The tenth and final installment of the Peacebuilder podcast’s first season features Dr. Jayne S. 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 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.”

Guest

Dr. Jayne S. Docherty

Dr. Jayne Seminare Docherty is our Executive Director here at the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding, at 91����Ƶ. She has also taught at George Mason University and Columbia College (South Carolina). Professor Docherty earned her Ph.D. at the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University and she holds an undergraduate degree in religious studies and political science from Brown University. She also studied theology at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.

Transcript

Jayne Docherty:
I think the “world viewing” piece is, you need to have an understanding that that conflict looks different to everyone. And so, this is the map that you’re seeing, kind of looking at it from outside, but you’re never outside because you always have a bias. Like what do I say…”what am I not seeing?” I think one of the really important things about “world viewing” is every worldview is a way of seeing, but it’s also a way of not seeing. So, “what are you not seeing?” And that’s why you need kind of multi-vocal and why it’s really good to do analysis with a team of people and not just one person.

[Theme music begins and fades into back ground]

patience kamau:
Hello everybody, happy Wednesday to you!
Welcome back to Peacebuilder, a Conflict Transformation Podcast by the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding.
My name is patience kamau and with us this finale episode of the season:

Jayne Docherty:
Jayne Seminare Docherty, executive director of the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding.

patience kamau:
Dr. Jayne Docherty is our executive director here at the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding at Eastern Mennonite university. She has also taught at George Mason University and Columbia college, South Carolina. Professor Docherty earned her Ph.D. at the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University, and she holds an undergraduate degree in religious studies and political science from Brown University. She also studied theology at the university of St. Andrews in Scotland.

[Theme music swells and ends]

patience kamau:
Good morning?

Jayne Docherty:
Good morning patience, how are you?

patience kamau:
Good, good. Thank you for doing this.

Jayne Docherty:
My pleasure, thank you!

patience kamau:
Yes, indeed, I’m happy to do this.
So what was your journey here to CJP/91����Ƶ/CTP?

Jayne Docherty:
Interesting! It was CTP when I arrived, right?

patience kamau:
Conflict Transformation Program…

Jayne Docherty:
Yeah, exactly!

patience kamau:
And when did you arrive?

Jayne Docherty:
2001. So that was a big year, right? I got here in August and within weeks we were looking at a changed world. How I got here is interesting –I was at Bethel College in Newton, Kansas, North Newton, Kansas in the early ’80s. Um, my son was actually born there while I was resident director in one of the residence halls. And then I met Lisa Schirch when we were students at George Mason and she kept saying, “we need you to come to 91����Ƶ,” and um, eventually there was a job opening when John Paul Lederach left.

And so that was an interesting experience to be hired as he was leaving. And there’s plenty of stories about that in terms of, um, you know, people coming to my office and saying, you know, I think trying to figure out “are you the new John Paul?” And so for about six months we danced around that whole, “do you think you are the new John Paul?” “Do other people think you are?” And then we were sitting at a faculty breakfast and I said, “you know, I really don’t think that’s the way we should be. I think we should not be a single star, but a constellation of all of us, each of us being an expert and recognized in some area –the field is really big and I think we need to change the paradigm.” So, um, I felt that was really important.

patience kamau:
Did you feel that people received that?

Jayne Docherty:
I think they did, but I think it’s also really hard to move away from the idea that there’s a leader in, in a system — that’s pretty culturally built, baked in in many ways. And then also making sure that the, the resources are focused in diversifying who’s out front, who’s getting attention and making sure everybody’s getting attention for the great work they’re doing.

patience kamau:
So you came here, Lisa Schirch talked you into…at least encouraged you…

Jayne Docherty:
…well into coming and applying, yes.

patience kamau:
Yes, um, what did you feel…like, what were your interpretations as she was saying to you, “we need you at CJP.” Why do you think she was saying that?

Jayne Docherty:
Well, I think she understood that I am Catholic and I come out of a faith-based orientation from Catholic Social Teaching –and there are many things that I think Mennonites and Catholics who take Catholic Social Teaching really seriously, have in common.

patience kamau:
Mm, such as?

Jayne Docherty:
I think commitments to social justice, um, recognition that uh, faith has to be acted on. I think there are some real differences –I think just because the Catholic Church is a lot older and has a longer, um, academic theology tradition –the teachings are a little more well-defined in the Catholic Church around this. We started in the late 1800s with Rerum novarum, which talks about workers’ rights and um, it’s pretty radical, right?

And then there’s this whole set of teachings that have come out. So we have kind of a guide, um, that we’re embedded in, and I think, um, Mennonites have a slightly different history of being a sect that’s withdrawn from the world and then the whole change into engaging with the world and finding kind of a voice for justice and peace. But I think that the two need to be talking with one another and I think that’s what Lisa felt. I think she also felt that the work that I had done on worldview conflict was really necessary.

patience kamau:
What was that work?

Jayne Docherty:
So I was, I was looking at what happens when you get people to the table and they don’t even live on the same planet. Like the way they see the world is so different or the way they understand the problem is so different that mediation, negotiation, all the stuff we were studying at George Mason, you can’t just do what you were taught because the problem’s much bigger. And I studied the negotiations in Waco, Texas between the Branch Davidians and the FBI, and I’d written a book, my dissertation that became a book studying what happens when people are trying to negotiate a situation in which they don’t share an understanding of the world.

And I felt Mennonites get that. I interviewed in many, at several different universities and when people used to ask me, “well, why did you choose 91����Ƶ?” Right? Like “it’s so small.” I said, it’s the only place nobody asked me what I meant by “worldview.” Mennonites get that people have different worldviews because they’ve been living in that status their whole time. And I didn’t have to deal with the, “Oh, you mean perspectives?” “No, I don’t mean people just have different perspectives on a shared problem, I mean they are defining it completely differently.”

patience kamau:
So what’s your definition of a “worldview”?

Jayne Docherty:
So, um, I actually like the word “world viewing” better because it’s an activity that we engage in all day long.

patience kamau:
Mm, it’s active!

Jayne Docherty:
It’s very active. It’s our constant making sense of the world and it happens for us individually, but it also happens in our communities. So it’s both a personal and a social process of making meaning of the world. And, um, I think the best way to think about it is, you go around all day long unconsciously answering a set of questions, what’s real and what’s not real, right? Like, so there’s always the opposite question –how do I know about it? What’s real knowledge? What’s valuable or not valuable? Oh, I’m trying to remember the others…you’ve read my book… [laughs]

patience kamau:
[Laughter continues] What’s the title of the book, in case someone want to look it up?

Jayne Docherty:
Sure. It’s, um, “Learning Lessons from Waco: when the arties bring their gods to the negotiation table.”

patience kamau:
What did you find in that –tell us about what, what was Waco? When did it happen?

Jayne Docherty:
So in 1993, the Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms [ATF], um, agency of the federal government raided a religious community called the Branch Davidians outside of Waco, Texas. And they were concerned that the community was collecting guns, and there was also something of a manufactured moral crisis around what might’ve been happening with um, the leader marrying multiple young women, having many babies, and the ATF did a dynamic entry raid –they literally went in with 80 heavily armed agents and the Branch Davidians fought back.

And then there was a 52 day negotiation with the FBI negotiation team and their, their hostage rescue team or their tactical team trying to end this standoff. There are 12,000 pages of transcripts, a little over 12,000 pages of transcripts of everything that was said between these two groups. So it was a really ideal data set to look at “what happens when people are trying to negotiate, when they don’t share an understanding of the world?” Because here’s this religious community that believes the end-time is coming and here’s the, the FBI trying to clean up a mess. Um, and, and looking at what they think of as a hostage situation, which isn’t really a hostage situation. So…

patience kamau:
…and what did you find in your dissertation?

Jayne Docherty:
So I think some of the things that were really interesting that I found is, um, I think the field of conflict resolution was afraid to talk about worldview conflicts, they’d really didn’t want to go there because they, at some gut-level understood, straight up mediation and negotiation the way we’re talking about it might not work. But what I found is a couple of really important things –when there’s a crisis and it gets bad, it’s usually because the parties have a combination, I call it kind of “a toxic combination of shared and different assumptions about the world.”

So if you think about the Branch Davidians and the law enforcement, the difference is the Branch Davidians are a religious community waiting for “the end” –um, waiting for “the second coming,” seeing themselves as having a role in that, and the FBI don’t share that worldview. The FBI sees themselves as just legitimate enforcers of secular law, which the Branch Davidians recognize, but it’s not the most important law for them. And they both believe in it’s okay to shoot people, right? [Wry chuckle]. They both believe it’s okay to use guns to, um, to defend their own way of seeing. So if you didn’t have that shared part, the difference wouldn’t be so bad, right?

patience kamau:
Yes!

Jayne Docherty:
Yeah. So I think when you look at worldview conflicts, I’m always looking for that combination –“what’s similar?” “What’s different?” Uh, so that’s one thing, and then I think the other thing is, because it’s a process, and you could see that in the transcripts, I realized that people can come to some kind of, um, they have something that they can share –so they’d get a negotiation success and then they may mistakenly think they can succeed in everything, right? But as the issues change, on some things they can get there and on some things they can’t.

But if you think, “Oh, we got here, so all the other stuff should fall into place,” and it doesn’t, then you tend to accuse the other party of having negotiated in bad faith, right? Like “you betrayed!” I think another thing was just the woeful, woeful ignorance and lack of preparation for most people in government and in law enforcement to understand religion as a force in people’s lives, and really to be able to work with, uh, faith dynamics in a sophisticated way. So that was…

patience kamau:
…like the importance of how people hold their faith and not dismissing it or minimizing it?

Jayne Docherty:
Right! Well, and I also think that there’s this, there was kind of a tendency from a lot of the FBI agents to think that, uh, religion has always pro-social –like that if you’re really a person of faith, you’re going to be “an obedient, good citizen,” right? As opposed to your faith might make you say, “the state is wrong and I need to do something different,” right? Yeah, and then at the end, there was one agent who was himself “a born again Christian,” and he gave them a test based on his faith and because they didn’t answer it correctly, he said, “Oh, they’re not really people of faith, they’re just using that as a cover.” And that then created the space for the final catastrophe, which is when the hostage rescue team or the tactical team went in and stormed in and you know, 90 people died in a tragic fire.

patience kamau:
What was the test that he presented? Do you remember?

Jayne Docherty:
It was…I’m trying to remember the details, but was around, “does David Koresh really believe he’s the savior?”

patience kamau:
Oh, this is so interesting!

Jayne Docherty:
Um, and if he were the savior, this is what he would say. And he didn’t say the right thing. So he doesn’t really believe he’s the savior –he’s just saying that so that he can have babies with all these women and you know, he’s a manipulative cult leader. Totally a wrong understanding of that community!

patience kamau:
This is interesting to me because what comes to mind, I think I heard someone else say this awhile back, I don’t know who, that “worldview is common sense to us until it encounters someone else’s worldview,” that doesn’t make sense –that clash right there.

Jayne Docherty:
Correct, correct!

patience kamau:
So in your opinion, how do you think this could have gone better if they had understood the concept of the different ways of world viewing?

Jayne Docherty:
Well, I mean, I think they…so the other thing that I had as part of the data set I was working with was the, the logs that the negotiators keep. One shift of negotiators, they write down what happened and what’s important, what’s going on so the next shift can pick up. They would not have written “Bible babble” every time this community was trying to explain what they were doing.

patience kamau:
Oh. So they will disregard that?

Jayne Docherty:
Totally, totally! Literally “Bible babble,” “preaching again.”

patience kamau:
Oh, that’s what they would write down?

Jayne Docherty:
That’s what they put in the log! So I’m looking at pages and pages of the Branch Davidians explaining a pretty sophisticated worldview, and I’m seeing opportunities where you could have had a conversation that might’ve…the thing about this is when the worldview differences are really, really deep, you can’t convince the other party to do anything –all you can do is construct the space in which they can convince themselves. So there was no way the FBI agents were going to convince these people who thought that they were being faithful to God, to decide that the way to be faithful, faithful to God was to come out, right? Only they could do that, or people who shared enough of their worldview, right? So…

patience kamau:
Yeah, yeah.

[Transition music plays]

patience kamau:
So how did you end up within peacebuilding? You studied at George Mason –how did you end up wanting to study conflict resolution there?

Jayne Docherty:
Yeah, conflict analysis and resolution, yeah, that’s interesting. I’m not only not Mennonite, I’m Catholic and I’m the daughter of a career air force officer who went to Vietnam when I was 11 and came home when I was 12 and I had joined the antiwar movement. So my pathway into this was definitely opposition to war, and um, so then it was after that it was Central America and our policies in Central America…and then some things happened and I discovered –because a faculty member did an interview on the radio– I discovered there’s this program right in my own backyard. I was living in Northern Virginia, at George Mason and that they had a Ph.D. in conflict analysis and resolution, so I was running a daycare at home, taking care of kids all day and started taking classes at night to test it, to see if that’s what I wanted. And then a couple of years later I applied into the program and that’s where I went…

patience kamau:
…and the rest is history…

Jayne Docherty:
…the rest is history.

patience kamau:
Right. Um, do I recall correctly that when you came to CJP, among the things that you introduced was conflict analysis?

Jayne Docherty:
Yes, there was an “intro to conflict transformation” class, but there wasn’t a “conflict analysis” class and I, I felt like, well, we’re really missing that. That’s the first step, right? If you’re going to do something about it, you first have to actually map it and understand it. And Lisa had been pushing for this as well and I think that when we got two of us on faculty, that was just enough to say, “okay, we’re going to add this class and we’re going to alter this intro to conflict transformation class into more of an analysis class.”

patience kamau:
What is involved in conflict analysis?

Jayne Docherty:
That’s interesting –what I like to say is, um, we all tell stories about conflict. That’s just human nature, all right? Name a conversation you’ve had that was meaningful where people didn’t start talking about somebody who was having a conflict. So stories are fine, but I think what analysis does is it says, “okay, slow down, don’t take your story as the reality, think through what’s going on.” And there are different kinds of analytical tools. So some of them are like a photograph –you freeze the conflict and you look at it and you go, “who are the parties, how are they relating to one another?”

And you just build the biggest map you can um, or “what are the power differentials and what does that look like?” And then some analytical tools are more dynamic –“how is this changing over time?” “What’s going on?” “What might happen next?” “What could happen next if we do something like this?” And then you begin developing your “theories of change” –you’re looking at the situation, you’re saying, “well, if we change this one element, then maybe it will move towards less violence,” right? But you have to have the analysis first. You can’t just walk around going, “I’m a mediator,” so every time there’s a conflict, mediation is what’s needed or “I’m a negotiator, so let’s negotiate everything.”

patience kamau:
You need to have an understanding of what it is that’s actually…

Jayne Docherty:
…yeah, yeah. And I think the world viewing piece is you need to have an understanding that, that conflict looks different to everyone. And so this is the map that you’re seeing kind of looking at it from outside, but you’re never outside because you always have a bias. Like what do I…what am I not seeing? I think one of the really important things about world viewing is every worldview is a way of seeing, but it’s also a way of not seeing, so, what are you not seeing? And that’s why you need kind of multi-vocal and why it’s really good to do analysis with a team of people and not just one person.

patience kamau:
Mm-hm, so in order to actually pay attention to the parts of world viewing that we don’t see, I mean you just said that one way is a way of seeing and it’s also a way of not seeing; how do we get peacebuilders and practitioners to actually interrogate that, those parts of themselves that they cannot see?

Jayne Docherty:
Well, I mean, I think that’s why encounter and working in groups and teams is so important and why we emphasize it so much here, right? In terms of what we’re teaching students and what we’re encouraging people to do. The only way to…I think there are some reflective ways to think about the world where you can say, “okay, what am I not seeing?” I mean, one thing is to say, “here’s what I think is going on, can I tell three other stories that would explain it?” Right? So “this person did that and it’s because blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” Okay. Try in your head, coming up with one, two, or three other explanations for why that person did what they did, that would make sense. That’s a good self-discipline.

patience kamau:
It takes the ego out of things, quite a bit!

Jayne Docherty:
Yeah. I mean I think it’s really important not to mistake our story for the reality.

patience kamau:
So let’s turn back a little bit towards CJP.
Um, what are some of the academic changes that have happened in your time here?

Jayne Docherty:
Well, that’s interesting –you already asked about one adding the analysis class. So I’ve watched the curriculum change multiple times and it’s one of the things I really appreciate about CJP a lot, is collectively as a faculty, we sit together and think very seriously about “what should we be teaching and how should we be teaching it?” And the other dynamic here is we don’t have a, I wouldn’t say we don’t have any “prescriptive” things because we do, like I just said that –analysis is important, right? Um, but we are responsive to the students who show up in our classroom. They come from conflict places and they bring experience and we are creating a learning community and space where they are challenging us.

So when I was hired, it was really interesting. I was interviewed in like March or April and the program was pretty small and they wanted me to come in because I was doing U.S. work; I wasn’t going to other countries. I said, there’s a lot of stuff that we need to be working with here in the U.S. and there were a lot of students from the U.S. in the program, relatively speaking, to the size of the program. In between the time I was hired and the time I arrived in August, we got the Fulbright cohort program. So I arrived to a classroom full of people from South Asia, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, all sitting in the classroom and I’m like, “wait a minute, this isn’t the student population that I came to teach.”

And then 9/11 happened and the world changed, right? You totally knew, in this field that nothing was going to be the same as what we had been working with. We were working in the remnants of a post cold-war era in the international level and thinking about this, and now we were going to be in a post 9/11 world. So I think all of those factors kept pushing us. The Fulbright students, because they didn’t really choose CJP, quite frankly. They chose to study in the United States on Fulbright looking at conflict and Fulbright said “this is where you’re going to go,” and there was such a big group.

So one year was from South Asia, the next year was from the Middle East and it was 10 to 12 students each year that their demands for more strategic thinking, higher…you know like what’s happening at the higher levels in policy, pushed this program as well. I was happy to see that because I believe we should be working at policy levels as well as community levels and that the role that we can play that I think is something CJP does really well is to say, look, the core of it is what people live in their daily lives, but that needs to be brought up to the policy level. You have to connect what the policy makers are doing and the big leaders are doing with what’s really happening on the ground, and empower the people on the ground to have voice to participate.

patience kamau:
So it’s this give and take between the micro and the macro, basically.

Jayne Docherty:
Absolutely. And I think that’s, that’s really kind of what we are –and that’s where we start talking about “strategic peacebuilding,” which not all the faculty members liked that term…

patience kamau:
What is meant by the term?

Jayne Docherty:
Well, I mean, so to me, strategy is making sure that you’re not just thinking about what you’re doing right now, but a strategy is thinking three or four steps ahead, right? So what do I want to have happen after this and after that and after that, and how do I have to do what I’m doing now to make sure that what I want to have happen three steps from now, right, is going to happen. And, but it’s a military term, so people really objected, like they said, “no, that’s just very militaristic.” And I’m like, well, peacebuilding isn’t going to get anywhere if we aren’t as sophisticated about change and setting goals and figuring out how to get there, as the military. So…

patience kamau:
Um, why did the, you said earlier that the Fulbright program told the students that “this is the program you’re going to go to” –why did that happen that way?

Jayne Docherty:
So that’s how Fulbright works uh, just generally students, um, even single students who apply who aren’t in that kind of group program that we had, if they apply, then their agencies that run the Fulbright system, and they send the files out to several universities, they get the acceptances back. They may tell the student, “these are the two or three that have accepted you, what’s your preference?”

But very often they don’t and what they’re figuring out…cause they get rewarded on placing as many students as they possibly can, so, um, they look at the finances. For a long time, CJP was very inexpensive compared to other schools and we got a lot of Fulbright students even after the cohort program ended. But now because people can’t get visas and it’s harder for international students to get in, the wealthy schools are getting all the Fulbright students because they’re just giving them full scholarships and we can’t afford to do that.

Uh, but this cohort program was actually specially designed. The theory behind it was that if you educated people from a region together, they would build relationships enough to go back and be kind of “network of effective action” in their area. Uh, I think that’s a good theory and I think we’ve operated on that with some of our other programs, like the Women’s Peacebuilding Program, but it doesn’t just happen, you really have to sustain it and support it. I think in South Asia, some of our graduates have kept in touch and worked together, the Middle East was much harder.

patience kamau:
In your opinion, what do you think is something unique that we can celebrate about CJP at this particular milestone?

Jayne Docherty:
So I think, one thing is what I already said about how we are responsive to the people who come to the, to the program, that the curriculum changes, that isn’t, that isn’t stopping, it’s happening now. We’re getting more U.S. students, more U.S. students of color who are saying, “you’ve got to deal with the legacy of slavery and racism,” um, and we’re saying, “yep, you’re right, haven’t been doing good enough on that, we need to do, uh, to do that.”

But I think the other big thing that I really think we should celebrate and that I think is the future for us is the network of graduates that we do have. If you look at the graduates, where they are around the world, if we can connect them to each other and stay connected to them, we are more than just a graduate program and we do more than any other program I know, to work with our graduates. Like if they come to us and say I have this project and I want to work on it, we on occasion have been able to find grant money, work with people. That’s how the Women’s Peacebuilding Program happened, and I think more of that, that’s what we need to be building up.

