He also gave a remarkable talk to the leaders of the International Baccalaureate program in Atlanta, where he laid out his vision for education in the developing world. In addition to Aga Khan University in Karachi and the University of Central Asia, and several hundred primary and secondary schools run by the Aga Khan Educational Services , the Aga Khan is launching eighteen elite Aga Khan Academies in countries like Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Mozambique. Each will have 750 – 1000 primary and secondary students selected by merit. The teacher-student ratio will be about seven to one, and the training of teachers will be taken extremely seriously at these institutions (an approach which will undoubtedly have a wider impact in those societies).

The purpose of the Academies is twofold: 1) To educate the next generation of merit-based leaders in the developing world; and 2) To provide a model of educational excellence in areas too often forgotten and dismissed.

I highly recommend the entire text of the talk, but here are some of the things that stood out to me:

1) Pluralism is perhaps the central challenge of our times. Here is how the Aga Khan articulated this: “Balancing the universal and the particular is an age old challenge - intellectually and practically. But it may well become an even more difficult challenge as time moves on and the planet continues to shrink. It is one thing, after all, to talk about cultural understanding when “the Other” is living across the world. It is often a different matter when the “Other” is living across the street.”

2) Pluralism is highly prized in Islam. The Aga Khan quoted multiple times from the Holy Qur’an to make this point, including this verse: “God created you from male and female and made you into communities and tribes, that you may know one another,” (Qur’an 49:13).

3) Educational institutions have a responsibility to address the challenge of pluralism directly: “Experience tells us that people are not born with the innate ability nor the wish to see the Other as an equal individual in society. Pride in one’s separate identity can be so strong that it obscures the instrinsic value of other identities. Pluralism is a value that must be taught.”

Following the legacy of his ancestors, the Imam-Caliphs of Fatimid Egypt who founded the great educational institutions of Al-Azhar and the House of Knowledge, the Aga Khan is revolutionizing education in the developing world.

And along with that, the idea of how values grounded in the Muslim tradition can contribute to modernity.