The book features a foreword by renowned restorative justice pioneer and 91����Ƶ Professor Emeritus Dr. Howard Zehr, who also contributed a collection of landscape photographs that visually underscore the book’s central themes of reflection, connection, and renewal. As a graduate of 91����Ƶ’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding, Waugh draws on both her professional experience and academic grounding to offer practical guidance for lawyers seeking to cultivate more compassionate, community-centered approaches to legal practice.

The book is available to order at the publisher’s site .

Beginning in fall 2021, 91����Ƶ’s MA in Education: Restorative Justice in Education degree program will offer an online option, in addition to the current curriculum on the Harrisonburg campus. The new virtual learning opportunity comes both in response to the pandemic and a desire to expand the program’s reach to include educators who live outside of the Shenandoah Valley. 

“When we offered the annual RJE Conference in a virtual format in June 2020, we immediately realized these benefits as participants from places like Chicago said they would have never been able to travel to Virginia to join us,” said Professor Paul Yoder, director of 91����Ƶ’s Graduate Teacher Education program.

The virtual conference drew in over 200 people from 25 states and three countries besides the U.S. – almost twice as many participants as came to the in-person conference in 2019.

“We recognize that another benefit of hosting events online is that we reduce our carbon footprint for those who would have traveled but are now a click away,” Yoder said.

Professor Kathy Evans said she’s excited by the prospect of working with more and more educators that can’t make the trek to 91����Ƶ’s campus. 

“I really love working with our local educators in the Shenandoah Valley. I have learned a lot from them and we have been able to grow together. Because 91����Ƶ is a smaller institution, we’re nimble, and so it enables us to work with our grad students in ways that make sense for them,” Evans said. “This online option means being able to also sit in Circle and grow with restorative justice educators beyond Harrisonburg, beyond Rockingham County.” []

More learning opportunities

Join educators and practitioners at the 2021 RJE Conference, which will take place virtually June 22 and 23. David Yusem, the restorative justice district coordinator at Oakland Unified School District in California, will be the keynote speaker.

Additionally, Kathy Evans will be speaking at the April 11 – 21.

The master’s degree in education with a focus on restorative justice education is offered through 91����Ƶ’s Graduate Teacher Education program. The program also offers a graduate certificate in restorative justice in education, and 91����Ƶ offers a master’s degree in restorative justice through the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding. 

A few structural changes have accompanied the online shift. Previously, the program included one-week summer intensive courses, which now will be held in half-day sessions over two weeks to prevent Zoom fatigue “while maintaining rich and immersive engagement,” Yoder explained. They’ll also draw on 91����Ƶ’s hefty toolbox of online instructional resources, including software like VoiceThread, to facilitate asynchronous communication.

One challenge of the online model is preserving the quality of connection and interaction that have been intrinsic to restorative justice programming at 91����Ƶ since Professor Howard Zehr, a groundbreaker in the movement,  joined the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding faculty in the 90s.

“Restorative justice (RJ) at its core is relational,” Evans said. “We can’t sacrifice the relational aspect of it just because we changed contexts. And I think that that’s a principle that transcends online versus face to face contexts. That’s a principle that’s important whether you’re in a first grade class, a college class, community development circle, or a juvenile justice circle.”

Evans said that the online format does require “a greater level of intentionality,” because it’s easier to be distracted on a computer than in a physical circle with your classmates. That intentionality takes the form of opening and closing rituals to circles, and having participants identify their distractions and develop shared expectations about how they will stay focused.

She also noted that a commitment to justice and equity have to be at the heart of any restorative justice program or work, down to the logistics of a class. 

“I think having a new context, i.e. online, requires us to specifically identify what justice and equity look like in an online format. What needs to happen to ensure that those things are evident?” Evans said. 

For example, some students may have internet connectivity issues, which then become an equity issue in an online class. Evans recalled a recent circle where a participant had some audio instability, even when they kept their camera off to preserve bandwidth. But the class discovered that this participant could keep their camera and mic on if the rest of the class muted themselves and turned off their cameras. 

Evans said that was a “beautiful analogy about stepping aside so that silenced voices can be lifted up. It was a lovely moment … this is what we need to do.” 

For a more streamlined read, note the following:

–links to each CJP program are omitted. To learn more about the specific programs named here, please visit the .

— a faculty or staff member’s title is listed once, on first reference. To learn more about individual faculty and staff members, visit the .

Our alumni are accomplished people and a wonderful resource, which is why we include a link to each personal profile on the . This information is provided and updated voluntarily.

September 2019

• A class of 22 new graduate students begin their first semester of studies.
• The new graduate students participate in CJP’s Grounding Day: an opportunity to begin to ground students in the history and current social, political, economic and environmental justice realities in Harrisonburg.
• Fidele Ayu Lumeya MA ’00 returns to the Democratic Republic of Congo to direct the Congo Ubuntu Peacebuilding Center.
• Talibah Aquil MA ’19 performs “Ghana, remember me…,” a multimedia production that sprung from her 2019 travels in Ghana as part of her capstone project on the themes of identity, race, trauma and healing.
• Twenty-one participants join STAR 1 on campus with Lead Trainer Katie Mansfield and Ayman Kerols MA ’16.

October 2019

• CJP’s 25th anniversary year kicks off with a “TenTalks” event at 91����Ƶ’s Homecoming and Family Weekend featuring Tammy Krause MA ‘99, Darsheel Kaur MA ‘17, and John E. Sharp, father of Michael J. Sharp ’05.
• Donna Minter, founder and executive director of the Minnesota Peacebuilding Leadership Institute and STAR Trainer, is honored with the Melanie Greenberg U.S. Peacebuilding Award of Excellence.
• Professor Johonna Turner, co-director of the Zehr Institute for Restorative Justice, gives the keynote address at a symposium on restorative justice hosted by the University of Richmond Public Interest Law Review. Attorney Brenda Waugh MA ’09 provides a talk on restorative lawyering and Suzanne Praill MA ’10, director of restorative justice at the Fairfield Center, contributes to a panel discussion.
• In collaboration with , CJP hosts Community Criminal Justice Days conference, bringing together community stakeholders for discussions and planning around reducing incarceration and recidivism in the local area.
• Howard Zehr, distinguished professor of restorative justice, is the featured speaker at the 2019 Vernon M. and Minnie I. Lynch Lecture at George Mason University.