Dave Brubaker says this –he says the next step for us, the next phase of CJP is all about its graduates. And I think of it as there’s this latent network and our job right now is to try to plug that in, which is why I want to try to get as many graduates back here for the celebration as possible because I’ve had the experience of going someplace and introducing graduates to each other. They’re working in the same space, they may actually even know each other and they didn’t know they studied here, right? Or that somebody was at SPI, cause if you include SPI and not just the degree programs, …

patience kamau:
…the Summer Peacebuilding Institute…

Jayne Docherty:
Yeah, Summer Peacebuilding Institute or STAR, the Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience program, many thousands of people in conflict zones have had some CJP experience, they just don’t always find each other and go, “oh yeah, we’ve got that shared kind of perspective.” So yeah.

patience kamau:
So if they’re able to come here and re-gather, it could be a place where we start connecting people to one another.

Jayne Docherty:
Mm-hm, right, to one another and also back to us –like, tell us what we’re supposed to be working on now. What is it looking like on the ground?

patience kamau:
What is your vision for CJP in the next 25 years? What’s CJP at 50 in your opinion –what do you hope for, what’s your dream?

Jayne Docherty:
[Makes an excited sound] CJP at 50 um, will be a really dynamic organizing location for peace, justice and nonviolence and trauma informed…doing work in a trauma informed way and we will be seen as a place that has huge impact. I’m a big dreamer and we’ll be on the map in the U.S. not just everywhere else. I think, when I first got here and started doing local work, I would go and say, “hi, I’m from the conflict transformation program at 91����Ƶ” and people two miles down the road would go, “what’s that?” And, but you could go to Nairobi and say, “hi, I’m from, you know, 91����Ƶ and this conflict transformation program,” and everybody go, “oh, hi, great to see you.” [Laughs]

patience kamau:
[Laughter continues] Right, right, wow. What do you think is going to put CJP on the map in the U.S. in the next 25 years? What do you hope?

Jayne Docherty:
I think we already have the capacity, I mean I think we already have something. The fact that, um, our STAR program, the trauma program was so celebrated at the Alliance for Peacebuilding Conference just last week, [recorded in October 2019] we have stuff. Um, I think what’s going to put it on the map is when we stop hiding it, right? And when we make it accessible to more people in more ways. So I think the other thing that we’ll be at 50 is, we’ll be, uh, we’ll be a program that runs education programs in the formal “credit sense,” but we will also have a very large and robust program for non-credit education.

patience kamau:
For training?

Jayne Docherty:
For training. Um, yeah, and I think we’ll be doing some more research. I think that actually, um, applied research is something that we need to develop. I don’t think that’s the very next thing to, for us to be a research center, I think that’s 10 years from now after we really established the, the, um, non-credit education side and grow it bigger than Summer Peacebuilding Institute and STAR, I think we’ll be a place where people come and say, “my organization or my community needs something, can you help us design what we need?” And we co-create with people.

patience kamau:
And you said one of those was the Women’s Peacebuilding Program was a sort of example?

Jayne Docherty:
So Women’s Peacebuilding Program happened when, um, you know, Dekha Ibrahim…

patience kamau:
…mm-hm, the late Dekha Ibrahim…

Jayne Docherty:
…the late Dekha Ibrahim, um said to Jan Jenner, who was working on our practice side, “we really need something for women, you know, we need to empower women in this field.” And then we ended up with this large grant funded program, bringing women with that cohort model, from a region where they were getting a, uh, graduate certificate, not the full degree, but in a program that was partially here and then partially there, in their own home, and that included accompanying them with a praxis coach in acting out, acting out of what they were learning and building networks with each other. And in Kenya, we see that, right? They’ve created a network that’s actually continuing to work as a network…

patience kamau:
…with one another. So what are the countries where this happened for the WPLP, so Kenya…?

Jayne Docherty:
So it was the Somali region and that included Somalia, Somaliland, uh, Kenya, that kind of all that area. Uh, there was a small group from Liberia and then there was the South Pacific, so Fiji and the Pacific islands and you know, had different sources of funding. But like a lot of things that are grant funded, it’s never going to last forever because the funders go, “Oh, that was a nice thing, and now what’s the next hot topic?”

And I think that’s something that, that we haven’t done well. Um, one of the reasons that I, I’m kind of fighting to hold staff here is because we’re putting in four and five grants, you need enough capacity, and you can’t get a grant and then turn all of your attention to running the program and not think about, well, what else should we be developing next?

patience kamau:
Strategy!

Jayne Docherty:
It’s strategy, exactly right. [Both laugh] Because this is going to end sometime, right. Um, and what I think we have is a lot of experience that can be translated into new programs. So what we learned by working with the women’s program can be turned into something that we can do in another, with other people in a slightly different way. But we learned a lot about how to work with groups. So let’s go find different groups. It doesn’t have to look just like that –that was a very expensive program and funders, not many funders are going to fund that, so…

[Transition music plays]

patience kamau:
Switching a little bit, how have you experienced community at CJP? So you’ve been here since 2001 that’s how many years?

Jayne Docherty:
18!

patience kamau:
18 Years.

Jayne Docherty:
Which for a military brat…

patience kamau:
…that’s a lot?

Jayne Docherty:
That’s a long time in one place. [Both laugh]

patience kamau:
Are you feeling like your nomadic roots want to move on?

Jayne Docherty:
Well, in some ways I did, right? So, um, when I went out on sabbatical, it was supposed to be for a year.

patience kamau:
When did you go on sabbatical?

Jayne Docherty:
I went on sabbatical in 2008 –I was supposed to be gone in 8-9 that academic year. The place I was working in Myanmar, they asked me to extend for another six months, so I came back and taught SPI and negotiated to get another six months and then they asked me to come back six months out of each year for the next couple of years after that. So in some ways I satisfied my nomadic roots by taking a very extended sabbatical and moving back and forth for a few years.

patience kamau:
Yeah. So in what ways have you experienced community being in the CJP community?

Jayne Docherty:
I think the [silence] …why am I hesitating? I’m hesitating because I think that other people in the system may experience community differently because for them, this is a very thick community, in the anthropological sense of a “thick community,” many, many layers of relationships.

patience kamau:
“Thick culture”?

Jayne Docherty:
Yeah, a very “thick culture” because if you’re Mennonite, um, you work here, you may go to church with the same people. You may have known them since you were a kid, um, and that creates a whole level of community that an outsider is never going to be a part of. Um, but that’s okay with me, honestly. That’s okay with me!

patience kamau:
Say more…

Jayne Docherty:
To me for whatever reason, that sounds a little smothering and I’m not sure I, I don’t really need to be fully inside that level of a thick community. What I have experienced is that when, um, I or anyone else in our system has had a family crisis or, or issues people are here for each other. I was a little nervous when I got divorced that, you know, it would be a very “couple culture” and that there would be no place for me –I haven’t found that. I’ve had people invite me to dinner, it doesn’t matter that I don’t have a plus one or a partner. I think I’ve had as much of the community experience here as I have wanted.

Um, and I also, um, have felt very supported and I, I think that we’ve supported, uh, other members of our community through really significant family events and health crises with children and, and that, that’s been really powerful.

patience kamau:
Yeah. Um, let’s see…

Jayne Docherty:
…I would say, I would say “authentic care.”

patience kamau:
“Authentic care”?

Jayne Docherty:
“Authentic care” for one another, I think that’s what we have, I think that’s what we try for. We don’t always hit it, right? Nobody’s perfect, but I think that’s, that’s what we strive for.

patience kamau:
Yeah. What do you think CJP could be doing better?

Jayne Docherty:
Um, I would like to see us get some more research grants for “applied research.” The challenge is, that’s not always easy to find funds for. Research funding often is still very traditional in the way it thinks about “knowledge,” and we think of “knowledge” as something that exists in the community that we want to elevate, kind of, “grounded knowledge” and pull it up and work with the community. That kind of funding isn’t always easy to find, but I think we could do, be doing more of it. On the other hand, our faculty carry a heavy teaching load. This is not a research university, right? So I think people need to remember that!

patience kamau:
If we’re not a “research university,” what are we?

Jayne Docherty:
We’re a “teaching university.” We’re teaching, we’re a teaching university, and there are different categories of universities. At a research university, a faculty member teaches maybe two courses a semester, sometimes two courses a year, right? If you’re in a tenure or tenure track position and our, our faculty are teaching three, 3-credit courses a semester or you know, two courses a semester plus SPI –Summer Peacebuilding Institute. So I mean it’s a much heavier teaching load.

patience kamau:
Okay, okay.
Um, how about in living together? What could CJP be doing better with…you said the population of students changes from cohort to cohort. Is there anything we could be doing better? Are we doing well?

Jayne Docherty:
I think one thing we’re doing well that I don’t think that a lot of schools invest in is, we hire a student to be the Community Building Coordinator, right? Like we say, “community doesn’t just happen, we’re going to invest some resources into helping each group of students build the kind of community that they want with each other.” And I’ve watched that, it’s been very different. I mean, really each class is very different or every couple of years changes kind of the culture of how much community they want. I mean some years it’s with the, with the Fulbright, you know, it’s, everybody’s having dinner together all the time, right?

patience kamau:
Yeah, yeah. Can you say something about the Foundations courses? How did that come to be? What are they?

Jayne Docherty:
[Hearty laughter] Yes, okay…

patience kamau:
Why do you laugh?

Jayne Docherty:
I’m laughing because, um, because that was a real journey and I think it’s one of the things that’s pretty special about CJP faculty really sitting together and saying, “what do students need to know and how is the, what is the best way to do…to make that experience happen?” Right? What do they need to know and what do they need to know how to do?

So we went from the first iteration was we said, okay, we’re going to set some more, um, more required courses. And we had “analysis” and “practice,” “theory” was not required when I arrived here. Um, and then we said “theory” and then “skills” classes. So those were separate courses taught by individual professors. And then we put in the comprehensive exam as a way of monitoring “how effective are we?” The students think it’s about testing them, really it’s about telling us, are we teaching what we think we’re teaching? Um, it’s both but, but I mean it was a major feedback loop for the faculty. We set the exam as –have the students choose a case, analyze it, think about a position or an organization that they would be and what would…and tell us what they would do and what they think would happen from that. And we got the first papers back and they were disjointed and not what we expected, not overall and not everybody, but enough so that we were sitting in the conference room reading the papers going, “Oh dear!”

Um, so then we tried like overlapping the “practice” and the “analysis” class, like let’s share some sessions, let’s do this. And that still didn’t get the effect that we wanted. So eventually we said we’re not going to get it inside the traditional three credit hours, single professor box. Let’s blow up the box –metaphorically– and build a six hour container.

So the equivalent of two courses taught by a team and then we sat and designed what would it happen, what would happen in the first semester of those six hours, what would happen in the, in the second semester. And that’s been evolving, right? And it’s been interesting to watch how it evolves –I think it puts a lot of pressure on the faculty. First of all, teaching with other people means you’re always in negotiation about what you’re going to teach, how you are going to teach it, what matters; and then we’re also getting very quick feedback loop. It’s a tight feedback loop on whether people are kind of getting the skills set and the knowledge set that we are expecting or think that they…hoping that they get.

patience kamau:
Is that improving? Is the model of Foundations I and II actually showing that people are gaining the tools you hope them to gain?

Jayne Docherty:
I think so. It’s a little hard to tell because we actually have other variables that have come in, right? So faculty have changed in the middle of this. So we actually have two, this is a little bit, we have to think about how effective is this –we have two more senior faculty members teaching Foundations I and two new faculty members teaching Foundations II and those two new faculty members are not part of the George Mason…

patience kamau:
Ah, alumni…

Jayne Docherty:
Right? So for a long time, what I would say CJP was when my colleagues from George Mason said, what is CJP? “CJP is what you get when you set a whole bunch of George Mason graduates loose and let them build a curriculum,” because almost everybody here had their degree from there. That’s not true anymore. So now we’re actually having conversations about “what is in the field” and, and how do you bring in Johonna’s expertise and Tim’s expertise and orientation….

patience kamau:
Johonna Turner and Tim Seidel.

Jayne Docherty:
Johonna Turner and Tim Seidel, right. So, but it’s, I mean, I think people can tell from that –even just saying it that way, that’s not what happens at other universities. You hire in an expert who has this expertise and they sit in their box and they teach what they teach and you don’t have to integrate it.

patience kamau:
Right, right. Well, it sounds like the size of CJP being small makes it nimble and responsive to what’s actually needed, in a quicker fashion.

Jayne Docherty:
Yes, right! Yeah, I think so. Yeah. I think that’s right.

patience kamau:
So thinking of you, what’s…for yourself and your career within peacebuilding, um, what’s been the most challenging thing you’ve faced and how could you have done it differently?

Jayne Docherty:
In peacebuilding or at CJP? [Laughs]

patience kamau:
Go in the direction that you want to go in?

Jayne Docherty:
Hmm. So at CJP coming in as a “cultural outsider,” I was literally the first non-Mennonite hired into the faculty for this program, not on campus overall, but for this program. And it was a big deal. Joe Lapp was the president –all tenure hires go to the board, but mine had to be walked through the board.

patience kamau:
What do you mean by that?

Jayne Docherty:
Uh, he, he really I think had to go and say it was okay to hire this Catholic into the premier peacebuilding program, right? Um, maybe I’m making a bigger deal of that, but that’s how it felt.

patience kamau:
That’s how it felt to you.

Jayne Docherty:
That’s how it felt –that, that was kind of a big step. And then I arrive, 9/11 happens! I’d been studying, because of the work I had done and was, had done with the FBI and stuff, I had been studying extremist groups in the United States and working around kind of the Michigan militia and things like that –and everybody looks at me and goes, “is this international or domestic,” right? And I get thrown up in front of, literally within a month, I’m standing in front of the entire campus giving a keynote address at the big teach-in after 9/11. Where are we going? And what was the question?

patience kamau:
What’s been the most challenging thing and how could you have done it differently?

Jayne Docherty:
So, I think one of the most challenging things was coming in as the first not Mennonite faculty member with a very different cultural background. I’m Italian. When my family’s mad, they yell at each other and that’s not very Mennonite. So, um, I probably over the years could’ve done a better job in the early years navigating how to fit into the culture a bit better or how to navigate that uhm…

patience kamau:
…difference?

Jayne Docherty:
Difference. Um, there’s so many things, patience, …

patience kamau:
…mm-hm…

Jayne Docherty:
…every time you do practice, there’s something that you’re going, “well, I could have done that differently.” So in the work in Myanmar, it’s very complex. I was asked by graduates of the program to come over and work with the ethnic armed groups in a civil war that’s been going on for more than 60 years now, right? Resistance to the government –ethnic groups not wanting to be assimilated into the dominant culture. The privilege of working for multiple years with them in the way that we were able to do, where we could keep designing and redesigning in response to what was happening was phenomenal.

I would say at a couple of points in that we made some strategic decisions that probably were…could have been done better, like, we gave up on one person and took me off of coaching them. I think we should have continued that coaching, those kinds of things happen all the time. You have limited resources, limited time, and you make decisions about where you’re going to put your energy and then you go, was that the right one? Right? Or if we’d put a little more time with her, would this process have moved along? Because one of the things you learn when you’re on the ground in those situations is, it’s actually personal, right? Whole conflicts and war systems are held in place by people’s personal stuff.

patience kamau:
Mm-hm, mm-hm, wow that brings it really into focus!

Jayne Docherty:
It’s really, really scary. Um, you know, somebody’s mom hurt somebody’s dad’s feelings and it’s hard for them to get to a negotiation table.

patience kamau:
What do you think have been the most significant changes in the peacebuilding field in the last 25 years?

Jayne Docherty:
Oh my goodness! Can we expand it beyond 25? Slightly beyond 25, let’s say 30 years. So first of all, the word “peacebuilding,” the big fight over who started it, right? Like what is “peacebuilding”? I think for the Mennonite community “peacebuilding” is a word that John Paul Lederach started using and we have a certain understanding of it. And then the UN started using the word and you know, they fight about who said it first and they are using it in a very particular way.

patience kamau:
So what are the different ways of using it?

Jayne Docherty:
So I think for, for us here, when we say “peacebuilding,” we mean “locally-led,” “locally-owned” –um, not something that comes from a government, right? Even though there may be peace negotiations going on, real “peacebuilding,” is about transforming the relationships between real people and changing the systems and the drivers and all of that, but including the people in that. Then the UN has their idea of what peacebuilding looks like and then all of a sudden in the early 2000s, USAID, US agency for international development, discovered peacebuilding.

And I remember when it happened because we had a practice Institute, Jan Jenner was the director, her phone started ringing off the hook from development agencies. The normal people who contract with USAID, right? They didn’t have any peacebuilding capacity at all, but here’s USAID writing peacebuilding into their calls for proposal. So we became a hot commodity, right? Like, “who can help us with this?” And we didn’t know how to navigate that system of contracting –and so it took us a couple of years to realize, if you don’t go “exclusive” on a contract with one of those agencies, they won’t include you in the design process, they’ll just use your name and they may or may not ever contract with you to do anything…

patience kamau:
…ever again…

Jayne Docherty:
…ever. They just may use your name to get the contract, right, and they don’t know, and it was fascinating to watch Washington, all the various ways that these agencies just tried to get “peacebuilding” into their repertoire. Mercy Corps merged with Conflict Management group, which was the old “getting to yes,” Roger Fisher team and basically it was a merger, corporate merger. Other people hired experts and some of them really successfully let them push their expertise into the whole system, and others made them just little agencies, little offices inside their system that didn’t really affect anything else, and you can’t do peacebuilding…

patience kamau:
…that way…

Jayne Docherty:
…because peacebuilding, you can’t, you have to do development differently. If you’re serious about this, then it becomes a way and a perspective and a set of practices that has to…it doesn’t just stand by itself, it shapes the way your…where you’re putting the well and how you’re negotiating to build a road and…and just watching that whole process. And now peacebuilding is very embedded into, kind of, the state funded development or relief and development –and I, on my most cynical days, I say really now the word peacebuilding -when used in that context- is just a way to stabilize countries, so the multinational corporations can take their resources. That’s not really about peacebuilding at all.

And I see CJP as needing to stand over and against that, while also sometimes taking that money and collaborating and working with it, but being very picky about when we do that. That was a big argument at CJP –“would we ever take USAID money?” When I got here, the answer was “no.” And then…

patience kamau:
…how did that shift?

Jayne Docherty:
Well and then it became, “well, we should ask the local people on the ground wherever the work is being done, is it okay with them?” So we’ve always deferred to our partners and our local contacts and our network and we continue to do that –we wouldn’t take their money if our local partners, all of our graduates said, “no, you can’t do that here.”

patience kamau:
So with our definition, with the definition of “peacebuilding” that you defined for us, what have been the changes in the last 30 years, as you put it?

Jayne Docherty:
Oh, well there I think paying more attention to policy and strategy and more recognition that it, it needs to, um, it needs to not just be at the community level, that you also then have to think about the structures and the laws and the systems. So I would say that’s a change for us and it’s a good one.

patience kamau:
And in the field in general?

Jayne Docherty:
…and in the field in general, uhm, see, when you say field, like…

patience kamau:
…whose field?

Jayne Docherty:
Whose field, right? It’s kind of like worldview, whose worldview? Whose story?

patience kamau:
Mm-hm, that’s a good point of clarification.

Jayne Docherty:
Yeah, and I think that the field, “the field” doesn’t look the same even for our restorative justice colleagues, right? And I think that when we named, renamed ourselves The Center for Justice and Peacebuilding, um, and so when we renamed ourselves that, and then when we put in the masters in restorative justice and we started getting more people who are really uh “social justice” focused, we always had this tension in our class between those who are fighting for justice and those who want to make peace, right.

Um, and I think one of our strengths is that we are holding those two things together –it’s not always comfortable and you know, you have to manage the dynamics in the classroom where…but, but in reality, both things are needed for genuine peace, which means peace based on a just set of relationships and everybody needs to learn from each other.

patience kamau:
Yeah, yeah.

[Transition music plays]

patience kamau:
All right, well we are almost done.

Jayne Docherty:
Are you kidding, have we been talking for two hours?

patience kamau:
No, for one hour, almost one hour.

Jayne Docherty:
All right.

patience kamau:
So what are you working on for yourself, um, developing right now for…?

Jayne Docherty:
Well, I don’t have much of myself in this seat, right? I mean, so for me myself, my work is CJP –my work is the institution and organization of CJP.

patience kamau:
When did you become the executive director?

Jayne Docherty:
Very surprisingly, and suddenly in May, right?

patience kamau:
May of 2019…

Jayne Docherty:
May of 2019, the day after graduation. So, and I didn’t know that that was happening until a month before…and, um, what am I working on now? What I’m working on now is making, uh, supporting this organization and becoming as resilient and creative and dynamic as it can be, so that we can be responsive to opportunities. Higher education is in a lot of turmoil and for a lot of reasons; there’s finances –fewer students want to get into more debt for a graduate degree, right? Visas aren’t being issued, we’re having great difficulty getting international students in.

So what does then our education process and where should we be in that, in that environment and what, what should we look at? We have a phenomenal staff –I am so excited to be working with the staff here and the faculty. Um, I think often in programs like this, the faculty gets centered and a lot of attention is on the faculty, and they are important, but we have a staff here that has, has been and has the capacity to even do more in terms of creating dynamic learning spaces that are accessible to a lot of people. So, yeah, that’s, that’s my goal. And, you know, trying to make sure that we find the money that supports it. I, I’d love to stabilize, um, our own sources of funds because then you can weather the storm and the, and the turmoil in the education arena a little better if you have an endowment. So working on that, and telling the story in a bold way!

patience kamau:
Yes!

