Veena Howard, Ph.D. is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Coordinator of Peace and Conflict Studies, California State University at Fresno. She is a versatile and accomplished scholar and an authority on the philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi. In addition to nonviolence and peacemaking, her interests include environmental ethics, interfaith interactions among Hindus and Muslims, gender issues in Indian philosophy and the Sant spiritual tradition of northern India, to which she belongs. She has been extensively involved in interfaith activities including the Interfaith Community Dialogue Group and monthly Interfaith Prayer Service in her former home of Eugene, Oregon and organized a panel on “Inter religious Perspectives on the Death Penalty” in a conference sponsored by the UNESCO Center for Intercultural Dialogue, where she was a Board member. More generally she seeks to foster cross-cultural understanding of the practice of nonviolence. Veena is broadly connected in the Hindu world both in India and the West, with astute practical judgment and understanding of complex and politicized religious and inter religious issues of India’s religions.. She attended the Salt Lake City Parliament where she organized a panel on Mahatma Gandhi and spoke in several other programs.