November 2019

• CJP co-sponsors a conference in Mexico City on the intersection of gender and peacebuilding: “Construcción de Paz con Perspectiva de Género” at the University Iberoamericana, a Jesuit-affiliated institution. Alena Yoder, CJP’s program development associate, was a panel moderator. Vernon Jantzi, emeritus professor, and Jayne Docherty, CJP executive director, presented papers. 
• STAR trainers facilitate a workshop for the Grand Canyon National Park’s Public Lands for all Inclusion Summit to explore principles of restorative justice, trauma awareness, resilience, and truth and reconciliation and how those principles might be applied in the organizations and the workplaces. Read about STAR’s ongoing relationship with the National Park Service.
• Kajungu Mturi MA ‘18 facilitates a day of trauma and resilience training for 91����Ƶ’s Intensive English Program staff and instructors.
• Gilberto Pérez Jr. ’94 GC ’99, vice president for student life at Goshen College, wins his bid for a city council seat in Goshen, Indiana. He will be the first Latino council member in a city that is 33-34% Latino.
• A Zehr Institute for Restorative Justice features multiple speakers on engaging communities of faith in promoting restorative justice, along with specific avenues and resources for collaborating with Catholic parishes and ministries.
• Eighteen people participate in STAR 2 with Katie Mansfield and Lisa Collins.

December 2019

• Katie Mansfield and Jon Swartz MA ‘14 facilitate three days of STAR-based training for the Department of the Interior’s Office of Collaborative Action and Dispute Resolution, including Sigal Shoham MA ’13.
• 91����Ƶ recognizes Dawn Curtis-Thames MA ’20 and David Nyiringabo MA ’20, then second-year CJP students,  for their outstanding contributions to CJP and the larger university community. Read about their practicum studies.

January 2020

• Wayne Marriott MA ’18, a conflict coach and mediator based in Christchurch, New Zealand, receives the Resolution Institute’s 2019 Michael Klug Award for his support to the local community after the mosque shootings there last year.
• The 10-episode Peacebuilder podcast launches, featuring faculty and staff members reflecting on the program’s history and their own peacebuilding work.
• Twenty-two people, including 11 CJP MA students, participate in STAR 1 on campus with Katie Mansfield and Johonna Turner.

February 2020

• The fifth annual SPI Community Day welcomes about 100 participants to get a taste of Summer Peacebuilding Institute classes and hear from speakers on racial justice, including Chief Kenneth Branham of the Monacan nation and Frank Dukes, a professor at the University of Virginia.
• Professor Emeritus Barry Hart is the keynote speaker at a seminar organized by Initiatives of Change Sri Lanka in Sri Lanka, discussing the role restorative justice could play in restoring and healing wounded people to create a more just society.
• The Zehr Institute for Restorative Justice hosts a webinar on Equal Justice USA’s approach to the relationship between community and police in Newark, N.J., and how trauma-informed responses to violence that are community-driven can reduce harm for those most vulnerable and marginalized.
• Ten people join Kajungu Mturi MA ‘18 and Katie Mansfield at a STAR 1 training on campus.
• Katie Mansfield presents on a panel titled “Healing and Resilience: Taking a trauma-informed approach to delivering assistance” sponsored by the Peace and Security Workgroup of the Society for International Development-Washington Chapter. 

March 2020

• CJP staff and faculty start working remotely and moving academic classes online due to COVID-19.
• STAR provides three days of training for the George Washington Memorial Parkway.
• The 25th Anniversary Celebration, planned for the summer, is postponed for a year. The new dates are June 4-6, 2021. Alicia Garza, John Paul Lederach and sujatha baliga are among the scheduled speakers who plan to attend.
• Katie Mansfield launches the virtual community Dancing Resilience, through which participants all over the world meet via video conference multiple times a day to dance together. 
• The Zehr Institute for Restorative Justice hosts a virtual book launch for (Skyhorse Publishing, 2020), by Lindsey Pointer, Kathleen McGoey, and Haley Farrar.

April 2020

• SPI announces its move to an all-online format.
• Donors help to meet two $35,000 matching grants set up by two couples and gave generously during Lov91����Ƶ Day in honor of CJP’s 25th anniversary.
• Cole Parke MA ’12 and Emmanuel Bombande MA ’02 are named as 2020 Peacebuilder of the Year honorees.
• STAR releases the Care “Together” video series: conversations between Katie Mansfield, STAR trainers and practitioners. 

May 2020

• SPI 2020 marks the 26th year of gathering peacebuilders for mutual learning and support – online this year using video conferencing and other digital tools. Eleven courses are offered to more than 180 people across 60% of the world’s time zones. Read general news coverage here, and more specific articles about creating community online and the digital peacebuilding class.                       
• Sixteen CJP graduates representing nine countries receive their degrees. 
• Johonna Turner is one of the three faculty presented with 91����Ƶ’s annual Excellence in Teaching Awards.
• Christine Kindler MA ’17 receives the Berlin Fellowship from Humanity in Action.
• The new Master of Arts in Transformational Leadership is launched earlier than expected as CJP moves online. The degree with online, hybrid and residential options for working professionals includes courses in business and leadership and will continue to add courses from other programs at 91����Ƶ as electives.

June 2020

• SkyHorse Publishing releases a new edition of Carolyn Yoder‘s Little Book of Trauma Healing.
• STAR provides a webinar for Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency’s Service Coordinators and Case Managers on trauma and resilience.

July 2020

• STAR trains campus ministry professionals at the National Association of Campus Ministers virtual conference.
• An advisory group of STAR trainers and practitioners work with Katie Mansfield to recreate STAR for online delivery. The group includes Donna Minter, Crixell Shell, Ram Bhagat GC ’19, Lisa Collins, Meenakshi Chhabra, and Johonna Turner. Elaine Zook Barge MA ’03, Vernon Jantzi, and Carolyn Yoder provide additional input and insight.
• STAR announces registration for STAR online.
• Johonna Turner contributes a chapter to Colorizing Restorative Justice: Voicing Our Realities (Living Justice Press, 2020), a collection of 18 essays penned by practitioners and scholars of color.

August  2020

• STAR wraps up four webinars for National Park Service staff.
• CJP welcomes 30 new students for orientation. This includes nine students in the new MA in Transformational Leadership program, with online, hybrid and residential options.
• Planning continues for the CJP “25+1” anniversary celebration.

Howard Zehr – director emeritus of the Zehr Institute for Restorative Justice and a distinguished professor of restorative justice at the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding (CJP) – is the ninth guest of the Peacebuilder podcast. In the episode, Zehr talks about his path to victim-offender conferencing as a young practitioner, the early days of restorative justice, and where he sees the field going from here.

The podcast is just one of the ways the center is celebrating its 25-year anniversary. Hosted by CJP executive assistant and anniversary celebration committee chair Patience Kamau MA ‘17, the 10-episode series features faculty and staff members reflecting on the history of CJP and their own peacebuilding work. A new episode drops every other week on the Peacebuilder website.

One of Zehr’s formative experiences as a young adult was attending Morehouse College, a historically black men’s college in Atlanta. He was confronted with being part of a “minority” as one of the few white students in attendance.