Jayne Docherty:
You know, I’ve been here 18 years and I keep saying Mennonites are great, they do phenomenal work, and then they hide it, right? They don’t brag about it.

patience kamau:
Put the lamp under a bushel?

Jayne Docherty:
Yes, exactly –they don’t brag! And, um, right after I got this, this job and was asked to do this, somebody said, “so what’s your goal?” I said, “brag about this place” –tell the stories,” right? Tell the stories!

patience kamau:
Yeah, I like your demeanor, you, you look proud –physically.

Jayne Docherty:
I am, I don’t have trouble bragging about this place, it’s phenomenal. Um, and I don’t have trouble asking for money either, so…

patience kamau:
Yeah, we need support.
Um, what do you do outside, CJP, that’s life-giving to you outside this work?

Jayne Docherty:
So I’m spending time with my parents who are aging, um, and I really am working at, at enjoying that, right? They’re not going to be here forever. So, um, it has its burdens, but it’s also a great privilege to, to be close enough to them –they are a couple of hours away. I just bought a new house, so I’ve been having fun decorating my house and in the last few years I’ve gotten very actively involved in politics, local politics. I have declined to run for office, I might do that after CJP, but I’m, I’m working on campaigns and helping candidates and asking for money for candidates –I don’t have any trouble asking for money.

patience kamau:
Right, right.

Jayne Docherty:
Yeah.

patience kamau:
All right.
Um, is there anything else you’d like to add?

Jayne Docherty:
So one of the questions that was on here, um, I don’t know where I was going to say that –uh, “positive outcomes of my time at CJP.” What I wanted to talk about there was, um, arriving in 2001 and 9/11 happened, Church World Service asked us to create a program which became the Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience Program, for community leaders, in the communities affected by conflict.

I was a negotiator –I didn’t want to mess with this trauma stuff. Largely because I came to realize my family had been living with “postwar trauma” since my dad came home from Vietnam in 1968, right. He’s, he wasn’t…people think about someone with trauma as this messed up person –he was highly functional, loving dad, wonderful guy. But there were effects on our family system, and so I think for me personally and professionally, really grappling with the importance of doing trauma and resilience work, as part of peacebuilding, that has been huge! Uhm, yeah, so…

patience kamau:
Thank you.

Jayne Docherty:
Yeah, thanks!

patience kamau:
I think that’s all.

Jayne Docherty:
All right!

patience kamau:
Thank you very much for your time.

Jayne Docherty:
Well, that was easy!

patience kamau:
It’s been a great conversation, I’ve enjoyed it.

Jayne Docherty:
Yeah, it’s been fun.

patience kamau:
All right.

Jayne Docherty:
Are all your conversations fun?

patience kamau:
Yes they are! Yeah, they are –would you like to do…Carl sang us out– would you like to do something unique? [Laughter]

Jayne Docherty:
[Laughter continues] I am not singing! So, that’s where I’m going to plead being Catholic.

patience kamau:
[More laughter] Yes, no singing! All right. Well thank you so much Jayne.

Jayne Docherty:
Okay, thanks.

patience kamau:
Bye.

patience kamau:
Jayne is the author of two books, Learning Lessons from Waco and The Little Book of Strategic Negotiation.

__

All right, this bring us to the end of our first season; thank YOU all so VERY much for your accompaniment in the last 18 weeks. For a small podcast, we count ourselves extremely blessed that we’ve had close to 5,000 downloads so far! Thank YOU! It has been an absolute joy for me to have these conversations with these ten people, as we commemorate this silver jubilee year of the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding’s founding. The first half of 2020 has presented itself as a serious challenge to the world, wounding us all in many ways, but as we sit with the discomfort this wound causes us, let’s remember, as Rumi so aptly put it, “the wound is where the light enters you.” Blessings to you now and always! And faith willing, we’ll see you again next time.

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[Outro music begins to play and fades into background]

All the music you hear on this podcast has been composed by: the one and only Luke Mullet. Our audio mixing engineer extraordinaire is: Stephen Angello. Audio editing support was generously provided by: Michaela Mast. And I am the podcast executive producer, audio recording engineer, editor and host: patience kamau. As you are able, please remember to subscribe, rate and review this podcast so that other peacebuilders may find it. Thank you so much for listening and join us again next time!

[Outro music resumes normal volume and plays till end]

Dr. Howard Zehr is director emeritus of the Zehr Institute for Restorative Justice and a distinguished professor of restorative justice at the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding. In this ninth episode, he 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.

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.”

Guest

Dr. Howard Zehr

Widely known as “the grandfather of restorative justice,” Zehr began as a practitioner and theorist in restorative justice in the late 1970s at the foundational stage of the field. He has led hundreds of events and lectured in more than 25 countries and 35 states. A prolific writer and editor, speaker, educator, and photographer, Zehr actively mentors other leaders in the field.
His books include Changing Lenses and The Little Book of Restorative Justice, both highly influential in the field, as well as photo/interview books such as Doing Life: Reflections of Men and Women Serving Life Sentences and Transcending, Reflections of Crime Victims. He was the initiator of The Little Books of Justice and Peacebuilding series.
Zehr joined CJP in 1996 and in 2013 stepped away from active classroom teaching. He remains involved with the Zehr Institute of Restorative Justice. Before coming to 91����Ƶ, he directed the Mennonite Central Committee U.S. Office of Criminal Justice.

Transcript

Howard Zehr:
That was…my goal was to get us to take a fresh look at some of our assumptions. So it’s to bring a fresh lens of…a fresh, fresh, look at things we take for granted. So the “Changing Lenses” seemed like an apt metaphor for it.

[Theme music plays and fades into background]

patience kamau:
Hey-hey -hey everybody! Happy Wednesday to you, and welcome back to peacebuilder, a Conflict Transformation podcast by the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding. My name is patience kamau and with us this ninth episode:

Howard Zehr:
Howard Zehr, I’m distinguished professor of restorative justice and the emeritus co-director of the Zehr Institute for Restorative Justice here at CJP.

patience kamau:
Widely known as the grandfather of restorative justice, Zehr began as practitioner and theorist in restorative justice in the late 1970s at the foundational stages of the field. He has led hundreds of events and lectured in more than 25 countries and 35 States. A prolific writer and editor, speaker, educator and photographer, Zehr actively mentors other leaders in the field. His books include “Changing Lenses” and “The Little Book of Restorative Justice,” both highly influential in the field, as well as photo-interview books such as “Doing Life: reflections of men and women serving life sentences” and “Transcending: reflections of crime victims.” He was the initiator of “The Little Books of Justice and Peacebuilding” series.

Zehr joined CJP in 1996 and in 2013 stepped away from active classroom teaching. He remains involved with the Zehr Institute for Restorative Justice. Before coming to 91����Ƶ, he directed the Mennonite Central Committee, U.S. Office of Criminal Justice.

[Theme music fades back in and ends]

patience kamau:
Hi Howard–

Howard Zehr:
Hello.

patience kamau:
All right, so let’s talk about how you ended up here at 91����Ƶ, CTP/CJP. What was your journey here?

Howard Zehr:
Well, I had been working from the late 1970s, uh, I had been working as a director of the office of crime and justice for a Mennonite Central Committee, U.S. and in that role I’d worked on a number of issues. I had developed restorative justice concept during that time and I had been working, done a lot of writing and interpreting things for practitioners and I was helping communities start restorative justice programs around the country who were interested in that, um, that kind of thing. And in 1990 I had been doing it from Elkhart, Indiana, and then I moved to Akron, Pennsylvania in 1990.

But by mid-1990s I was feeling like I was kind of done there –I was feeling that “maybe I’ve done what I can do for this field” and Ray Gingerich was a professor here and he was doing some things on a regular basis at MCC and he would show up at my desk and he would make me promise that I would not take any other job before they had a chance to have me here and I didn’t know how seriously to take him. They had asked me here to give a talk one time before that –I didn’t know until much later when I had been hired, that actually was my test lecture [Laughs].

patience kamau:
Oh wow [laughter].

Howard Zehr:
[Laughter continues] I didn’t know they were even considering me at that point, but they had me here and do that, do a lecture…

patience kamau:
…they were clearly impressed!

Howard Zehr:
I, well, whatever, anyway. I ended up here in ’96 I came, I taught here before that I taught, uh, I drove down in a weekend format during the winter and taught a restorative justice class. That’s where people like Bonnie Lofton first made contact with CJP, she took that class.

patience kamau:
Where would you drive from?

Howard Zehr:
From Akron.

patience kamau:
…from Akron, Pa., and you are from, from Indiana originally?

Howard Zehr:
Well, Illinois, Indiana. Born in Illinois and grew up a lot in Indiana, in the Elkhart area in Elkhart, and then had left there when I went to college or toward after my first year of college, but then in ’78 I moved back there. My father had just died, my mother was there and I’d kind of burned out and was ready to do something different. So, I was directing a halfway house for ex-offenders that burnt down, I was taking classes at the Seminary, at Notre Dame law school.

patience kamau:
Where’d you go to undergraduate college?

Howard Zehr:
I started at Goshen in Indiana, but then I went to Morehouse College in Atlanta, my second and fourth year. In between there, I went to Bethel college in Kansas where I met my wife, but I graduated then from Morehouse in 1966.

patience kamau:
Why the second and fourth year –what was with the in between year?

Howard Zehr:
Well, I went…my sophomore year I went to Morehouse, which is a historically black college and I pretty much intentionally, I mean there weren’t very many white students there and most of them were short term…um, what do you call it?

patience kamau:
Visiting scholars? Exchange students?

Howard Zehr:
Yes, they were exchange/visiting…some kind of program. It was unfortunate because they came from a rather elite school in New England and they came down really, they were seen as voyeurs because of the civil rights movement. And so a lot of my fellow students felt really disrespected by them and so it was actually a disadvantage…

patience kamau:
…for you?

Howard Zehr:
For me, I had to prove I wasn’t one of them, but I was there one year and I was pretty much totally immersed in an African American world, I had no experience with that prior to that really, and a couple of things happened –one of them, my parents had moved to Kansas and when I went home for spring break, the Dean took me for a whirlwind tour and convinced me, I oughta come to Bethel and I had, I kind of…was trying to figure out who I was. I mean, I was so immersed in this world that was new to me and so it was kind of a chance to take stock of who I was. I really wanted to go back and , the president of Morehouse, liked me, he was, and he arranged for the NAACP legal defense fund to pay my way the year as a minority student. So, and then I graduated in ’66.

patience kamau:
Yeah, wow! How was your experience in those two years there? How, how would you describe them?

Howard Zehr:
Well I’d say it’s one of the more, it was absolutely pivotal for my life, it was transformative — I mean it just changed my whole world, and really the reason I do what I do today is because of that. It wasn’t easy. I mean, it was lots of…I knew there was going to be culture shock…I had tried to prepare, I was 18 I mean, what can you do? But I had read all kinds of stuff. I had read African American authors, I had read sociologists –I tried to prepare for it, but even then it was…for one thing, people just didn’t read me the way I was used to being read, my body language. What I said was interpreted totally differently, I mean this was, this was less than a decade after Brown vs. Education, so I mean, none of us had a lot of experience of the other.

So it was a, it was a profound experience and not an easy one, but really important one for me. When I hear people today, we hear this from our students saying, “I don’t feel safe in this environment,” how do you ever learn if you, I mean, if you don’t get out there, …

patience kamau:
…you have to be challenged.

Howard Zehr:
You have to be places that feel emotionally unsafe and, and that was just really important for me.

patience kamau:
It was formative to you.

Howard Zehr:
Absolutely!

patience kamau:
Do any specific examples come to mind that you can think of? Emotionally — what was challenging? So you said you were prepared, you were reading, but you couldn’t prepare fully –does anything come to mind that…

Howard Zehr:
Well, as I said, people viewed me completely differently, I had to learn to understand. I had to realize that how do you adapt to, to be able to communicate and communicate what I thought I was communicating. Things that I might think were reaching out in a friendly way might not be interpreted that way. I learned a lot about “white privilege” and I mean we didn’t call it that in those days, but I very soon learned all the privileges I had and sometimes my peers asked me to use those privileges…when I could do things they couldn’t do.

But that was a, that was a really important experience. There were a few cases where I was confronted with physically, to prove myself, uh, but yeah, I mean it was some point I..my, one of my room, my roommates and others got together and they awarded me a certificate, “Honorary Negro” was the term in the ’60s, so I still have it in my stuff somewhere, this, this certificate.

patience kamau:
Did you find, being a minority in a majority black, uh, environment, did you find that what was considered as white privilege elsewhere was stripped away in that environment?

Howard Zehr:
Yeah, the things that I would have assumed I…the privileged, I had, I wouldn’t have in that. And just, uh, yeah, just, uh, it was just an important experience to learn to be what it’s like to be a minority in a majority group, that that’s really important. And I realized, when some of my colleagues now and so forth don’t quite, don’t get it, I realize well you really have to have that experience to understand it.

patience kamau:
Mm, you have to live it, to actually know it.

Howard Zehr:
You have to live it, you have to live it to understand what it, um, what it’s like.

patience kamau:
At what point did you begin theorizing about restorative justice? At what point in your life, would you say?

Howard Zehr:
After I graduated and was finishing my Ph.D., I took a job at Talladega College in Alabama and um, that’s a Historically Black College and I taught there during the seventies, and during that time I, that’s when I got involved in justice issues in a practical way. I began to work with defending some prisoners, uh, in a variety of…supporting prisoners, but also I, and a colleague began to train students. We began to put together teams, research teams to help defense attorneys pick juries in really highly politicized cases, death penalty, prison riots, police brutality.

And so I had, I had a lot of on the ground experience with justice and injustice and I, I realized pretty quickly how racist it was, how inaccurate it was, you know, and I actually wrote an article during those years for national magazine, Sojourners Magazine about all of these things. Of course, looking back, I didn’t really understand how, how fundamentally flawed the system was. Like many people who are advocates for one side or the other, I didn’t know anything about victims –I didn’t want to know anything about victims, and no, I didn’t know, it just wasn’t part of the picture. I was a defendant…I was an offender advocate.

And then I kind of burnt out at teaching and we need…my father had just died and we moved to Indiana not quite knowing what we’re going to do. But as I said, I was working part-time directing this transitional house for people coming out of prisons and the other part I was going to school and within a very short time that the building burned down.

patience kamau:
Was that, was that an accident?

Howard Zehr:
[Chuckles] Well, I think it was by here, but the funny part was I had had the fire inspector out that same day –we had gone through it, I pointed out, so I used to be an electrician, so I pointed out some electrical problems that he hadn’t seen, he marked them down. He got back to the station and within two hours the fire trucks were rolling out to our place. He said, the guys at the fire station just him for months, you know, he goes to inspect it and when he got back it burns. Actually, we never approved it, but I think what happened is there were some bees that had made a nest where the electrical service went into the house and I think some of the guys thought they could smoke them out, and I think they started the fire that way [Laughter].

patience kamau:
Oh dear!

Howard Zehr:
So then there was this new idea of bringing victims and offenders together…

patience kamau:
Is that what’s “victim-offender conferencing”?

Howard Zehr:
It was called “victim-offender reconciliation” in those days. It appears that a Mennonite probation officer and a couple others, a juvenile probation officer had gotten an idea like this and started doing it and then heard about the one in Kitchener and they had tried to do it and it wasn’t going very well, i was kind of floundering. And my board chair, uh, Marlin Jeschke from, a seminary professor, no…Goshen College professor, Bible professor, uh, he just thought I had to go see, check this out…and I was really skeptical. I mean, you know, I didn’t want to work with the system. I, you know, the prosecutors, the judges, we were the guys with “the white hats.”

But I went down there and, and they dumped it all on me. I mean, they weren’t, it wasn’t going very well and it didn’t belong –cause I realized– in probation anyway, so they immediately dumped it on me, and…

patience kamau:
What does that mean — that you were basically to run it?

Howard Zehr:
I was it! Um, and so a couple of things that happened. I began to, people around the country had been hearing about this idea, but knew…nobody knew quite what it is or how to do it. So I immediately began to write manuals and booklets about it — I wrote a handbook for facilitators.

So we used volunteers so I built..made a handbook. Eventually that became something called the VORP book that had a sections on how to organize a program and so forth. Um, and I immediately moved it out of probation and found a nonprofit base for it. But one of the things, funny things happened while I was in probation, yet we had a head judge of the County who was a real loose cannon and we heard he was coming to visit our office and everybody thought they did not want him to know about this new program.

So I moved the whole program into the trunk of my car for the afternoon, packed it up, took it out –it wasn’t that much obviously. Took all the files and we put them in the car until he left and then we put them back.

patience kamau:
Did it turn out to be the right decision or was he not that much of a threat?

Howard Zehr:
I think so. No. I think he could have been a threat. We didn’t want him messing with it. And then within a short time as I began to try to, I mean I’m, my self-concept is basically “a journalist of justice.”

patience kamau:
A Journalist of Justice.

Howard Zehr:
I’m a comm…my interest has been communication ever since I started college as a speech major right, but when I moved to Morehouse I dropped that. Um, so I wanted to learn how to communicate and part of the reason I left teaching in the seventies, I wanted to learn to communicate to a larger audience, not to an academic audience.

So communication had been a part of my goal on self-image all along, and so immediately I was trying to communicate what we’re doing and as I did that, and as I began to research, I began to hear these pieces out there, this idea of “restitution,” of involving the community, a mediated process. And I began to synthesize that to try to explain what we were doing. And I couldn’t remember until a number of years ago where I got the term “restorative justice,” but, Ann Skelton is a human rights attorney in South Africa who was working on her Ph.D., and she came to visit here and I was in that office over there in the corner…

patience kamau:
Where Jayne is now?

Howard Zehr:
Yeah, where Jayne is now –when I was either co-director or filling in for Vernon as director, I can’t remember which, and I turned her loose on my files in the shelves, then she found this book on the shelf –iIt had an essay by a fellow named Albert Eglash, who had an idea of “restitutive justice.” He didn’t want the victims involved at all, but he had this article and he had this one paragraph where there was a series of terms of justice and one of them was “restorative justice,” and it was underlined, and I realized, “Oh, that’s where I got it.” She then traced it back to a German theologian in the fifties but anyway.

patience kamau:
Wow!

Howard Zehr:
But I was trying to figure out how to communicate –I was looking for words that you could remember, and so at that time I was using the language of “retributive justice.” So “restorative justice,” “retributive justice” in alliterated, you know, something one could remember, but basically I was trying to; I’m a synthesizer basically. I said that in beginning of “Changing Lenses.” I said, “this isn’t a book of invention, it’s a book of synthesis.” So I was trying to pull these things together and communicate it, and then I first presented this material…I was a facilitator for a weekend retreat for National Conference of Priests and Nuns, Catholic clergy who were involved in prison ministry –and that’s the first time I remember rolling out this whole concept of…

patience kamau:
…of “restorative justice” in that phrase…

Howard Zehr:
…of “restorative justice” and the arguments for it, in that phrase, and the arguments from a historical perspective and the biblical perspective and the experiential.

patience kamau:
How was it received? I guess that was a receptive audience?

Howard Zehr:
That was a receptive audience. But then I presented it, there was a group of victim-offender, again, we used the term “reconciliation,” practitioners from around the country and I presented it to them –they didn’t pay much attention to that.

patience kamau:
They didn’t?

Howard Zehr:
They didn’t, didn’t seem to catch on to anything. But then I published that in 1985 as a little booklet called “retributive justice, restorative justice,” that that got picked up quite a bit, and then changing…I began working on “Changing Lenses” that came out in 1990.

patience kamau:
Ah, yeah, we just celebrated its 25th…

Howard Zehr:
Yeah, that was a couple of years…2015, I think.

patience kamau:
Right. They have a new edition of it that was released…

Howard Zehr:
Yeah, yes.

patience kamau:
What was different about it?

Howard Zehr:
We re-ordered it a little bit, different introduction, wrote the foreword for it. Uh, some new exercises in the back and things like that.

patience kamau:
So I’m curious when it became “victim-offender conferencing”?

Howard Zehr:
I think Lorraine, Lorraine Stutzman Amstutz, and I gave it that term and maybe I’d learned that term “conferencing” from New Zealand, for instance and so forth. But the word “reconciliation” is very problematic, –uh, it’s a real hot button issue for victim groups cause they feel like they’re going to be pressured into it. And it’s the kind of terms that…”forgiveness and reconciliation” are terms that the news media keeps using, even though we tell them not to. What I say is that these kinds of programs, these kinds of encounters, they’re about trying to meet victims needs, they’re about trying to hold those who offended accountable for…they’re a way to involve people and identifying those needs and the solutions. If people choose to reconcile, that is totally up to them, but it’s not mandated. We’re not going to bring it up; it’s up to them! Now if they move, and usually they do, from a less …to a less hostile position, that’s a form of reconciliation I suppose, and some do reconcile, but that’s not our goal…

patience kamau:
…but it’s completely up to them?

Howard Zehr:
It’s really up to them. And so the term “reconciliation” is, is really misleading, but the media keeps using it. I mean they love happy stories, you know, so they’re always, yeah, I know — sujatha’s case that I had, I had linked her to, we told the reporter over and over again, it’s not about forgiveness, not about reconciliation, …

patience kamau:
…but nonetheless…

Howard Zehr:
…then of course somebody else writes, the title…

patience kamau:
…it becomes that…

Howard Zehr:
…well then, we have to do all this cleanup work with people, you know…

patience kamau:
Yeah, well, I suppose that’s the lazy work of using easy phrases that just catch people’s attention and what, I don’t know, clicks, I guess these days is what we’re going to.
Um, yeah. That’s fascinating that’s, that’s good to know the provenance of how all these things came to be.

