“Peace activists tend to be sensitive to interacting with the military and police,” said 91����Ƶ professor , as she introduced the speakers. “We often define security in a different way, focused on ‘human security.’” But she believes the two sides can – and must − work together even in countries where the security forces are part of a repressive government.

“We’ve come a long way in civil society to move from protesting security policies to making policy proposals for how to better pursue human security,” said Schirch, who has been invited to speak at the Pentagon, the Army War College and West Point Military Academy. She noted that several Harrisonburg Police Department officers were guests at the luncheon.

A research professor at 91����Ƶ’s (CJP), Schirch is also director of human security at the , an international network of peacebuilding practitioners and scholars that promotes “sustainable peace and security.”

Schirch and many of the luncheon attendees are currently involved in the final phase of a three-year project: the creation of a master curriculum, including a handbook and training modules, to help security forces and civil society groups learn how to collaborate on human security, community engagement and security sector development. The project, supported by the , partners the Alliance for Peacebuilding with the and the at the University of Notre Dame.

Approximately 30 contributors travelled from 26 countries for the one-week “training of trainers” on the 91����Ƶ campus. The luncheon speakers, who were part of the training session, spoke about their experiences engaging with military and police.

Reforming police practices

Kamal Uddin Tipu started his career as a police officer in Pakistan, eventually rising to deputy inspector general in the city of Islamabad. He came to CJP as a Fulbright scholar in 2004 to earn a master’s degree.

At 91����Ƶ, Tipu focused on restorative justice as a better way to deal with crime, law-breakers and victims. He spoke fondly of his time on campus, his family’s experiences while living in Harrisonburg, and his internship with the police department in Rochester, New York. He returned to Pakistan to implement what he had learned, introducing reforms in local police practices.

In recent years, Tipu went to Africa as a police adviser to the African Union and United Nations. “I saw how we need to focus more on the root causes of conflict,” he said. “I also saw the enormous amounts of money that countries spend on the military.”

A ‘peace general’

Deng Giguiento, a longtime peacebuilding trainer and practitioner, counts two generals as her friends on the Philippine island of Mindanao. As training coordinator for the Peace and Reconciliation Program of , she often interacted with security officials on local situations of conflict.

When a German couple was abducted by anti-government insurgents, for example, she helped negotiate their release alongside an army general. The general had rejected military action, despite opposition from his officers. Afterwards, the general started a class for his officers. His textbook was “The Little Book of Conflict Transformation,” written by��John Paul Lederach, founding director of CJP.

“When the general got stuck, he would call me and put me on speakerphone,” said Giguiento, who helped to establish the after attending SPI in 1997.

Moving from protest to proposals

Bernardo Arevalo de Leon, a former Guatemalan diplomat, talked about how his country is still trying to recover from a 33-year civil war between armed rebels and a repressive right-wing government. After 10 years of peace talks, the two sides signed a peace accord in 1996, but the country is struggling to implement reforms that were promised.

“The big task is to transform the way the government uses its security forces,” said de Leon, who was involved in the peace process. “We needed to think differently about the role of the police and the army.”

He also pointed out that civil society needed to move from protest to proposal to engage in the reform of the security sector.

De Leon is now based in Guatemala, where he is director of the Regional Office for Latin America for , a global peacebuilding nongovernmental organization based in Geneva.

Subsequent legs in her journey:

• Three years with in Kenya, where she did STAR work with Doreen Ruto, a from 91����Ƶ (91����Ƶ).
• Four years with the for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame, where she studied under and then apprenticed with John Paul Lederach, founding director of .
• Beginning a PhD in expressive arts and conflict transformation from the .

It began here

On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Mansfield was on the 18th floor of an office building in lower Manhattan when she noticed scraps of paper floating by her window. She and her colleagues evacuated the building and began walking rapidly northward to get away. She heard and then saw the collapse of the twin towers. Dozens of people from her home suburb of Garden City died in the attack.

“For over a year I couldn’t plan more than five days out,” Mansfield recalls. “A Somali friend later told me, ‘Now you know how we feel every day.’” Ultimately she quit her job at Goldman Sachs, traveled for a year, and found her way to teachers and mentors working in peace education and conflict transformation.

One of these teachers was , who co-facilitated Mansfield’s STAR cohort in 2010. Now they are working as a team, together with program associate and trainer . Zook Barge’s focus is on curriculum development and training; Mansfield’s is on administering the program, developing the STAR network (“learning community”), and producing communications.

STAR’s birth

In late 2001, STAR was born as a partnership between CJP-91����Ƶ and to provide resources for responding to trauma in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.

“What began as a program to provide tools to pastors working with traumatized congregations in New York City and Washington,” says CJP executive director , “has blossomed into a valuable resource for peacebuilders from East Africa to the Middle East to Central America.”

STAR has trained over 5,000 people from 62 countries on five continents. The program has been a springboard for: , which deals with the wounds of racism; , addressing veterans’ re-entry; and , emerging from post-Hurricane Katrina work with teenagers.

“STAR is proof that even out of the most dreadful violence it is possible to grow life-giving and peace-supporting responses,” says , CJP’s program director.

