April 24, 2008
Lecture looks at Buddhism under Pol Pot
Buddhism under Pol Pot is the title of a lecture to be given by Ian Harris of the University of Cumbria, England, at 7:30 p.m. Monday, April 28, in 220 Kane.
Based on fieldwork and archival research over a three-year period, this illustrated presentation will highlight the manner in which the Khmer Rouge shifted from co-opting socially progressive segments of the Buddhist monastic order in the early years of the 1970s to the almost total destruction of organized religion in Cambodia by the time they were ousted in 1979. It will also examine the Buddhist origins of communism in Cambodia, the re-emergence of Buddhism in the early 1980s, and best estimates of the numbers of monks who perished during Democratic Kampuchea.
Harris is a professor of Buddhist Studies in the Division of Religion and Philosophy at the University of Cumbria, England. He is currently Tung Lin Kok Yuen Canada Foundation Visiting Professor on Buddhism and Contemporary Society at the Institute of Asian Research, at the University of British Columbia. He is the author of The Continuity of Madhyamaka and Yogacara in Early Mahayana Buddhism (E.J. Brill, 1991), co-editor of Contemporary Religions: A World Guide (Longman, 1992), and Cambodian Buddhism (University of Hawaii Press, 2005).
Harris studied at the universities of Cambridge and Lancaster, receiving a doctorate in Buddhist philosophy from the latter, and has written a number of articles on Buddhism and ecological ethics. Over the last 10 years he has concentrated on the political manifestations of Buddhism in South and South-East Asia, particularly Cambodia. He is a founding member of the U.K. Buddhist Studies Association and editor of the Bulletin of the British Association for the Study of Religions.
