Patience Kamau ’02, MA ’17 (conflict transformation), stands outside the post office in Nyahururu, central Kenya, and holds a letter. Its mailing address is written to her in blue ink, while the return address lists an “91����Ƶ” in Harrisonburg, Virginia, of the United States. The high school senior tears open the envelope and starts reading. The letter inside tells her that 50% of her tuition costs at 91����Ƶ will be covered through the university’s International Grant.

Though that moment occurred nearly three decades ago, Kamau remembers it like it was yesterday. “That was among the greatest blessings I ever received,” she said, looking back.

She didn’t know much about the U.S. at the time, and even less about 91����Ƶ, but her decision to cross an ocean and enroll at the university would forever shape her future. “It was very clear it was shifting the trajectory of my life,” she said.

Soon after receiving that first letter, she received another from 91����Ƶ with an invitation. “Bring an open heart,” Kamau recalled reading, “because here you will make friendships and relationships that you will maintain for the rest of your life.”

“And that was true,” she said. “Many of the relationships I formed at 91����Ƶ remain meaningful in my life.”

She admitted that she didn’t choose 91����Ƶ; her father chose it for her. He had heard through family friends about “a little college in Harrisonburg” with a strong pre-med program. “He started looking into it, reading and studying it, and he liked it,” Kamau said.��

She arrived as a pre-med major in the fall of 1998. Her parents were physicians, and they encouraged her to follow in their footsteps. Kamau enjoyed biology classes during her first year at 91����Ƶ, but once she started taking organic chemistry her sophomore year, she realized it was not for her. She quickly switched majors to computer information systems.

She became close with the handful of other international students on campus and got involved with the university’s multicultural and international programs, where she came under the wing of Delores “Delo” Blough ’80, former director of international student and scholar services. “Delo was a huge part of making all of us feel at home,” she said.

After graduating in 2002, Kamau worked in a variety of campus departments, including the alumni and parent relations office, the seminary, and the Office of Institutional Research and Effectiveness. She eventually landed a position at the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding, serving as assistant to the executive director while a student at CJP. As a perk of her job, she said, she could take eight credit hours a year at no charge.

Six years ago, as chair of CJP’s 25th anniversary committee, she began producing a series of Peacebuilder podcast episodes featuring the program’s faculty and staff to capture CJP’s oral history. According to an 91����Ƶ News article from 2022, the podcast had logged more than 11,500 listeners in 119 countries and territories around the globe.

Since 2022, Kamau has served as program director for . The online course and connection platform offers activists, innovators, and others seeking knowledge and tools a space to “manifest solutions for people and planet,” according to its website.

Kamau said she categorizes her life as “100% lucky.” Half of that luck comes from the random happenstances she had nothing to do with. The other 50% is the kind of serendipitous luck when “preparation meets opportunity,” she said, borrowing a favorite phrase from Oprah.

“You try and live a certain way and prepare, and then when the opportunity arises, you hopefully take advantage of it,” she said. “I couldn’t have been more grateful to have ended up at 91����Ƶ as a young adult who didn’t fully know who I was or what I wanted from life.”

Your support helps students pursue a quality college education without financial barriers. Join us for the 10th annual Lov91����Ƶ Giving Day and contribute to the scholarships that empower future 91����Ƶ students. On April 1, let’s show that our generosity knows no bounds…for the record!

The event was originally planned for summer 2020, but cancelled because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The format switched to all virtual once it became clear not only travel for guests but also on-campus hosting would be challenging. The 2021 Summer Peacebuilding Institute, which runs concurrently, is also online for the second consecutive year.

Such a delay doesn’t dampen the festivities. Like the program itself, which has adapted successfully to new constraints and socio-political developments, the celebration’s virtual format has expanded its reach.

Registered guests will receive access to links for sessions in their emailed receipt. They will also have access to recorded sessions after the weekend.

With more than 700 alumni in 78 countries, including the 25 recent graduates from CJP’s Class of 2021, CJP’s network is worldwide. That includes an estimated 5,500 (STAR) program participants and 3,700 participants. CJP also hosts the , which has brought many to CJP through their interest in restorative justice.

The event features sessions with CJP co-founder John Paul Lederach, 2019 MacArthur Fellow and restorative justice attorney sujatha baliga, Ahimsa Collective founder Sonya Shah, an alumni gathering and oral histories with women critical in founding CJP and former executive directors of the center. Executive Director Jayne Docherty gives an interactive address in which she discusses recent changes at CJP and invites audience members to join in the visioning work.

The keynote speaker is Alicia Garza, currently the special projects director for the National Domestic Workers Alliance and principal with the Black Futures Lab. She is also the co-founder of the Black Lives Matter movement. Read more about Garza here. 