“People just didn’t read me the way I was used to being read. My body language, what I said was interpreted totally different[ly],” Zehr recalls. “It was a profound experience and not an easy one.”

It was in the 1970s, while teaching at another historically black institution, Talladega College in Alabama, when Zehr started working with the criminal justice system. He provided support to prisoners and trained student research teams “to help defense attorneys pick juries in really highly politicized cases: death penalty, prison riots, police brutality.”

In 1985, Zehr published the booklet Retributive Justice, Restorative Justice, followed by Changing Lenses in 1990, a seminal work in Zehr’s own career and the field at large. He joined CJP in 1996, at the urging of Professor Ray Gingerich and Director Vernon Jantzi.

“My self concept is basically a journalist of justice,” Zehr says – communication and networking are foundational to his work. The whole reason he launched the Little Books of Justice and Peacebuilding series was to make the core concepts of CJP accessible to a wider audience. 

Zehr pitched the first title, The Little Book of Restorative Justice, to his publisher saying, “I want it to cost about the same as a Big Mac dinner.” Over 100,000 copies of the book have now been sold in a variety of languages.

What does he celebrate most about CJP? “We’re still, as far as I know, the only academic program with a practice, a reflective practitioner value-based kind of approach. Which is what we set out to be.”

Looking forward another 25 years, Zehr says he likes where he sees the next generation going.

“That’s partly why I’m staying out of it,” he says. “A lot of them have a much wider vision about applications – to historical harms, to social injustices – but I don’t want us to lose also some of our focus on things like bringing those who are harmed and those who caused harm in the context of a criminal system together as well … I hope we can hold those things together.”

During the 2019-20 academic year, as the commemorates its 25th anniversary, a series of guest authors will share reflections about CJP’s personal impact. We want to hear your thoughts, too!

Thousands of people have intersected with CJP over the years, and each of you has contributed to the work of making the world more just and more peaceful. Join us for our anniversary celebration June 5-7, 2020. Visit the anniversary website for more details.

Read reflections by��Phoebe Kilby,��Mohammad Abu-Nimer,��Maryam Sheikh, Sanjay Pulipaka, and Shyamika Jayasundara-Smits.

Ruth Zimmerman and Howard Zehr served as co-directors from 2002-07. Both brought significant experience in other roles with the organization before that time. Here they collectively share their paths to CJP, their partnering leadership and significant work of their tenure.

In the early 1990s, Ruth had returned from eight years in the Philippines and was searching for a job. One of the positions she applied for was administrative secretary at 91����Ƶ’s newly-forming Conflict Analysis and Transformation Program (later shortened to Conflict Transformation Program, or CTP). Though Ruth thought her experience and degree positioned her for something more challenging, then-director Professor Vernon Jantzi convinced her that this program would expand and provide good career advancement possibilities.  As is often the case, his vision was prophetic.

Ruth accepted the offer. Her first day on the job included the task of going through the complete filing system for the new program, all within one cardboard box. The second task was to buy office furniture. But her role soon did become more challenging, and in a few years, she became associate director while Vernon was director.

Howard had been director of the Mennonite Central Committee U.S. Office for Criminal Justice since the late 1970s. From that base, he developed restorative justice materials and assisted communities in establishing such programs. By the mid-1990s, he had concluded that he had probably done what he could do for the field. Then Ray Gingerich, professor of sociology at 91����Ƶ, began urging Howard not to take any other jobs without considering CTP. Both Ray and Vernon felt that conflict transformation needed the restorative justice component. 

Howard first taught an RJ course in a weekend format. In 1996, he joined the faculty. Although he had administrative experience, he had no intentions of ever administrating again. Obviously he failed to keep that commitment, and he also was proven wrong about his involvement in restorative justice: the center and its students proved a base and catalyst for significant expansion of restorative justice. 

In the late 1990s, while Vernon was on sabbatical, Howard served as interim director with Ruth continuing as associate director. The duo worked together well, but Howard felt that Ruth deserved recognition for the key role she was playing. When Vernon later stepped away from his leadership position, Howard reluctantly agreed to take on a part-time director role for a transitional period, but only on the condition that he and Ruth serve as co-directors. 

This was a time of many unknowns within the center, causing some tension amongst various parties. External advice was that a co-directorship is a problematic structure with many possibilities for conflict, and often that is true. However, Howard and Ruth had built up a relationship of trust and respect in the interim year and were convinced the unusual structure would work. Howard focused primarily on academic affairs while continuing his teaching responsibilities while Ruth managed staff, programs and budget.

Ruth:  “A key element I always appreciated in working with Howard, even through some tough stuff, was his ready question:  ‘Are we having fun yet?’ We could always find things to laugh about. This was such a critical glue for the team since many students were coming from dire conflict situations which could create a heaviness in the atmosphere.”

Howard: “Ruth had a proven record as a full-time administrator and had played a key role in keeping the center going and growing. I thought that this contribution and role had to be recognized structurally. We dealt with some heavy stuff during this time, but I appreciated Ruth’s sense of humor and relied heavily on her competence and knowledge.”

With a departmental team of more than 20 employees and 80 or more students, all with rich life experience and different perspectives and personalities, there were bound to be conflicts — even within a peacebuilding program. And indeed there were during these years. There were also many challenges involving budgets and relationships within the 91����Ƶ structure. As a community, we didn’t always practice what we preached.

On one occasion, Ruth returned from a wilderness bike trip during which she had to ride through a terrifying gauntlet of eight rattlesnakes. She reflected on her return that each of the snakes seemed to be a metaphor for one of the challenges we were facing. One year we reworked “Old MacDonald Had A Farm” to name some of our challenges and frustrations and sang it at the staff/faculty Christmas party. Fortunately that text has been lost.

A significant milestone during these years was the beginning of the program’s relationship to the Fulbright Program. Thanks to Ruth’s initiative and guidance, CJP became the primary venue for Fulbright scholars from South Asia and the Middle East who wanted to study conflict transformation. This resulted in highly diverse groups of students from many countries, religions and professions. They brought tremendous richness and legitimacy to CJP and when they returned to their home countries, built networks and programs that continue to this day.

A number of curriculum developments occurred during these years, including the clarification of concentrations and the establishment of an annual “curriculum camp” that brought faculty together to work on curriculum issues and strengthen relationships. The Practice Institute was formally established and provided with its own director. Several new endowments supported faculty research and student scholarships. We also worked hard to clarify and streamline decision-making processes within the program. During these years, Janelle Myers-Benner moved from student assistant to staff. She is now the longest-employed CJP staff and it would be difficult to overstate the value of the administrative management she has brought to the program.

