Now, the 21-year-olds  share another distinction — 91����Ƶ graduate. The brothers were among the more than 400 Royals who received diplomas on Sunday during commencement exercises at the liberal arts school.

conferred 426 degrees and certificates on graduates during Sunday’s ceremony, including 306 bachelor’s degrees and 97 graduate degrees.

“This is your day,” Swartzendruber told the graduates, before telling their families, “our students know full well your support has been an integral part of their success.”

Family Tradition

For the Rittenhouses, of Green Lane, Pa., attending 91����Ƶ runs in the family. Their parents and a brother also graduated from the university, which factored into their decision to choose the institution.

The brothers have much in common and often were mistaken for one another when they first arrived on campus.

“People realized we have our own little quirks,” Justin said.

But they do have their differences.

Joel described himself as the dominant one of the two, to which Justin agreed. Naturally.

Justin, a education major, hopes to get a job at the after graduation.

“I’ve always liked to work with kids one-on-one instead of [in] a traditional classroom,” he said.

Joel majored in and his minor was in .

“I have no immediate plans, but I plan to stay in the area and pick something up,” he said.

Sunday’s commencement speaker was , granddaughter of Roy Disney and grandniece of Walt Disney.

Disney is a filmmaker and philanthropist whose credits include the production of “Pray the Devil Back to Hell,” a film documenting the Liberian peace movement led by .

Gbowee, an 91����Ƶ alumna, received the 2011 Nobel Peace prize for her work in organizing the women of Liberia to demand peace in their wartorn West African country.

Disney said women can play an important role in bringing an end to violence in the world by getting involved in the economic and political realms where decisions to go to war are made.

“We have to have the courage,” she said, “to imagine a different world is possible.”

She cited a United Nations study that found that less than 3 percent of the signatories to 21 major peace agreements in recent years have been women.

Addressing  thousands who gathered for 91����Ƶ’s 94^th commencement, Disney referenced Julia Ward Howe, the 19^th-century writer of the “Battle Hymn of t­­­­­­­­he Republic.” She spoke of how the carnage of the Civil War caused Howe to move from rallying the North to fight against the South, as exemplified by the “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” to being a pacifist for the rest of her adult life.

Howe was the first to lobby for the declaration of an annual day of recognition for mothers, but she linked such recognition to her view that mothers understand “the interdependent nature of life” and therefore are more likely to work for peaceful resolution of conflicts.

“Women, in critical mass, in places where decisions are made, reduce the value of force and masculinity as political and social currency,” Disney said. “By introducing alternative modes of problem solving…., they make spaces hospitable not only to other women, but to all kinds of men.”

The graduation ceremony occurred outdoors under a brilliant blue sky with ideal temperatures, a fairy tale ending to a weekend forecast of rain and cool temperatures.

Disney, who co-produced “, offered her support to the values of social service and peace that 91����Ƶ teaches: “I feel I’ve spent years trying to teach my sons about charity and mercy and patience. More often than not, I feel like I’m forced to teach them these things against everything they see, in politics, popular culture, in school, in the public discourse and even in certain aspects of the religious sphere.”

Disney encouraged graduates to emulate the “moral wavelength” on which Howe operated: “What Howe originally proposed was an international Mother’s Day of peace, because she felt down to the deepest part of her soul, that a woman brings a commitment to peace with her when she talks about politics that is visceral, and uncompromising, and functions on a moral wavelength that is nearly impossible to counter.”

Disney closed with a poem by Rainer Maria Rilke, “The Sonnets to Orpheus, Part Two, XII.”

Want the change.  Be inspired by the flame
where everything shines as it disappears.
The artist, when sketching, loves nothing so much
as the curve of the body as it turns away.

What locks itself in sameness has congealed.
Is it safer to be gray and numb?
What turns hard becomes rigid
and is easily shattered.

Pour yourself out like a fountain.
Flow into the knowledge that what you are seeking
finishes often at the start, and, with ending, begins.

Every happiness is the child of a separation
it did not think it could survive.  And Daphne, becoming a laurel,
dares you to become the wind.

Graduating class

91����Ƶ President Loren Swartzendruber conferred 426 degrees and certificates: 306 undergraduate, 97 graduate degrees, 11 certificates in pastoral ministry studies, 10 graduate certificates in conflict transformation and two graduate certificates in in educational settings.

The undergraduate class had 99 people who graduated with honors, finishing with cumulative grade point averages between 3.6 and 4.0.

Some of the administrators, faculty and students wore bailing twine pinned to their robes in remembrance of farm-raised Theodore (Theo) Brian Yoder, who would have been among these graduates if he had not died at age 22 on April 12, 2012, after a 12-year battle with various cancers.

