The Universal Academy of Cultures is an elite club created in 1992 at the initiative of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel. It brings together world-renowned personalities from science, philosophy, literature and art, including Umberto Eco, Salman Rushdie, and Leszek Kołakowski of Poland, and it is under the patronage of the President of France. Members of the club meet once a year at the Louvre Museum in Paris. The aim of their lectures is to consider the future of the world from an ethical point of view and to suggest ways of acting against intolerance, xenophobia, racism, anti-Semitism, discrimination against women, and of fighting against poverty, ignorance and the deliberate degradation of certain forms of life.
The web page features the Charter of the Universal Academy of Cultures, a manifesto adopted on November 9, 1992, initiating the Academy's activity. The Academy of Culture is preparing an interactive manual under the authorship of U. Eco, F. Colombo and J. Le Goff. The manual will address tolerance in light of diversity and broadly defined "otherness": physical (disabled persons), gender (equality between men and women), religious, cultural and racial. The web page includes links to organizations promoting tolerance, current events in the Academy, and critiques of books and films.