During this time, we also led a process to rename the program from the Conflict Transformation Program to the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding. Restorative justice was playing a growing role in the program, and the scope of peacebuilding was expanding to include such fields as trauma healing and organizational development. The program needed a name that was more inclusive than conflict transformation.

We are gratified to see where CJP is today.  Succeeding directors have brought new gifts to the program. Competent staff and hundreds of “students” (John Paul Lederach used to call them “colleagues masquerading as students”) have contributed more than can be spelled out here.  We are grateful to have played a part in this story.

 ***

Ruth left CJP to join Mennonite Central Committee as a regional area representative, giving leadership for programs in India, Nepal and Afghanistan. Following those three years, she joined World Vision as a senior program manager and has had responsibility for both Asian and African development programs.

Howard is mostly retired but still employed “very part-time” with the , a program of CJP that began in 2012 and carries on Howard’s emphasis on connecting practitioners in the field to resources, networks and opportunities.

A time capsule of 91����Ƶ’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding (CJP) is in the works – not to be buried, but uploaded. The artifact in question is a podcast, which will feature ten CJP faculty and staff members reflecting on the history of CJP and their own peacebuilding work. The 10-episode series is set to launch on Wednesday Jan. 22, 2020, with a new episode dropping every other week on the Peacebuilder website.

The podcast is the creation of Patience Kamau, a 2017 graduate of the program and also chair of CJP’s 25th anniversary committee, who wanted to give students, alumni, friends and supporters of the graduate program an in-depth look at where CJP has been, where it is now, and where it hopes to go.

“For the sake of posterity, this is emerging as a gem,” Kamau said. “These voices are here right now, many of them were here 25 years ago, and given the simple trajectory of life, are unlikely to be here 25 years from now.”

But why a podcast, specifically?

“It’s a way that a lot of people are consuming information these days. I think it’s a necessary long-form method of connecting with the audience,” Kamau explained, in contrast to the “fragmented” nature of social media posts. “When you’re doing it on podcasts, you can go into more depth, and you can connect with an audience in a different, more meaningful way.”

While the exact episode order is yet to be determined, Kamau said the pilot will feature Barry Hart. His interview acts as a primer to CJP, touching on elements like the Little Books of Justice and Peacebuilding series and curriculum design, which other interviewees then dive into more deeply. “It’s like passing on a baton,” Kamau said. 

She asked each interviewee the same questions, based on the 25th anniversary’s theme of “celebrate, reflect, dream,” but of course “each one of them goes down a very unique path based on their own careers and life experiences.”

Kamau is an avid podcast consumer – she subscribes to at least eight, and regularly listens to others beyond those. That gave her an ear for what makes for a good listening experience, as she went into the project having to teach herself about audio production by looking up internet guides and tutorials.

Alumni Michaela Mast ‘18 and ‘19 have also helped breathe life into the podcast. Mast, co-host of the climate justice podcast , which is sponsored by the housed at 91����Ƶ, has lent technical assistance. Mullet, whose scores have been featured in recent documentaries and video games, is composing original music for the episodes.The podcast’s audio mixing engineer is Steve Angello who works closely with Mullet.  

“There’s something organic about it, just doing the work in anticipation of what will emerge. It’s a work of art, where the overall beauty lies in paying attention to the details” Kamau said.

The episodes will be also available on Apple Podcasts on iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcast, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, and TuneIn.

Featured voices

Each episode presents an interview with the following CJP affiliates, listed alphabetically by last name as the exact episode order is yet to be determined.

• David Brubaker, dean of 91����Ƶ’s School of Social Sciences and Professions and longtime CJP professor,
• Jayne Docherty, executive director,
• Bill Goldberg, director of the Summer Peacebuilding Institute,
• Barry Hart, professor of trauma, identity and conflict studies,
• Katie Mansfield, Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience (STAR) program lead trainer,
• Janelle Myers-Benner, academic program coordinator,
• Gloria Rhodes, professor of peacebuilding and conflict studies,
• Carl Stauffer, professor of restorative and transitional justice and co-director of the ,
• Johonna Turner, professor of restorative justice and peacebuilding and co-director of the , and
• Howard Zehr, distinguished professor of restorative justice.

This year marks the 30th installment of the Lynch series, an annual lecture sponsored by the School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution which features “ground-breaking approaches to analyzing conflict and promoting peace,” according to its . 

Zehr will speak on “Human Rights Meets Restorative Justice,” examining some of the modern-day challenges of enforcing human rights and how the legal system can contribute to injustice.

The lecture is especially appropriate considering the strong ties between CJP and S-CAR. Three long-term faculty members Lisa Schirch, Barry Hart and Gloria Rhodes, as well as CJP Executive Director Jayne Docherty (also a long-term faculty member) earned their doctorates at S-CAR and several CJP graduates are continuing their doctoral studies at George Mason.

Previous Lynch speakers include John Paul Lederach, the co-founder and first director of CJP; the president of Malta, Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca; and Paul Butler, a professor at Georgetown Law in Washington D.C. and former federal prosecutor.

Read reflections by��Phoebe Kilby,��Mohammad Abu-Nimer,��Maryam Sheikh, Sanjay Pulipaka, Howard Zehr and Ruth Zimmerman, and Shyamika Jayasundara-Smits.

 ***

The threatening invasion of Iraq by the U.S. sent me seeking CJP. Clearly the many peace marches I had participated in in Washington were not effective. I thought at the time that CJP could teach me about peacebuilding and how to stop such war mongering by my country. But what I learned instead equipped me to confront a more personal issue — that I and my family were offenders in an insidious history of injustice carried out within the United States since its founding. CJP gave me many tools to address those injustices, though the journey continues.

Taking classes with my international classmates was fascinating and humbling. I learned about conflicts all over the world and how people were working to transform them. Jayne Docherty gave me the tools for conflict analysis. John Paul Lederach taught me the importance of “mercy, truth, justice and peace” (Psalm 85:10) for conflict transformation. I explored identity with Barry Hart, the importance of ritual and symbol in peacebuilding with Lisa Schirch, restorative justice with Howard Zehr, and Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience (STAR) with Carolyn Yoder. Mostly I thought about the use of these concepts and skills to address conflicts and injustices in other countries or in the US where those conflicts and injustices were caused by other people – not by me, not by my family.

A few years after I graduated, I learned that CJP was exploring a new program called . The people coming together were descendants of enslavers and persons enslaved in the United States. They were talking about racial healing and reconciliation. That got me thinking. My father’s family had a long history in Virginia. Had they been enslavers? It did not take much research for me to learn that indeed they were. I knew that there were African American Kilbys living in Virginia. A Google search brought up the name Betty Kilby Fisher, who had written a book titled Wit, Will and Walls (Cultural Innovations, Inc., 2002). When I read the book, I suspected that my family had once enslaved hers. Her father and mine had grown up on farms less than a mile apart.