Becoming the director

Mansfield was named director of STAR in early 2015, a position she will hold while continuing to pursue her doctoral studies focused on dance-based and movement-based healing, restorative justice and transforming the wounds of trauma. She succeeded Zook Barge, who had led the program as both its top administrator and chief instructor for eight years, until her requests for splitting the duties bore fruit.

Mansfield’s first job after earning a bachelor’s degree from Harvard in 1996 was at Goldman Sachs. She started as an analyst, then became an associate and finally a vice president in the investment management division. She spent four years in New York City and four years in London.

In STAR trainings, participants create a drawing called the “river of life.” Reflecting on the flow of her river, Mansfield says the powerlessness she experienced immediately after 9/11 set her on the path – and helped prepare her – for her new role with STAR.

Organizers, including CJP founding director John Paul��Lederach, sociology professor Vernon Jantzi, and �ᾱ���쾱������Assefa, a mediator in conflicts around the world, invited friends and colleagues to talk and think about the cutting edges of practice and theory in international peace work. Some uncertainty surrounded the launch of CJP itself, Jantzi recalls, and the organizers of the Frontiers conference didn’t have any particular plans to make it an annual event.

And they surely didn’t imagine that 20 years later it would be thriving, would have brought 2,800 people from 121 countries to 91����Ƶ’s campus and would have directly inspired the creation of at least 10 other short-term peacebuilding institutes in Africa, Asia, the South Pacific and North America. Nor could Lederach, Jantzi and Assefa have imagined that they would remain involved to varying degrees ever since, though Assefa is the only one has taught every year at the summer institute.

“There was so much energy generated,” Jantzi recalls, of the first conference. “People were so eager to share their experiences.”

Participants found that simply being together at a week-long peacebuilding conference was tremendously beneficial and inspiring for their work, and the response was enthusiastic. During the following academic year, CJP received its accreditation, had three students in the master’s program and admitted a dozen more to begin in the fall of 1995, and had hired its first full-time administrative staff member, Ruth Zimmerman. Things were heading in a good direction, and CJP organized a second Frontiers in International Peacebuilding conference in the summer of 1995.

Conference becomes “SPI”

For its third year, CJP gave its one-week peacebuilding conference a new name: the Summer Peacebuilding Institute, or SPI. Word was spreading, interest was growing, and SPI was about to begin growing quickly in size, scope and length. By 2002, SPI attracted around 150 participants from about 50 countries and offered 20 classes over a two-month period.

One of the major early emphases at SPI – and CJP more generally – was grounding the academic curriculum and classroom instruction in practical, on-the-ground application of peacebuilding and conflict resolution. Early in SPI’s history, outside funders helped bring participants from different sides of several major conflicts around the world, including groups of Catholics and Protestants from Northern Ireland and members of the Hutu and Tutsi ethnic groups from Rwanda and Burundi.

This created a rich and challenging environment at SPI, adding a heavy dose of real-life experience from difficult, violent conflicts – sometimes involving opposing sides of the same conflict – to complement the theory-based aspects of the curriculum.

“In the classroom, that was pretty powerful,” says Tim Ruebke, who attended four years of SPI before earning his master’s degree from CJP in 1999.

Rich experiences outside classroom

Many report that the most powerful moments at SPI, though, occurred during informal, social times away from the classroom. Ruebke recalls an evening gathering at a home in Harrisonburg where participants from Northern Ireland shared stories, songs and dancing with each other and the rest of their classmates.

While the daily sessions focus on the cerebral, “head” aspects of peacebuilding, these informal, social times in the evenings get at its emotional “heart.” This aspect of SPI, Ruebke says, mirrors the reality of many real-life peace negotiations, where the hard work of compromise, connection and understanding between parties often occurs in relaxed, social settings before being finalized at the formal negotiating table.

“A lot of stuff that happens here is informal and relational,” says Jantzi. “We think it’s very significant.”

And as SPI participants often discover, the emotional aspects of peacebuilding aren’t always happy times of singing and dancing. One of the early SPI sessions included visitors from the former Soviet republic of Georgia as well as Abkhazia, a disputed region within Georgia over which a civil war was fought in the 1990s. One evening, an SPI professor had planned a discussion about this conflict and began by displaying a map of the region.

Ruebke was in the audience, and remembers that one of the parties was upset in some way by what was (or perhaps, what wasn’t) portrayed on the map. This immediately and badly derailed the session, and by the time things had been patched up and discussion about the conflict was able to proceed, the importance of the “felt” aspect of peacebuilding had been brought home to Ruebke in a memorable way.

“Even though we were a peacebuilding program, people brought their stuff with them,” remembers Ruth Zimmerman, who says that these sorts of conflicts would periodically flare up between participants. “We had a great learning ground for using some of those [conflict resolution] skill sets over the years.”

At the very beginning, the Frontiers in International Peacebuilding conferences and SPI were simply opportunities for professional development and learning. Before long, however, participants and graduate students in CJP began lobbying for an academic credit component to SPI. Though hesitant to accept the constraints of a pre-planned curriculum, CJP added a credit component to provide students with more flexibility in earning degrees through the program.