Co-founder of the Black Lives Matter movement Alicia Garza will speak at 91����Ƶ (91����Ƶ) during the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding’s 25th Anniversary Celebration banquet on June 5, 2021.

“This is an unparalleled privilege that Alicia Garza accepted our invitation to be our keynote speaker; what an honor,” said Patience Kamau, anniversary committee chair.

The celebration, a three-day event from June 4-6, is all virtual.

“We know our prospective guests will be attending from many different time zones, which means live attendance may not be possible,” said Kamau. “All sessions will be recorded and we ask that you register in order to receive the links to recordings after the event.”

It will also feature sessions with CJP co-founder John Paul Lederach, 2019 MacArthur Fellow and restorative justice attorney sujatha baliga, Ahimsa Collective founder Sonya Shah, an alumni gathering and oral histories with women critical in founding CJP and former executive directors of the center. On Sunday, Executive Director Jayne Docherty gives a “State of the Center” address.

‘A lot to learn’

After postponing the 2020 celebration, Kamau and Docherty were thrilled at Garza’s willingness to reschedule a year in advance.

“We have a lot to learn from Alicia Garza,” said Docherty. “More students enrolling in our programs are bringing a focus on undoing the continuing legacy of racism, white supremacy, genocide of native peoples, and other forms of oppression in the United States.”

is one of the three co-founders of Black Lives Matter. Garza, Opal Tometi, and Patrisse Khan-Cullors started the first chapter in 2013 in response to the acquittal of Trayvon Martin’s murderer, George Zimmerman. According to their , the global Black Lives Matter network “is a chapter-based, member-led organization whose mission is to build local power and to intervene in violence inflicted on Black communities by the state and vigilantes.”

The movement gained prominence in 2014 for activism in Ferguson, Missouri, after the murder of Mike Brown by police officer Darren Wilson. Now, the movement has over 40 chapters in four countries.

Garza: Racism the ‘least understood’ phenomenon in this country

Garza, who is based in Oakland, California, currently serves as the special projects director for the National Domestic Workers Alliance, which advocates for domestic workers in the U.S. In 2019, she helped launch Supermajority, a membership-based organization that aims to build equity and power among women in America through advocacy, community building, and electoral participation. 

She is also the principal at Black Futures Lab, a project to build “Black political power” and influence and transform black communities. One of their initiatives, the Black Census, polled over 30,000 African Americans on the issues they face and tangible solutions to those problems. The census is “the largest survey of Black people conducted in the United States since Reconstruction,” according to their .

“I think race and racism is probably the most-studied social, economic, and political phenomenon in this country, but it’s also the least understood,” Garza said in a .  “The reality is that race in the United States operates on a spectrum from black to white. It doesn’t mean that people who are in between don’t experience racism, but it means that the closer you are to white on that spectrum, the better off you are, and the closer to black that you are on that spectrum, the worse off you are.”

As as a “queer Black woman,” she brings an intersectional lens to her justice work, addressing racial issues alongside those of gender, sexual orientation, and gender identity. 

Garza’s first book, (Doubleday, 2021), was published earlier this year. Her writings have been featured in the , , , and many more. Among other awards, she was recognized as one of the most influential African Americans by .

On this week’s episode of Peacebuilder podcast, Professor Benjamin Bergey speaks with host Patience Kamau MA ’17 about peacebuilding through music, and how working with intercultural youth ensembles inspired him to enter the field. The “Peacebuilder” podcast, in its second season, is a production of 91����Ƶ’s, as it celebrates its 25th anniversary. 

More than 6,500 listeners in 102 countries and 1,239 cities across the globe enjoyed Season I.

The podcast is among just a handful covering the general peacebuilding field. It is available on, Apple Podcasts on iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcast, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, TuneIn and other podcast directories.

Bergey teaches music theory and conducting at 91����Ƶ (91����Ƶ). The university recently announced a new concentration in music and peacebuilding, which Bergey developed. He also conducts the 91����Ƶ choirs and orchestra, conducts the Rapidan Orchestra in Orange County, and served as the music editor for Voices Together, a new Mennonite hymnal.

Bergey told Kamau that he’s always been drawn to leading ensembles, since his early days in church – “bringing people together to make something greater than the sum of its parts.” 

In 2010, during his cross-cultural semester in the Middle East while an undergraduate at 91����Ƶ, Bergey interviewed Palestinians and Israelis about the role of music as a tool of both protest and community-building. He was particularly inspired by two organizations that brought young Arab and Jewish musicians together to build common ground. 

