On August 23rd, 2023, Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar engaged in a dialogue with CEHV's Dr. Aaron Yarmel at the Ohio Union Performance Hall.

Gurudev is a humanitarian, spiritual leader, and an ambassador of peace, human values, social service, leadership, and cultural preservation of indigenous ways. He meets with world leaders and diplomats around the globe and his resume includes negotiations such as the 2007 Iraq Ceasefire, 2016 Colombia/FARC Peace Deal, as well as most recently the Ayodhya Conflict in N. India. He has also done extensive conflict resolution work in Venezuela, Syria, Ukraine, Jammu and Kashmir, as well as Kosovo. He holds a variety of awards and honorary doctorates and speaks extensively on a wide variety of topics at many places. Just this year he addressed European Parliament twice, as well as the United Nations. In 2007 he was honored by the Obama Presidency by Vice President at the time Joe Biden, for the Universal Declaration of Human Values. His foundation Art of Living and non-profit International Association for Human Values are part of the largest volunteer-based organizations world-wide. Here is a snapshot of some of the international service work that he has spearheaded: https://aolf.me/service

Aaron is the Associate Director of the Center for Ethics and Human Values at The Ohio State University, where his research interests include philosophy for children, social change, and two-level utilitarianism. In addition to overseeing all CEHV programs, Aaron leads its efforts on dialogue facilitation and skill building, outreach, and the ETHOS Fellows program. He is also the Founding Director of Philosophy Counseling and Consulting, an organization that offers dialogue facilitation training and philosophical counseling in the Logic-Based Therapy Tradition. He serves on the board of directors and executive board (as treasurer) of the PLATO Organization and on the editorial board of Analytic Teaching and Philosophical Praxis. Aaron holds a PhD in philosophy from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, an MSc in Philosophy of Science from the London School of Economics, and a Bachelor of Music from the Eastman School of Music. Outside of his academic work, Aaron has been an animal rights activist and a vegan since 2011.