Some core courses have been offered year after year, including ones dealing with conflict analysis, restorative justice and trauma healing, and others that focus on practical peacebuilding skills like negotiation and reconciliation. Yet SPI stays true to its roots by exploring the field’s frontiers and updating its course offerings to reflect emerging themes in peacebuilding. Examples of new courses in 2014 include ones on media and societal transformation, playback theater, trauma-sensitive peacebuilding, mindfulness, and architecture as a peacebuilding tool.

Things ran on the skinniest of shoestring budgets in the very first years of SPI, when CJP professors opened their homes to participants after the day’s sessions had ended, while their spouses pitched in to help with meals. Volunteers filled many support roles. This contributed to the organic, intimate atmosphere that remains an important aspect of SPI to this day. But it was an exhausting and, in the long run, unsustainable way to run the event that itself led to conflicts between overworked staff members.

“It was so much work,” recalls Zimmerman, who filled leadership roles at CJP from 1995 to 2007. “I used to put in 70-hour weeks.”

Huge logistics behind SPI

In addition to planning courses and lining up faculty to teach them, coordinating the many moving parts of the growing SPI program presented huge logistical challenges. Once, a participant booked a flight to the Dallas, Texas, airport rather than Washington, D.C.’s Dulles Airport. Another one hopped in a taxi and directed the driver to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, 185 miles north of Harrisonburg, Virginia.

In 1998, just after she became one of CJP’s earliest master’s program graduates, Pat Hostetter Martin (also a participant in the very first Frontiers in International Peacemaking conference) joined SPI to help relieve the growing crisis of stress and exhaustion the workload was placing on other staff. The following year, Martin became SPI’s co-director with Patricia Spaulding, and then sole director from 2004 until 2008.

In 2000, William Goldberg – a 2001 master’s program graduate of CJP – joined the SPI staff as the transportation coordinator. He later served as an associate director, co-director and, as of 2013, the director of SPI, which now has two full-time staff members and employs about 10 temporary staff each summer. (Other SPI leaders: Gloria Rhodes in the ’90s, Sue Williams, 2008-’11; Valerie Helbert, 2011-’13.)

As the first Jewish program administrator at 91����Ƶ, Goldberg embodies one of the ways that SPI has affected 91����Ƶ as a whole by bringing such wide cultural and religious diversity to campus. From the very first Frontiers in International Peacebuilding conferences, CJP leaders wanted faculty to reflect the religious and cultural diversity of the participants – a desire at odds with 91����Ƶ’s requirement that all faculty profess a Christian faith. After some discussion, CJP was able to negotiate exceptions to 91����Ƶ’s hiring practices and hire non-Christian faculty members during the summer, which Jantzi points to as an example of the strong support SPI has generally enjoyed from university administrators since its beginning.

91����Ƶ’s hospitable community

Support from the university extended well beyond the administration, remembers Jantzi. Cafeteria staff embraced the opportunity, rather than resented the hassle, of serving participants with a variety of religious and cultural dietary preferences, while the physical plant staff went to great lengths to ensure everyone stayed comfortable during their time on campus. Together, the welcoming atmosphere the entire university created at SPI for visitors from around the world became an important part of its success.

As employees and departments outside of SPI pitched in to help it succeed, SPI also tried to build closer ties to the broader university community by making events like the opening ceremonies and the periodic SPI luncheons open to anyone on campus and in the surrounding community. And when these general open invitations didn’t attract large audiences, Martin found greater success when she started targeting specific people and departments with invitations and paying for their lunches.

SPI staff have also made similar efforts to share the diversity present on campus each summer with the broader community in and around Harrisonburg. As SPI’s community relations coordinator for about a decade, Margaret Foth worked to connect participants with families, churches and civic groups in the area. She helped form a particularly strong relationship with the Rotary Club of Rockingham County, which hosts a speaker from SPI each year and has helped underwrite an SPI trip to Washington D.C. A close relationship also developed between SPI and Park View Mennonite Church, just down the road from 91����Ƶ, which has welcomed numerous international visitors in Sunday School classes and as participants in worship services.

“We wanted [participants] to know that it was an area that was welcoming and hospitable,” says Foth. “They weren’t just coming for an academic session. They were coming for relationships in a welcoming community.”

From 2000 to 2010, vanloads of SPI participants made connections farther from campus when they attended a peacebuilding conference held each summer by a group of churches in Knoxville, Tennessee, 360 miles southwest of Harrisonburg. (The minister who organized this conference, Jim Foster, is a graduate of Eastern Mennonite Seminary.) By staying with host families, the visitors enjoyed a more immersive experience in American culture; Foth says she could always count on enthusiastic reviews the following Monday, after participants returned to campus.

One year, a Vietnamese-American lawyer from California made the 12-hour round trip to Knoxville, and ended up staying in the home of a Mennonite pastor who, decades earlier, had fought in the Vietnam War. After they stayed up one night talking about their experience of that conflict, the lawyer returned to SPI and told Foth it had been a moment of great healing.

“I can still see him running across campus to give me a hug and say it was the best thing to have happened to him,” she recalls.