Howard Zehr:
The interesting thing was it wasn’t very long until people came from all over the world –I mean the early ’80s already, we’d only been operating since about seven…well, the folks in Elkhart had done some cases as early as ’70, mid-’70s I think, but I came on the scene in ’77, ’78 –and we had people coming from Germany, England, all over; within a couple of years, there was so much interest in it.

[Transition music plays]

patience kamau:
Um, the title “Changing Lenses” also comes from your interest…you’re a photographer; you’re a really good photographer. Um, so how did you choose that title? And I imagine that it had to do with you being a photographer?

Howard Zehr:
I was sitting around with a couple of friends who were involved in…with me and we were trying to figure out a metaphor and yeah, it was the photography and I –that was, my goal was to get us to take a fresh look at some of our assumptions. So, it’s to bring a fresh lens, a fresh look at things we take for granted. So the “Changing “Lenses” seemed like an apt metaphor for it.

patience kamau:
Did you get any push back? Um, as “restorative justice” became something you were writing about, were there hostile…have there been hostile groups that have pushed back against it, that you’ve been aware of?

Howard Zehr:
Yeah. Well, the interesting thing, I always say that when you introduce something new, the first thing people do is they ignore it and then they try to fight it and then they co-opt it. And so yeah, it goes through all those stages. My surprise initially was it didn’t get as hostile reactions as I thought, for instance, I was asked to be a part of a big conference in Multnomah County, Portland, Oregon, and the respondents to my talk were a judge, the head of the department of corrections and a prosecutor, Multnomah County, so I thought they’re going to say, this is totally stupid. This is, I just thought this…instead they, they acknowledged that…they tried to say we’re doing some of these things and so forth, but they didn’t and that has been part of my surprise all along, is that people didn’t… I try…actually though I tried to write this in a way that would bring people along.

My boss at Mennonite Central Committee, when I had finished the text, I showed it to him, he was the head of the U.S. part of it where I worked and I gave him the manuscript and he came back laughing. He said, “you know, this is a totally radical book, but I didn’t catch on until the end.” [Both laugh] One time I was in a conference in Washington, D.C., in a seminar and I was being, I was attacked by a fellow from a conservative think-tank, and he says, “I know what you’re about, you’re trying to change the whole society, you’re just trying to revolutionize society.” I just chuckled because the other piece, the other criticism I was getting is that this isn’t radical enough, but he was reading the biblical chapter, particularly where I talked about the justice in the old Testament, uh, isn’t just, it’s about, not having right relationships, it is just as bad as to have poor among you and not doing something about it, as to be committing so called “crimes.”

patience kamau:
Why was he so threatened by that? Did he, was he able to articulate that?

Howard Zehr:
Well, he was a conservative, you know, and so he saw this book as trying to upset the status quo.

patience kamau:
Okay. Um, what are the overlaps in indigenous practices and uh, restorative justice?

Howard Zehr:
Well, when I started out, I was pretty ignorant, ignorant of that. I mean, “Changing Lenses,” and the way I articulated “restorative justice” was really as, sujatha and others said, it was from my indigenous perspective; I was drawing on my experience, my background, my religious background, my theological background, and my background as a European historian, which was my, my roots, you know, my German family, German background. Uh, I had heard anecdotes about indigenous justice, but I had no knowledge of it at all.

When I got to traveling internationally and began speaking, and then when I got here and had so many students from indigenous traditions, I began to, they kept saying, “this is what our elders did” and “this is what our elders did before the colonists came along and repressed it.” Some would say “that’s what my elders do today, they have do it in secret,” and I began to realize that this is really…restorative justice really in many ways, is the best of indigenous traditions combined with modern human rights sensibilities. It’s a way of bringing…legitimizing indigenous practices that have been repressed by the legal system and bringing them into the modern context. And so it’s been exciting when some of my former students take it back to their traditions and use that to have dialogues among their elders…

patience kamau:
…in ways that feel familiar to them.

Howard Zehr:
Very familiar!

patience kamau:
Right! Yeah, but also incorporating, what’s recent about the criminal legal system…I suppose…

Howard Zehr:
One of my favorite stories, memories is in my class that I used to teach –one of the exercises at some point was you had to go and explain “restorative justice” to somebody who didn’t know about it and see what happened.

patience kamau:
Mm, how would that go?

Howard Zehr:
Oh, some of them were just a hoot, I mean some people would go to a bar and tap somebody on the shoulder. And one fellow from, uh, Nigeria called and tried to explain it to his mother and she wasn’t having it. But, but we had a fellow here from Rwanda whose family had died in the genocide. Uh, he had come here to catch his breath and regroup and he just married a Rwandan woman, a new wife, and he decided he’d explained it to his wife.

So he goes home and he starts to explain it and she just starts laughing. And he’s like, “why are you laughing?” She says “you came all the way over here and you’re paying all this money to learn what every African already knows?” I thought, yep, “there you are.” [Laughter]

patience kamau:
[Laughter continues] “You had this all along in Rwanda, but you had to do to America to get the legitimacy of it.”

Howard Zehr:
Which is kind of a remnant of the colonial world where some white guy has to articulate it before people will believe it.

patience kamau:
…will pay attention.

Howard Zehr:
Yeah.

patience kamau:
Yeah, that’s the imbalance of “knowledge” I suppose –but maybe that’s being corrected over time.
Um, so then you came to CJP, which was the Conflict Transformation Program at the time because of, uh, professor Gingerich?

Howard Zehr:
I actually, when it first started, it was, it was “Conflict Analysis and Transformation Program (CAT-P),” which didn’t work very well, so it was changed to have “conflict transformation.” [Laughter]

patience kamau:
That would not work. [Laughter continues]

Howard Zehr:
Nah, it didn’t work. [More laughter]

patience kamau:
Yeah, it is just there to be made fun of! [Laughter]

Howard Zehr:
And then when Ruth and I were co-directors, we moved to change it, because it didn’t, we needed to include the “justice” and the other fields that we were now incorporating. We changed it to “Center for Justice and Peacebuilding.”

patience kamau:
Yeah, and that was at the 10th anniversary?

Howard Zehr:
Yes, that’s right. Yeah. Um, so how did Ray Gingerich convince you to come here and Vernon Jentzi? No, you said Ray was the one that…

Howard Zehr:
Well, Ray kept telling me that, but Vernon was the one that really made it work. I mean, Vernon was the one that negotiated with the university. So he was the maverick behind…Vernon has had a much larger role in this program than is recognized by most people. I mean, he’s the one that really brought John Paul here in the first place, he gave up his sociology teaching –he’s a sociologist, and taught Spanish just so John Paul would have some good…could teach. Uh, so he played a really key role and he was key in bringing me here. I don’t, and John Paul might’ve played a role, but it was, if I didn’t know if he did, but it was Vernon who did the negotiating.

patience kamau:
Yeah. Yeah.
So once you got here, among the things that you introduced was, uh, The Little Books series in general. Can you talk a little bit about that? How did that come to be? They’re so accessible –how did the concept begin?

Howard Zehr:
Well, I can’t remember which came first but, but there were, I do know the idea for “The Little Book of Restorative Justice,” I’m assuming that…I’m pretty sure that I started with the idea for “The Little Book of Restorative Justice” and then realized it could be more than that. I was thinking about how to make it accessible and there was an international dialogue going on –they wanted to have this big meeting and try to hammer out a definition of “restorative justice.” And you know how I feel about committee process.

patience kamau:
[Ironically] You just love them! [Laughter]

Howard Zehr:
[Ironically] I just love ’em! And I didn’t, wasn’t going to have anything to do with it.

patience kamau:
Exactly!

Howard Zehr:
And I figured, if I could write something short and so accessible, not that it would define it, but then it would give us a starting point for the discussion. So I set out to try to do that; and I saw on a, in a bookstore “The Thin Book of Appreciative Inquiry” and that gave me the idea. So then I went to Goods who were my publisher, who were doing a lot of my publishing Good Books, at the time.

And I had this idea, I said, I don’t know if I said exactly this, but I think I said something like, I want it to cost about the same as a Big Mac dinner, you know, it should be cheap. And they, they really, I gotta hand it to them, they really weren’t just trying to make money, they seem to have a mission. And so they went with it. Um, and they said they would do it as long as I would, I would do the editing and that meant that I would do all the screening and the initial content editing, they would do final editing, but I was to really shape them up. And so I began to map out possible books and contact authors that…I think all of the authors were “by invitation” in those early years, and I was pretty hard nosed. I mean, I rewrote some of them. Some of the authors weren’t all that happy, but they…

patience kamau:
…had to meet a high bar to qualify?

Howard Zehr:
You know, academics aren’t all that good at writing accessible things sometimes.

patience kamau:
They’ve become a really successful series.

Howard Zehr:
They do. They have, they’ve sold, I don’t know…I mean, years ago The Little Book of Restorative Justice had passed a hundred thousand. I haven’t, haven’t seen figures, I don’t know if we have figures.

patience kamau:
And it’s been translated into multiple languages hasn’t it?

Howard Zehr:
…quite a number I’ve lost track.

patience kamau:
Have other Little Books been translated into other languages that you are aware?

Howard Zehr:
Yeah, yeah, oh yeah –I can’t remember which ones but yeah, quite a number of them got published.

patience kamau:
Yeah. Um, so you were the original editor by default [chuckles]

Howard Zehr:
It was basically, yeah, it was basically my idea and I kept pretty close control of it.

patience kamau:
Yes, because you were shaping and you were building it…

Howard Zehr:
…it was shaping and a couple of reasons, one of them is, you know, I don’t believe in doing things by committee, but also it’s like, a work of art can’t be done by committee. It has, it needs a steadying perspective of a person and I didn’t want to control it; I mean I had people, I would, every one I did, I would run it past people in the field and so forth. I had a changing group of people…

patience kamau:
…advisors? A reference group?

Howard Zehr:
…a reference group for each one. But I felt like it had to have a consistency.

patience kamau:
Of course!

Howard Zehr:
So that’s, yeah, that’s what I did.

patience kamau:
So it reflects your vision.

Howard Zehr:
I mean, maybe I’m just a control freak, but I’m not usually, I don’t think so…

patience kamau:
I, I don’t think so…but you’re right. I mean it’s a, it’s, it’s a, you provide a vision and then you guide through it. I mean, you guide the process through it and that way then it’s consistent.

Howard Zehr:
Yeah.

patience kamau:
Um, who have been the other editors after you?

Howard Zehr:
Well, for a short time uh, Judah Oudshoorn did that, and then…and Barbara Toews is doing it now.

patience kamau:
She’s the current editor?

Howard Zehr:
Yeah. I’m not sure…Bonnie Lofton looked at it but declined to do it. So I think it was Judah and then went to Barbara –she goes by Barb. She and I have done a lot of collaboration –we did the critical issues on restorative justice book together and we’ve done teaching together, and so forth and we’re working on some book projects now together too.

patience kamau:
Where does she work?

Howard Zehr:
She’s at the university of Washington, Tacoma.

patience kamau:
What’s her job there?

Howard Zehr:
She’s a professor, well, she’s an associate professor I think.

patience kamau:
Okay. So she’s a teacher.

[Transition music plays]

patience kamau:
So what do you think is something we should be celebrating about CJP at this milestone, at 25 years?

Howard Zehr:
Well, the fact that we exist, the fact that we’ve had as much impact! I mean this program has an international impact and reputation. I mean we have people coming, they’ll say, I went to the embassy and…interested in practice oriented conflict, conflict resolution or that kind of thing, and they’ll say, come to, come to the CJP. And, and we’re, we’re still, as far as I know, the only academic program with a practice, that “reflective practitioner,” “values-based” kind of approach, which is what we set out to be. I mean, we have a surprising number of people who’ve gone on to have Ph.D.s, but that has not been our intent; to me our intent to train reflective practitioners.

patience kamau:
What do you think we could done better in the last 25 years?

Howard Zehr:
Oh my. Oh, it’d be nice if we had a lot more money; we’ve been scraping along. Internally, we could have handled our own conflicts better than we did sometimes.

patience kamau:
So we didn’t always practice what we preached?

Howard Zehr:
Oh no, we didn’t always practice what we preached. We could have done a better job, I think, of communicating our mission and what we do and as I say, raise money, raising money, than we’ve done for sure.

patience kamau:
Mm-hm. Hmm, what do you think were some of the failures of the communication we were doing internally, or challenges, is what I should say.

Howard Zehr:
You know, it’s pretty common for, a…it’s, for a while there, so many restorative justice programs that were internally, having internal conflict. It’s really hard. Our egos get in the way, for one thing, that’s one of them. The directors who have come here from non-academic settings, you know, we finally arranged that finally we negotiated it so they didn’t have to have a Ph.D. to direct us, to be executive director of the program. They’ve all had a culture shock when they see the ego, the way academic egos and ambitions play out. You know, I said, you know, I’ve often thought about how, when people get frustrated at the conflicts and that if you’re at a big university, I mean this is nothing compared to the big universities where people are stabbing each other in the back –we don’t do that!

patience kamau:
Um, you said earlier that the stages of something new being implemented –just want to go back a little bit –has restorative justice been co-opted?

Howard Zehr:
Oh my, yes! So many places. I mean not over across the board, but, oh yeah, there’re so many places. Well, people calling things “restorative justice,” that aren’t. Just yesterday I was in a conference, I won’t name the organization, but on their website they claim they’re a restorative justice program and people who know, would say “there’s no way it’s a restorative justice program.” That’s the problem, but it sounds good. That’s one way that it’s being co-opted –people use elements of it, they use it to get money. I’ve had Corrections People say, “well, I just claim what I’m doing is restorative justice to get money.” People take pieces of it without the whole thing. Yeah. It’s very common for organizations that work with prisoners or with people who’ve offended to take on the language of it without incorporating victims, for instance. In my mind, you have to be equally concerned for everybody involved…

patience kamau:
…for the offenders and the victims…

Howard Zehr:
…and the victims and others that might be caught up in it. I got a, one time, an email from a prisoner advocacy group in Florida. I think it was saying “we’re just, we’ve just gone through this process, we’re really excited, we’ve become a restorative justice program, look at our website.” I look at the website –there’s 30 things to do for prisoners, there’s not a thing, suggestion for people who have been hurt, for victims. That’s not restorative justice.

patience kamau:
That’s not it, yeah, It’s lost its meaning in that context. What do you, have you watched or are you familiar with the program on CNN that Van Jones does?

Howard Zehr:
I’ve heard about it.

patience kamau:
What are your thoughts on that?

Howard Zehr:
Well, I am so, cynical about involving the media in particular, the entertainment really. We’ve had lots of experience over the years and most of it hasn’t been that good, and I take cues like, one of my victims’ friends whose daughter was murdered, who runs a restorative justice program, she’s just had it with these kinds of programs. She and I have talked about it –so I’m sure there’s some good things in it, but they always go for the high profile kinds of conflictual stories. You know, they don’t want to deal with the more ordinary things.

patience kamau:
The more ordinary things are complex…

Howard Zehr:
…and they’re complex. Yeah. They want to dramatize it so much. They, my understanding before I came on the scene, one of the national networks had come out to Elkhart and wanted to film and so they put them in touch with the victims and offenders who’d been through the program. They went home, there was no conflict left –I mean they, they wanted some big dramatic thing and here these people had all made peace with themselves, so there wasn’t a story there.

patience kamau:
They wanted some reality TV.

Howard Zehr:
[Chuckles] Yeah, they wanted some reality TV. That was before reality TV, but even then, yeah, so I’m just not very cooperative. I’ve, I’ve worked with some programs like ABC did a show a long time ago –I spent a lot of time with the producer trying to help him understand the complexities of it and he did a fairly good job, but it takes an awful lot of energy and there’s so many, everybody’s interested. I get so many different requests just today, somebody doing a documentary and wants help “for your advice” or me to appear on it and I’m just kind of done with that.

patience kamau:
[Chuckles] You’re moving into retirement.

Howard Zehr:
I am! [laughs]

patience kamau:
[Ironically] I’m not envious at all [both laugh]. Oh my goodness.
So in your time within CJP, how would you say you’ve experienced community around here?

Howard Zehr:
Uh, it’s clear that we, we care a lot more about each other than most places –at least in my day here, it’s a very relationally ordered place. So students coming here for instance, often talked about that and if they, when they left here and went to one of the big universities, they had culture shock because it was such an individualized climate comparatively. Um…

patience kamau:
They were expecting what they had here to carry on elsewhere and it didn’t.

Howard Zehr:
Yeah, of course, that also had…means there’s expectations that aren’t realistic about us as well. But I think we’ve had a history of trying to take care of each other. I don’t know how much the faculty and staff socialize at this point. I don’t know,I wouldn’t consider it my primary social community. Maybe it’s partly cause I’m retired but, but there is a sense of community that’s much different than what it was at other universities or other similar kinds of settings. It’s very clear.

patience kamau:
What’s your vision or hope for CJP at 50, so in the next 25 years, what would you hope this organization would be known for in about 50 years?

Howard Zehr:
[Chuckles] I hope we keep our practice orientation, our value orientation, our ability, our willingness to bring people of all different kinds of faith or lack of faith traditions together for dialogue. Uh, I would hope we both focus on larger social transformation but not lose our focus on some of the more traditional applications. One of the things I worry about, I really like a younger generation moving into these fields –it’s partly why I’m staying out of it–I think that’s what has to happen, and a lot of them are taken, they 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 just things like bringing those who are harmed and those who caused harm in a context of a criminal system together as well.

And I worry a little bit about losing that, but I hope we can hold those things together. You know what, I’m, I’m kind of a connector. I’ve spent a lot of my life just connecting people, and so, like I travel –a number of years ago I was traveling a lot– I was running into lawyers who are very isolated but who were trying to apply restorative justice in their lives. And so we started a series of retreats. We brought these attorneys in so they learned to know each other, shared ideas and so forth. And that’s…

patience kamau:
The Palavers!

Howard Zehr:
The Palavers, yeah! And so, I can tell you more about the history of that term if you want, but so my dream would be for the Institute that we do more of those, like I’ve dreamed about bringing prosecutors who are interested in restorative justice together. We have a prosecutor who is interested in our program. I just, he’s from another city I just connected him to a former lawyer who’s a graduate of our program and now that, he says he’s his latest best friend, and so I liked doing that. I really like that a lot because they learn a lot, share a lot from each other.

patience kamau:
Oh that excellent! It gives you joy because you just really lit up!

Howard Zehr:
It does. I love to connect people; so I hope we do more of that. In the early days of the field, when I was hired by a Mennonite Central Committee, it had been a U.S.-Canadian joint program and we immediately split it up, and Dave Worth who was one of the people who did that first case, it started this whole thing in 1974, became the director in Canada and I in the U.S. and we really collaborated. We would meet regularly. We would try to figure out “what does this field need?” And he would, for instance, we might say “it needs a book about this,” and Dave would say, “well you write it, I’ll pay for it.” You know, and we would just plot out…trying to go on gut-feeling, listening to people, trying to assess what the field needed. And so we would produce these things and we had, we started having, we would bring in a person, we would get together, we would deliberately invite mix of academics, practitioners around a speaker and we’d kinda get together for an afternoon and evening and we would have a presentation and then we would talk.

And one of those was , a Dutch law professor who influenced…was one of the influences on me. And he used to say, he used to talk about “the importance of talk,” and he said, “palaver,” you have “to palaver” or “you have to keep talking.” And so we called these “palavers” and we would hold these regularly, for years, we would hold these palavers where you bring deliberately a small group, not to debate, but to explore together. And often we would publish the paper –the talk that was presented as a result. So, there was a series called “The Occasional Papers and…” Justice, justice and peacebuilding or justice or something like that.

patience kamau:
What’s that — The Occasional Papers…?

Howard Zehr:
“The Occasional Papers of Justice and peacebuilding [sic],” something like that. That wasn’t quite the right term. It was published by MCC and their little booklets.

patience kamau:
Are they still available somewhere –would people able to access them?

Howard Zehr:
I think they might be on a website–might even be on our website.

patience kamau:
Probably if people Google…

Howard Zehr:
In fact, here’s one lying here –it was called “New Perspectives on Crime and Justice: Occasional Papers of the…” at the time it was called “MCC-Canada Victim-offender Ministry Program” in the U.S.-MCC, U.S. Office on Criminal Justice.

patience kamau:
[Ironically] A nice short title! [both laugh]

Howard Zehr:
Yeah. But they each have a title for the, for the issue, and that’s where I first published, uh, “retributive justice, restorative justice” in that series.

patience kamau:
Oh, right, that’s what, so that’s what you referred to at the beginning when we started recording. Wow. All right. That’s, that’s good to know where the term palaver came from — it’s not a very common term.

Howard Zehr:
No, it’s not, and it’s a controversial term if you look it up.

patience kamau:
Mm, why?

Howard Zehr:
Well, it was a term used by Portuguese traders in Africa and they were so irritated that they had to negotiate –you had to take, when they went there to get some, they had to do all this talking, and they had to palaver.

patience kamau:
Ah, yes [both laugh].

Howard Zehr:
[Laughter continues] And so they were kind of grumpy about it, I take it.

patience kamau:
[More laughter] Yes, we Africans, we like to talk, you know “let’s sit down, let’s not rush it, let’s have a cup of tea, let’s talk about it.”