“From a peacebuilding standpoint, we know how dialogue and empathy are those kinds of crucial components in transforming conflict,” he said. The brought the kids together to sing, create their own songs, and take music classes. did much the same, but with instrumental orchestra activities. Both organizations also facilitate dialogue between the students.

[This podcast was recorded before escalation of the current conflict in Israel/Palestine.]

Bergey recalled watching an Arab and a Jewish student sharing a violin stand, struggling together through a particular passage of Beethoven’s “Symphony No. 1 in C major, Op. 21.”

“It’s these youth coming together in ways that otherwise doesn’t happen …. it doesn’t happen organically, right, in just normal day-to-day living,” Bergey explained. “Studies show that music making together can … help overcome perceptions of dissimilarity and to work towards accepting others’ differences.”

Organizations like these that work in high-conflict areas aim to bring people together in a safe environment.

“That takes a lot of intentionality, a lot of careful planning and facilitation, where they can share experiences, bring themselves to feel like they can tell stories and make music,” Bergey said. “Because really it’s a vulnerable act, especially singing.” 

Bergey went on to write his doctoral dissertation on music and peacebuilding, and trained with in 2018. With a slogan of “War Divides, Music Connects,” the Netherlands-based nonprofit works around the world with artists, social activists and communities on conflict. 

Bergey sees immense potential in this field, even for everyday group settings, in which activities like drum circles, group breathing exercises, or collaborative songwriting can help people become grounded within themselves and build trust with one another.

“This really is an exercise in mindfulness, honestly. It’s important for us to both listen and feel what’s happening within ourselves, but also be able to listen and, dare I say, empathize with those around us,” said Bergey.

Talibah Aquil MA ’19 (conflict transformation) is the featured guest of this week’s episode of the Peacebuilder podcast hosted by Patience Kamau MA ’17. In the episode, Aquil talks about her first journey to her ancestral home, Ghana; the captivating performance art capstone that was borne of that experience; and her calling as a bridge between the North American and African continents.��

The “Peacebuilder” podcast, in its second season, is a production of 91����Ƶ’s, as it celebrates its 25th anniversary. 

More than 6,500 listeners in 102 countries and 1,239 cities across the globe enjoyed Season I.

The podcast is among just a handful covering the general peacebuilding field. It is available on, Apple Podcasts on iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcast, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, TuneIn and other podcast directories.

Aquil first decided to travel to Ghana after research through ancestry.com revealed that she had more ancestors from there than any other African country. For her capstone project to her graduate studies at the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding, she spent three weeks there, interviewing Black Americans and others of the African diaspora who had returned to their homeland about how those experiences shaped their identities. 

Aquil used those stories to create “Ghana, Remember Me,” a poetry, dance, and music performance that speaks on healing historical trauma within the African diaspora community. The project brought together her experiences and a diverse skill set: A graduate of Howard University with a BA in musical theater, Aquil toured with a professional dance troupe after college.

Performing “Ghana, Remember Me” “brought to my attention how many people really need spaces to talk about identity … and the complexities of it,” she said. 

That work has helped Aquil face the present as well as her history. 

“Something about me connecting to the root of my identity gave me such power that when I came back to the States, it was almost like I was prepared to endure all of the racial chaos that was happening in America, because I knew where I came from,” she said. “I saw the power of my people and it gave me strength. It gave me strength. It didn’t take away the pain, but it gave me strength to endure.”

She recalled a feeling of homecoming, even on her first trip to Ghana. 

“Your cells remember … the body knows,” Aquil said. 

Aquil moved to Ghana last year, and lives in the capital city of Accra. 

“I knew in my spirit that I was supposed to be in Ghana and, again – not knowing the puzzle pieces, just like my journey at CJP – I knew that I was supposed to be here. And listening to that intuition, I’m so grateful because it has been wonderful,” she said.

Aquil is now a lecturer at CJP, where she introduced a course titled “Re-imagining Identity” that examines the intersections of identity, storytelling, dignity, and the arts. In that same vein of re-imagination, she is also developing an organization called “We Are Magic.”

“The goal is to bring diaspora people of color to Ghana – to connect, to history, to identity, and to heal from historical trauma,” Aquil explained. “I want to do this at a little to no cost for them. I want to build a place where folks can stay and it be a resting place, a restorative place in Ghana.”

Aquil is slated to host and facilitate a crosscultural travel and study experience for 91����Ƶ undergraduates in the coming months.

Matt Tibbles MA ‘18 is the featured guest of this week’s episode of Peacebuilder podcast. Tibbles speaks with host Patience Kamau MA ’17 about and trauma-informed classrooms.

The “Peacebuilder” podcast, in its second season, is a production of 91����Ƶ’s, as it celebrates its 25th anniversary. 

