Peace Activist Arun Gandhi to Speak at Lehigh

Indian-American peace activist Arun Gandhi, grandson of Mohandas “Mahatma” Gandhi, will present “Lessons Learned from My Grandfather: Nonviolence in a Violent World,” the 2017 Kenner Lecture on Cultural Understanding and Tolerance on Tuesday, Feb. 7, at 8 p.m. in Baker Hall.

Arun Gandhi was born in South Africa in 1934, where he experienced discrimination under the nation’s apartheid laws. After he was the victim of racial violence, Gandhi’s angry desire to seek eye-for-an-eye justice was tempered when his parents sent him to live with his grandfather, Mahatma Gandhi. He learned from the iconic Indian leader to embrace the notion that “justice does not mean revenge, it means transforming the opponent through love and suffering,” his online biography explains. Daily lessons from his grandfather taught Gandhi how “to understand nonviolence through understanding violence.”

According to his biography, Gandhi left South Africa after marrying because his wife, the late Sunanda, was Indian and the South African government would not allow her to accompany him there.He and Sunanda served the poor in India, developing programs to support economic stability and human compassion. Gandhi also worked as a journalist for The Times of India for 30 years. After moving to the United States in 1987, the couple founded the M.K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence, which promoted the principles of nonviolence locally and globally. In 2008, Gandhi founded the Gandhi Worldwide Education Institute to “promote community building in economically depressed areas of the world through the joining of Gandhian philosophy and vocational education for children and their parents.”

Gandhi has written several books, including Legacy of Love: My Education in the Path of Nonviolence; The Forgotten Woman: The Untold Story of Kasturba: Wife of Mahatma Gandhi (co-authored with his late wife Sunanda); Grandfather Gandhi, a children’s picture book memoir about Mahatma Gandhi’s approach to peace and his influence over his grandson; and Be the Change: A Grandfather Gandhi Story, a companion to Grandfather Gandhi.

Today, Arun Gandhi speaks worldwide about his grandfather’s lessons about nonviolence.

The Kenner Lecture Series in the College of Arts and Sciences was endowed by Jeffrey L. Kenner ’65. Kenner, who studied industrial engineering and business administration at Lehigh, established the lecture series in 1997. After a career as a management consultant with PricewaterhouseCoopers (then Price Waterhouse & Co.), he became involved in leveraged buyouts and venture capital. In 1986, Kenner formed his own firm, Kenner & Co. Inc. He served as a university trustee from 1995-2002, has long been a member of the university's Asa Packer and Tower Societies, and is a member of Leadership Plaza.

For more information about this event, contact the Office of Interdisciplinary Programs at 610-758-3996 or incasip@lehigh.edu.