Howard Zehr:
Exactly!

patience kamau:
That’s good. All right, wow.

Howard Zehr:
So that’s what we’re trying to do.

patience kamau:
Yes. Um, and we’ve had a couple here, some of those palavers with…the last one we had was with law enforcement…

Howard Zehr:
…with police officers. We’ve done…we did with lawyers. What else? We’ve done some others but I have to think about it.

patience kamau:
Yeah.

[Transition music plays]

patience kamau:
So what do you do when you’re not…you’re retiring…so how are you spending your time, most of your time? What’s giving you life lately? As you “pass the baton” to the younger generation, as you keep saying…

Howard Zehr:
[Chuckles] Well, I still get emails that need to be answered and people wanting to talk to me, and I try to, a lot of those, I try to pass over, pass off to colleagues, partly because I don’t want to do them and partly because I want them to become “the place to go,” instead of me, but occasionally, like last last week I had a young woman –college student– wanting to interview me and I was like, “oh my, I can’t do this,” and then I thought, you know, she could end to being a CJP student so I talked to her and yeah, she’s really bright, she’s, she’s really interested. I told her about CJP she got quite interested in it, so I still do some of that. I do consulting with a variety of things.

I just met with a fellow from Shenandoah County who’s documenting all the barns in Shenandoah County and I’m consulting with him on a possible book that the Historical Society wants to do. I’m a volunteer with Gift and Thrift. Part of my, part of what I do is electronics –I’m an amateur radio operator and I’m a tinkerer and repairer of radios. I have a client for instance who is a collector of old radios going back in the ’20s, sometimes it keeps me busy restoring these radios and I just delivered to him, yeah, this week, that I hadn’t done in a while.

patience kamau:
Do you still chat with people on radios on uh…?

Howard Zehr:
I do, but Morse code only.

patience kamau:
Morse code?

Howard Zehr:
I’m, I’m, you know, it’s a dying group there. Well, I talked to the guy last night and he’s an electrical engineer with the National Radio Observatory and he is only 58 –that’s pretty young for Morse code and most of us are my age…

patience kamau:
…so you are just sitting there tapping?

Howard Zehr:
Well I use uh, electronic keys…

patience kamau:
…that shows my ignorance.

Howard Zehr:
Well, no, it’s most people…I use, it’s a pad…it’s called a paddle, you make, it makes dots on one side and dashes on the other. And it was a real craft too, I mean part of it is just the joy of doing it well, I’m more, I get a lot of positive feedback, people say I “have a good fist,” that’s what it’s called when you have got it…and I take…

patience kamau:
…what does it mean to “have a good fist”?

Howard Zehr:
To mean to hit, to really do code, it’s called “CW” –to really do “code well,” which means you got the rhythm right, you got separation right, you got, so it’s really readable. I love the mechanics of the paddle and I like the electronics of it, so that’s what I do, I mean I chat regularly but I do it on Morse code.

patience kamau:
Okay. Do you do the voice part of it?

Howard Zehr:
I don’t anymore, I used to, but I just don’t have any interest in it. I like tinkering with the electronics of it, you know, building things, fixing things. I write, I’m not doing, not doing much justice writing these days, but I write regularly for amateur radio magazine, technical articles, things I’ve built or adapted or fixed or whatever.

patience kamau:
What have you built lately?

Howard Zehr:
Well, I have a…there’s an issue coming out this month that has one of my articles on the front cover, but I think it’s got a bunch of small articles inside about various radio equipment that I’ve modified or I review or…yeah.

patience kamau:
Oh, that’s fascinating!

Howard Zehr:
And then I do a lot of photography still. I have some clients I do photography for and then, I like to do personal photography and also…

patience kamau:
…you’ve been doing some hospice photography?

Howard Zehr:
Well, I’m a volunteer. I have, they haven’t had any for a while, but I do. I’m available for hospice patients and families if they would like portraits or pictures of the family and so forth. That’s been really meaningful and I’ve got two possible books in the process, which I’m…both of which I’m working with Barb Toews on. One of them is, if we can get the rights sorted out, it’s, I’ve gone back to 22, 23 of the people from my life, my “Doing Life” book, which are life sentence prisoners; in Pennsylvania, that’s “real life” and I’ve gone back and re-photographed and interviewed them…

patience kamau:
…that’s right, you returned 25 years later?

Howard Zehr:
…25 years later, and so we’re hoping to do a new book about life sentences with a different publisher, but I have to get the rights to use some of that old material and that’s still in process, we haven’t…

patience kamau:
…is that complicated?

Howard Zehr:
Well it depends on the publisher that bought Goods out when they went bankrupt and the publisher bought it and then, so we’re working on, we have a publisher that wants to do it. They’re eager to do it.

patience kamau:
Yeah, so when you have, um just to go back to that –one of those books that you did with the lifers and then you photographed them again, was that two years ago when it was 25 years later?

Howard Zehr:
Yeah, mm-hm.

patience kamau:
Which was fascinating to just see how they’ve changed.

Howard Zehr:
It is.

patience kamau:
What struck me the most, beyond just the physical changes that obviously happen to people as we age, was that the original pictures, if you did not know that these were people who were imprisoned, you would not have just known it –it wasn’t apparent by looking at the photographs. The ones 25 years later, that’s the first thing that jumps out –what changed, is that the prison system that just doesn’t allow them to have street clothes?

Howard Zehr:
Right, that is right! Yeah. When I, when I did this, they were allowed to…I, I wanted us to confront these people as people, without the stereotypical clues that are usually associated with pictures of prisoners –and I’m kind of a connoisseur of prison photography and most photographers, well, most, but I, so I look at a lot of photographer photography by other photographers, prisoners, and it’s usually pretty stereotyped because they go there and they don’t know that much about prisons and they’re, they’re taken by the bizarre elements. But that of course reinforces our stereotypes, so I wanted us to confront these people as people…

patience kamau:
…mm-hm, with their dignity…

Howard Zehr:
…with their dignity, the way I’d want to be photographed. So I got permission, I set up a little studio and a backdrop and at that time they were allowed to have street clothes in there, so that on special occasions they could wear –that has changed so they don’t, so they are all in the prison garb now. So that’s a, that’s a, yeah, it’s different.

patience kamau:
Do you know why that has changed? That just seems like such a regression.

Howard Zehr:
Oh there’s been a lot of regression. A lot of, a lot of security concerns, rigidification in the system –a lot of the human elements it seems are out…

patience kamau:
…have been stripped away…yeah, is that…it makes me wonder whether that’s connected to the, to the profit making machine that has just taken over prisons.

Howard Zehr:
I doubt if it is, it’s partly because they’re more, they’re really sensitive to outside flack from people. Uh, so if they get flack about people showing up and looking “too human,” they get flack and security, they’ve gotten a lot tighter on security things. Part of it is, some of the old guard dying off, like one of the people in my “Victim” book, actually was at the time superintendent of one of the biggest/highest security prisons in America, Donald Vaughn. He’s . He is in there in that book because his son was murdered and there’s a whole story to that, but he was, he was, he had grown up in the system.

I mean he had been a, had been a guard at Eastern State Penitentiary, one of the original prisons in America, but he had this real kind of human…he’d walked through the corridors and people would come up and talk to him and, I think some of that’s gone, it feels like it’s more bureaucratic than it was then –the system as a whole, but I don’t know. It’s certainly been politicized. That’s part of the problem as this whole criminal justice and prison system has gotten politicized –everybody gets nervous and so they get more and more restrictive.

patience kamau:
Yeah, It’s interesting to watch what prisons look like –I think I was seeing a magazine at some point about the prison system somewhere in Europe, in the Netherlands. I mean it was not apparent…

Howard Zehr:
…oh it’s so different…

patience kamau:
…it’s very different.

Howard Zehr:
Oh yeah, their, their theory is that what prisons are about is the loss of Liberty, nothing else. So you don’t punish people there, you try to make it as much like normal as possible, so that when they’re released they won’t have that shock of going back into society.

patience kamau:
They can reintegrate into society more easily, yeah. Is there more an element of um, rehabilitation there?

Howard Zehr:
There, there is I think too, yeah.

patience kamau:
There isn’t much of that here…?

Howard Zehr:
No. And that’s partly the result, it’s a long story, but the effort in, in the ’60s we had a “therapeutic model” as in people were sick and they ought to be made, made well and so we had indeterminate sentences cause the idea was you’d hold people in prison until they got better. Well, who decides that? It turned out to be a real control device because all you had to have with one write-up for some silly thing, and you didn’t get out.

patience kamau:
Very subjective.

Howard Zehr:
Oh it was so arbitrary! And so Progressive’s got this idea, let’s just call it “just deserves,” let’s say we’re just punishing people…it’ll be a limited time. You take the discretion out of the system and that’ll be better. Well, it didn’t move…it didn’t take the racism out of the system at all –it moved it out of the public into the places where you can’t see it. So we moved from a “medical model,” which had its problems to a “just deserves model”…

patience kamau:
…a just…?

Howard Zehr:
…a “just deserves” — make sure people get, you’re just, you just, you’re gonna…

patience kamau:
…”just deserves”…

Howard Zehr:
… what you deserve, period. Your punishment, that’s it. And so we’re going to have fixed sentencing, mandatory sentences, the judges are going to be told what the sentences are and so forth. But it, it didn’t get rid of the “arbitrary-ness” and racism, and as I said, it just moved it into the prosecutor’s office, things like that. But in the process, a lot of the legislation wrote the idea of their rehabilitation just out of the law –they even lost the language of “corrections.” It’s sort of coming back, but you know, it became a punishment system.

patience kamau:
Right. Exclusively that. Yeah, and was that probably part of the, the bill, the Crimes bill that passed in the ’90s that I think also made mandatory, mandatory sentences that just had a really, really severe effect on the black and African American communities, Black and Brown bodied people.

Howard Zehr:
It did yeah. Well, it’s ironic because part of the reasons Progressives pushed it is they thought it would reduce that…

patience kamau:
…but it had the completely opposite effect…

Howard Zehr:
…of course it didn’t, yeah. And it’s partly because of the indicators that were used to set those mandatory sentences. It was partly because the Conservatives saw this as a chance to actually increase the punishment — sure they like punishment. So I think that the more Progressive were pretty naive and looking back on this, but yeah, it just turned into…you know, every social intervention, whether…no matter how well you intend, is going to have unintended consequences. And this is an example of that — this whole movement had huge, unintended consequences.

patience kamau:
That are hopefully being corrected now. Well, slowly, …

Howard Zehr:
…slowly…

patience kamau:
…yeah, yeah…

Howard Zehr:
…piecemeal…

patience kamau:
That’s right.

[Transition music plays]

patience kamau:
How has the peacebuilding field, in your opinion, changed in the last 25 years?

Howard Zehr:
Well, it’s, it’s certainly expanded, become more expansive. Certainly our definition of peacemaking, uh, peacebuilding here has become more expansive. We now include organizational issues, we include trauma, restorative justice in it –that wasn’t there when this program started, there might’ve been some idea that it ought to expand, but…it’s certainly expanded. Um, the “conflict transformation,” I’m sorry, the “conflict resolution” field, it’s certainly quite large, but it’s also become sort of old hat too, I think…it’s…so, I think our definition of it is a much more expansive one than a lot of people understand it.

patience kamau:
Our definition of peacebuilding or conflict transformation?

Howard Zehr:
Of peacebuilding and conflict transformation really, probably.

patience kamau:
What do you mean by saying the “conflict resolution” one is very expensive?

Howard Zehr:
Well, there’s a lot of programs within, a lot of them aren’t very…well for one thing, lawyers have sort of uh co-opted it. There’s a book, year’s ago really, that I found really helpful to trace the history of mediation in this country and the takeover, the co-optation by lawyers. I mean it’s an example of what I said –first you ignore it and then you fight it, and then you find ways to co-opt it and it has been taken over.

I mean a lot of us in the ’70s were advocating mediation as a way to involve the community –that really grassroots kind of, but a lot of that’s gone. These are agency-based mediation programs, lawyers are doing a lot of it, and I worry about that with restorative justice as well. My bias, when I was working –helping these communities, I was always thinking, “how do you build a community base for this?” “How do you organize, operate?” Sure you work in cooperation with the system, but it needs to be community based, uh, and not just another agency.

patience kamau:
All right, I think we’re almost done. Is there anything else you’d like to add that we haven’t talked about –you’d like to mention?

Howard Zehr:
One thing I couldn’t, you know, I said I’m really interested in photography and I’ve tried to use that in my justice work, and I used to teach photography here. I taught research too, which I really enjoyed doing. But when I first came here, I don’t think anybody wanted to teach research and they just dumped it on me and, they didn’t give me any guidelines.

But I discovered that there’s this whole emerging field of qualitative research –it was going in the same direction I had been going as a photographer and others…that was looking much more at a much more respectful perspective of relationship between the person being so-called “researched” and “the researchers” and more collaborative. It was just so many…it was coming out of, uh, out of, uh, studies around race and gender a lot and feminist studies. But, so I developed a qualitative research course that people, my former students still say this, tell me every so often it’s the thing they use the most, the skill they learned the most here. And it was, it was, uh, it was just a very exciting course, believe it or not [both laugh].

patience kamau:
I believe it!

Howard Zehr:
And then eventually I began, when I didn’t teach that I taught a course called “contemplative photography,” which I had a lot of fun with too and out of that came “The Little Book of Contemplative Photography.”

patience kamau:
How come there was no “Little Book of Qualitative Research”?

Howard Zehr:
You know, I thought about it, I just never got around to doing it, but I thought about doing that. Yeah.

patience kamau:
Yeah, yeah. So what is it that your students tell you that they go back to from that qualitative research class?

Howard Zehr:
Part of it is the interview or the conversational…

patience kamau:
…mm-hm, aspect of things…

Howard Zehr:
…cause, it was an interview based, court interview and I really believed in the importance of visuals, communication, a lot of communication is visual and so I tried to help people combine visuals and words and then, Paulette Moore and I taught for a few years here at the end, we taught a course called “research as art and transformation” where we explicitly incorporate art into the research process.

patience kamau:
Yeah, I think that’s it, so, thank you very much Howard.

Howard Zehr:
Thank you.

patience kamau:
It’s been a joy.

Howard Zehr:
Yeah, it’s fun talking with you!

patience kamau:
You as well.

patience kamau:
Howard is the author of “Changing Lenses,” “The Little Book of Restorative Justice,” “Doing Life: Reflections of Men and Women Serving Life Sentences,” and “Transcending: Reflections of Crime Victims.

[Outro music begins to play and fades into background]

patience kamau:
All the music you hear on this podcast has been composed by: the one and only Luke Mullet. Our audio mixing engineer extraordinaire is: Stephen Angello. Audio editing support was generously provided by: Michaela Mast. And I am the podcast executive producer, audio recording engineer, editor and host: patience kamau. As you are able, please remember to subscribe, rate and review this podcast so that other peacebuilders may find it. We’ll be back with a new episode in two weeks! Thank you so much for listening and join us again next time! .

[Outro music fades back in, and ends]

In this episode, Katie Mansfield, lead trainer of the Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience (STAR) program at the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding (CJP), speaks about her path to STAR from working in multinational banking during 9/11, polyvagal theory, and her dissertation work on embodied trauma healing.

Mansfield, who was raised on Long Island, flew back to New York on September 8, 2011, to be close to her mother after her grandmother’s death. She lost friends in the terror attacks on September 11.

“I was physically present with both a sense of fear and powerlessness that I had not, until that point, experienced in my body before,” Mansfield says. A few years later, she quit her job and began learning about different ways of seeing the world from a family in India – a peace education teacher; his wife, a human rights lawyer; and his mother, the first female high court justice in the country.

During “time around their table, they were just removing dirt from my eyes,” Mansfield says. When she returned to the States, she worked with the organization Peace Games alongside school children grappling with neighborhood violence and interpersonal conflict. Her mentor there suggested she pursue further education in peace studies.

Mansfield went on to study under John Paul Lederach at the Kroc Institute at Notre Dame, who suggested she take a class in restorative justice at the program he helped found – CJP. After finishing her master’s in international peace studies, she attended the Summer Peacebuilding Institute in 2009, which “made a very strong impression.”

She recalls attending a STAR training in 2010, where she talked about her experiences on 9/11. Another attendee from Somalia told her, “Well, now you know how we feel every day.”

Mansfield’s doctoral dissertation, Re-friending My Body: Arts-based, embodied learning for restoring my entirety, in part draws on neuroscientist Stephen Porges’ polyvagal theory, which deals with the vagus nerve’s role in the embodiment of emotion and trauma.

“So many of us are learning the words, but not the embodiment,” Mansfield says. “Trauma and joy and life land on the body, and systems and structures, and how people respond to us is because of what’s happening in the nervous system. Do I feel safe in a situation in my body, or do I feel endangered?”

In researching for her dissertation, Mansfield was confronted with the power and privilege she’s experienced in her own life, and their effects on how she interacts with others. Similarly, she sees one of CJP’s core challenges now, at its 25th anniversary, as overcoming a tradition of “helpers and healers” going from a privileged and safe position to help others in less privileged situations.

“That model is a holdover from colonial mindsets, and it is not fully respectful of the incredible resilience, capacity, wisdom, power, healthy power that exists in all of these communities that some people are trying to go help,” Mansfield says.

Guest

Katie Mansfield

Katie Mansfield is the Lead Trainer for the Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience program, or STAR, here at CJP.

Before joining STAR, Katie worked with Mennonite Central Committee in Kenya for three years as peacebuilding coordinator. Previously she was an apprentice with John Paul Lederach at Notre Dame’s Kroc Institute, researching, writing, planning and network building with initiatives in Colombia, Argentina, Thailand and Nepal. She also worked with CDA Collaborative Learning Projects and engaged in peace education work in Boston, Davao, Mindanao and Delhi, India. Prior to working in peacebuilding, she worked for eight years with a major multi-national bank in New York and London.

Katie is a Ph.D., candidate in Expressive Arts and Conflict Transformation with the European Graduate School in Switzerland. She completed her M.A. in International Peace Studies at the Kroc Institute in 2008 and her AB in History at Harvard University in 1996. She has also completed teacher trainings in yoga, healing dance and Integrative Energetic Medicine.

Transcript

Katie Mansfield:
Rumi’s poem, “The guest house” is here on the wall, right?

“This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.”

[Theme music plays and fades into background]

patience kamau:
Hey everybody, happy Wednesday to you! And welcome back to Peacebuilder, a Conflict Transformation podcast by the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding. My name is patience Kamau and with us this eighth episode:

Katie Mansfield:
Katie Mansfield, and I’m the lead trainer for the STAR program — Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience.

patience kamau:
Katie Mansfield is the Lead Trainer for the Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience program, or STAR, here at CJP. Before joining STAR, Katie worked with Mennonite Central Committee in Kenya for three years as peacebuilding coordinator. Previously she was an apprentice with John Paul Lederach at Notre Dame’s Kroc Institute, researching, writing, planning and network building with initiatives in Colombia, Argentina, Thailand and Nepal. She also worked with CDA Collaborative Learning Projects and engaged in peace education work in Boston, Davao, Mindanao and Delhi, India.

Prior to working in peacebuilding, she worked for eight years with a major multi-national bank in New York and London. Katie is a Ph.D., candidate in Expressive Arts and Conflict Transformation with the European Graduate School in Switzerland. She completed her M.A. in International Peace Studies at the Kroc Institute in 2008 and her AB in History at Harvard University in 1996. She has also completed teacher trainings in yoga, healing dance and Integrative Energetic Medicine.

[Theme music fades back in, in a crescendo and ends]

patience kamau:
Good morning Katie!

Katie Mansfield:
Good morning patience.

patience kamau:
How are you today?

Katie Mansfield:
I’m doing well.

patience kamau:
Good, glad to have you here!

Katie Mansfield:
Thank you.

patience kamau:
So let’s begin by you just telling us your story of how you ended up here at 91����Ƶ, CTP/CJP.

Katie Mansfield:
I suppose the shortest answer to that question is, um, is sort of two-fold. When I was doing my, uh, masters in international peace studies at the Kroc Institute at Notre Dame in Indiana, John Paul Lederach who had started the program here –or who was among the team of people who started the program here– was my faculty research advisor, and then I got to, uh, be part of a group of people who were apprenticed with him. Um, he got funding for a peacebuilding apprenticeship pilot program. And during that apprenticeship he said, “you know, you should take a restorative justice class at 91����Ƶ.” So I came for SPI in 2009 after finishing my master’s in 2008, and um, that made a very strong impression on me.

patience kamau:
Mm — in what way?

Katie Mansfield:
Well, one was the, the energy of the Summer Peacebuilding Institute, and um, yeah, there were some things that were really extraordinary that happened, like conversations with classmates. As I was studying restorative justice and grappling with some –frankly harm that I had done, I received an out of the blue email from a person I had harmed, suggesting forgiveness and mercy. And so it was really extraordinary that like being here, learning about this, really engaging my body, mind and spirit in, you know, how to address harms, including the ones that I have done. And then having whatever energy came from that invite and magnetize an email from someone on the other side of the globe, um, was really extraordinary.