But what should I do with this information? I consulted with CTTT co-founder Will Hairston, who told me that I should contact Betty. Now that was a scary thought. But my CJP experiences gave me the courage to try. If my classmates from Israel, Palestine and Lebanon could talk to each other, then I should be able to do this. On Martin Luther King Day 2007, I sent Betty an email.  She responded, “Hello Cousin.”

Since then, we have participated in CTTT together and learned more about our families. Historical records confirm that my family enslaved hers; DNA analysis shows we really are cousins. I have seen Betty show me mercy as we share the difficult truth of our families’ relationship and seek peace together. I have tried to make amends for the injustice of my family and my own treatment of African Americans through the establishment of a college scholarship endowment for Betty’s family. John Paul Lederach’s “mercy, truth, justice and peace” inspired this work as did Howard Zehr’s concepts of restorative justice. I watched as rituals used in STAR helped my cousin Betty face the many traumas she experienced when she and her brothers desegregated their high school. I learned that my own identity is linked to whiteness and privilege.

It may sound as though I have figured this all out, but the journey continues as I learn from Betty and our family and together we strive for that balance between peace and justice that CJP teaches us to seek.

Phoebe Kilby retired in 2014 having worked for eight years as associate director of development for 91����Ƶ’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding, where she also earned a graduate certificate in conflict transformation. Coming to the Table, a national racial reconciliation organization, was initially sponsored by CJP and was an affiliate organization from 2012 until recently (the organization is now sponsored by Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth in California). A past CTTT president, Phoebe is a member of the organization’s Reparations Working Group and co-facilitates a local group in Asheville, North Carolina.

She and her African American cousin, Betty Kilby Fisher Baldwin, published their story in a book of CTTT stories, Slavery’s Descendants (Rutgers University Press, 2019), and were featured the month after the book was released in a.

In addition to her grad certificate, Phoebe holds a BS in botany and Master of Environmental Management degree, both from Duke University.

To share comments or connect with Phoebe, use the comment box below.

We’d love to hear and share your personal reflections about CJP at 25! To celebrate, reflect and dream with us, click here!

“We don’t need to be lawyers, prosecutors, judges or social workers here,” he said. “We just need to be humans and talk about our experience, to change the world and make peace.”

Maia helped organize the group of 54, the largest of any one nationality to attend SPI at one time. It included people who are judges, RJ promoters, officials of the judiciary, lawyers, university professors and municipal guards. Dozens more were on a waiting list.

Most participants this year took courses on Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience (STAR) I and victim-offender conferencing.

The SPI courses, Maia said, provided tools that will broaden how RJ is used in Brazil, where current guidelines proposed by the national council of judges focus on the use of circle processes.

“Here at 91����Ƶ, we are learning that RJ is not what the law says, but what the community and people feel about the justice,” he said. “It has given me a new lens, and prepared me and other people in the group to talk more about restorative justice, and be ready in our spirits to go back to Brazil and talk about how these theories and practices are important to the community and not only to judges, prosecutors and lawyers.”

Trauma-informed justice

RJ, which is grounded in repairing the harm of crime in processes that engage individuals and other community members, is well served by trauma training, said second-time SPI participant Mayara Carvalho. She has practiced RJ in the Brazil juvenile justice system, schools and university settings, and she earned her PhD researching restorative practices in communities. She is also laying the groundwork for an RJ center.

Carvalho incorporated STAR training she received at last year’s SPI into her work with a young boy in Brazil who had been convicted of murder and drug dealing, but who had also suffered poor health and bullying.

“When I put trauma and resilience together on the table, we could see him as a person,” she said – and “he started to think about himself as a person, not as a victim or as an offender.”

In addition to her book Justiça Restaurativa na Comunidade, about using RJ in communities, Carvalho has written a guide titled “Programa NÓS – Belo Horizonte” for using restorative practices in schools. Brazilian schools, she said, are often “a kind of door to criminalization” because of how they respond to students with problematic behavior.

“We’re trying to develop nonviolent communication, restorative practices and circle processes inside schools,” she said, “to work on conflicts in a better way.”

Changing the conversation

The SPI experience has shaped the Brazilian conversation about RJ, said Maia, and prompted the group to think about “what we’re doing in Brazil and what needs to be changed to do better, to expand this restorative understanding, and then to [bring] this powerful tool to the community for transformation.”

It’s not only about law, he said: It’s also about a social theory of justice.

“In Brazil we just see what the law says, and apply this in cases,” he said. “Now, we are starting to think, ‘Is this justice, to resolve the case only by law? Or justice is to give people the chance to heal their trauma?’”

Tentative plans are for another group of 25-50 to attend SPI next year, with the current group returning the following year to take STAR II and an RJ course that has a dual focus of RJ in education and RJ in the legal system, Goldberg said.

Turner will lead the organization with Carl Stauffer, also a CJP professor, who has co-directed the institute since its founding in 2012. She succeeds Howard Zehr, a well-known professor of restorative justice for whom the institute was named, who will continue advising the institute as a director emeritus. Turner, previously a faculty associate, is well-acquainted with the Zehr Institute. Her responsibilities in that role included planning and co-leading the regular webinar series as well as developing strategic partnerships in support of the institute’s mission to facilitate connection and exchange between restorative justice practitioners and students around the world.

As co-director, Turner looks forward to greater involvement in the Zehr Institute’s organizational development and big-picture strategy. One of its strengths to date, she says, has been “bringing different groups of people together to learn from each other.”

At the same time, she hopes to widen the institute’s reach by including people and groups – particularly young people of color involved in grassroots activism – whose important contributions to restorative justice have not received the attention they deserve.

“We can play a role in amplifying the voices of young people of color involved in organizing, because their views and theories are not being heard,” Turner says.

Turner is also eager to see the institute’s profile grow on 91����Ƶ’s campus as it has around the world in recent years, during which time it has hosted delegations from several countries for restorative justice seminars and trainings. An upcoming example of such on-campus work is a partnership with 91����Ƶ’s Office of Student Life to host a training for faculty, staff and students on using restorative justice to address harm and build community at the university. The training is on Oct. 27.

A third priority of Turner’s involves her recent academic work examining the relationship of faith and spirituality to the practice of peacebuilding and justice. Last year, she taught a new class “Peacebuilding Through Biblical Narrative,” as well as a Summer Peacebuilding Institute course called “Christian Spirituality for Social Action.”

Such passing on of leadership is what Zehr hoped for when the institute began, he said.

“It is time for me as a first-generation developer and practitioner to make room for others of this new generation,” Zehr said. “Johonna is in that second generation of restorative justice practitioners who is empowering a third generation, and that opening of the space for new voices and emerging themes is important to the movement.”

