[AJC] Plan includes moving office from Italy, creating "peace universities"Four years after failing to bring the 2015 World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates to Atlanta, the city is primed to host the 2020 gathering as part of a grander plan that could rebrand "The City Too Busy to Hate" with the more global "City of Peace."
The blueprint, if all goes according to plan, also would move the organizing group’s offices here from Piacenza, Italy. In addition to hosting the summit every few years, organizers would collaborate with local colleges to create "peace universities."Boosters are trying to finance the initiative with private funds - and arguing Atlanta is the perfect fit.
The city already is home to the Jimmy Carter Center, dedicated to the 39th president and 2002 Nobel Peace Prize winner. Martin Luther King Jr., who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, lived here.Business and community leaders, including Koch Industries Executive Vice President Jim Hannan, Integral Group’s Egbert Perry and former mayor Andrew Young, laid out the framework at a breakfast meeting of the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce on Monday. Unlike in 2015, boosters say they have a memorandum of understanding."It has a chance to be significant," said Hannan. "We have the broad support, but we are going to need people to support building the foundation."