So that was my first experience here. Um, and, and learning with Lorraine and Howard was really life-giving. So that was the first time coming here and the next year, uh, as part of a research project that I was doing, I got to come to STAR, in Minneapolis, so with Elaine Zook Barge and Donna Minter, and so that was kinda my second CJP-ish experience. And I didn’t know when I was taking STAR that I would be moving to Kenya six months later. Um, but when I did got to work really closely with CJP alum, the late, Doreen Ruto. And so when…and then a number of CJP people had said hello while I was in Kenya, cause people come through, you know, so Vernon and Elaine and Jan Jenner. And so when I came back, I checked in to say hi and said, “you know what Doreen and I have been doing?” And uh, they said, “Hm, there might be a job you should apply for.”

patience kamau:
And what was that job?

Katie Mansfield:
At the time the job title was STAR director –my role now is the Lead Trainer of STAR because we’ve had some organizational shifts.

patience kamau:
So that transition from…what does it mean to be “the Lead Trainer”?

Katie Mansfield:
Uh, it means that I get to learn from a lot of people in environments ranging from, you know, sort of more intimate groups from 15 to 25 people in a five-day training, to larger groups. You know, young people who are new Americans at the Harrisonburg High School who are a part of something called “peer leaders,” and we do a one day thing for young people looking at how, um, adverse experiences hit our nervous systems, to two or three day trainings that, you know, more recently we’ve been doing things with organizations that are trying to address harm within their organizational structures that are, that are both structural like structural racism, structural sexism, as well as things that have happened between individuals.

So sometimes we not only do the five day star trainings, um, but we also are customizing things to work with, with particular situations, uh, to bring some of the processes and practices that we talk about and teach about, and practice in STAR, um, to particular organizations and groups.

patience kamau:
Mm, are there things that you can boil down to what STAR actually teaches?

Katie Mansfield:
Yeah, so STAR draws on, um, at least five fields of theory and practice. Um, so if you, depending which way you want to turn the star, um, you might start with “trauma and resilience studies,” “conflict transformation,” “restorative justice,” “human security,” and um, “spirituality” –kind of broadly defined. So those are the five areas, right? “Trauma and resilience studies,” “conflict, transformation,” “restorative justice,” “human security,” and “spirituality and meaning making.”

So each of those is, in and of itself, a huge body of theory and practice, and these were brought together in the wake of September 11, 2001 when, um, Church World Service came to the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding and said, “y’all have been doing a lot of work in a lot of other people’s contexts, can you develop something for community and religious leaders who are responding in the U.S. to what just happened?”

And so Carolyn Yoder worked with a team of CJP faculty, and some people who were students at the time, to develop a curriculum that drew upon, the deep pillars. You know, Lisa Schirch’s work in human security, um, multiple people’s work in conflict transformation, restorative justice, and, and trauma and resilience studies –Nancy Good, and Barry Hart had been doing a lot of work around trauma for a long time. And so, drawing on the stuff that was here as well as stuff that was outside the CJP, Carolyn wove together a five day “experiential training,” is one way to put it.

patience kamau:
She wrote The Little Book of Trauma Healing, right?

Katie Mansfield:
Yeah.

patience kamau:
Was it around the same time?

Katie Mansfield:
The original Little Book of Trauma Healing was published in 2005. Um, so the first STAR workshops were in 2002, early 2002, the Little Book was published in 2005 –and she’s actually in the process of revising and updating it, so maybe it will even coincide with the anniversary.

patience kamau:
Oh wow. That’d be great!
Um, if I recall correctly, you…so how have you processed the intersection between how STAR came to be as a result of September 11 and yourself or in New York City on that day?

Katie Mansfield:
Yeah.

patience kamau:
How has the your internalization of that been? What’s your process?

Katie Mansfield:
Yeah, well, certainly requires some drawing on spirituality and meaning making, right?

patience kamau:
Yeah, yeah! You were in the city on the day itself?

Katie Mansfield:
Yeah, and I am a New Yorker, you know, my parents are Brooklyn born and I was raised on Long Island and um, a few dozen friends and, um, family members of friends were killed on that day. So I was both physically present with, um, a sense of peer of, of fear and powerlessness that I had not, until that point, experienced in my body before. And the loss, you know, having my grandmother go to funerals pretty much daily for two months straight, was not something that we had known in our lives. And, um, actually when I went through STAR in 2010 as a participant, I, and I tell this story often, so, um, there was a Somali lady who’s just said to me, “well, now you know how we feel every day.”

So I, I don’t tell the story as if it’s some kind of exceptional thing, and because my life had been the way it was, it was exceptional for me. Um, so I think it is one of the reasons I ended up in this work. I was doing extremely different work at that time, which is what had me down in the financial district of Manhattan.

patience kamau:
What work were you doing then?

Katie Mansfield:
I worked for a large multi-national bank for eight years, so I really didn’t have a clue that the fields of work, of “restorative justice” and “conflict transformation” and “human security” and “trauma and resilience studies,” uh, existed. I was there doing my thing. Then for me it was a version of the world falling apart. And because I had not experienced that level of fear and powerlessness in my own body before, it stopped me in my tracks. And it took me a year or two before I could think again more than five days into the future. So I used to be a longterm planner and suddenly five days was as long as I could look at. And I went back. My mom’s mom had just passed away, which was why I was in lower Manhattan that day –I was actually living in London at the time, um, because I wanted to support my mom in a time of grief, my managers in London said, “yeah, I work out of the New York office for a month.”

So I had flown in on September 8th, 2001. Um, and, and then happened to be there when it all went down. And, um, so I returned to London at the end of September. And, um, even though I had known for a long time that working in a bank wasn’t really the, the thing for me for life, I hadn’t figured out what was, um, and when my ability to future plan dried up, I just stayed in my wheel and kept spinning. I remember on the, on the plane ride to New York on September 8th reading these books about like, “what do I do with my life,” you know, kind of going through a quarter-life, “midlife crisis” early, you know, sort of thing. Um, and as soon as it happened, I just stopped thinking about the future and I stopped imagining that my life might be any different.

So when I went back to London, I just got back in my wheel and I spun for a while. Um, knowing what I know now, know that I was in a form of trauma response. Um, and after one to two years, I finally started to kind of lift my head up above the water again, and be able to see something. By 2004, I had quit my job and, um, I found some amazing teachers. Um, I found a peace education teacher in India, who , a friend had introduced me to and his wife was a human rights lawyer, so Shantum Seth was the peace educator and a Buddhist teacher. Um, his wife, Gitu was um, a human rights lawyer, his mother was the first woman high court justice in India.

So, suddenly I got to fall into learning from this family who, um, saw things very differently than how I had been seeing things. So it was like time around their table –they were just removing dirt from my eyes. Um, and I’m sure there’s still a lot of dirt in my eyes, and it led me to come back to the U.S. with a, kind of a, different perspective and an idea that there was something called “peace education.” And, um, and then I got a chance to work with an organization called Peace Games that worked in schools that were, whose students were experiencing a lot of, um, yeah, some, some neighborhood violence and just being human, and all the things that we deal with, um, in terms of peace and conflict.

And I got to play games and ask questions and learn with third graders every week. Um, and my mentor there, Steven Brion-Meisels said, you know, “if you’re interested in this, you might want to do a degree since you haven’t been doing this work very long.” And that’s what led me to Notre Dame. Um, and through there to CJP, through that to Kenya and Doreen and through really intensive work with her on trauma awareness and resilience, to then working for STAR. But without that experience of…and, of course there have been others since, um, experiencing fear and powerlessness like that, I don’t think I would be remotely equipped to do…

patience kamau:
…the work that you’re doing now?

Katie Mansfield:
Yeah.

patience kamau:
Yeah.

[Transition music plays]

patience kamau:
So you used the language of, uh, feeling trauma in your body.

Katie Mansfield:
Mm-hm.

patience kamau:
When did you actually come to that language –because you use that to describe how you felt after 9-11?

Katie Mansfield:
Mm, I imagine participating in STAR was the beginning of that –um, of really putting a fine brush on it. Often when we study, and even practice some of the many different approaches to addressing violence and responding to violence without more violence, we can have great concepts, we can have great things to say, inspiring quotes, powerful words and structures and frameworks and theories.

And um, in some ways the “body anchoring” that I now talk about, um, as really central came first out of STAR, but part of it is a much more recent, um, awareness because of what I’m working on in my thesis, which is around arts-based embodied learning. And it was really interesting just talking with a colleague a couple of days ago. I wrote down what he said, that “it is so necessary because so many of us are learning the words but not the embodiment,” right? So, so much of our learning orientation…

patience kamau:
…happens in the head?

Katie Mansfield:
Right, and yet trauma and joy and life land on the body. And systems and structures and how people respond to us is because of what’s happening in the nervous system. Do I feel safe in a situation in my body or do I feel endangered? You know, my brain can say, “oh, this is a safe place because you know, I know these people and sort of some people, I don’t know, but I can see where the exits are and there’s the sun is shining, and this is familiar, but something in my gut tells me this is not safe,” and that can be a memory from 10 years ago, or it can be a particular person who walks in, and if my body doesn’t feel safe, I’m going to have a response to that.

patience kamau:
How do we reconcile that? Or sometimes are we even aware that there’s that dissonance within us.

Katie Mansfield:
Yeah. I think, I think awareness is the first thing. And of course one of the things we learn studying trauma is that the body often knows things that we can’t quite process in our brain.

patience kamau:
What’s the physiology of that? Why is that?

Katie Mansfield:
So a lot of it relates to the Vagus nerve. Um, so Stephen Porges has written a book that’s really dense some years ago called “The Polyvagal Theory” and some other books more recently that I think are much more accessible because, unfortunately in the almost 20 years since STAR was established, there’re a lot more people talking about trauma. So fortunately and unfortunately, so I see it as both a blessing and a thing to grieve that a book about trauma is on the New York times bestseller list, right? For years.

patience kamau:
Say more about that…

Katie Mansfield:
Um, yeah. Bessel van der Kolk’s “The Body Keeps the Score” was a New York times best seller for a long while. And on the one hand, great, we need this information –public health, you know, trauma does need to be a public health concern above all because of the impacts of history, right? Historical harm, which was named to my knowledge, publicly written about, um, by Maria Yellow Horse Brave Heart, ah, talking about the historical trauma of the Lakota and by many others I’m sure in communities that I haven’t gotten to read about. Um, but we have these “foundational harms” that are still playing out in individual bodies and in organizations and in the very land that our structures sit on. Um, and we also have the legacies and aftermaths of the historical harms of enslavement playing out, and so these two things alone mean, and then if we think about “participatory-induced traumatic stress,”…

patience kamau:
What is that?

Katie Mansfield:
Uh, was originally, again, to my knowledge written about by Rachel MacNair and her focus was more around when folks go to war and come back from war. There is, um, always, uh, an honorable impulse there, and there is –at some point– a realization that participating in war is harming other human beings. And so “participatory-induced traumatic stress” basically refers to any situation when either as individuals or as large groups, we have participated in harm to other individuals or groups, …

patience kamau:
…which in turn means we’ve harmed ourselves, cause you can’t harm another without harming yourself, right?

Katie Mansfield:
Right, right. And not everybody’s gotten there yet, right.

patience kamau:
Understanding that?

Katie Mansfield:
But, um, but yes. So if you take…actually Navajo activist Mark Charles, um, said in a big meeting in Washington, D.C., he said, one of the reasons that so many, so few white Americans can talk about the historical harms of genocide or attempted genocide and enslavement are because of participatory-induced traumatic stress. And, and so he’s pointing out, it’s not only that one InBody directly did the harm, but if one InBody is benefiting from the harm, um, there is a participation and a complicity in that, and so there’s often just a, “I don’t want to talk about it.”

patience kamau:
Yeah. Yeah. Um, you had alluded earlier to the disconnection between the body and the mind and you were going to explain the phys…the difference in the, what physiologically is happening that causes that disconnect.

Katie Mansfield:
Oh, thanks for keeping me on track.

patience kamau:
No problem! :)

Katie Mansfield:
Um, so Stephen Porges brought forward The Polyvagal Theory and while there are hundreds of pages to read about that, um, the simplest way that I’ve learned to understand it is that we have this nerve and Resmaa Menakem, um, who is a therapist and author based in Minneapolis, um, calls it the “soul nerve.” Yeah. So the, the Vagus nerve or the “soul nerve” and others have called it the “wandering nerve” is this incredible apparatus in our body that anchors into the brainstem, travels down to the palate, down through the throat, past our heart, down past our digestive system, into the depths of our gut, right? So this has, this nerve has branches, um, throughout really essential systems in the body and more of the impulses through that nerve go from the gut up to the brain, than from the brain down.

patience kamau:
Oh!

Katie Mansfield:
So often we think, “oh, it’s about thinking,” “it’s about cognition,” and actually so much of how we feel safe or endangered, is what our gut sense is. And there’s probably more to say about that, the structures of the brain, but, but what this means in practical terms is that, um, whatever I might be thinking, whatever moral structures or ideas, kind of cognitive stuff I carry in my brain, if my body smells a smell, it brings back a particular memory. If my body sees a particular color, shape, thing that is associated with a memory that made my body have a huge response, that memory may not have a time stamped on it, um, cause that’s another thing, and this might be too much detail, but like in the limbic system, we have the amygdala, which is the brain’s “fear center,” and we have the hippocampus, which acts as like a time/date stamp and kind of a “filing system” like, oh, that happened on this date.

And so one of the definitions we use in STAR is from Peter Levine, who wrote years ago the book “Waking the Tiger,” uh, which is about healing trauma, and in it he offers the definition that “trauma is when our ability to respond to threat is overwhelmed.” So it’s not just, I can’t respond, but what ability I have, what capacity I have, right? Cause we, human beings have amazing capacities –it’s overwhelmed. And, and that can happen for many different reasons, from experiencing overwhelming events that show up in the headlines to a surgery gone wrong when you were under anesthesia, um, to the all too pervasive instances of domestic violence that are too many places in our world, um, to the things that we carry in our bodies because of what happened to our ancestors or because of what we know our ancestors did.

And so these things, and Resmaa Menakem, again in the book, “My Grandmother’s Hands,” he’s looking at racialized trauma in the U.S. and he’s really laying out how this stuff lives in our nervous systems. And so he speaks into why we have implicit bias and responses, because we’re carrying things from many generations ago. You know, he, he calls us “white bodied” and “black bodied” Americans, um, and he acknowledges that, that that’s a simplification and there are many bodies and there are newer immigrants who, you know, bring other stories into the picture.

And there’s our native communities who bring other stories than “white bodies” and “black bodies,” so, so, he, uh, Resmaa does a really good job –he lays out that like there’s the much talked about and named in films and in literature, historical harm of enslavement, but there is much less focus on what white folks are carrying in their bodies, probably reaching back to when they had to flee Europe because of the practices of public torture and things that were real traumagenic events that “white bodied” Americans never deal with or attend to in terms of what’s carried in their nervous systems.

Um, and he talks about “clean pain” and “dirty pain” and when he talks about “clean pain,” in some ways it, it really resonates with what we use in STAR –the “cycles of violence” diagram– is in STAR (to oversimplify what is usually an unpacking of five days), first we talk about the impacts of trauma on the body, brain, beliefs and behaviors. Then we talk about how those impacts often leave us in “cycles of violence.” And those cycles of violence can include “acting-in” on self or community and “acting-out” against others and other communities. And then in STAR we talk about how we, you know, many different strategies for moving out of those “cycles of violence,” and I really liked the way, um, Resmaa puts it cause he talks about “clean pain,” which is just really “feeling the feelings,” right.

patience kamau:
Just letting them flow through you…

Katie Mansfield:
…letting them flow through you, and there’s a lot of practices required to enable us to feel our feelings. When our ability to respond to threat has been overwhelmed or when, yeah, when we are in trauma response, even feeling what we feel can be inaccessible to many people. Um, so first there are practices for enabling ourselves to feel “clean pain,” but part of what he’s laying out is that if we don’t, we go the “dirty pain” route, which is just blowing our pain through on other people’s bodies.

patience kamau:
Ah, and is that what he’s then saying probably a lot of “white bodied” Americans have done over time?

Katie Mansfield:
Yeah, because we haven’t dealt with a “clean pain” process.

patience kamau:
Yeah. Oh wow! And what’s the third, fourth and fifth of the STAR week?

Katie Mansfield:
Oh yeah. Well, day one is usually just, um, getting onto the same page. You know, when you arrive and you’re talking about trauma and resilience, there’s a lot of arriving to do. Um, it’s not, I mean, my mother’s a math teacher and is very passionate about math and…it’s not showing up for a five day math class. There is very deep emotional material and physical material for many of us. Um, if you think about the prevalence, the tragic prevalence of sexual abuse and, uh, other abuse and how many bodies are walking around with those memories in their nervous system.

If you look at what people have suffered with systemic racism and dignity violations, um, many people have been talking about dignity violations. Our, our South African colleague Oscar jumps to mind, Oscar Siwali, you know, from the apartheid struggle –there were so many references to this, and then in the U.S. Donna Hicks wrote a book called “Dignity,” and so her languaging flows into our program. There’s evidence that a dignity violation hits the physical body and the nervous system with the same impact as a physical hit. And so from these systemic things that are kind of “in the water,” so to speak, to things that are happening when we violate each other’s dignity, whether through some kind of…and, and many times unintentionally.

patience kamau:
Micro-aggressions?

Katie Mansfield:
Yeah, and I have, yeah, and I have unfortunately done them really recently and it’s, um…

patience kamau:
…we all do. :(

Katie Mansfield:
Yeah, this is, this is being human.It brought Ibram X. Kendi –I don’t know if you’ve seen his book, “How to Be an Antiracist.” He has this great line:”I used to be more racist, I am changing.”

patience kamau:
It’s so compassionate; self-compassion.

Katie Mansfield:
Yeah.

patience kamau:
That’s good.

Katie Mansfield:
Yeah.

patience kamau:
Um, back to the days of uh, STAR.

Katie Mansfield:
Yeah. So we start getting on the same page, kind of understandings and definitions –what are we talking about when we talk about trauma? Um, and, and doing a little bit of arts-based examination of our own experiences, but not to kind of expose that to everybody in the, in the room, but just to do a little self exploration and to share with one partner. Um, so just kind of first getting on the same page, “what are we talking about?” Then we move into a segment of the journey that’s currently called, “why we don’t just get over it.” Um, and that’s where we talk about the body, the brain, the beliefs and the behaviors. Um, and I really like what Judah Oudshoorn has put in “The Little book of Restorative Justice for Sexual Abuse.” Um, which is the simple framework, which is “harms create needs, justice is meeting needs, true justice is healing.”

So we, we look at “what are the needs that are created, what is going on in bodies”? Um, and this sort of starts on the first day and, and flows into the second day of a, of a typical STAR where we unpack what’s, what, “why, why does the body feel this way?” Or “why do so many bodies feel this way?” Um, and there are many different ways to feel, right? There’s not one way that trauma hits people, but naming what are some of the common patterns of experience. Um, and part of that is just –when we are going through a trauma response, we can feel so isolated, so alone, and so, like “no one could possibly understand how this feels to me, and I don’t understand how this feels to me and I don’t have words for it and I don’t have tools for it.” That’s the nature of overwhelm and…

patience kamau:
…mm-hm, you just know you feel bad…

Katie Mansfield:
…yeah..

patience kamau:
…feel pain. Right…

Katie Mansfield:
…yeah. Or you feel fear, or you feel aggression or you, you know, you’re, you’re behaving in ways that in your thinking brain you would never behave. Meanwhile…that’s what happened to me anyway. Um, so we, we unpack to kind of do some de-stigmatizing. So for me, part of the naming of things on the “why we can’t just get over it” is in the first two days, the work of de-stigmatization, um just kind of naming common responses, and then we move into, okay, so now these things have happened to body, brain, beliefs and behaviors –what does that mean in terms of “acting-in” and “acting-out”? How does that entrap us in “cycles of violence” at the individual level and at the collective level?

And then, um, by day three –so we kind of have unpacked that by the end of day two and by day three we move into, well now “how do we transcend these cycles of violence?” “What are ways that we break free?” “How do we do acknowledgement” and “how do we reconnect,” um, either self or relationship or community. And we, we travel that path for the rest of the week focusing on all different ways to build resilience, um, by breaking “cycles of violence.” Um, and it’s funny cause we have one specific unit on the last day called “resilience and self-care,” and sometimes people look in there like, “why don’t you talk about resilience before this?” And the whole point is that we’re, number one, from the first day doing practices together that help build bodily resilience, but also that breaking “cycles of violence” is, in and of itself, both a source and a result of resilience.

[Transition music plays]

patience kamau:
Um, you talked about trauma being…or a “trauma response” being something that overwhelms our ability to respond…

Katie Mansfield:
…mm-hm…

patience kamau:
…how, how does that square-off when something really, really good happens in our lives? Because that can also be overwhelming.

Katie Mansfield:
Mm-hm, yeah!

patience kamau:
What do you think of that?

Katie Mansfield:
Well, you know what’s really interesting, um, there’s a person named Karla McLaren who, um, and I have Christen Peters of the CJP and Jonathan McRay, a CJP alum to thank for recommending this book to me. Um, Karla McLaren has written a book called “The Language of Emotions,” and um, I got to spend, I got to be part of a little thing that she and Jonathan hosted this summer, which was a grief ritual –and in that grief ritual, one of the, one of the comments she made, cause she basically lays out that every single one of our emotions has something to heal in us and something to teach us.

