Our Inspiration: The Swidler Family
IPub is the brainchild of Leonard Swidler and Sandi Billingslea. The Swidlers are a remarkable family where diversity is not just embraced, but practiced. Like all of the Swidlers, she has been an Educator, training Agents across the country the standards required of an excellent agent. Leonard is a well-known and highly respected professor based at Temple Univ
ersity, where he has taught Catholic Thought and Interreligious Dialogue since 1966. He’s more than “just a professor”: Len is the founder of Temple’s Dialogue Institute, which he founded in 1978. The Dialogue Institute grew out of the Journal of Ecumenical Studies, which Len founded in 1964 with his late wife Arlene. The Journal is an influential, peer-reviewed quarterly publication for people who study and practice two-way religious and ideological dialogue. Len is “also the kindest man in the world,” says Sandi. Their late brother Jack, she says, was similarly exceptional. “Jack never knew a stranger – he was the great facilitator. He elegantly worked events so that people would meet one another and find opportunities between them. For most people, this is a coat you put on and hang up when you are tired and want to go home. For Jack ( we called him ‘Jake’) it was his skin, his oxygen.”
We think Sandi is a pretty unique person, too. She asked a group of us to help her create a site to feature books by Len and similar thinkers and encourage visitors to engage in Dialogue. The goal, she says, is to help people notice similarities among and between groups, recognize differences, and create ways we can peacefully live with one another. This is how IPubCloud was created. We hope to bring to you wealth of literature on dialogue.
