To read Riane Eisler’s “Investing in Our Human Infrastructure: The Real Wealth of Our Nation Is Its People,” click here.

For “Building Cultures of Peace: Four Cornerstones,” click here.

Riane Eisler
Dr. Nancy McCormick Rambusch Lecture
Educating the Children of Tomorrow in Peace and Social Justice

AMS 2009 Annual Conference
Friday, February 27, 10:30 AM – NOON
 

Riane Eisler’s radical and hopeful vision of the future includes people choosing to live at peace with one another and with nature in a social order based on partnership rather than domination. In her revolutionary 1987 book, The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future, now available in 23 languages, Riane reexamines evidence from archaeology, anthropology, and linguistics and concludes that—contrary to conventional theory—prehistoric partnership cultures may have been the true wellspring of civilization. She postulates that such a world is possible again if we have the will to re-create it.

An eminent social scientist, attorney, and social activist, Riane is president of the Center for Partnership Studies, a nonprofit organization dedicated to research and education about cultural transformation. She wrote the award-winning Tomorrow’s Children: A Blueprint for Partnership Education in the 21st Century, hailed by Publisher’s Weekly as “an ambitious, imaginative, and practical guide to a better educational future.” In her most recent book, The Real Wealth of Nations: Creating a Caring Economics, Riane proposes a new approach to economics that recognizes and values the most essential human work: caring for people and nature. Jane Goodall says this book is a “call to action,” and Archbishop Desmond Tutu calls it “a template for for the better world we have been so urgently seeking.” Riane believes her message resonates powerfully with diverse people around the world because the common theme of caring helps them “connect the dots” and realize how effective one individual can be.

Riane Eisler was born in Vienna, Austria. When she was a small child, her family was forced to flee the Nazis, emigrating to Cuba and eventually to the United States. This trauma led to her lifelong quest to understand why atrocities like the Holocaust happen and what we can do so that they do not happen again.

Her pioneering work in human rights has expanded the focus of international organizations to include the rights of women and children. Her research on systemic cultural transformation has contributed to the fields of history, sociology, economics, psychology, and education. An international speaker and consultant, Riane has been invited to Germany by Prof. Rita Süssmuth, former president of the Bundestag (German parliament); Colombia by the mayor of Bogota; and the Czech Republic by former president Václav Havel.

She is the author of over 200 essays and articles in publications ranging from Behavioral Science, Futures, Political Psychology, and UNESCO Courier to Brain and Mind, Yes!, Human Rights Quarterly, Journal of International Women’s Studies, and World Encyclopedia of Peace. Her books include The Power of Partnership; Sacred Pleasure; and Women, Men, and the Global Quality of Life, which statistically documents the key role of the status of women in a nation’s general quality of life.

Riane holds degrees in sociology and law from the University of California, Los Angeles, where she taught pioneering classes on women and the law. She is a founding member of the General Evolution Research Group, a fellow of the World Academy of Art & Science and World Business Academy, and—with the Dalai Lama and other spiritual leaders—a member of the World Commission on Global Consciousness and Spirituality. She cofounded the Spiritual Alliance to Stop Intimate Violence. Riane has been honored with the Humanist Pioneer Award and the first Alice Paul ERA Award. She is the only woman among twenty great thinkers, including Hegel, Adam Smith, Marx, and Toynbee, selected for inclusion in Macrohistory and Macrohistorians in recognition of the lasting importance of her work as a cultural historian and evolutionary theorist.

Dr. Nancy McCormick Rambusch founded the American Montessori Society in 1960, with the support of Whitby School in Greenwich, CT. The Dr. Nancy McCormick Rambusch Lecture, presented each year during the AMS annual conference, provides an opportunity for eminent educators and advocates to present their perspectives to an international audience. The Rambusch lecturer is selected by the Archives Committee with advice from AMS board members.

Photo: Michael Collopy

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