Turner and Stauffer recently addressed that very topic in a book chapter, “The New Generation of Restorative Justice,” they co-wrote for a recently published book, The Routledge International Handbook of Restorative Justice.

Stauffer welcomed Turner’s appointment to jointly lead the Zehr Institute, saying her visionary power, gift for networking and organizational skills will serve the organization well.

“It’s a pleasure and an honor to be able to co-direct with Johonna,” he says. “I look forward to a strong partnership and an excellent opportunity to grow and expand the vision of the Zehr Institute with [her].”

Throughout the fall, Turner and Stauffer will conduct a strategic visioning process to both evaluate the Zehr Institute’s past and plan its future programming. Turner will also continue teaching graduate-level courses on restorative justice and other topics.

In her practicum at the Restorative Justice Clinic (RJC) at Campbell Law School in Raleigh, North Carolina, Jang saw her theory of change – that increased understanding builds trust, which fosters relationships, which in turn enable better ways of dealing with conflict to make communities more healthy and sustainable – play out in a variety of practicum settings: the legal system, a prison and local schools.

There, she participated in victim-offender dialogue in a ground-breaking felony case in the state, and facilitated both restorative circles in Butner prison and restorative dialogue in school settings.

The collaborative placement at RJC grew out of years of connection between Howard Zehr of 91����Ƶ’s and his co-director professor Carl Stauffer and RJC director Jon Powell, who with another RJC staff member Joia Caron traveled to attend Jang’s presentation in Harrisonburg from North Carolina.

“It’s very important for us to have that kind of relationship with this program,” Powell said, adding that Jang “is going to do great things” in restorative justice.

“This type of cross-institutional collaboration is key to the efficacy of restorative justice practice,” Zehr said. “Not only do students benefit, but so do the institutions and communities in which they work.”

Read about other��research, practicum learnings by CJP’s 2018 graduates.

RJC and Jang were involved in facilitated dialogue in a high-profile felony case involving a shooting that injured a child but ended in restitution for the victim and her family and community service – but also forgiveness, “tears of happiness” and hugs.

In March 2017, a bullet fired by James Scott Berish struck a 10-year-old sleeping girl in a lower apartment in Durham. Berish initially fled the scene, but later turned himself in to police. The prosecuting attorney assigned to the case had attended an RJC restorative justice training, and realized this case was suited to the process, said Powell.

“What I see in Mr. Berish is a man taking full responsibility, a man who made a mistake and owns it,” said assistant district attorney . “What I see in Deisy and her family is a family who was wounded physically and emotionally, a family who asked for healing, a family who got answers to their questions and a family who found peace and forgiveness.”

Jang remembered the words of the judge following Berish’s sentencing hearing: “What does justice look like? Each of the people in this room might have different idea about what it looks like. However, this morning we know what it feels like.”

In the federal correctional complex at Butner, Jang facilitated restorative circles of inmates and community members who met to tell each other their stories as a means of restoration. In different grade levels in schools, she helped students to resolve conflicts and to learn alternative ways of dealing with future conflicts.

“This work is building relationships based on really good understanding and hearing stories,” she said. “If you share, and if you’ve heard somebody’s story, then you might not judge them then at all, because you know then truly who they are.”

Jang plans to attend law school and promote the use of restorative justice in her home country of South Korea, following additional practical training in the U.S.

“We wanted to learn deeply about the roots of this movement,” the husband-wife duo wrote in an email – and to “meet people who were walking toward the same way that we wanted to go.”

The group of 21 teachers, students, community leaders and legal professionals was hosted by 91����Ƶ’s and the Jan. 16-17 during an 11-day east coast tour organized with the (KOPI). Since 2000, KOPI has educated and trained individuals and organizations in various domestic and international peace education programs.

The participants on this trip had already learned from restorative justice (RJ) and discipline workshops in Korea, said KOPI director Jae Young Lee. The purpose of this trip was to learn about the “spiritual, cultural, and historical backgrounds” of the restorative justice movement.

“If we believe RJ is a paradigm and not a program, it is important to know the Anabaptist/Mennonite tradition emphasizing peace and justice as a center of their faith,” he said.

To that end, Zehr Institute co-directors and co-facilitated a session on restorative justice in Anabaptist tradition and Christian theology. Other sessions led by professors and provided overview and discussion of such varying topics as the implications of RJ and historical harms for educators. The group also experienced a one-day Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience (STAR) training led by Katie Mansfield.

A 2003 CJP graduate whose work has been featured in Peacebuilder magazine, Lee said that the RJ education such as he experienced at 91����Ƶ doesn’t impact only enrolled students.

“When you transform one person’s life through education, it can [create] transforming power for hundreds and thousands of people in the future,” he said, adding that KOPI held nearly 1,500 workshops and lectures on RJ and peacebuilding during 2017 alone.

The visit was also an opportunity for “two-way” learning, said CJP executive director Daryl Byler – for both CJP staff and graduates like Lee and fellow delegation participant Yoonseo Park, who earned his masters in conflict transformation in 2016.

“They and others have taken the restorative justice training they received at CJP and expanded its application to a variety of Korean contexts – including the criminal justice, educational and health systems, as well as in housing and church conflicts,” Byler said.

Although preparing for such delegations requires a major commitment of time and resources at CJP, Byler said that “the payoff is priceless.”

Following their two days at 91����Ƶ, the delegation also visited the Mennonite Central Committee headquarters and Material Resources Center in Akron, Pennsylvania; met with shooting victims and family members in the Nickel Mines Amish community; toured Belleville, Pennsylvania; and visited two Washington D.C. schools that practice restorative discipline.

“It’s like oxygen,” said public prosecutor Danielle Arlé during a break from the whirlwind schedule. “I can breathe again.”

“I have courage to continue leading these programs,” said Ivana Ferrazzo, another public prosecutor who hopes to implement a victim advocacy program and to advocate for restorative justice in education.

“There is an Eastern saying that when the disciple is ready, the master comes,” Judge Leoberto Brancher said. “So restorative justice came to us in Brazil in the late 1990s and now almost 20 years later, we can come before the source of restorative justice … to review what we’ve been doing. It’s a time for tuning and beginning a new stage.”

The source he refers to is , professor emeritus at 91����Ƶ’s and co-director of the , which hosted the visitors. Zehr co-facilitated a session on restorative justice and serious crimes; all of the other sessions and site visits were hosted by 91����Ƶ-educated “disciples.”

Lima planned and developed the learning experience

Retired Brazilian judge Isabel Lima, a professor at Catholic University in Salvador, developed the idea for the intensive seminar while she was a visiting professor at the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding in spring 2017.

