Zhou Qifeng(right), President of Beijing University is talking with Bernd Engler(center), President of University of Tübingen of Germany. Photo by Xie Fang.  The inauguration of the World Ethics Institute was celebrated at the Stanford Center of Peking University on Oct 29.  Xu Jialu, President of Institute for Advanced Study of the Humanities and Religion of Beijing Normal University, Zhou Qifeng, President of Peking University, Tang Yijie, President of Institute of Confucianism, Dr. Michael Schaefer, German ambassador to China, etc., attended the opening ceremony and made their speeches. Xu indicated in his speech that human beings are facing with the unprecedented environmental and social crisis, yet nobody has put forward effective solutions. He advocated that academia should keep doing profound researches step by step, communicating ideas with each other, and making efforts to promote world ethics.  He calls for more and more people to reduce material desires for reconstructing the human spiritual world.  It is the first step to remove moral vacuum, he said. Du Weiming, President of Institute for Advanced Humanistic Studies, introduced that the establishment of the goal of the World Ethics Institute is to base on Chinese traditional culture and absorb the wisdom of various civilization. Du said to build a creative World Ethnic Institute, will serve for both research and education.   Zhang Xiaoxi and Xie Fang are reporters from Chinese Social Sciences Today Chinese Social Sciences Today, No.373, Oct, 31, 2012.(Translated by Yang Lu)