The Claude Pepper Center for Intercultural Dialogue supports research, teaching, and service projects that promote intercultural understanding throughout the world. The Claude Pepper Center is situated within the College of Social Sciences on The Florida State University campus in Tallahassee, Florida, USA.

The Center is named for Claude Denson Pepper, who served as a representative of the State of Florida in both the United States Senate and House of Representatives for close to fifty years. Many of those years were on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee where he worked for world peace and a global respect for human rights. He donated his papers to the Florida State University, and upon his death the United States Congress granted funds to establish a memorial in his honor.

The Claude Pepper Center for Intercultural Dialogue strives to support the work of The Alliance of Civilizations, an initiative of the United Nations established to promote a “global climate of dialogue.” The Center works through classes, seminars, public lectures, faculty exchange programs, international conferences, student exchange opportunities, and service projects. The Center also supports faculty research projects and collaborative faculty research with international colleagues, and develops new courses and distance learning techniques to enrich the academic experience of graduate and undergraduate students.

An impetus to the establishment of the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations initiative calling for a “global climate of dialogue,” was the widely read work of Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order. His argument is that “culture and cultural identification, which at the broadest level are civilizational identities, are shaping the patterns of cohesion, disintegration and conflict in the post Cold War World.” (Huntington, p.20)

Huntington suggests nine global patterns of civilizational identities:
(1)African (2)Asian (3)Buddhist (4)Hindu (5)Islamic (6)Japanese (7)Latin American (8)Orthodox (9)Western

He suggests that lacking global intercultural understanding achieved through interaction and dialogue, these distinct identities may opt for conflict, and thus plunge the world into varying degrees of chaos.

While peoples of these identities exist primarily within their own regions of habitation, representatives of each can be found on university campuses throughout the world. Universities are centers of learning that bring together students from all backgrounds and traditions to interact cooperatively and peacefully.  Any given university campus is likely to have students and faculty members from each of the civilization identities. Universities are the ideal setting in which to foster a culture of dialogue because they are gathering places for those willing to learn from others and ready to share their own experiences.

The Claude Pepper Center believes that leaders of universities must work together with representatives of government, business, the media, religion, humanitarian groups, and the indigenous communities within developing regions to effectively encourage intercultural understanding.  The Claude Pepper Center for Intercultural Dialogue at The Florida State University undertakes the role of catalyst in stimulating universities throughout the world to foster a “global climate of dialogue” within their academic communities and in collaboration with a worldwide alliance of colleges and universities.

In its role as catalyst, The Florida State University through the Pepper Center for Intercultural Dialogue proposes the following:

1. The establishment of an Advisory Board comprised of representatives of the nine civilization identities;
2. The solicitation of a major endowment investment of two million dollars from each region to be matched by the State of Florida’s matching gift program;
3. The establishment of an academic Advisory Board made up of faculty members from Florida State University and academic colleagues from the nine identities;
4. The development of intercultural conferences, undergraduate and graduate courses of study, faculty and student exchange programs, research endeavors, and cooperative ventures with allied universities from the nine regions;
5. The organization of policy research targeting the four areas identified in the November 2006 Report to the Secretary General of the United Nations regarding “The Alliance of Civilizations” initiative: youth, education, media literacy and migration.
6. The initiation of student service projects, bringing tomorrows leaders together across the borders and boundaries of the various civilization identities.