More than 6,500 listeners in 102 countries and 1,239 cities across the globe enjoyed Season I.

The podcast is among just a handful covering the general peacebuilding field. It is available on, Apple Podcasts on iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcast, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, TuneIn and other podcast directories.

During the conversation, he shares moving personal stories that actualize both his learning journey and the important peacebuilding ideas he studies, practices and teaches – drawing from experiences as a youth pastor and a juvenile detention officer, in education and prevention for a domestic violence and sexual assault shelter, and from among his students in classrooms at 91����Ƶ.

A 2018 graduate of 91����Ƶ’s , Tibbles is an organizational development and conflict transformation professional with experience working in and with multi-ethnic for-profit businesses, higher education, nonprofit organizations, and indigenous tribes. He balances teaching at 91����Ƶ with consultancy work among organizations and school districts, focusing on co-creating dignity and honoring trauma-informed and restorative organizational cultures. 

Tibbles brings these experiences into the courses he teaches to undergraduates in the peacebuilding and development program and the sociology program. He also teaches graduate courses at CJP. 

Tibbles begins by describing a pivotal experience of de-escalating conflict while working as a youth pastor in the Pacific Northwest. Witnessing the effect of trauma on the child involved pushed him to explore the concept more fully in the youth group he worked with at the church. Later in Alaska, he worked at a juvenile detention facility where he encountered trauma-informed care and practices. Night shifts there allowed for deeper exploration of restorative justice, especially through webinars offered by the and readings of The Little Book of Restorative Justice by Howard Zehr (Good Books, 2002).

There, Tibbles began to ask different and probing questions about the behavior of the teens he worked with: One guiding question was “In what reality does this behavior make sense?” Viewing those behaviors through a trauma lens, as responses to trauma, helped him and others he worked with see how daily protocols and practices could raise fear and anxiety. For example, walking directly behind a teen in transition between activities triggered a stress reaction, but shifting slightly into her peripheral vision was a much less threatening position. 

While our default approach might be “blaming and judging,” asking questions about why behavior might be happening “allowed us to see a much bigger, broader picture of what was going on,” Tibbles said.

After studies at CJP, he’s worked to integrate restorative justice and trauma-informed pedagogy within the larger university community with a ripple effect as students across the disciplines see the potential and benefits to bring those principles into various settings.

“When we’re able to create trauma-informed and resilient systems, my hope is, and I’m seeing it a little bit from students that have graduated, or even students that have transferred out of 91����Ƶ into another university or college, is that they’re taking these experiences of being trauma-informed and resilient into their own communities into wherever they’re going,” he said. “And they’re beginning, in small ways, to shift systems that haven’t been trauma informed, or, or haven’t focused on resilience into systems that are beginning to explore just even a little bit of what that means and how it [can be] transformative.”

Professor Carolyn Stauffer is the featured guest of this week’s episode of Peacebuilder podcast. Stauffer speaks with host Patience Kamau MA ’17 about her work in the fields of sexual harm and trauma. 

Before returning to her alma mater as a professor, Stauffer spent 16 years in Southern Africa. In the podcast, she recounts working at a rape crisis center in the mid-1990s, where she saw a “hierarchy of identities” among the survivors of sexual assault she worked with.

Race “was the primary sort of frame of identity that was given the most recognition … after race then class became an issue,” Stauffer explained, especially among those from mixed race communities. In contrast, gender-based issues weren’t much considered in the national discourse on oppression, all while “Johannesburg was considered the rape capital of the world.” 

When Stauffer joined the 91����Ƶ (91����Ƶ) faculty in 2010, she thought seriously and prayed about how to serve those experiencing intimate partner violence and gender-based violence in the Shenandoah Valley. She started the Silent Violence Project, in which Stauffer and a team (which included Center for Justice and Peacebuilding students) worked with women who were homeless, undocumented, or in the Beachy Amish communities. 

“What were the unique risks that they faced based on their identity?” Stauffer asked. “What were the resistance strategies that they used to push back against abusers … what were their resilience strategies?”

At the time, Stauffer was co-director of 91����Ƶ’s MS in biomedicine program. She wanted to ensure that the future healthcare providers under her tutelage would be sensitized to sexual harm survivors, so she held a symposium – with a cadre of conservative Mennonite survivors teaching her students. Many of the survivors hadn’t completed the eighth grade.

“I flipped the script and basically positioned them as the experts to train my biomedicine students sexual harm and trauma. And so it was this total change of power dynamics,” Stauffer explained.

Despite her vast expertise in this field, Stauffer still welcomes learning from others. She recalls how, after one symposium, someone asked her about the intersection between sexual violence and neurodiversity – for example, a survivor who may have ADHD or autism. 