��

Akin to heaven on earth?

In 2014, a total of 184 people from 36 countries attended SPI – about the size that SPI has been for the past five years, Goldberg says. As its third decade begins, SPI is as strong and as thriving as ever – planning for 2015 began before the books had even been closed on this year’s session.

Those who have been involved with SPI in some way over the past 20 years treasure the many memories and friendships they’ve formed along the way.

“I think it’s one of the best things that’s happened for 91����Ƶ,” says Jantzi. “It’s one of the most exciting things I’ve been involved with here …. It’s just a really, really energizing time.”

One year, Jantzi and an Iranian seminary student who came to SPI struck up an intriguing, weeks-long conversation about whether converting other people to their respective religions could be done in a nonviolent, non-coercive way. This man later became a high-ranking diplomat who, years later, returned to the United States as part of an Iranian delegation to the United Nations. He contacted Jantzi and invited himself back to Harrisonburg to give a guest lecture in one of Jantzi’s sociology classes – an encouraging indication, Jantzi says, of the high regard this former SPI participant still had for 91����Ƶ.

Goldberg says he’s often inspired by the great lengths that people will go to so they can attend SPI. In 2014, a group of Syrian participants traveled at least 12 hours each way, through difficult and unsafe conditions, to Lebanon to get their visas to travel to the United States. Then they did it again to catch their flights – an illustration, he says, of “the need that people have for this training.”

And he’s similarly inspired by the eagerness with which people return to very difficult circumstances in their homes to put that training and learning into practice.

“No matter how difficult the conflict someone comes from, they want to go back and make it better with the new skills they’ve learned here,” Goldberg says.

More generally, Martin, as well as others interviewed for this story, says one of the most important enduring memories of SPI is “the rich diversity of the whole thing. Oftentimes, that came out so well in the opening ceremonies. That just humbled you.

“You want heaven to be like this,” she says.

— Andrew Jenner

All along, Colombia’s leading politicians have told the leaders of displaced peoples in rural regions to be quiet about their struggle to survive. Last April, the governor of the Bolivar region, Juan Carlos Gossain, asked the Montes de María communities not to march for the beliefs they carry alongside them every day, not to lay down their tools for a week for the sake of the land they love.

His request was denied.

I arrived at the gathering of Montes de María campesinos, with another undergraduate from 91����Ƶ and “Seeders” from , all of us desiring to support this quest for social justice. As I slipped from the back of the tiny motorcycle that had brought me to the bottom of this mountain through the rain and mud, the first thing I saw were small mounds of supplies and tall signs.

The signs said things like “Por la reperacion integral” and “La Montaña se mueve,” or “For integral reparations,” and “The mountain moves.” The small mounds consisted of cloth bags of yucca and ñ������ and piles of firewood, necessary to feed the protesters. The area was alive; groups of people discussing the plans, announcements made through a loudspeaker hidden among the crowd. Droves of motorcycles dropped people off, adding to the ever-constant stream of people and provisions. Trucks weighed down with families rushed down the mountain, the people aboard scattering to learn news or set up hammocks nearby.

Hundreds walking to ask for help

Over 700 people gathered at Arroyo de Arena, most campesinos, farmers originally from the Montes de María, a community of hundreds of families. Decades ago, inhabitants of those communities fled their homes for fear of their lives, caught between warring militias and government-backed soldiers. Their return to their land was fraught with challenges: confusion over land titles, lack of medical care and schools, and general unemployment. On top of that, a relentless fungus has decimated what was a major source of income, their avocado crops – without government assistance, farmers cannot revive this major cash crop.

The five-day plan? Walk 70 miles, from where we met to Cartagena, where community leaders planned to meet with government officials in the hope of winning an agreement for better support for the Montes de María communities. And walk we did on that first day, from 6 a.m. to 4 p.m. in the blazing Colombian sun. People sang to accordionists and shared snacks of cheese bread and made sure water got around to everyone. Determination seeped from every pore and touched every community we walked through, flags and signs waving high, cheers and chants breaking the rural calm.

However, the plan changed once the governor of Bolivar sent delegates to assure us that he wanted to talk, and that he would even come to us at our resting point in San Jacinto at the end of the first day. When Gossaín arrived, he spoke for well over an hour, assuring the crowd of how much he cared about each of their communities, but that walking the entire way would be a waste. If everyone could talk here, why walk for another four days?

Meanwhile, we gringas meandered around the San Jacinto school, wondering where to stay overnight, while exploring and speaking to the children, who were not shy about expressing their opinions and asking questions. We watched the groups of cooks make meals for the entire group out of the collected and shared food, and were stared at curiously by the volunteers providing security at the schoolyard entrance, placed there so people from the nearby community would not come in and eat the food or stir up trouble.