So the anger, the sadness, the grief, the boredom and apathy, the, the shame, the hatred, each of these things, the joy, the contentment, the happiness, they all have something to heal in us and something to teach us. And yet as humans in most cultures or many cultures, at least, we pretty much don’t want to have anything to do with anything but the joy, contentment and happiness. And so we push the anger away. We pushed the sadness away. We, we really don’t want to go there –and so we haven’t developed, frankly, the resilience and the capacity to let those emotions flow through us. And in some ways that’s, I feel like what Resmaa is talking about in terms of “clean pain,” and it’s, I think, what we’re talking about in STAR when we’re talking about acknowledgment and reconnection.

patience kamau:
Right!

Katie Mansfield:
Right? Cause it’s not that bad things are going to stop happening; but how do we actually find ways to flow with all the emotions that are here as healers and teachers for us to help us move through those experiences without doing harm to other people or without doing harm to ourselves. And one of the things she said about joy just blew me away, which was –one of the things joy does, is it drops all your protective boundaries. Anger, shame, hatred, all of these things can be nourishment to build healthy boundaries, joy, basically, it’s like “I’m connected to everything and everyone and isn’t just everything great?”

And things can sort of sneak up on us when joy is all that we’re about. Um, and if we’re not engaging with the sadness we feel, if we’re not engaging with the anger, we feel, um, again, people have heard me tell the story, but like one of my most important teachers is, um, a man from Maharastra whose name is Martin Macwan and, um, he’s been very active in the Dalit rights movement, um, for years, and when I was asking him, so he, his organization was working in like 3000 villages. And I was like, “how do you recruit people to do the work of ending caste discrimination?” And he said, well first they have to be from the place, cause then they really know what’s going on. Second, he said they have to be angry. I was like, huh? Cause you know, I was coming from this, “everybody be nice” framework. Gotta be nice. I was like, “they have to be angry?” He said, yeah, because that means the work is coming from a place of truth. And he said, the third thing is they have to have the spark of “loving-energy” to transform that anger into “loving-action.” And when I think about joy, um, and, and now losing your…

patience kamau:
…my original question? Was about joy overwhelming us.

Katie Mansfield:
Oh, right. Being overwhelmed by joy.

patience kamau:
Yeah.

Katie Mansfield:
You know, and I think we can be, right? We can have, like a wonderful series of events. You know, it’s kind of classic equanimity stuff, right? Like, I came to learn about equanimity through studying with Buddhist teachers, right? That whether you’re going really high or whether you’re going really low, you’re kind of out of equilibrium. And so to, um, and our systems are geared to bring us high and bring us low with regularity. And when we get stuck in one or the other, that’s when our nervous systems start to crumble and have some, some challenges. Um, and, and I would say, you know, on the one hand, wouldn’t it be lovely if we all just got to experience being overwhelmed by joy more often. Um, on the other hand, the loss of boundaries that that brings is a real thing and we need some protection. You know, we need to have, um, we need to be aware of what we’re carrying and what we’re taking on from other people.

And I think this is so important for all of us peacebuilding folks, right? Cause we want to change the world. We want to “celebrate, reflect and dream.” We want to do the big things and really make this world less deadly. Like, it’s a real mission, and there’s a lot that lands on our bodies in doing that work. And so we have to have processes for cleaning, clearing, maintaining, loving this body and this little energetic field of ours or else we are going to take on more than is healthy for us to take on. We’re going to get sick and we’re probably going to do some harm, because of that whole dirty pain thing. Because if we’re not tending to what is carried in our system, and that can mean self-care, it can also mean collective-care, it can mean rest.

And it can also just mean honest self-assessment, right? Cause we’re human, so we have these streams of, I don’t know about you, maybe you’re like more enlightened than this, but I’m not. And my, my wonderfully, messy self has streams of self-hatred, has streams of shame, has streams of grief, has, has streams of very painful stuff. And because I just want like, let’s be happy, you know, like, let’s, let’s find our way to joy so that we can make peace, you know? And if I don’t attend to those really yucky, thorny things that I carry inside me, then I’m not going to show up well, and I’m going to do harm.

patience kamau:
A number of times you’ve used the word “shame,” which of course to me, it brings Brene Brown to mind quite a bit. In one of her books, and maybe even her talk –she talks about “foreboding joy,” uh, which is not allowing oneself….like even when, I think the example she gives is that one time she looked at one of her children, maybe her son or her daughter sleeping, and she was overcome with joy, but she pushed it away and was, “something’s gonna go wrong any moment now” –and not allowing herself to live in that. So the balance between that, in allowing ourselves to feel joy when it comes, and also allowing ourselves to feel pain when it comes, it goes to the equanimity you’re talking about.

Katie Mansfield:
Yeah.

patience kamau:
Because the opposite is also true –there are people who do not want to feel joy because they are anticipating it disappearing and that’s our fear.

Katie Mansfield:
Yeah, yeah. I think she also said you can’t just numb the bad stuff.

patience kamau:
That’s right, you can’t numb partially.

Katie Mansfield:
So if you’re numbing the bad stuff, you’re also numbing the good stuff. And so, I mean, Rumi’s poem, “The Guest House” is here on the wall, right?

“This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.”

So the poem goes on from there. And I think this, this, you know, I love poetry and not everybody does. And some people think like, come-on, someone just got shot. These people are being attacked. This military policy is meaning thousands of people are directly under bodily threat –and you’re talking about poetry?

patience kamau:
Oh, but it’s so healing…

Katie Mansfield:
…and so, yeah. So there’s healing, but there’s also like, if you’re trying to engage in some kind of heroic work, and you’re not tending to the grief that goes with the mess that we’re in, it’s gonna bite ya. It’s going to bite you in terms of health. It bit me in terms of blind spots in my practice. It’s going to bite ya.

patience kamau:
Yeah.

[Transition music plays]

patience kamau:
Tell me about your dissertation –so what have you been writing for 10 years? You submitted a draft last Friday?

Katie Mansfield:
[Boisterous laugh] Yeah. In some ways I feel like this project has been going for my full 44 years. Um, I actually entered a Ph.D. program in 2013, so it’s been six years that I’ve been, um, in that. And, um, it’s, it’s interesting –it started out as, uh, a project that I wanted to call “re-friending the body: arts-based embodied learning for facing chronic violence,” right? So very grandiose kind of “pedestal” stuff. But in the end became a project called “re-friending my body: arts-based embodied learning for restoring my integrity.”

patience kamau:
So it changed from “re-friending THE body…” to “re-friending MY body…”

Katie Mansfield:
Mm-hm…

patience kamau:
…can you talk about what caused that change?

Katie Mansfield:
Yeah, so first of all I realized that, especially in a scholar practitioner role, there can…there’s almost like a systemic encouragement to, to talk the language of “grand theory” and to like make your mark by writing some grand theory of everything. And as I was sharing my grand theories of everything –and I have some good ones– um, I was missing really important details. And for example, I had this really awesome intention to explore racism and we were going to do that in two or three class sessions. And I am a white bodied person who has had access to all kinds of power and privilege in my life. And I only had a co-facilitator who was a person of color in one of those three classes. And the way that systematically landed on the bodies in the room was really harmful.

And so the way I set things up, was really hurtful, to particular individuals in the class, even in this thing where I had this great intention like, “yeah, we’re going to be brave and we’re going to talk about racism. We’re going to, we’re going to muddle through this together.” And we did muddle through it together, and because of certain things I didn’t see, that the system habituates people like me not to see. And I love, um, Ijeoma Oluo has been a really awesome, uh, accompaniment accompanist to my learning journey in this Ph.D. because what, what happened with that situation in the research container –so the class I was teaching was the forum for the research. And in my research, which I wanted, you know, the two pilot studies I had done, it had been so healing and everybody, not everybody, but probably…most people who talked to me had great experiences and I was like, “great, now we’re going to research this and we’re going to document it and everyone’s going to see how wonderful this work is.” Well, instead, …

patience kamau:
…what happened?

Katie Mansfield:
A number of people were really hurt in the learning container. And we got to address it in really extraordinary arts-based ways together as a learning community, and we all remain connected in relationship, and I had internalized a lot of shame –because I had many other things going on in my life. I was doing way too many STAR trainings, traveling a lot and not taking time for rest and recovery. I had some really significant mental and physical health challenges in my family system. There was a whole constellation of really challenging things happening at the same time as the research was happening. So it was a perfect storm to teach me some really profound lessons.

And when a year later I finally had the time to write about it –cause I work three-quarter time for STAR and then I take these breaks to write my dissertation. My advisor said, well, this is really courageous writing, but what are you going to do with all of that self-blame and shame? Because basically I had gone from thinking like, I know something and I have something to do about peace and about ending violence and particularly about looking at racism in this world and what the course where my, okay…so I have a lot of like, perfectionist narratives in my mind and body. I have, I had like huge, good-bad binary going on. Um, and uh, Robin DiAngelo in the book “White Fragility” talks about how the good-bad binary is one of the biggest stumbling blocks to us addressing racism in this country, because you can’t do a racist harm and still be a good…and still think of yourself as a good person.

patience kamau:
Oh, but we’re so complex!

Katie Mansfield:
Right? We are complex and you know, we’ve been raised in a racist system –generations of our people globally have been raised in, you know, racist systems. And so of course it’s in us and you know, she just names that when you get feedback about having done something that is a racial harm, you have options. You can say thank you, now I’m learning, or you can go to this place of shame that shuts down any possibility for learning.

patience kamau:
Right, right, right.

Katie Mansfield:
And, and that, that goes back to the nervous system stuff, right? When our ability to respond to threat is overwhelmed. So because of the dynamics of racism, someone saying, “hey, you just did something that was racist,” gets…like to be kind of a threat to me…cause I internalized that as like, “I’m a bad person, I’m a bad person.” You know, this is some kind of attack, right? And then we become overwhelmed cause we don’t want to be bad people and we want to think like, “no, no, I’m not racist –I’m a good person.” Anyway, Robin DiAngelo explains all that –and I read White Fragility –I was like, “oh yeah, people do that.” Well, then [chuckles]…

patience kamau:
…it came home to roost?

Katie Mansfield:
…finally I realized like, “oh!” And what she names is like, people get so defensive, particularly white people get so defensive when someone calls a racial harm, and so the, the good news I guess is that I didn’t get super defensive. I was like, “wow, I got work to do.” And, and we openly processed some of it as a class, and I’m sure not nearly to the level of needs that everybody had, cause you know, I’m learning and we’re all learning. And while I was able to be non-defensive, there was a part of me that really internalized, “I am a horrible person.” “Who am I to call myself a peacebuilder?” “Who am I to call myself an educator?” “Who am I to call myself trauma-informed?”

Like I went to a real complete dismissal of myself –and there were a lot of other things going on in my life, it wasn’t just about this, but this was the thing that tipped me into thinking “I don’t belong here, I got nothing.” And what was so extraordinary is that because of the structure of three-quarter time working for STAR and one-quarter of my time to work on things, I actually got to go through what I think of as a three-phase healing process, engaging arts-based, embodied learning for myself.

patience kamau:
What are those three?

Katie Mansfield:
And so the first part was when, um, one of the students in the class said, I would like to bring a group of educators from my country to take the five-day class with you and we’ll co-teach it. And we did, and we had an incredible experience. And so it was like, Oh yeah, there’s something to this. And the second thing was after I did the writing, and my advisor named, “there’s a lot of shame and self-blame,” I did this seven day process and each day was on a different chakra, so a different energetic center of the body and focusing on that through drawing, through dance and through journaling and sometimes with, um, a friend helping me out, you know, like for example, current CJP student Yasmiene Mabrouk, as I was telling them about this healing process I was doing, they said, “you know, you do you want to do it all alone or do you want someone to work with you? I got all my papers done so maybe I could help you out.”

And so they agreed to come and I got to tell a person who hadn’t been in the, “the shame container,” [chuckles] no, I mean was it was a “learning container,” um, I got to tell them the story and then they helped me engage and we co-created a process that day. And this was about the solar plexus chakra, which is the, the energetic seat of power in the body…

patience kamau:
…you are pointing to your diaphragm…

Katie Mansfield:
Yeah, pointing to my diaphragm. So this is the energetic seat of power in the body. And it’s also the energetic seat of kind of like the story I hold about who I am in this world. And so that was the day that they joined me. They helped me land on the questions –“how do I do accountability without shame or attack?” You know, which is basically, again, going back to “clean pain,” right? But really digging into that and, and doing it in ways that included, um, an arts-based process that was both individual and relational and doing work about how to use power in healthy ways. And part of my thesis is coming to a definite…a definition of resilience, which was “healthy power in the midst of vulnerability and uncertainty.”

patience kamau:
“Healthy power in the midst of vulnerability and uncertainty.”

Katie Mansfield:
Yeah, because often people think resilience –well that’s just being strong, being like a rock. Well actually…

patience kamau:
…stiff upper lip?

Katie Mansfield:
…that hasn’t served us so well! Um, so that was one example of when another person came in and helped, you know, bring the process and, and they made the great point –like if you’re dealing with power, it’s good to have an accountable situation and be accountable to another person. So I did, so the first thing was with the group of educators from, from Korea. The second thing was with, um, …

patience kamau:
Oh, was this, was this what Eunkyung Ahn organized?

Katie Mansfield:
Yes, yes. So Eunkyung had taken the class and she had been part of both the really challenging and healing set of things that went on in the class. And in spite of it all or because of it all, she said, “I want us to bring a group of Korean educators who are focused on bringing restorative justice in schools.” So she brought them and together we co-facilitated a week of arts-based embodied learning with those educators.

And it was really life-giving and um, working with Eunkyung was life-giving and working with these educators. So, so it was restorative for me as well because instead of the deep imprint of sadness and “oh no, I hurt people,” um, that I had been carrying, it was like, “oh well, also we can do this work in healing ways.” And then a few months later I did this seven day process, some on my own and some with, um, accompaniment, and because I did that and I saw how much that healed in seven days, the final two months of working on my dissertation, I set up, um, so that every single day included, yes, some reading and some writing, but also arts-based processing, including dancing, including, um, drawing, including journaling and uh, with the added benefit -cause it was summertime in the Shenandoah Valley- of a lot of touching the earth, both through gardening and through just literally putting my body on the ground.

And it’s funny, I was talking with Molly Stover who is a local craftsperson and quilter and there’s a pillow that I bought from her months ago that said, be still and listen, the earth is singing. And had this unbelievable experience where I was doing these daily processes and I, I had started to look more into ecology and like Soula Pefkaros, you know, a CJP alum has done a good deep look at, at, um, eco-psychology, and so I can’t pretend to be any kind of expert on it, but I just started to really touch the earth more and, and stop moving around so much. In a six week stretch this year there was a trip to Afghanistan and back and a trip to Kenya and back. Like these bodies were not made to go those distances in such short times, you know, maybe not in a lifetime.

But anyway, I just really prioritized being still, and the last three weeks I think I left my house a handful of times; and being still and listening, stories came through me. I got my poetry back. Like I wrote this one poem, “please help me find my poetry,” like in the first healing process. And like, so the poem started to come again and the like stories, a creation story came out and I have never written a creation story in my life. And then a few months later, Yasmiene, they said, why don’t we read Sacred Instructions because we’re doing an independent study. Um, and Sacred Instructions is by Sherri Mitchell and it’s in the subtitle is: “Indigenous Wisdom for Healing Trauma [sic]”…maybe I have mixed up on the subtitle, but Sherri Mitchell, um, comes from up in the Penobscot area of Maine, and is deeply grounded in her own culture and has written a gift of a book that speaks about conflict transformation that speaks about trauma and grief. And the opening chapter is creation stories and there was so much resonance –and you know, I’m like, I’m pretty white person and as Tala and I have been talking about, we are all indigenous to somewhere, if you go far enough back.

patience kamau:
Tala, our current student, Bautista.

Katie Mansfield:
Yeah, who’s got so much amazing teaching that she is imparting to me! And um, as I read her some of the stuff that had come out in the creation story that I got by sitting still and listening to the earth, were like almost the exact same. And I just realized like she’s coming from a culture that has, since time immemorial, listened to and cared for the earth. I have not been in that cultural space. When I just got still enough, that story came through me and it was really kind of a moment of like, “oh, right, we need to be still,” and to re-institute our creativity. And you know, of course John Paul talks about the, creativity being a critical ingredient in “The Moral Imagination,” and that always stuck with me, um, but it stayed in a different way. Um, when I actually got to be really earth grounded, um, for a couple of months.

So the process ended up starting as like, “ooh, let me showcase how beautiful arts-based, embodied learning can be for people who are working as activists or educators or restorative justice practitioners” to, you know, make the world a better place by, uh, addressing violence with nonviolence. Right? So I went from kind of this big picture thing to like, wait a minute, I created a harm and I have gone through a process to address it, but I haven’t fully addressed it in myself because I didn’t fully deal with the “clean pain.” Um, and so in order to go with integrity into the next stage of my life, I need it to do a lot of work cleaning up.

And it, it, it enables me now to kind of talk about where I am and what messiness I have, and what gifts I have with a different kind of humor, than I could certainly in the midst of that, and probably even before, you know, I think I, I probably took myself too seriously before and didn’t take the pain that so many bodies carry seriously enough. I’m sure I don’t fully even understand now. And this is, this was what I was about to talk about a while ago from Ijeoma Oluo, in her book “So you want to talk about race,” she says “know the limits of your empathy;” and I just find that really helpful advice, especially for white folks. Right? Cause there can be this thing like if I, if I’m present enough, if I’m loving enough, if I’m caring enough, like guess what, we know nothing of another body’s experience.

patience kamau:
Ah, maybe that’s why your dissertation changed from “the” body to “my” body.

Katie Mansfield:
Exactly. Exactly.

patience kamau:
Um, something’s just occurring to me as you’ve been talking –you, you’re of Italian background, right?

Katie Mansfield:
That’s one quarter of my heritage.

patience kamau:
All right. So just in general, personally being an immigrant to this country and something that I wrestled with or just that I observe –so much of a lot of white bodied people lose…have lost from my observation, and I don’t know whether I’m right or not, but from my perception, have lost their own background and that feels to me like a loss….it’s, it presents in strange ways. Like people are threatened when they hear somebody else speaking a different language that they don’t understand. Um, I’m thinking of one of our really great teachers and leaders, uh, in Kenya and a lot of East Africa, probably Africa in general, but Mr. Lumumba, he is a professor and he talks about how when there are tribal Wars, like in Africa, they are referred to as “tribal Wars,” but when they are tribal Wars for example, in Europe, which were the World Wars, they’re referred to as “World Wars,” but really they’re tribal, you know, the Germans fighting the Polish, and this and that. But there’s this desire that over time, at least within America, everyone overtime stops being Polish or this and that.

I mean it’s still there you know, like there’re Irish celebrations and what have you, but the overarching identity is being white. But that has not always been true because for example, if you go to Ellis Island, you see all these uh, obstacles to, “oh now they’re coming from East Europe and they’re dark-eyed,” and this and that…but then over time now everyone’s just “white.” Like what are your thoughts on that? It’s just interesting to me –feels like a loss of identity, I don’t know?

Katie Mansfield:
Yeah. Um, there is, there is. In fact, this very morning I was reading through this beautiful book that my aunt created that traces four or five generations of our Irish heritage ancestors and what we know about them practically, cause she’s my aunt Pat is an amazing genealogist, and in my thesis I…part of what I…so one of the things Karla talked about in the grief ritual was that the ancestors are always willing to help, but you need to ask. And she said there’s a lot of unemployment on the other side. So like we’re not asking our ancestors questions, not inviting their help, and that’s part of the cultural loss, right? Cause we’re so focused on “now” and “to-do lists” and “the future” that I think a lot of, particularly white bodied Americans, don’t recognize the past that lies before us, right?

As, as J.B. [Jebiwot] Sumbeiywo said. Um, and so one of the things I did very intentionally each morning was name specific ancestors, my grandparents have all passed on, so naming my grandparents, naming some of their forebears, both the ones who I know a lot of their joyous self lives through me, but also the ones about whom I’ve heard stories of really terrible mental health, pain, abuse. And it’s just been an incredible experience because my mother’s father, who was the, the Sicilian part of me, yeah, my mom’s dad, his family came from Sicily.

patience kamau:
So he spoke Italian?

Katie Mansfield:
Yeah, he spoke Sicilian dialect. How much have you…

Katie Mansfield:
If you listened to Sicilian –Italians will tell you that’s not Italian. [Laughs] But yes, he spoke both Italian and Sicilian dialect and his parents came and they, um, apparently his mother never wanted to learn English and, and she was apparently, I just learned this through this process cause I started asking my mother more questions about my ancestors. Like, so what do you know about grandma Rosina and grandpa Antonio? And we have some amazing family stories about them, but I started hearing these pains like, “oh, grandpa Antonio just went and got grandma Rosina and brought her here and she never wanted to be here,” right? So inherent in that is like the patriarchy, right? A woman who didn’t want to leave her place but had to because that’s how marriage worked and no power to do anything about that. And then there’s my own grandfather, Rosina’s son, who died young of pancreatic cancer, who I have heard of as a very loving person, as an achiever, as a perfectionist. And one of the things that’s amazing, right –on a really superficial level, racism is about skin. Obviously. It’s not about skin, it’s about history. It’s about original sin, you know, is one of the titles.

But I had, I have had some skin cancer and I realized there is a parallel process going on because when I, I’ve had some things cut off me before, but recently I had something on a very prominent place on my chest, like right below my neck. And so the doctor said, well, why don’t we do a topical cream instead of, uh, cutting it. And my chest got so inflamed and infected and I couldn’t sleep. And energetically this sits between my heart-center, which is the seat of love-relationships, and my throat, which is voice and self-expression.