“We have to think beyond just one particular sort of static definition of who that survivor or who that harm doer is. I think that’s part of taking the field forward, is including an understanding of the intersection of identity and sexual harm.”

Professor Tim Seidel, this week’s guest on the “Peacebuilder” podcast, has played an integral role in the fields of strategic peacebuilding, global studies and interfaith engagement at 91����Ƶ. He brings practical experience in all three fields, having lived and worked in Palestine, Israel, and served as Mennonite Central Committee’s director for peace and justice ministries in the United States.

Seidel speaks with host Patience Kamau MA ‘17 for the third episode of the season.��The “Peacebuilder” podcast, in its second season, is a production of 91����Ƶ’s, as it celebrates its 25th anniversary.��

More than 6,500 listeners in 102 countries and 1,239 cities across the globe enjoyed Season I.

The podcast is among just a handful covering the general peacebuilding field. It is available on, Apple Podcasts on iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcast, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, TuneIn and other podcast directories.

Seidel shares his journey to 91����Ƶ, where he has helped to start an undergraduate global studies major and an interfaith studies minor. Seidel also teaches graduate students at the and serves as director of 91����Ƶ’s Center for Interfaith Engagement.��

Seidel brings four topics to the podcast conversation and unpacks them in discussion with Kamau: 

• transnational and anti-colonial connectivity and the politics of solidarity, 
• critical political economy,
•  violence, non-violence and resistance, and 
• religion, interfaith, and the post-secular in politics, peacebuilding, and development. 

Their conversation includes probing questions, ranges throughout hundreds of years of global history, touches on popular culture and current events, and follows a critical thread of colonialism into each of the topics.

In a nutshell: “How do we pay attention to the world that we live in today and its colonial constitutions? How do the colonial legacies persist into the present and what are the ways in which people inhabiting this world are struggling and resisting?”

If you’re one of those listeners who thrills to the intellectual “chase,” you will want to come to this 55-minute podcast with some paper and a pen to jot down words and names for further investigation, including the several indigenous and BIPOC scholars, authors, political figures and activists who are referenced.

Many of the ideas and explorations discussed in the podcast are explored in Seidel’s scholarly works and associated presentations. For a full list and links, visit his 91����Ƶ webpage.

Seidel previously taught at American University and Lancaster Theological Seminary. He holds an MTS from Wesley Theological Seminary and a PhD from the School of International Service at American university in Washington DC. At Messiah College, he earned a BA in biochemistry with minors in anthropology and mathematics.

Find all episodes here.

Enjoy a livestream interview on Tuesday, March 30, from 4-5 p.m. and hear more about how the podcast began, what’s new for Season II, and why this unique format is such an exciting way to talk about and learn from peacebuilding practitioners. Lindsay Martin, CJP development director, is the host. 

91����Ƶ students, faculty and staff can access secure Zoom links for events by visiting the Calendar page after logging into my.emu.edu. Events opened to the public will be available via  page. [You do not need a Facebook account to access Facebook live.]

The “Peacebuilder” podcast, hosted by Patience Kamau MA ‘17, releases the second episode of its second season today. Kamau’s guest is Professor Catherine Barnes, who teaches strategic peacebuilding and public policy at 91����Ƶ’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding.

The “Peacebuilder” podcast, in its second season, is a production of 91����Ƶ’s, as it celebrates its 25th anniversary. 

More than 6,500 listeners in 102 countries and 1,239 cities across the globe enjoyed Season I.The podcast is among just a handful covering the general peacebuilding field. It is available on, Apple Podcasts on iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcast, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, TuneIn and other podcast directories.

In the podcast, Barnes and Kamau chat about Barnes’ expertise in designing and facilitating deliberative dialogue processes, as well as current events including the military coup in Myanmar.

“Dr. Catherine Barnes has worked for conflict transformation and social change for more than 30 years,” Kamau says by way of introduction. “In many countries, she has worked with civil society, activists, diplomats and politicians, and armed groups to build their capacities for preventing violence and using conflict as an opportunity for addressing the systems giving rise to oppression and grievance.”

Their conversation begins with a deep dive into deliberative dialogue: what it is, when it’s useful, and what it has the power to do for a community struggling with conflict.

“The dialogue is very much about setting the conversation in this connection point – at a human level – between those who are involved and the perspectives that they have to bring. So that particularly if there’s been tension, conflict, or even indeed oppression, that you have this humanization of relationships,” Barnes explained. 

One of the early experiences that led Barnes towards this field of work was growing up in the Quaker Universalist tradition, in which congregants gather in silence “and seek the light of God moving within,” she said. They “have … this understanding that often in those spaces, there may be someone who feels moved to share something.”