The undergraduate class raised funds, including matching funds from Bibb and Dolly Frazier of Frazier Quarry, to install Wi-Fi printers in the residence halls as their class gift.

To listen to the full commencement exercise visit .

A full gallery of photos from commencement is posted at .

, a philanthropist, scholar and award-winning filmmaker, will give the at 91����Ƶ (91����Ƶ), Sunday, April 29, at 1 p.m. “91����Ƶ is a remarkable institution, an island of sanity in a country that often has difficulty crediting the discourse of peace,” said Disney.

“It recognized in , an extraordinary gift for activism and principled nonviolent leadership long before either I or the Nobel Committee did, and for every Leymah that has risen to prominence from 91����Ƶ I happen to know there are dozens of others quietly laboring in obscurity to build peace.”

More than just a last name

Granddaughter of Roy Disney and grandniece of Walt Disney, co-founders of the Walt Disney Company, Abigail Disney intertwined her longtime passion for women’s issues and peacebuilding in her first film, “” (Fork Films, 2008). Directed by Gini Reticker, the film shows how Liberian women forced their warring men to arrive at a peace settlement that led to the election of Africa’s first woman president.

The film focuses on the peace activism of 91����Ƶ alumna and .

“War has never been a tidy, closed activity, taking place on a clearly demarcated battlefield between two uniformed entities, or when it has, that has been the exception,” Disney wrote on the “” PBS website. “Rather, war marches right through the center of everything—through house, hearth and field—ripping a hole into the center of things that can never be entirely repaired.

“To bring a woman’s eyes to the telling of the story of war—to turn the camera around and place it in her hands—is to fundamentally alter the way war looks, sounds and smells,” she added.

Previous ties to 91����Ƶ

91����Ƶ first hosted Disney at a entitled “,” featuring Gbowee and women from around the world who are involved in peacebuilding. The event included previews of the five-part PBS television special, “Women, War & Peace,” , which premiered in October 2011. The series challenges the conventional wisdom that war and peace is a man’s domain, and features celebrity narrators Matt Damon, Tilda Swinson, Geena Davis and Alfre Woddard.

The forum was part of a larger gathering of women peacebuilders at 91����Ƶ. Disney was one of 20 participants in a three-day conference that grouped female peace workers from nine countries to learn from each other’s experiences and explore the potential value of an educational program at 91����Ƶ tailored to women peacebuilders.

During the public forum, Disney moderated a discussion by three influential women in peacebuilding: Leymah Gbowee; the late , a Kenyan-Muslim woman of Somali ethnic origin who received the 2007 Right Livelihood Prize (alternative Nobel Prize); and , an MA graduate of the and director of the .

Fostering female peacebuilders

In 2008, Disney launched “,” an organization supporting female voices and international peacebuilding through nonviolent means.

Peace is Loud organized a 2009 Global Peace Tour as part of the UN’s International Day of Peace. The tour brought “Pray the Devil Back to Hell” to hundreds of community screenings in churches, living rooms, community spaces, and forums in the U.S. and abroad, sharing the inspirational story of the women of Liberia.

Disney is the founder and the president of , a progressive, social change foundation that bestows grants to grassroots, community-based organizations working in low-income communities in New York City.

Disney earned a BA from Yale, an MA in English literature from Stanford University, and a PhD in English from Columbia University. She has served on the boards of the Roy Disney Family Foundation, The White House Project, the Global Fund for Women, The New York Women’s Foundation, the Fund for the City of New York, and more.

Learn more about Abigail Disney and her work

Gbowee, who shares the prize with and , earned a master’s degree in conflict transformation from the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding (CJP) at in Harrisonburg, Virginia. She attended CJP’s Summer Peacebuilding Institute in 2004 and participated in a round-table for Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience (known as “STAR”) in 2005.

Gbowee led a nationwide women’s movement that was instrumental in halting Liberia’s second civil war in 2003.

“Leymah Gbowee mobilized and organized women across ethnic and religious dividing lines to bring an end to the long war in Liberia, and to ensure women’s participation in elections,” noted the in making the award. “She has since worked to enhance the influence of women in West Africa during and after war.”

Starting in the 1990s

Gbowee’s links to Mennonites began in 1998, when she received training in “trauma healing and reconciliation” and then worked at rehabilitating child soldiers. Perhaps unbeknownst to her, the first trainings in this subject in Liberia occurred when , a Mennonite with trauma expertise, arrived in Liberia in the early 1990s, with funding from and what is now called , both based in the United States.