Warm hospitality to us, with food shared

Eventually, some people came forward and asked us where we were from. We explained that we were in solidarity with their cause and were there to help in any way we could. The group extended warm hospitality to us, inviting us to accordion battles and romantic ballads, and giving us bigger portions of yucca and beef and rice. At night, hundreds of people set up a web of hammocks in the nearby forest, and we did likewise. The people around us saw our dreadful attempts at tying hammocks, commented loudly that we would never sleep well hanging like that, and retied them for us, every time. They stared at our cross-cultural reading material, tried sneakily listening in as we answered questions in clumsy Spanish about American culture, and showed us pictures of their relatives in the States.

Around us, discussions were being held with the heads of various government agencies. Some governmental leaders blamed farmers for their dead avocado crops. Assurances were made for a health clinic on one side of the mountain. The Montes de María leaders insisted their people were prepared to continue walking as planned if their demands were not met.

Gossaín made a bold announcement that the local government was already working on many of their demands, and that the president himself would come talk to them in a month to settle on the issues.

Given such a promise, the leaders then decided there was no point in continuing the protest, so the hammocks were taken down, the pots cleaned and stacked, and the groups assembled. A sense of triumph filled the air as people boarded air-conditioned buses supplied by the governor after the leaders demanded them.

Government cracking down, not helping

Sadly, as of mid-September 2013 – five months after the suspended march – the demands and needs of displaced communities still are not being met in Colombia, according to the organization Sembrandopaz. (This organization was founded by Ricardo Esquivia in 2005 to support justice and peacebuilding in Montes de María and the Caribbean region of Colombia.) Campesinos are currently striking, directly affecting the country’s economy, because the government has ignored their cries. Movement leaders from the Montes de María have been thrown in a high security prison or accused of being guerrilla leaders in order to scatter blame where it is not deserved.

I have no doubt that through their current strife, Colombia will see a day where the belittled and forgotten will be respected and regarded as crucial by not only its government, but by its people. This faith lives on within those who remember that Colombia thrives on the labor and resilience of the campesinos, that those communities have bonds that cannot be broken with prison walls and death threats, and that after the bad times – after the rain and the mud and the suffering – must come a time of peace and equality, from the coastal fisherman to the mountain farmer, and all the advocates in between.

* * * *

Editor’s note: Long-time peace activist Ricardo Esquivia is at great risk in Colombia at the present time. In an alert emailed Sept. 18, 2013, Jess Hunter-Bowman of Witness for Peace (led by 91����Ƶ alum Sharon Hostetler ’80) said that following Esquivia’s involvement in the Montes de María community movement, the military has arrested one of his fellow leaders and likely also will be arresting Esquivia on concocted charges of being a guerrilla leader. For more information, visit the .

She found that unique blend at Harvard.

“Harvard Law School has a growing commitment to public interest work and alternative dispute resolution,” said Sauder, a first-year law student. “I just started working as an intern for the Program on Negotiation where I’ve connected with other people who also care about peacebuilding, restorative justice and conflict resolution.”

A foundation of law…

Sauder was drawn to the pre-law minor at 91����Ƶ as a freshman because it encouraged her to challenge preconceived assumptions and “look at creative ways the law can build peace and resolve conflicts.”

“I learned to think through multiple sides of issues, appreciate questions and stop seeing the world in black and white,” said Sauder. “I was worried law school would ruin that important transformation but I’ve realized that law is full of ambiguities and recognizing them is critical.”

Dan Wessner, a former history professor at 91����Ƶ, initiated the pre-law minor in 2005. Sauder credits Wessner with preparing her for the challenges of law school. “As a lawyer, he taught me how to write more concisely and argue thoughtfully and effectively.”

In addition to Wessner’s classes, Sauder appreciated her pre-law capstone class taught by , a who holds an MA from . She believes the time spent discussing multiple sides of a case and reading legal theories helped her mind transition to think “like a lawyer.”

“Our time spent in personal reflection and analysis gave me an opportunity to consider the type of person I want to be in my legal career,” said Sauder. “I have continued to apply what I learned about myself in that class at Harvard.”

In addition to Wessner, Sauder points to , and to colleagues in Sawin’s with influencing her path to Harvard.

“The pre-law classes in peacebuilding, theology, ethics, business and philosophy showed what a unique and well-rounded program 91����Ƶ has,” said Sauder. “I loved how inter-disciplinary the pre-law minor was…It helped me to see the connections and consider the law in both broad and narrow contexts.”

…rooted in peace

Harvard Law groups incoming students into sections where they maintain the same class schedule with other students. Sauder enjoys the camaraderie and small community feel of her section which has softened her transition from a smaller campus.

“I’ve found a number of others who connect with Mennonite values including a student who studied under John Paul Lederach (founding director ofCJP) at Notre Dame,” said Sauder. “I’m excited about the vibrant community here that’s passionate about social change and justice issues.”

As the newness of the semester has worn off, Sauder is looking forward to continued dialogue with her peers on social justice and peacebuilding.

“I’ve really enjoyed sharing about my unique experiences at 91����Ƶ and the values I developed there.”

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 .

“We are designed to live in community and in close relationships,” Johnson explained in an interview with a reporter at a coffee break. “Love is not an intoxicating mixture of sex and infatuation.”

Instead love is having an emotional bond with others with whom we form “a safe haven from the storms of life,” she said. Johnson and several other internationally recognized speakers at the conference stressed that this type of love actually enables us to live longer, with less pain and sickness.