Barnes went on to earn her doctorate in conflict analysis and resolution from George Mason University alongside Jayne Docherty, Barry Hart, and Lisa Schirch. She’s done conflict transformation work all over the world – including training deliberative dialogue process designers and facilitators in Myanmar. 

91����Ƶ the current violence in the country, Barnes said she feels “so heartbroken. I feel scared, scared for people who I have come to know and respect and, indeed, to love … I think it really does reveal in many ways how the zero sum nature of a power paradigm based on unilateral control and coercion is so hard to shift.”

“Are there resilience tools that you think are within the community that might help carry them through this?” Kamau asked.

“I always, always have hope,” Barnes replied. “I often will say that it’s actually, it’s within movements that you almost need these skills even more to try to think about, ‘how do we generate something that will be different in nature, different in kind than the old system that had been oppressive?'”

The “Peacebuilder” podcast, hosted by Patience Kamau MA ‘17, releases the debut episode of its second season today. 

This announcement will come as a delight to the more than 6,500 listeners in 102 countries and 1,239 cities across the globe who enjoyed Season I.

Those 10 episodes celebrated the 25th anniversary of 91����Ƶ’s ’s and highlighted the contributions and professional fields of faculty and staff.

The podcast is among just a handful covering the general peacebuilding field. It is available on , Apple Podcasts on iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcast, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, TuneIn and other podcast directories.

“Return listeners will find that the second season dives a bit deeper into specific areas of peacebuilding practice and concepts,” said Kamau. “New listeners will be inspired to learn more about peacebuilding and I hope everyone gains some knowledge that moves them toward deeper levels of self-actualization.”

Kamau has again teamed up with the production team of composer and audio mixing engineer for the season, with episodes dropping every other week.

Join a livestreamed interview March 30 from 4-5 p.m. with Patience and hear more about how the podcast began, what’s new for Season II, and why this unique format is such an exciting way to talk about and learn from peacebuilding practitioners.��, CJP development director, is the host.��

Season II’s first episode features Vernon Jantzi, currently director of academic programs at 91����Ƶ’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding and a co-founder of the center more than 25 years ago. Janzti served as director and co-director from 1995-2002.

“This first episode bridges between last season’s theme, with Dr. Jantzi giving some of CJP’s history, while also reflecting on current issues,” Kamau said.

Jantzi begins the interview with a story of fascinating coincidence: how his visit to a rural community while on alternative service in Nicaragua became the subject of a 10-minute extemporaneous speech in Spanish and how that topic led, not to an assistantship at Cornell to teach the language, but instead a full scholarship to earn his doctorate in sociology.

Jantzi also discusses how his work with land reform in Costa Rica led to an exploration of mediation and peacebuilding, followed by a collaboration with John Paul Lederach, then also teaching in the sociology department at 91����Ƶ, to create a graduate program in conflict transformation.

Now 26 years later, Jantzi reflects on the changes he’s seen in CJP and how the center is reimagining itself in ways that are responsive to the current political environment in the United States but also to its global network of alumni.

“…Working with people in different parts of the world, they’d say, ‘well, you know, it’s great to have you here …But you know, if you really wanted to make a difference, you’d go back and you would change the way your government relates to the rest of the world, or you would do this,’” Jantzi said. “…That’s the exciting part about being at CJP right now.”

Respect, dignity, an awareness of the need to honor past history and trauma to promote current healing and how we do this at the national and local levels — Jantzi sees these approaches as key values for CJP now and in the coming months.

Jantzi’s longtime connection to peacebuilding work in Mexico offers a case study for the importance of trust and cooperation among community members. Successful efforts to “rebuild the social fabric” in that region now integrate elements of restorative justice, trauma healing and truth-telling, he says.

The next episode of Peacebuilder podcast, featuring Professor Catherine Barnes on designing deliberative dialogue processes (facilitation), drops on March 10.

Poet and theologian Pádraig Ó Tuama will spend the second week of September virtually touring 91����Ƶ: speaking in chapels, colloquia, and classes; chatting with pastors and LGBTQ+ groups; and networking with community organizations, including NPR’s local radio station affiliate WMRA and JMU’s Furious Flower Poetry Center. 

All of these events will be . Those who register to attend will receive a webinar link and will be able to interact with Ó Tuama through Q & A.

His book In the Shelter: Finding a Home in the World (Hodder & Stoughton, 2015) is this year’s Common Read selection, one book the campus community is encouraged to read, reflect on, and engage with.

