[Abstract: Here is part of the story how a conference of 250 leading scholars grew from 250 to over 3,000 in less than forty years and how it is poised to take its place as a new and non-governmental institution of a budding global civilization where every mind finds its “true calling” as predicted by Plato, Confucius and host of other visionaries, poets, and dreamers.]

The original stimuli for The International Conference on Thinking were several:

• No major research studies underway at the University of the South Pacific which is the “national university” of 12 smaller English language nations of the Pacific. The mostly overseas-born leadership of the University had not installed at the University a passion for cutting-edge research. Not one native Pacific Islander on the main campus held the doctorate.
• At the world level, a problem affecting almost every department of every university, except in Japan, was that students were entering universities far less prepared than in the past. In effect, the world’s children were losing IQ points.

In effect, an international conference on thinking would help stimulate solutions to such acknowledged deficiencies. The 52 members of the School of Education/Humanities (Education, English, Home Economics, Industrial Arts, Mathematics, Music, Psychology) approved the concept; the University Vice Chancellor, Dr. James Maraj, a Trinidad-born “guru” of the East Indian culture, with an exceptionally cosmopolitan personality and intellect immediately authorized a budget of $2,000. I immediately telephoned the world’s best-known author on training human minds on how to think logically, creatively, imaginatively, and, “laterally” — his invented term, — Dr. Edward de Bono, a Rhodes Scholar, with doctoral degrees from the Universities of Malta, Oxford, and Cambridge, and the author of over 50 books on thinking. He immediately agreed to come entirely at his expense, setting a precedent that future ICOTs should have followed, but did not.

With that success, I called the British Council in London where the Director, Mr. T.H.L Matthews, immediately agreed to send three of Britain’s top thinkers, the Director of Britain’s Brain Science Research Center, Physics Professor D.M. MacKay; an expert on artificial intelligence, Professor Margaret Boden; and Oxford’s Richard Dawkins, later to hold the Darwin Chair in Zoology there.

A brilliant poster, South Pacific themed, announcing the Conference was sent to every major university in the world to post. The response greatly exceeded our expectations. 250 attended with 95 delivering papers on the theme of improving the thinking skills of the human species. No such conference had ever been held before, as if we “grass-roots” citizens were waiting for “all-wise” governments to acknowledge and remedy such oncoming social problems. The atmosphere was so exciting and fruitful that the attendees “demanded” that such a conference continue every two and one-half years, alternating hemispheres.

The International Conference on Thinking II, took place on August 19 – 23 at Harvard University, attended by 847 persons with nearly 200 being turned away because of Harvard’s space limitations at the time. Highlighting the Conference were Edward de Bono, of course; the first Minister for the Development of Human Intelligence in the world, Professor Luis Alberto Machado of Venezuela; and Yale University’s distinguished neurophysiologist, Professor Charles F. Stevens. The organizer of the Harvard Conference soiled the event, however, by inviting one of his heroes, the most famous published racist at the time, Arthur Jensen of the University of California, Berkeley. (Jensen had no interest in solving the problem of falling IQ’s, or of raising children’s intelligence.) His famous paper on IQ, Harvard Educational Review, Fall, 1969, set out to prove that the reason Black children score lower on IQ test was due to genes, not due to an inferior education where southern states invested $5,000 for White students for every $1,000 invested in the education of Black Children. Professor Jerome Kagan at Harvard and his students analyzed Jensen’s article and found 32 errors of fact or calculation.

The third was at the University of Hawaii, with over 1100 participants. By now it was obvious that the “Deliberate effort to teach thinking skills as a base for all education”, started by Socrates and Aristotle had been reborn, thanks to Professor de Bono. These conferences were so successful that greed invaded our movement and a non-tenured faculty member at Harvard saw these conferences as stepping-stones to tenure, eminence, and money. So he, having a perch at Harvard, persuaded most of the board that I formed that the founder of these conferences, being Black, was not qualified to carry these Conferences forward. I was not informed of, nor invited to ICOTs 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8.

Urged by Professor de Bono, David Perkins of Harvard invited the founder of these conferences to host the XIth Conference in Phoenix in 2003 where multiple disasters beset ICOT XI. An award of $50,000 by the City of Phoenix to market the Conference world-wide attracted a Russian-born person of unknown income and affiliation, Nick Zeniuk, to volunteer to attract to ICOT XI several of his high placed “friends” such as Peter Senge of MIT and General Michael Hayden, Director of the National Security Agency. About four weeks before the Conference opened. Zeniuk sent emails to hundreds of registered participants that the Conference had been canceled. He informed the 25 top Chinese scholars who were awaiting visas that they would be refused entry into the U.S. because of the SARS epidemic. This of course was another Russian lie. Mr. Zeniuk also somehow persuaded the three rectors from North African Islamic universities to withdraw from the Conference shortly after the opening ceremonies.

A month before the Conference was opened the Conference computer was hacked into and we lost the email addresses of over 1,000 participants. Yahoo refused to assist us to investigate the source of the hack, believed to have been engineered by Nick Zeniuk’s associates.

Despite the nefarious sabotage, nearly 900 attendees registered for the Conference, which was opened by the Rector of the oldest university in the world, Quaraouiyine University in Morocco. The major newspaper in Phoenix, The Arizona Republic, carried a planted front-page story headlined, “The Wheels fall off” the Conference. At the same time, the Russian operative, Nick Zeniuk, arranged for a “Management” thinking conference to take place, but across town, to feature MIT’s Peter Senge and those who had signed up for the “Management Track” of ICOT XI.

Despite the unprecedented and widespread sabotage, some unique support arrived. NHK Television of Japan sent a full crew to film the event parts of which were later repeatedly broadcast across Japan. And, one of Hollywood’s most successful conductors, Russ Garcia who was famous for being music director at several Hollywood film companies and NBC, and for scoring Charlie Chaplin’s Oscar-winning song “Smile,” flew up from New Zealand with his wife Zina, to spend a month planning an enchanted evening of great music with the Phoenix Symphony Orchestra and several of his most accomplished musician friends. For the first time, first-class music took center stage to preach the joys of creative thinking.

Despite the multiple sabotages, most of the 850+ attendees from around the world, including the most famous scholar of the South Pacific cultures, Professor Ron Crocombe of the Cook Islands and The University of the South Pacific, sometimes called “The father of Pacific Studies,” praised the unique focus and quality of the Conference.

The U.S. Government acknowledged William Maxwell’s ownership of the name, “International Conference on Thinking” by issuing to him Trademark Number 5,641,746, on January 01, 2019.