MIT recently launched The Dalai Lama Center for Ethics and Transformative Values and who better to speak at its first conference next month than the man himself? According to the Boston Globe, the Dalai Lama will be in Boston at the end of April for four days to give a series of talks, including one at the MIT event called “Ethics and Enlightened Leadership”. (I wonder if he’ll discuss the failure of ethics on Wall Street?)

The Dalai Lama will also be speaking at Gillette Stadium…that’s right, the same place where the New England Patriots football team plays. If there’s one man who can bring out the same numbers of people as a professional sports team in Boston, it’s the Dalai Lama. (The last time he was in town, in 2003, I went to a talk he gave at the Garden—home of the Boston Bruins hockey team—and was amazed at how full the 19,600-seat arena was.)

The Dalai Lama has an interest in science, particularly neuroscience. He caused quite a stir when he spoke at a Society for Neuroscience meeting in 2005 and he’s recently funded a Stanford research center about compassion and altruism. The last time he was in Boston, he took part in a conference on the mind.