“Contact with a loving partner literally acts as a buffer against shock, stress, and pain,” Johnson said in Hold Me Tight. Conversely, “emotional isolation is a more dangerous health risk than smoking or high blood pressure,” she wrote, citing sociologist James House at the University of Michigan.

Of the five keynote speakers, Johnson and two others cited the results of several decades of research to support their assertions that caring relationships are as necessary to human life as air, food and water. The others referencing this research were neuroscientist James Coan, PhD, of the University of Virginia, and Dr. Daniel J. Siegel, a professor of psychiatry at the University of California-Los Angeles.

“The brain is a social organ, and our relationships with one another are not a luxury but an essential nutrient for our survival,” wrote Siegel in his latest book, Mindsight – The New Science of Personal Transformation, to which he referred frequently in his presentation. Siegel also described how our minds work in synchronicity with those around us.

Throughout the conference, which began the evening of March 31 and ended at noon on April 2, 2011, 91����Ƶ philosophy professor , offered brief, heartfelt responses following the major speeches, often tying modern scientific insights into love with the 2,000-year-old teachings of Jesus. “It is good for us to live in community,” said Early. “It is exhausting for us to live in isolation from each other.”

Early added, however, “Community can also be harmful.” Strangers cannot betray us – it is those closest to us who can betray us, he noted. As a result, we must cultivate “habits of repair,” in order to heal harms that have been done, in addition to learning how to love healthily.

Cult of Individual Questioned

The conference served to challenge the mythic image in the United States of strength being embodied in a lone individual making his or her way self-sufficiently through life, pretending not to need long-term, committed relationships.

“We are seeing a paradigm shift away from the cult of the individual and back to nurturing relationships,” said , a professor in 91����Ƶ’s counseling department. “This will be world-changing.”

Conference organizers expected about 700 participants, mostly from 91����Ƶ, but attendees from the community inflated the total to 1,200. Filling much of the University Commons arena, the audience included retirees, church personnel and health-care providers from the community (Rockingham Memorial Hospital was a co-sponsor).

As the developer of Emotion Focused Couples Therapy (EFT), Johnson led a day-long, pre-conference training on EFT for 300 people in the mental health field.

“Forget about learning how to argue better, analyzing your early childhood, making grand romantic gestures, or experimenting with new sexual positions,” Johnson said in her book and paraphrased in her speech. “Instead, recognize and admit that you are emotionally attached to and dependent on your partner in much the same way that a child is on a parent for nurturing, soothing, and protection.”

In the conference, Johnson, Coan and Siegel all made reference to the parent-child attachment studies begun after World War II by British psychologist John Bowlby. His Canadian assistant, Mary Ainsworth, continued this research through the 1990s, becoming a renowned psychologist in her own right. This research has now has been replicated and expanded by hundreds of other researchers; it demonstrates a child’s critical need for resonating with at least one caring adult in order to develop healthily.

Using MRI imaging of the brain, Coan and other researchers have found that interpersonal relationships, particularly secure ones, have a measurable impact on brain activity. If someone feels threatened – resulting in a fight-flight-freeze response – this can be monitored via the “signal change” in his or her right amygdala, said Coan in his keynote speech. This signal increases to a high level when the threatened person is alone. The signal is attenuated by having a stranger present. It registers lowest – meaning,�� fewest signs of stress – when a partner is present.

This new research by Coan and others is revolutionizing the field of psychology. It�� strongly suggests that humans are intended to live in relationship with others (that is, in families and communities), not as isolated individuals – in short, our brains function optimally when we have supportive relationships with others.

Conversely, if someone feels socially rejected, it registers in the same part of the brain (the anterior cingulate cortex) as physical pain does, according to research cited in Siegel’s book.

Underlying Spiritual Message

As he was wrapping up his presentation, Coan said with a smile, “I’ve never been invited to speak about spirituality at any conference, or about God.” In that respect, the 91����Ƶ conference was “uncharted territory,” he added.

Johnson told a reporter than when she was growing up in England, “my sense of spirituality got stuck in rules, dogma and dictums.” After Johnson included the words to a classic hymn “Abide with Me” in her presentation – noting that the words spoke of the need for attachment – 91����Ƶ’s veteran choral conductor, , surprised Johnson by leading the audience in singing “Abide with Me.” She later said the singing touched her deeply, bringing tears to her eyes.

In Mindsight, Siegel spoke of the importance of social “integration” by describing a choir in which “each member of the choir has his or her unique voice, while at the same time they are linked together in a complex and harmonious whole. One is never quite certain where the choir will take the song, but the surprises simply highlight the pleasure of a familiar, shared melody.”

Illustrating Siegel’s words, Nafziger and his student choral group, the Chamber Singers, performed a series of songs, with audience participation, including one that the entire audience of many hundreds was coached to create out of a spoken poem. The music seemed to transcend the boundaries between secular scientists, international students, devout Christians, and equally devout skeptics. Siegel publically summed up a feeling no doubt shared by many: “It’s incredible to be here.”