Hart trained Lutheran church workers who, in turn, trained Gbowee. Hart also arranged for , who became Gbowee’s friend and mentor, to earn a graduate degree in conflict transformation at 91����Ƶ. In 1998 Doe became one of the earliest master’s degree graduates from what is now called the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding, setting the stage for Gbowee to earn the same degree nine years later.

In her 2011 memoir, “,” Gbowee says she came to 91����Ƶ because it was “an American college with a well-known program in peace-building and conflict resolution. It was a Christian school that emphasized community and service.”

Responding to the Nobel announcement, 91����Ƶ President said:  “The impact that Leymah was able to have, first in Liberia, then in West Africa, and now all over the world, shows that another, nonviolent reality is possible. This affirms the dreams and hopes of groups, educational institutions, and churches that are devoted to supporting peace work.”

“We plant what we call ‘seeds of peace’ as widely as we possibly can, usually through education in peace building theory and skills, and then trust that some of these seeds will bear fruit,” he added.

Seeds of Peace

The woman Gbowee calls her “true friend” and fellow founder of , Thelma Ekiyor, attended 91����Ƶ’s 2002 Summer Peacebuilding Institute, as did Gbowee’s first champion and employer in Liberia, Lutheran Reverend “BB” Colley, who attended the annual institute in 2000 and 2001. At Colley’s urging, Gbowee read “” by the well-known Mennonite ethicist John Howard Yoder.

Gbowee, who was named , is the central figure in a documentary co-produced by , “.” Completed in 2008, the documentary is part of a “” series to be aired over five successive Tuesdays in October 2011 on public television stations in the United States.

In her memoir, Gbowee credits with introducing her to the (WANEP), an organization that he co-founded and led after finishing his master’s degree at 91����Ƶ. (Doe received 91����Ƶ’s annual and now works for the United Nations. His daughter, Samfee, graduated from 91����Ƶ in the spring of 2011, overlapping for one year with Gbowee’s eldest son, Joshua “Nuku” Mensah, who enrolled in the fall of 2010.)

“WANEP, based in Ghana, emphasized using nonviolent strategies and encouraged women to join the effort to address problems of violence, war and human rights abuses,” wrote Gbowee.

WANEP supported the launch of , the organization through which Gbowee and her colleagues conducted the campaigns that played a key role in ending the civil war in Liberia. (This organization is the predecessor to Gbowee’s current organization, Women, Peace and Security Network Africa.) The WANEP-launched women’s network—plus , the grassroots movement led by Gbowee—laid the groundwork for the election of fellow Nobel Laureate Ellen Johnson Sirleaf as president of Liberia, the first woman president of an African nation.

WANEP is now led byof Ghana, a 2002 graduate of CJP.

CJP Teachings Credited

Gbowee’s memoir credits two of the founding professors of CJP, and , with strongly influencing her through their writings and teachings.

“I read Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi and the Kenyan author and conflict and reconciliation expert Hizkias Assefa, who believed that reconciliation between victim and perpetrator was the only way to really resolve conflict, especially civil conflict, in the modern world. Otherwise, Assefa wrote, both remained bound together forever, one waiting for apology or revenge, the other fearing retribution.”

As Gbowee began to attend international meetings pertaining to peace and feeling the need to “speak with more knowledge and authority,” she says, “I began amassing books on conflict resolution theory: ‘’ and ‘,’ both by .”

In May 2004, the summer after the Liberian peace accords were signed, Gbowee came to 91����Ƶ to attend classes at its annual Summer Peacebuilding Institute. “Those four weeks were another transformative time for me,” she says in her book, noting that she studied with Assefa at the institute and with, “who taught me the concept of ‘restorative justice.’”

“Restorative justice was… something we could see as ours and not artificially imposed by Westerners. And we needed it, needed that return to tradition. A culture of impunity flourished throughout Africa. People, officials, governments did evil but were never held accountable. More than we needed to punish them, we needed to undo the damage they had done.”

Women in Peacebuilding at 91����Ƶ

In June 2011 at 91����Ƶ, Gbowee participated in a by-invitation conference on the needs of women peacebuilders around the world. Participants included filmmaker Abigail Disney of the United States, of Fiji, of Afghanistan, and , a Kenyan-Muslim woman of Somali ethnic origin who received the 2007 Right Livelihood Prize. (Abdi died in a car accident after returning to Kenya in July 2011.)

“As a direct result of this conference, we will be launching a women and peacebuilding program at our ,” says , executive director of CJP.

The announcement from 91����Ƶ on the Nobel Peace Prize award can be found at .

