buddhism." My talk, "Buddhism, Race, Class, Sexuality and Gender in the Modern World," will explore why this human rights movement (over and above others) has become so urgent for so many Americans in the latter half of the 20th century.

            We will look at the role the Dalai Lama has played in the Human Rights movement as an "Engaged Buddhist" and come to understand whether his kind of philosophical thought and religious practice offers a viable approach to living peacefully in a war-torn world. We will examine whether such strategies can be successfully imported and applied in diverse and thoroughly modern contexts?
 
 

- Biography - Jennifer Manlowe is a NYU Press-published author of "Faith Born of Seduction: Sexual Trauma, Body Image and Religion" and co-editor of "The Gender Politics of HIV/AIDS in Women," is Assistant Professor of Culture, Psychology and Religion in The Friends World Program--North American Center, Long Island University.