Diana Chapman Walsh speaks to the trajectory of the Mind & Life dialogues and provides the social context and cultural relevance of this topic of craving, desire, and addiction.
Diana Chapman Walsh, PhD, was the twelfth president of Wellesley College, from 1993 to 2007. Her tenure was marked by educational innovation, including a revision of the curriculum and expanded programs in global education, internships and service learning, and interdisciplinary teaching and learning. In 1998, Wellesley’s Program in Religious and Spiritual Life helped catalyze a national movement by hosting “Education as Transformation,” a gathering of more than 800 participants from more than 250 institutions. President Walsh evolved a distinctive style of self-aware leadership rooted in a network of resilient partnerships and anchored in the belief that trustworthy leadership starts from within. Currently, she chairs the inaugural board of the Broad Institute, and serves on the boards of the Kaiser Family Foundation, the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, and the Mind & Life Institute. She was a director of the State Street Corporation (1999-2007) and a trustee of Amherst College (1998-2010). A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, she writes, speaks, and consults on higher education and leadership. Before assuming the Wellesley presidency, Dr. Walsh was professor and chair of Health and Social Behavior at the Harvard School of Public Health.
Tenzin Gyatso, the14th Dalai Lama, is the leader of Tibetan Buddhism and a spiritual leader revered worldwide. He was born on July 6, 1935, in a small village called Taktser in northeastern Tibet. Born to a peasant family, he was recognized at the age of two, in accordance with Tibetan tradition, as the reincarnation of his predecessor, the 13th Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lamas are manifestations of the Buddha of Compassion, who choose to reincarnate for the purpose of serving human beings. Winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1989, he is universally respected as a spokesman for the compassionate and peaceful resolution of human conflict. He has traveled extensively, speaking on subjects including universal responsibility, love, compassion and kindness. Less well known is his intense personal interest in the sciences; he has said that if he were not a monk, he would have liked to be an engineer. As a youth in Lhasa it was he who was called on to fix broken machinery in the Potala Palace, be it a clock or a car. He has a vigorous interest in learning the newest developments in science, and brings to bear both a voice for the humanistic implications of the findings, and a high degree of intuitive methodological sophistication.