The author of four books of poetry and prose, Ó Tuama is known for integrating themes of language, power, conflict and religion. He is also a peacebuilder and mediator. From 2014-19, he led the , Ireland’s oldest peace and reconciliation organisation. He hosts the podcast from On Being Studios.

Monday, September 14 

• 6 p.m. – Writers Read

Ó Tuama will read excerpts from his poetry and prose. The event is open to the public via Zoom and live stream. 

Tuesday, September 15 

• 11 a.m. – Seminary Chapel and Talkback

Ó Tuama will speak on “Jesus of Nazareth: Strange man in strange times,” looking at Jesus through the lenses of story, poetry, literary analysis, and imagination. This event is open to the public via Zoom and live stream. 

• 3 p.m. – Books and Brews with WMRA

This live event, open to all, will also be available via Zoom and live stream. moderator Mary Katharine Froehlich will speak with Ó Tuama about “how poetry, books and reading kept me safe.”

Wednesday, September 16

• 10:15 a.m. – Convocation and Talkback

Hello to Language. What does it mean to use language today? — in a time of pandemic, in the latest racist decade of a racist era, in a time where truth is questioned and language is fake if it’s labelled fake. Pádraig Ó Tuama will explore the power of language; power to harm and power to heal, and consider that power in conversation both with story and time. How do we tell stories about the times we are in? How long do we imagine the times we are in will be the times we are in? How do we speak today in order to consider new stories?

 This event is open to all: 91����Ƶ students and employees may attend the event in Lehman Auditorium, with overflow space in SC 106 and UC 170; the public may tune in via Zoom and live stream.

• 4:15 p.m. – University Colloquium

Ó Tuama will speak on “Reading can save your life: living our lives in conversation with received narratives.” This colloquium will touch on the practice of reading poetry, religious texts, and the stories of our own lives, as well as narratives about belonging. Available via Zoom and live stream. 

Thursday, September 17

• 12 p.m. – Discussion with the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding

Insights and Mistakes from Ireland for Isolated Times

In 2021, Ireland will mark 100 years since partition. During that time, there have been numerous sustained periods of conflict about British-Irish dynamics: conflict that has been witnessed both on the streets and in policies. Given this hundred years of conflict and attempts at brokering peace, what lessons might be relevant for today?

Friday, September 18

• 10 a.m. – Talk with the Furious Flower Poetry Center at JMU

The is the nation’s first academic center for Black poetry. In “The shelter of stories in uncertain times,” Ó Tuama will talk with Executive Director Joanne Gabbin about the poet’s role in modeling truth-telling, social justice, and activism. This event is open to all via Zoom and live stream. 

• 1 p.m. – “How shall we go from here?” Closing session

What is the role of the imagination in peacebuilding and public life? Building on years of LGBTQI advocacy, Pádraig will reflect with us — on the last session of his residency — on how the imagination might nurture public action, change and witness. This event is hosted by Patience Kamau and Catherine Barnes. 

Register for any event here.

Pádraig Ó Tuama speaks softly, soothingly, with just a touch of grit in his gentle Irish accent. Next month, you can hear the voice of this poet, theologian, and mediator on his virtual five-day visit to 91����Ƶ (91����Ƶ). 

His book In the Shelter: Finding a Home in the World (Hodder & Stoughton, 2015) is this year’s Common Read selection, one book the campus community is encouraged to read, reflect on, and engage with.

Ó Tuama will engage with the 91����Ƶ community in several settings during his virtual tour from Sept. 14-18, including a live-streamed Writer’s Read event, a virtual coffee and conversation time with pastors, chapels, a colloquium, and gatherings with small student groups, including Safe Space and the .

“I’ve heard of 91����Ƶ for years — and have always wanted to be part of something at the campus,” said Ó Tuama. “Having an opportunity to collaborate and co-create events with faculty, staff and students on the campus is a delight to anticipate: bringing fields of literature, religion, peace-work and language together.”

Ó Tuama is known for integrating themes of language, power, conflict and religion. He is also a peacebuilder and mediator. From 2014-19, he led the, Ireland’s oldest peace and reconciliation organisation. 

“I am ecstatic that we here at 91����Ƶ, and in the Harrisonburg community, will have the blessing of Pádraig Ó Tuama’s gift of teaching and guidance through the process of holding and examining questions about who we are, and how we navigate this beautiful and broken world,” said Patience Kamau, a staff member with the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding who played an integral role in bringing Ó Tuama to campus.

Visit in the works for many months

Kamau convened the committee that has worked for more than a year on this visit. The group includes Professor Kirsten Beachy, who also chairs the Common Read selection committee; Campus Pastor Brian Martin Burkholder; Trina Trotter Nussbaum, associate director of the Center for Interfaith Engagement; and community members Sheryl Shenk and Les Horning. Sue Cockley, dean of the School of Theology, Humanities and Performing Arts, and Professor Vi Dutcher, director of the Academic Success Center, also contributed.