One goal of the educational experience was to bring together diverse practitioners — public prosecutors, professors, community representatives, professionals such as psychologists, social assistants, lawyers and judges — and to “invite them to think collectively from now on,” said Lima, who has been involved with restorative justice since it emerged in Brazil in the 1990s.

The delegation visited Harrisonburg City Schools, Harrisonburg Police Department, James Madison University, 91����Ƶ, and the Fairfield Center, among other locations, to explore various applications of restorative justice: in K-12 and higher education, law and criminal justice, community policing and police training, indigenous and transitional justice, ecology and the environment.

Integrated leadership, sustainable programs among the goals

In contrast to the United States, where a disparate group is driving the widening influence of restorative justice concepts, the Brazilian judiciary has played a key role in Brazil, Lima said.

Brancher, a fellow judge, is one proponent who has made a nation-wide difference. A judge in the city of Caxias do Sul, he talks about restorative justice as an allegorical light during a dark time in his professional career, when he questioned the efficacy and meaning of his work with incarceration facilities for juveniles. Seen as both a punitive and protective system, “the way those two positions were disconnected made everything we did harmful because of misunderstood conceptions,” he said. “It was an existential question for me: what does life want from me as a judge? And also a professional question: How can I enforce the law? RJ came to me during to that period as an answer.”

After nearly 20 years working to advance the concept, the five-day experience at 91����Ƶ heralds a new stage, he said, towards “the creation of a more solid basis and more integrated leadership to give support and enable this process to be sustainable.”

Lima is leading the efforts of the group to stay connected through online platforms, with potential webinars and courses also in the works, she said.

International delegations visit 91����Ƶ

The Brazil group isn’t the first to travel to 91����Ƶ to learn about restorative justice. The Zehr Institute hosted an international delegation from Nepal last year and will host a large group of South Korean practitioners in January.

, co-director of the institute, sees a growing awareness to observe and learn about restorative justice in practice as well as in theory.

Lima worked with the group and Zehr Institute facilitators to plan a learning environment that would be both “theoretical and practical,” responsive to the group’s “questions, needs, doubts and interests.”

��The collaboration within local RJ practitioners evident during the week was also an immersive educative experience, Lima noted. The group witnessed the “embracing of restorative justice as a social movement to nourish our hurt humanity … working as a community to face challenges around us …empowering ourselves and others that live and work with us. These experiential components are ingredients of the peacebuilding movement.”

Participants (as pictured in group photo)

Front, from left: Altair Honorato Pacheco, Virgínia Rego Bezerra, Mário Augusto Figueiredo de Lacerda Guerreiro, Ivana Kist Huppes Ferrazzo, Rafaela Duso, Danielle de Guimarães Germano Arlé, Jurema Carolina da Silveira Gomes, Eulice Jaqueline da Costa Silva Cherulli, Haroldo Luiz Rigo da Silva, Diego Dall Agnol Maia, Fernanda Yumi Furukawa Hata, Roseli Maria Duarte, Cristiane Castro Mello.

Middle: Evandro Gomes Macedo, Daniela Carvalho Almeida da Costa, Gilca Oliveira Carrera, Leoberto Narciso Brancher, Isabel Maria Sampaio Oliveira Lima, Howard Zehr, Fátima De Bastiani, Afonso Armando Konzen, Renata Maria Dotta, Cristina Mulezin Gonçalves, Renata Fernandes de Araújo.

Back: Kajungu Mturi, Carl Stauffer, Antônio Dantas de Oliveira Junior, Josineide Gadelha Pamplona Medeiros, Nirson Medeiros da Silva Neto. Not shown: Johonna Turner.

[Since attending 91����Ƶ, the couple, formerly known as Anita and Cristian, have begun using their Jewish names.]

Channah completed a master’s degree in religion at , but also took courses through the (CJP), including . ��

David, who studied law in Chile, attended CJP and earned a . There he also assisted professor with , a storytelling project for survivors of domestic violence, and professor with the ongoing translation into Spanish of his book Changing Lenses.

Earlier this year, Channah finished a master of theology degree from the , and the couple has since moved to Hamilton, Ontario, where Channah is beginning her doctoral studies at and David is looking for opportunities to develop processes of dialogue in the Jewish community about the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine.

While at 91����Ƶ, the pair collaborated on various projects, one of which was offering coping with past trauma and the pressures of a new country and being ostracized due to immigration status. The workshops were built on the idea that doing art — painting, drawing, photography, poetry and more — would help participants reflect on their experiences.

For Channah and David, facilitating reflection was a natural extension of their own experiences at 91����Ƶ, where personal reflection was central to their formative coursework.

“For us, having that time of introspection and learning at 91����Ƶ is what made us what we are today,” Channah reflected recently. “There are so many key aspects of who we are and that will never leave us that were borne out of 91����Ƶ.”

Attuned to trauma

Two years after they were married, Channah and David experienced the physical trauma of an 8.8-magnitude earthquake in Chile in 2010. But they are also attentive to historical and societal trauma, including their own, and 91����Ƶ was a place where they could explore, share and grow from their experiences.

Both Channah and David were raised in Christian families with Jewish ancestry, and have since — together — chosen Judaism. That wasn’t a quick or easy transition, and it put them in touch with their own families’ historical trauma stemming from the Inquisition long ago and subsequent discrimination and persecution.

More immediate, though, was the trauma of growing up under the rule of the dictator General Augusto Pinochet.

David remembers checking his family’s household garbage to make sure no evidence of black market items or political dissent could be be found by anyone who might look through their trash.

“You were always scared of saying what your political views were because you didn’t know who you were talking to, and if something you said would go back to the army,” Channah said. “There were a lot of people who were paid by the dictatorship to spy on other people.”

Such threats meant that homogeneity was valued highly: not standing out was safer. Channah said that translates into “‘Don’t be anything that makes you stand out and be different, because you could be in danger.’ Even though that’s not the case anymore, that’s how trauma works. The traumatic stress is still there.”

Even though Pinochet’s rule ended in the 1990s, David added, the government was still considered “transitional” as late as 10 years ago, and he described the ongoing environment as one not welcoming of minorities, hugely divided along economic and political lines, and subtly violent.

“That kind of violence is invisible, if you look just superficially, but it’s really strong and it has really deep roots in the culture,” he said.

Not just a defining language

It was in that context that David trained in Chile as a human rights lawyer, motivated by “growing up seeing too many injustices against the people I loved, and a kind of rebellion against the imposed narrative of oppressor/oppressed that I experienced,” he said. “I thought that through justice this dynamic could be changed.”

But it wasn’t until coming to 91����Ƶ that his current foundation for peacebuilding was established, and as a CJP graduate student, David says, he learned the language that has since defined his life.

