PROVIDENCE — Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor, author and Nobel Peace laureate, will deliver the keynote address at an April 18 ceremony announcing the Institute for International Sport’s 2011 World Peace Summit.

Wiesel will speak on the role of youth in world peace.

The 2011 summit, expected to attract some 18,000 graduates of the Scholar-Athlete Games, first held in 1993, will coincide with the institute’s 25th anniversary.

“It’s always been our goal to create an event to bring all of them back together and tap into their idealism and intellect,” said Dan Doyle, the institute’s founder and executive director.

“We wanted to create this event not just to bring young people to Rhode Island for 10 days [but to] create a network of extraordinary young leaders,” he said.

Wiesel, a leading social activist, founded with his wife The Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity shortly after receiving the Nobel Peace prize.

The foundation, rooted in the memory of the Holocaust, also fights “indifference, intolerance and injustice through international dialogue and youth-focused programs.” Wiesel has written more than 40 books and is best known for Night, which was published in France in 1958, a memoir of his experiences during the Holocaust.

He teaches at Boston University.

“I am for any initiative for peace, even more so if its sights are set on young people,” Wiesel said. The institute, a nonprofit organization founded in 1986 and based at the University of Rhode Island, will next focus on expansion, hosting the World Scholar-Athlete Games in Australia in 2008 and Japan in 2009, Doyle said.

The institute also plans to host in the United States the U.S. Scholar-Athlete Games in 2008 and the 2010 World Scholar-Athlete Games leading up to the World Youth Peace Summit.

Through programs such as the World-Scholar games, which blend intellectual discussions with sports and the arts, the institute aims to build friendships and promote peace and conflict resolution.

“There is something about the strength of sports and the arts that can bridge cultural divides,” Doyle said.

Doyle, a Bates College graduate, decided to study sports diplomacy at Tuft University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy after seeing the effect of sports on human relations while traveling in Europe in 1968 as a prep basketball player and visiting Cuba in 1979-80 as the men’s basketball coach of Trinity College.

“It just struck me as intriguing how well people got along … when sports was the way they came together,” Doyle said.

Tickets for the April event, at 7 p.m. in the Rhode Island Convention Center, are $20 for adults and $10 for students. To buy tickets, visit the institute’s Web site www.internationalsport.com or call ArtTix, (401) 621-6123.

marmenta@projo.com