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Honolulu, Hi—October 6, 2005 -- Professor Nukul Ruttanadakul, a social activist from Thailand, is this fall’s special guest speaker at Chaminade University of Honolulu for The Reverend Yoshiaki Fujitani Interfaith Program. Ruttanadakul will speak at Chaminade in the Mystical Rose Oratory on Saturday, October 22, 2005, from 3:00 to 5:00 p.m. His subject will be: on “Managing the Resolution of Conflicts between Buddhists and Muslims in Southern Thailand” This is a free lecture. Donations to help support this lecture series are greatly appreciated. Please RSVP your attendance to Dr. Poranee Natadecha-Sponsel via email to psponsel@chaminade.edu or call (808) 735-4822.
Ruttanadakul is a biological ecologist, ornithologist, and environmentalist who has been at the Prince of Songhkla University in the ancient Thai city of Pattani since 1978. Ruttanadakul was born and raised in the southernmost part of Thailand, where the majority are Muslims of Malay heritage and speak a separate language called Yawi. The Muslim communities tend to be coastal fishers and wet rice farmers. The Buddhists tend to live more inland and emphasize wet rice farming in the lowlands and dry land farming on the mountain slopes. Although Muslims and Buddhists maintain separate villages, often adjacent to one another, usually they live in harmony and cooperation. However, occasionally over the decades a few Muslim extremists have resorted to violence in conflicts of one kind or another, but this has mostly been triggered and often magnified by the actions of central government officials in Bangkok. Ruttanadakul himself is a devote Buddhist, but works closely with Muslims as well as Buddhists on issues of community ecological development and environmental conservation. His teaching and research specializations include rural Thai culture, political ecology, sustainable natural resource management, traditional environmental knowledge and local wisdom, biodiversity studies and conservation, and river and coastal ecosystems. His M.S. degree is in Zoology from the most prestigious institution of higher education in Thailand, Chulalongkorn University. Over the years he has presented conference papers, written reports, and published journal articles nationally and internationally. Ruttanadakul knows intimately the people, communities, cultures, environments, and politics of southern Thailand from his own personal experience and observations as well as his professional perspective. He speaks with genuine authority and profound insight about the environmental and sociopolitical problems and issues in the region.
Celebrating 50 years of educating students for life, service and successful careers, Chaminade University offers a liberal arts curriculum with day, accelerated evening, online and graduate courses. The main campus is located in Kaimuki at 3140 Waialae Ave., Honolulu, HI 96816, with 10 satellite locations around Oahu military bases and Catholic parishes and schools. For more information, visit the Chaminade University website at www.chaminade.edu or call (808) 735-4711.