“I lacked a lot of the language about peacebuilding, of conflict transformation,” he said. “I realized that justice is just one element in the process of social transformation and part of what, as a society, we should do so as to aim to build healthy communities.”

“I don’t know if the people at CJP see the magnitude of the training that they are providing,” he added, “but without that I couldn’t be working in the healthy way I’m approaching the society, the community where we are working right now. All those peace concepts within the Mennonite tradition are really important for us, even if we are not Mennonite — even for people of different religions, different traditions.”

Being educated at 91����Ƶ in that new language of peacebuilding, though, was not solely technical. “You have this safe environment where you can speak about your background, where you can relate with other people of other traditions. That was a powerful energy in our journeys,” he said.

Contributions to Biblical studies

Channah also credits her time at 91����Ƶ with bringing her academic Biblical studies into focus, in part thanks to the advising of professor , known for his work in trauma, identity and conflict studies.

Hart was David’s practicum advisor — and became friends, he said — and when Channah asked him to be her thesis advisor, he was “honored, and intrigued” by the thesis topic: the relationship between religious meditation, Hebrew chant and the trauma healing process. He said Channah has an ability “to see and explain complex spiritual and psychological relationships — for the purpose of self-understanding and from a desire to help others traumatized by violence of all kinds.”

While there are many who are exploring the intersection between psychology and Biblical studies, Channah said, she seeks out themes of resilience and dignity, themes that at 91����Ƶ she realized were central in her own life starting in her childhood.

“Growing up a Latina was a difficult experience, with all the machismo and the sexism and really not feeling like I was a first-class citizen,” she remembers. As a 10-year-old child traveling with her father, a Baptist pastor who visited seminaries and attended conferences with Channah and her three-years-younger brother in tow, people would ask her brother what he wanted to be when he grew up.

“I was not looked at at all,” she said. “It was subtle, but it told me, ‘You don’t really matter. You don’t get to have choices, because you’re not a man.’”

When she decided to attend college, people asked her, “Why would you want to do that?” When she decided to pursue a master’s degree, she was asked, “Well, isn’t that a little too much?”

Even today some in her extended family still don’t understand why she’s entering a doctoral program. “It still doesn’t fully register that women are just as capable as men. It feels so ridiculous to even say it, because of course they are,” she said.

Somehow, though, even way back as a child, something was driving her, something she can’t really pinpoint. It could have come from having also spent several of her formative years living in Canada and seeing a different form of society — or, she wonders, “Was it the Shekhina, the Hebrew name for divine presence, for the energy of God? I wonder if it can be that.”

Spiritual director and Eastern Mennonite Seminary professor Kevin Clark noted a “particular resiliency” in Channah, and the “interplay of her own inner narrative and the context around her which emerged as resourceful and creative engagement,” he said. “I appreciated the integrity with which she asked the questions of experience and the Holy, immersed at times in the silence of prayerful awareness which, in turn, inspired artistic expression and a discerned way forward.”

Whatever it was that was moving her, when Channah — and David — eventually came to 91����Ƶ, they immersed themselves in the community, earning not just graduate degrees but also “the respect of many for their deep spiritual wrestling and personal integrity,” Hart said. “We were given a gift when they joined us.”

“There is something about 91����Ƶ’s openness and sense of safety it creates, and the inclusiveness of people from different parts of the world,” Channah said. “Even though we’re all so different, we’re on the same wavelength of creating community and peacebuilding, and that creates a sort of connection that really opened our eyes not just to learning about others, but to learning about ourselves and where we wanted our journeys to take us.”

“We have many, many cultural things in our family,” David added. “We are Mennonite, we are Jewish, we are Latin American, we are minority — but we are very proud that the Mennonite culture in us is key. We were changed by the Mennonite culture at 91����Ƶ.”

***

Nourah Alhasawi invites viewers to confront their preconceived notions about face-veiled Muslim women. Not as an American, or a Christian, or a member of any demographic – but as one person to another.

Alhasawi is a professor of Islamic Studies at Princess Nourah University in her home country of Saudi Arabia. She also wears a face veil.

For her capstone project to earn a master’s degree in conflict transformation at 91����Ƶ’s , Alhasawi gathered 20 women and interviewed them on their feelings about face veils. Then, each participant was photographed in various stages of the veiling process – unveiled, partially covering the hair, fully covering the hair, wearing a colorful face veil, and wearing a plain black face veil. Each participant was again interviewed about their experience, and some met for group discussion.

The Margaret Martin Gehman Art Gallery was filled to capacity for Alhasawi’s presentation.

“These women are not terrorists … they are not even Muslim,” she told the crowd.

For the presentation, Alhasawi hung twenty hinged portraits in the gallery – the viewer first encountered a fully veiled woman, eyes appearing somber or powerful, a few mischievous – then “opened” the portrait to reveal the subject with only partially covered hair.

In America, Alhasawi says, “The more visible my face-veil is, the more invisible I become.” In light of the invisibility, harassment�� and oppression she endured as a face-veiled Muslim woman in America, she created this project with the hope that viewers would set down their cultural baggage and encounter the portrait subjects as individuals.

“It’s not about systems, it’s not about ideology, it’s about you and me,” says Alhasawi. She explained the various “problematic responses to difference” that people exhibit: acting as if the “other” has no personhood, demonizing and dominating the “other,” and portraying the “other” as exotic and therefore not dignified. Alhasawi also pointed out a problematic response that can stem from a desire for equality: minimizing the other’s differences.

“If you don’t see my difference, then you don’t see me. Or you don’t see me fully,” says Alhasawi. She pointed out that unveiled faces are not a universal norm: she had to become accustomed to seeing American clothing (and lack thereof).

Alhasawi also explained the danger of moral overcorrection: according to a Pew Research Center , only 12 countries in the world legally require some form of religious garb for women, while 39 countries legally prohibit some form of the same. “They have this assumption that women would only wear this by force, so they force them not to wear it.”

“Nourah is a social entrepreneur, willing to take risks and cross her comfort zones,” says Professor Carl Stauffer, her practicum and academic advisor. She also enlisted the help of Howard Zehr, Soula Pefkaros, and Adriana Hammond to photograph the subjects of this social experiment.

“We overcame so many things in less than an hour,” says Alhasawi. One participant first described women in black face veils as “scary,” but closed their last interview by presenting Alhasawi with a gift of a black scarf.

“It made me think much more about myself than it did face-veiled Muslim women,” says participant Frances Flannery, director of the at James Madison University. The project made Flannery reflect on society’s “claims” on women – such as how they should appear and express themselves – characteristics which are covered by a face veil.

Alhasawi hopes there will be other opportunities to display the photographs in the United States, and intends to write further about the project’s implications. She has returned to Saudi Arabia to teach two graduate classes and continue research projects on women’s rights and English-language representations of the prophet of Islam.