A Facebook post from Horning triggered the odyssey. In early 2019, he dipped into “In the Shelter” on a recommendation from seminary alumnus Blaine Detwiler, who pastors Marion Mennonite Church in Marion, Pa. He swallowed the book in a several-hours-long reading and then posted about the experience on Facebook. 

Kamau replied to his post that she had “the great honor” of meeting Ó Tuama while at an “On Being” gathering in California in 2018.

Horning expressed a wish that Ó Tuama might visit 91����Ƶ. 

“Why not? I think we can do this,” wrote back Kamau.

“I sensed in Pádraig a kindred spirit, and had this profound feeling that he would connect well to so many facets of 91����Ƶ’s identity,” said Horning later.

Resonating themes

In the Shelter weaves together poignant and humorous stories from Ó Tuama’s life, Celtic spirituality, poetry, and theological analysis. “His book is personal, profound, and an excellent reading choice for souls in quarantine working to welcome an uncertain future,” Beachy said. 

In a vignette from the opening of In the Shelter, Ó Tuama recounts a time he spent wandering around New York City, lost literally and figuratively. He encounters a woman singing in the subway.

I didn’t feel like singing but she was so full of life that I couldn’t leave. She was singing about the woman in John’s Gospel who makes her way to the well during the hottest time of the day and, at the well, meets Jesus. It’s a story I love, because the characters are so rich and lively … So there I was, in the belly of the city, hearing songs about a story that I loved on a day when everything seemed to be dying. I was the only white boy surrounded by black women twice my age, and they were singing ‘Alleluia’ and I was crying and thinking that maybe everything wasn’t lost anyway.

Hello to the city.

Hello to the little worlds we live in.

Before his visit, you can listen to Ó Tuama at a virtual gathering – storytelling events in which nine people have up to ten minutes to tell a true story from their life. He also hosts the podcast from On Being Studios. The episodes are short, usually five to 10 minutes, in which Ó Tuama reads one poem and reflects on current and historical events, lines that speak to him, and compassion for the subjects. 

“Poetry is a thing that helps me breathe,” Ó Tuama said . “There’s space on the page for my own imagination to fill in the bits that I need, and poetry makes me slow down in my reading. I never skim read a poem. I always read it out loud to myself, and it slows my heart down and it slows my breathing down and it helps my lungs to fill.”

The tenth and final installment of the Peacebuilder podcast’s first season features Jayne Docherty, executive director of the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding (CJP) at 91����Ƶ (91����Ƶ). Docherty speaks on her path to the field, the importance of considering worldviews in a conflict, and how the program has grown and changed since she joined as the first non-Mennonite faculty member, shortly before 9/11.

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.

The concept of worldview is a keystone in Docherty’s stories. It shaped how she interpreted the fiasco at Waco, Texas between the Branch Davidians and the FBI, which she wrote her dissertation on while a doctoral student at the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University. It’s also the reason she chose to teach at 91����Ƶ – “it’s the only place nobody asked me what I meant by worldview,” she says.

But she prefers “the word ‘world viewing’ better, because it’s an activity that we engage in all day long.”

Docherty went on to publish a book based on her dissertation: Learning Lessons from Waco: When the Parties Bring their Gods to the Negotiation Table. That research taught her a lot about mediation and negotiation in a situation where two groups have a “toxic combination” of shared and different assumptions of the world.

“When the worldview differences are really, really deep, you can’t convince the other party to do anything. All you can do is construct a space in which they can convince themselves,” she explains. “Every worldview is a way of seeing, but it’s also a way of not seeing. So what are you not seeing?” Acknowledging your own and others’ ways of world viewing makes team-based conflict analysis all the more important, Docherty says. That way you can cover for one anothers’ blind spots.

Docherty had to navigate some differences in worldviews when she came to the then-Conflict Transformation Program as an Italian Catholic whose father was a career Air Force officer. 

“At CJP, coming in as a cultural outsider, I was literally the first non-Mennonite hired into the faculty for this program,” she says. Even so, she’s found an “authentic care for one another. I think that’s what we have. I think that’s what we strive for here.”

Her hopes for CJP in another 25 years? That the program is recognized, not just internationally, but also in its own figurative and literal backyard as “a really dynamic organizing location for peace, justice, and nonviolence, and doing work in a trauma-informed way.” 

We already have a strong network of graduates doing good work in the field, Docherty says, but it’s somewhat of a “latent network. And our job right now is to try to plug that in.” 

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.”