Gbowee was one of the leaders of a women’s movement that was instrumental in ending Liberia’s 14-year-long civil war in 2003.

Gbowee inspired Disney, the daughter and granddaughter of two leaders of the Walt Disney Company, to produce her first film project, The 2008 award-winning documentary shows the way Liberian women forced their warring men to arrive at a peace settlement that led to the election of Africa’s first woman president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, in 2005.

In a June 10 forum sponsored by 91����Ƶ’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding (CJP), Disney explained her motivations in being one of the executive producers of This new documentary — to be aired on PBS over five successive Tuesdays at 10 p.m., beginning Oct. 11 — features women peacebuilders in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Colombia, and Liberia.

“War has never been a tidy, closed activity, taking place on a clearly demarcated battlefield between two uniformed entities, or when it has, that has been the exception,” Disney wrote on the “Wide Angle” PBS website and reiterated at 91����Ƶ. “Rather, war marches right through the center of everything — through house, hearth and field — ripping a hole into the center of things that can never be entirely repaired.

“To bring a woman’s eyes to the telling of the story of war — to turn the camera around and place it in her hands — is to fundamentally alter the way war looks and sounds and smells,” she added.

After showing a trailer of “Women, War & Peace” to the audience of about 60, Disney moderated a discussion by three women: Gbowee; Dekha Ibrahim Abdi, a Kenyan-Muslim woman of Somali ethnic origin who received the 2007 Right Livelihood Prize (alternative Nobel Prize); and Koila Costello-Olsson, another MA graduate of CJP and the director of the Pacific Centre for Peacebuilding.

“I found the [Disney] preview to be harshly realistic, yet optimistic,” said Janice Jenner, director of CJP’s Practice and Training Institute. “The film series apparently doesn’t gloss over the ravages of war, but it won’t leave the viewer feeling helpless and hopeless, because it also focuses on the many women showing courage, resiliency and determination to change the war paradigm.”

Abdi spoke about war strategies that include systematic raping of women and rendering them homeless, as means of destabilizing a society. She has worked with African women, however, who have learned to use resistance techniques to the waging of war, such as refusing to cook food for the warriors. They have also used intermediaries, such as elderly women as negotiators and catalysts to reduce violent conflict in their regions.

Abdi also offered some ways that women in her region are able to anticipate conflict and thus to activate their networks to try to prevent it. One of the signs of budding armed warfare is an increase in domestic violence by the men. Another is seeing giraffes suddenly show up in a town, a sign that they have been spooked by the young armed men roaming the countryside.

Abigail Disney was one of 20 participants in a three-conference that began June 9 at 91����Ƶ. It grouped female peace workers from nine countries to learn from each other’s experiences and to explore the potential value of an educational program tailored to women peacebuilders.

“In collaboration with CJP graduates and partners, we wanted to explore whether future women peacebuilders would benefit from a program focused on the distinctive needs, skills and strengths of women,” said CJP executive director Lynn Roth.

Some women at the consultation had spent decades living and working in conflict regions of the world, such as the Kenya-Somalia border region, Liberia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Eastern Europe.

The consultation took place toward the end of CJP’s annual Summer Peacebuilding Institute, from May 9 to June 17, 2011.

The program will feature Liberian peace activist Leymah Gbowee and documentary filmmaker Abigail Disney, along with other women from around the world who are involved in peacebuilding in their communities.

A trailer for the five-part documentary series, “Women, War and Peace,” that will air on public television this fall will be shown, and several of the women will reflect on their experiences in a panel discussion, with time for audience questions.

“Women, War & Peace” is PBS’s new five-part, prime-time television special that challenges the conventional wisdom that war and peace are men’s domain. It will debut in October 2011, featuring celebrity narrators such as Matt Damon, Tilda Swinson, Geena Davis and Alfre Woddard. The series reveals that many of today’s conflicts are not fought by nation states and their armies, but rather by informal entities: gangs and warlords using unconventional weapons. Women have become primary targets in these conflicts, but as the series demonstrates,they are also emerging as critical partners in brokering peace.

Abigail Disney is a filmmaker, philanthropist, and scholar, the granddaughter of Roy Disney and grandniece of Walt Disney, co-founders of the Walt Disney Company. Her longtime passion for women’s issues and peace-building culminated in her first film, the powerful feature documentary “Pray the Devil Back to Hell” (Fork Films, 2008), about the women of Liberia who brought peace to their broken nation after decades of destructive civil war and focuses on Leymah Gbowee’s peace activism.

Admission to the program is free. For more information, call 540-432-4979.