The two other keynote speakers – John Paul Lederach, PhD, professor of international peacebuilding at the University of Notre Dame, and Nancey Murphy, PhD, professor of Christian philosophy at Fuller Theological Seminary in California – offered insights into building relationships to emerge from conflict situations (Lederach) and into the links between Christian theology and the findings explored at the conference (Murphy).

The proceedings of the conference are to be edited for publication in the coming year. In the meantime, interested people can download PDFs of presenters’ PowerPoints at the .

and , a married couple with three young boys, conceived of the conference topic more than two years ago. They were two of the four 91����Ƶ professors and one staff member who spearheaded the conference. The others were biology professor , whose grant-writing yielded major funding from the John Templeton Foundation, and chemistry professor , who collaborated with Suter Science Center office coordinator Cheryl Doss in organizing the conference and ensuring that it ran smoothly.

So say the organizers of an “attachment conference” to be led by experts from across North America gathering at 91����Ƶ in the spring of 2011.

Conference is first of its kind

, PhD, director of

, PhD, 91����Ƶ associate professor of

, PhD, 91����Ƶ associate professor of

“Conversations on Attachment: Integrating the Science of Love and Spirituality,” a first of its kind, will bring together five internationally-recognized experts from a variety of disciplines to apply key insights from attachment theory to current research and practice.

The conference will be held March 31-April 1, 2011 and is open to the public.

“We hope hundreds of people will join us for three days of life-changing conversation that is sure to change how you see yourself, your relationships and the larger world,” says , PhD, director of , one of the conference sponsors.

Necessity of attachment in life

Program planner , PhD, 91����Ƶ associate professor of , believes this conference “is sorely needed as well as timely.”

Recent neuroscience demonstrates that “healthy attachments, particularly people-to-people connections, are crucial for society to survive and flourish,” says Kishbaugh.

“One of our most important tasks is to learn how to form healthy attachments – with each other, with the earth and with God.”

, PhD, associate professor of , first had the idea for 91����Ƶ to host such a conference.

“Attachment theory gives us a specific handle on the development of our sense of self, the dynamics of love, and the hope for repair after rupture,” he notes.

“This conference provides an open space – stretching from neuroscience to spirituality – to talk about what it means to be human.”

Attachment Conference Speakers

Confirmed conference speakers include highly sought after experts who are bestselling authors in their fields. They include:

Sue Johnson, EdD

Sue Johnson, EdD: Professor of clinical psychology at The University of Ottawa, director of the Ottawa Couple and Family Institute Inc., and the International Center for Excellence in Emotionally Focused Therapy. Dr. Johnson has published numerous books, chapters and articles in the field of relationships and therapy. Her most recent book is written for the general public and is entitled “Hold Me Tight – Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love.”

James Coan, PhD

James Coan, PhD: Assistant professor of psychology, member of the Neuroscience Graduate Program and director of the Virginia Affective Neuroscience Laboratory at the University of Virginia, co-editor of Handbook of Emotion Elicitation and Assessment

Daniel J. Siegel, MD

Daniel J. Siegel, MD: Clinical professor of psychiatry, UCLA’s Center for Culture, Brain, and Development; co-director, Mindful Awareness Research Center and co-author of the bestseller, “Parenting from the Inside Out: How a Deeper Self-Understanding Can Help You Raise Children Who Thrive.”

John Paul Lederach, PhD

John Paul Lederach, PhD: Professor of international peacebuilding at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, University of Notre Dame and author of numerous books, including “The Moral Imagination: The Art and Soul of Building Peace.”

Nancey Murphy, PhD

Nancey Murphy, PhD: Professor of Christian philosophy at Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, Calif., and author of “Bodies and Souls, or Spirited Bodies?”

Pre-conference training with Sue Johnson

A will be offered March 31 by the originator of Emotion Focused Therapy, Dr. Susan Johnson, EdD. Dr. Johnson’s 2004 book (2nd Ed).

The Practice of Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy: Creating Connection is the basic text on this form of therapy and her more popular book Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love is used for enrichment and insight into the dance of attachment.

The training is open to mental health professionals, pastors and interested community members who want a formal introduction to Emotion Focused Therapy by the originator of this approach.

It runs from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. in Martin Chapel of Eastern Mennonite Seminary.

Signature sponsorship

is the signature sponsor for the event. 91����Ƶ is grateful for the collaboration with this local partner. Learn more…

Conference schedule and costs

More information about the conference schedule and costs, as well as online registration and blog postings by presenters, is available at .

Inquiries can also be sent to conference coordinator Cheryl Doss at��attachment@emu.edu or phone 540-432-4400.

Supporters who made the conference possible

The conference is funded by a grant from Metanexus Global Network Initiative to the Shenandoah Anabaptist Science Society (SASS).

SASS is an inter-disciplinary, area-wide organization which creates space for dialogue and promotes education on issues at the intersection of science and religion.

SASS () is housed at 91����Ƶ and open to all interested persons.

John Paul Lederach

John Paul Lederach, the co-founding director of the Conflict Transformation Program at 91����Ƶ, now the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding (CJP), will speak at 7 p.m. in Martin Chapel of the seminary building on “The Poetics of Peacebuilding.”

“Peacebuilding requires an eternal belief in the creative act, the building and coaxing of imagination itself,” Dr. Lederach has stated. He will elaborate in his presentation.

Lederach is currently professor of international peacebuilding at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at Notre Dame University. He received the Reinhold Niebuhr Award from Notre Dame on May 19, 2009, given annually to a Notre Dame student, faculty member or administrator whose life and writings promote or exemplify social justice.

Lederach was named a “distinguished scholar” on the faculty of 91����Ƶ’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding and returns to teach in CJP’s annual Summer Peacebuilding Institute (SPI).

He has authored and co-edited 15 books and manuals in English and Spanish, including The Moral Imagination: The Art and Soul of Building Peace (Oxford University Press, 2005), The Journey Toward Reconciliation (Herald Press, 1999), Preparing for Peace: Conflict Transformation Across Cultures (Syracuse University Press, 1995), Building Peace: Sustainable Reconciliation in Divided Societies (USIP, 1997) and The Little Book of Conflict Transformation (Good Books, 2003).

Lederach received his PhD in sociology with a concentration in the Social Conflict Program from the University of Colorado. He and his wife, Wendy, have two children, Angie and Josh.

Admission to the program is free. A reception with refreshments will follow at 8:30 p.m.

For more information, call Phoebe Kilby, 540-432-4581 or email: phoebe.kilby@emu.edu.

John Paul Lederach, professor and founding director of the Conflict Transformation Program at 91����Ƶ, now the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding, has received the Reinhold Niebuhr Award from Notre Dame University.

Dr. Lederach is currently professor of international peacebuilding at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at Notre Dame. The award is made annually to a Notre Dame student, faculty member or administrator whose life and writings promote or exemplify social justice.

“This year’s recipient has spent his life advancing the cause of peace,” said Notre Dame provost Tom Burish in presenting the award to Lederach on May 19. “From Nicaragua to Nepal, the Philippines to Colombia, he has served as mediator, strategist and catalyst for peacebuilding. As the leading theorist of the concept of conflict transformation, he advises governments, religious organizations, universities and community groups striving to reconcile societies torn apart by violence.

“As a practitioner of peace, he accompanies the poor, the refugees and the victims of war – eliciting from them alternatives to violence,” Burish continued. “His wide-ranging experiences, profound analyses and deep moral imagination have formed the basis for a corpus of writing that has enlightened peace studies scholars and peacebuilders around the globe. He is, in the words of St. Francis of Assisi, ‘an instrument of peace.'”

Dr. Lederach previously served on the faculty of 91����Ƶ’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding (CJP) and is currently a “distinguished scholar” there. He returns to teach in the annual Summer Peacebuilding Institute (SPI), part of the CJP program.

He has authored and co-edited 15 books and manuals in English and Spanish, including “The Moral Imagination: The Art and Soul of Building Peace” (Oxford University Press, 2005), “The Journey Toward Reconciliation” (Herald Press, 1999), “Preparing for Peace: Conflict Transformation Across Cultures” (Syracuse University Press, 1995).”Building Peace: Sustainable Reconciliation in Divided Societies” (USIP, 1997) and “The Little Book of Conflict Transformation” (Good Books, 2003).

Lederach received his PhD in sociology with a concentration in the Social Conflict Program from the University of Colorado. He and his wife, Wendy, have two children, Angie and Josh.

Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, president emeritus of Notre Dame, was the first recipient of the Reinhold Niebuhr award, sponsored by friends of the Protestant theologian and author. In September 1972, Father Hesburgh announced the establishment of a Reinhold Niebuhr Award at the University of Notre Dame.

Jacques Koko of Benin

The (CTP) at 91����Ƶ began with the enrollment of two American graduate students in 1994. It has now seen more than 1,500 people from 83 countries take one or more of its courses, with 160 of these earning a masters degree or graduate certificate in Conflict Transformation.

“The unique aspect of CTP is that it starts from the analysis of the self and then goes on to look at communal, societal, organizational, regional, and international conflicts,” said Kaushikee, a 2002 masters graduate of CTP and current professor of peace and conflict resolution at a major university in New Delhi, India.

“The program is a beautiful combination of theory and practice. It not only influences our head but touches the heart,” she added.

Selam Hussein, a Mennonite from Ethiopia and the chief organizer of the 10th Anniversary Celebration of CTP, said that the three-day event is designed to give visitors a taste of the skills, techniques and theories for which CTP has a worldwide reputation.

The celebration begins at 5:30 p.m. on Friday, June 3, with a dinner speech by CTP founding director John Paul Lederach. It continues through a series of 15 classes and workshops on Saturday, June 4, and ends on June 5 with a Sunday-morning sermon on peace by 91����Ƶ President Loren E. Swartzendruber.

Entertainment is offered on Friday and Saturday nights, with a concert by renowned folk musician John McCutcheon on Friday and a storytelling performance by Israeli-born actress Noa Baum on Saturday.

Celebration participants will include more than 100 students from several dozen countries who will be attending the 2005 session of 91����Ƶ