And so I had this terrible situation and then I got to be part of, um, energetic medicine learning and one of my classmates did a session on me and asked about my liver. And I was like, no, no, we need to work with the chest here. And the thing is, the liver energetically is the seat of anger in the body. And she got me to talk about all the unexpressed anger that I had in my life about love-relationships. And the next day that wound dried up. And as I’m doing this process and writing about healing from shame and all the different things that come into play when we’re trying to address a lot of different forms of violence, but particularly racism in a U.S. context, I realized that I was dealing with skin and my grandfather was a dermatologist and I got this one poem that is also about dealing with those dark emotions that we don’t want to deal with?

It was, “I sat in the shadow, the shade of this tree had enough sun on my face in this life. Too much sun translates as skin cancer for me. Had enough sun on my face in this life, was taught to be light, stay out of the shadows. Now I’m not sure where that too well lit road goes. I’ve had to cut parts of me off.” And so I think the work of all of us, and of course many of us cannot trace our ancestors, right? For many people that was completely disrupted systematically, people were cut away from their families…

patience kamau:
Right!

Katie Mansfield:
So first we have to acknowledge there were people who cannot trace their ancestry. And then for those who can, and especially the white bodied ones who haven’t dealt with some of the “clean pain” that their ancestors were probably carrying and that they’re still carrying in their nervous systems, this journey can really unearth some amazing gifts and I’m inclined to believe that the healing does reach backwards through the generations. I had like a little dance party with all my grandparents when I finally hit send.

[Transition music plays]

patience kamau:
So Katie, what do you think CJP should be celebrating right now? I mean, you’ve been here for five years, will be soon, what’s to celebrate in this, at this milestone in your opinion?

Katie Mansfield:
Yeah, I mean, in some ways the difficulty is the celebration. Um, and so what I see as one of our core difficulties right now is –I feel like we come out of a tradition of helpers and healers going to help other people. And that’s not entirely true, right? The idea of the education that happens here is that everyone who goes through it is the helper and healer for their own place. Right? But if you think about kind of historically, systemically, what are the origins of some of this peace and conflict work? It involves people from a more privileged and safe position going to people who were in less privileged and more endangered positions and critical theory and systemic lenses are making it real clear that that model is a holdover of colonial…

patience kamau:
…mindsets?

Katie Mansfield:
Mindsets, right. And that it is not fully respectful of the incredible resilience, capacity, wisdom, power, healthy power that exists in all of these communities that people are, some people are trying to go help. And so that that justice lens, that systemic justice lens says, things have to change. You know who, who are the bodies in leadership in different spaces talking about different issues? Why don’t you have a person of color leading all of the conversations about racism? And then there are other issues with that, right? There’s, there’s other people who would say, well, no, you can’t put all the emotional labor on the people of color, you have to have people carrying their own part of the burden.

So it’s, it’s more complicated than any one sentence can do justice to. But, you know, particular to trauma, I noticed just in the course of the last two years that I used to talk from the works of primarily white authors who were all coming from a more clinical understanding of trauma, but making that clinical understanding accessible to other people. And there’s a lot missing from that, if what you’re saying, that’s what trauma theory is because there’s a huge body of radical feminist theory and of critical race theory and practice from many different cultures worldwide, in particular a lot of indigenous cultures, to address trauma that’s not coming out of clinical stuff and has huge amounts to teach us about trauma and resilience.

And so I think there’s a balancing going on, where I hope that we can celebrate the voices that are guiding us, be a much greater multiplicity. Um, because you know, I, I came in here like “wow, these Mennonites they know peace,” and there’s a lot of awesome wisdom from Mennonite traditions, and there are so many people who know peace and who grapple with violence and who have huge amounts of wisdom and resilience to teach. And so I celebrate that I think we are, I think we’re trying to honor that.

patience kamau:
We’re trying, Yeah. So looking down, 25 years down, the lane what do you hope CJP will be? CJP at 50?

Katie Mansfield:
I think CJP at 50 might draw on the awesome multiplicity of perspectives of its alumni to bring a wisdom that has grounding in many different places and traditions, but not in a way that’s just about like a good show, but in a way that I don’t yet have the exact words for it. I have like a few hundred pages of words for it, but I haven’t yet figured out how to put a really fine point on it, which is like when each person is doing the thing that is informed by their own deep roots, change comes maybe more slowly, but it’s grounded and I think the earth is singing, I also think the earth is crying –so for each of us to both physically get more grounded in the place we are and not think there is some grand theory of everything that we can go all over the place dropping.

And that was never the approach, right? The approach was always elicitive, always like “the wisdom is in the room,” have the right conversations, have an elicitive structure and the wisdom that’s in the room will emerge. So I do believe that’s always been the approach and still coming to a real creative structure that allows for much more fluidity for much more exchange, for much more, “here’s the deep embodied wisdom that comes from this place.” I think that can stimulate the kind of creativity and a grounded creativity.

So, you know, there’s, there’s kind of one version of creativity that’s like, “Ooh, look, I can paint something beautiful,” but a grounded creativity is like, you know, when Wendell Berry writes “be joyful, though you have considered all the facts,” right? Like if, if we have bodies who are grounded in place and in earth and not thinking that there’s one approach that’s going to fit…I mean I, this feels so obvious, right? It feels so obvious –like obviously one size does not fit all, and I think there’s still so much, like I thought I knew a lot of stuff and then I had no clue. I, I’ve called it power oblivion in my, in my dissertation. Like I had no clue about my own power and how to use that helpfully or not helpfully. And so I guess finding ways for people to discover and continue reviving their healthy power in grounded ways.

But I don’t know, I feel like even the question of where to be in 50 years is not necessarily a healthy question for us to be answering, cause we have really huge things happening to the earth now. And so that idea of vision, right, I love Elise Boulding’s 200-year present, you know, I think it was Václav Havel who said, hope is not necessarily, you know, knowing what the result is going to be, but hope is knowing that what you’re doing now makes sense regardless of the outcome. And so I, I almost feel like I have no view of 50 years and I really, really hope that we can learn to be more present with each other. I know, and really all of those things have to happen at the same time. Um, I really hope that in 50 years we know much better how to address the past, and to be present.

[Transition music]

patience kamau:
We’re almost done, so in just closing, Katie, what do you do for fun?

Katie Mansfield:
Hm, well, dance is the, the word that most people would shout out…

patience kamau:
…associate with you…

Katie Mansfield:
If they had to answer this question. So I do dance. Um, and, and last night I had the most incredible experience –I woke up, you know, uh, kinda in the middle of the night, and I remembered that it was a clear night and it was the new moon. So I went outside and I lay on a big bolster pillow and I looked up at the sky and I got to see two shooting stars. So I think my answer a few months ago would have been like, well, I dance, and I write and I cook and I host and I go hiking in the woods. I do those things and they’re great –and the power of being still and touching the earth and seeing the cosmos, it’s really fun and really life-giving.

And you know, to use the title of my thesis, it helps me re-friend my body. Like I had broken relationship with my body –I was saying things to my body that were really not okay and they were, they were violent [chuckles], and, um, to actually become friends with all that’s here in terms of complexity and mess and amazing thoughtfulness that has required the help of the earth, of the ancestors, the cosmos; and there’s nothing like looking up at those stars to see that we are part of a long history of evolution.

patience kamau:
This is right. This is right.

Katie Mansfield:
Attempting to dismantle, this mantle of white that lies over the ground, I found these lies live deeper. I think I know the way down to the central core of truth, but pieces of the crust keep flying into my eyes. Be still, she says, put down the drill, she says, you are killing me!
[Begins to sing] Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral, too-ra-loo-ra-li. [stops singing]
It’s okay to cry, she said, stop beating yourself and destroying us both.

patience kamau:
This has been great.

Katie Mansfield:
Good to talk with you patience.

patience kamau:
Thank you for sharing your time with me.

Katie Mansfield:
See yah!

patience kamau:
Hey, hold on a minute –after we finished, the mic was still recording and it captured more of Katie’s poetry and other gems.

Katie Mansfield:
So in the very last day of my dissertation writing, I got um, one final poem that helped me kind of see where I am. Because there was this really challenging quote from Ijeoma Oluo who was a really helpful teacher to me through her book “So you want to talk about race,” and in a more recent article she wrote, “if your anti-racism work prioritizes the growth and enlightenment of white America over the safety, dignity, and humanity of people of color, it’s not anti-racism work, it’s white supremacy.” [Both make acknowledging sounds]

Katie Mansfield:
And then, um, Kyle Powys White who’s a Potawatomi scholar, um, writes “indigenous environmental movements work to reject the ancestral dystopias and colonial fantasies of the present. This is why so many of our environmental movements are about stopping sexual and state violence against indigenous people, reclaiming ethical self-determination across diverse urban and rural ecosystems, empowering gender justice and gender fluidity, transforming lawmaking to be consensual, healing, intergenerational traumas and calling out all practices that erase indigenous histories, cultures and experiences.” So I read these two things that these awesome healing forces in humanity wrote and then I realized, despite my best intentions, I did a white supremacist project grounded in colonial fantasy.

And then I got this poem which is informed by the writing of a number of different people, and the stories of a number of different people. One is Ibram X. Kendi who said, “I used to be more racist, I am changing.” One is Fania Davis’ recent Little Book of Race and Restorative Justice in which, at one point she writes, “there are no sides,” and at another point she talks about the need to create “a healing ground, not a battleground.” It draws on Fannie Lou Hamer’s, well known words “nobody’s free, until everybody’s free.”

And it draws on the story of the hummingbird that I understand to have origins in indigenous South America, although the tale has traveled –and the hummingbird is trying to save the forest from burning and the other animals ask, you know, “what the heck are you doing now, with that tiny beak of yours?” And the hummingbird says, “I’m doing what I can.” So this poem came at the end of my process of uh, learning. It’s called, “there are no sides.” “I am neither heroine nor villain. I am neither to be imprisoned nor placed on a pedestal. I am practicing being on this ground. I am practicing listening inside and out. I used to be more racist, I am changing. I am a story of privilege and a story of oppression. There are no sides and nobody’s free until everybody’s free. I am doing what I can to make my body, our bodies, this work, this country, this world, a healing ground, not a battleground. Let me let us face history, drop salvation fantasies. Prioritizing myself is white supremacy, and I will do more harm if I don’t start with me.”

patience kamau:
And just to mention that we had just talked about, you just gave the background, the provenance of that story about the hummingbird.

Katie Mansfield:
Yeah.

patience kamau:
There’s somewhere on YouTube or by Wangari Maathai…

Katie Mansfield:
Yes!

patience kamau:
That she talks about that story –if people want to look it up– it’s pretty amazing.

Katie Mansfield:
Yeah, oh yeah. Look, you can look up, there are two really beautiful animations. , and there’s kind of of it.

patience kamau:
And you said the Koreans that came earlier in the year called themselves “the hummingbirds.”

Katie Mansfield:
Yeah. So when this group of educators came, um, I was working with Eunkyung to understand more about who was coming. Um, and, and during the preparations she shared with me that they consider themselves and she said “like the hummingbird.” And I asked her what she meant by that and she told me the story they had learned a few years ago while visiting Vancouver, a story with origins in indigenous South America that was put to paper and then to anime by Haida storyteller illustrator, Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas. I may not be getting that just right. And later told by Wangari Maathai and now this story is claimed by this group of Koreans, and this was so meaningful to this group of educators that they still really invoke that image of the hummingbird. And we had a hummingbird that Eunkyung and I fashioned out of beeswax as part of our centerpiece for the week –so it was a very present theme for us in that learning.

patience kamau:
We could keep going for hours, but we have to stop.
Thank you, Katie.

patience kamau:
Katie is the author of…

• Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience programme: experiential education towards resilience and trauma informed people and practice. An article in Intervention: Journal of Mental Health and Psychosocial Support in Conflict-Affected Areas. [Volume 15, Number 3, Page 264 – 277.]

She is also author of…
• Supporting creative, whole peacebuilders: An apprenticeship program –– a chapter in Faith and Practice in Conflict Resolution. [edited by Rachel Goldberg.]

Recently, Katie was also on a special COVID-19 episode of the Virgil Stucker & Associates Podcast “” ––it was of their second season.

[Outro music begins to play and fades into background]

patience kamau:
All the music you hear on this podcast has been composed by: the one and only Luke Mullet. Our audio mixing engineer extraordinaire is: Stephen Angello. Audio editing support was generously provided by: Michaela Mast. And I am the podcast executive producer, audio recording engineer, editor and host: patience Kamau. As you are able, please remember to subscribe, rate and review this podcast so that other peacebuilders may find it. We’ll be back with a new episode in two weeks! Thank you so much for listening and join us again next time!

[Outro music swells and plays till end]

In this seventh episode, Bill Goldberg, director of the Summer Peacebuilding Institute (SPI), speaks on the importance of grassroots and domestic peacebuilding, even in 91����Ƶ’s (91����Ƶ) own backyard and campus.

Goldberg jokes that he “married in” to the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding (CJP) through his wife, former faculty member Lisa Schirch. His background was in international relations that often dealt with negotiations between world leaders. At CJP, though, he saw the value of grassroots-level peacebuilding.

“It actually was more important than the high level. That the high level negotiations would always fall apart if it wasn’t backed by lower level and by communities working together,” Goldberg says. He started taking classes at CJP, then picked up a few short-term contracts, like arranging transportation for SPI. He became the director in 2014.

Goldberg’s predecessors, Pat Martin and Sue Williams, taught him a lot.

“Pat had an open door policy that no matter what she was doing, no matter what time of day it was, if someone came to her office to talk, she would just drop everything and be with that person,” he says. “And with Sue, her analytical mind was just incredible,” whether it was arranging classes or “speaking truth to power.”

One major change Goldberg has witnessed in his time at CJP is a shift towards domestic work, rather than focusing on international conflicts. In his early days he recalls international students challenging the faculty and staff – “you have to fix your own problems as well as help us fix ours. And I think it took 10, 15 years for that realization to set in.”

This change has accelerated in the last few years, he says, due to fewer visas being approved – meaning domestic-born students are now in the majority at CJP – and a surge in white supremacist rhetoric across the U.S. and in Harrisonburg itself.

“It’s just become much easier to be open about racism and bigotry, and to actually be a racist and a bigot out in the open, and so we’re now seeing the need to combat that more,” says Goldberg.

While Goldberg sees this as a necessary and powerful shift, there are still ways he thinks 91����Ƶ as a whole could improve: like hiring non-Christians as full-time faculty. Goldberg himself is Jewish, and while he understands the value of a Christian Mennonite university, the hiring policy “implies to others, only those who are Christian have the values to teach here.”

Guest

Bill Goldberg

For more than fifteen years, Bill Goldberg has worked in various capacities for the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding, including as Director of the Summer Peacebuilding Institute since 2014. He spent fall of 2017 co-leading a Middle East cross-cultural to Israel, Palestine, Jordan, and Egypt, with his wife, former CJP professor Lisa Schirch. Bill holds a Master’s degree in conflict transformation from 91����Ƶ.

Transcript

Bill Goldberg:
A lot of what the International Relations field does is talks about high level negotiations and you know, work with leaders of countries and how that can bring about peace and while that’s one way, I started realizing when I was spending more time around CJP when Lisa was working here that, the grassroots methods that CJP used were…had a lot to do with peacebuilding as well. In fact, started realizing that it actually was more important than the high level, that the high level negotiations would always fall apart if it wasn’t backed by lower level and by communities working together.

[Theme music plays; fades into background]

patience kamau:
Hi everybody! Happy Wednesday to you and welcome back to Peacebuilder, a Conflict Transformation podcast by The Center for Justice and Peacebuilding. My name is patience kamau and with us this seventh episode:

Bill Goldberg:
Bill Goldberg and I am currently the director of the Summer Peacebuilding Institute at 91����Ƶ, and also a 2001 graduate of the masters program.

patience kamau:
For more than 15 years, Bill Goldberg has worked in various capacities for The Center for Justice and Peacebuilding, including as director of the Summer Peacebuilding Institute since 2014. He spent fall of 2017 co-leading a Middle East cross-cultural to Israel, Palestine, Jordan and Egypt with his wife, former CJP professor Lisa Schirch. Bill holds a master’s degree in Conflict Transformation from Eastern Mennonite university.
__

But before we begin, we do want to remind you our listeners who planned to join us in June, that with great sorrow in our hearts, we decided to cancel the CJP at 25 gathering. Circumstances surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic caused by the Coronavirus left us no choice. Instead, we have postponed exactly a year and hope that you will join us in June, 2021. Those of you who had already registered, we thank you and we will be in touch regarding your options, including receiving a full refund.

[Theme music crescendo and end]

patience kamau:
Hi Bill.

Bill Goldberg:
Hi.

patience kamau:
How are you today?

Bill Goldberg:
I’m doing well.

patience kamau:
Oh wow. You were among the first ones at the beginning –how many years had it been? I guess 2001, so…

Bill Goldberg:
I think it was three or four, well let’s say three or four years of graduates that I remember. I was here since ’98.

patience kamau:
As a student?

Bill Goldberg:
Kind of. Uh, I actually married into the program. My wife Lisa was a faculty member and I was doing movie work on movie sets around the country, and when we got married, we realized we needed a bit more of a life than that work provided. And since Lisa had a job here, uh, we decided that we were moving to Harrisonburg.

patience kamau:
So who is your spouse –full name?

Bill Goldberg:
Lisa Schirch. She used to be an 91����Ƶ faculty member and now she does a lot of contract work.

patience kamau:
Talk more about how you ended up at 91����Ƶ/CTP/CJP.

Bill Goldberg:
Sure. Well, so basically after moving to Harrisonburg I realized that my background in International Relations could be advanced more if I had a Conflict Transformation degree. A lot of what the International Relations field does is talks about high level negotiations and you know, work with leaders of countries and how that can bring about peace and while that’s one way, I started realizing when I was spending more time around CJP, when Lisa was working here, that the grassroots methods that CJP used were…had a lot to do with peacebuilding as well. In fact, started realizing that it actually was more important than the high level, that the high level negotiations would always fall apart if it wasn’t back by lower level and by communities working together.

So I started realizing that I needed more training in this field. Um, and truthfully I just couldn’t find another job I liked in Harrisonburg. So I started taking a class or two, I was also a stay-at-home father for our daughter, and so I was on the slow track for a degree, not necessarily finish as fast as possible. So I did classes part-time and at the same time some short term projects came up, conferences and things that needed someone to do logistics, and Ruth Zimmerman, who was the co-director at the time, was interested in my help with that. So that kind of brought me in, in the late nineties, early two thousands to work here as well as be a student.

patience kamau:
How did that dovetail into SPI? The Summer Peacebuilding Institute?

Bill Goldberg:
Actually that’s one of the first places I worked. I was, I originally helped with transportation issues for the Summer Peacebuilding Institute and also did other short term contracted workshops that were happening around here. It just kind of eventually became all of my time working with the Summer Peacebuilding Institute, and you know, 13, 14 years later I became the director.

patience kamau:
When was that? Which year was that?

Bill Goldberg:
Uh, ooh, I think it was 2014 in July was when I became director.

patience kamau:
Who was the director before that?

Bill Goldberg:
That’s kind of quirky. Sue Williams was the director and when Sue left, my colleague, Valerie Helbert and I, who had been the assistant directors, kind of took over for a year or two as co-directors. And then Valerie left, uh, and moved to North Carolina and I wanted to be the director, so…

patience kamau:
…you became the director!

Bill Goldberg:
I became the director!

patience kamau:
How is it going so far? What are your thoughts on that?

Bill Goldberg:
I think it’s going well. I think that Sue being director, she had an amazing reputation and she was incredible when it came to short-term programming and analysis of things that fit together, and her being the director before me, and Pat Martin being the director before her, their skills, their experience were really helpful when I became director, having watched them work.

patience kamau:
Mm, in what ways?

Bill Goldberg:
Uhm, just with Pat, Pat had an open door policy that no matter what she was doing, no matter what time of day it was, if someone came to her office to talk, she would just drop everything and be with that person while they were talking and you know, whatever problems they had worked through it. And for a while we all shared the first floor of the Weaver House and it was a very big open space, and so people would come in and talk to Pat all the time while the rest of us were working, and it just kind of led to that sort of style where if someone comes into my office, I try my best to give them all of my attention. And with Sue, her analytical mind was just incredible the way she put things together, whether it was guest speakers in classes or whether it was the actual schedule of SPI as well as her ability to stand up to leadership and speak truth to power, when she saw things that weren’t going the way she hoped they would go. Um, and it was really empowering to watch her do this and watch her say like, this is what I believe and this is what we’re going to do.

patience kamau:
Mm-hm, and follow through on that…

Bill Goldberg:
…and follow through on it. So, and it really helped with my style. I, one of the things I started doing as soon as I became director was institute a policy of “just because we’ve always done it, is not an excuse to continue.” And so for years there were things we were doing at the Summer Peacebuilding Institute “because we had always done it that way,” and it got to the point where if someone asked me, “why are you doing this?” and I didn’t have an answer, it seemed obvious to me that it was time to look into changing it. Whether it was, “why are you having all seven day classes?” There are classes that would fit well into a week –and if the answer was “because we’ve always had seven day classes,” that wasn’t good enough.

patience kamau:
Then you would change it.

Bill Goldberg:
The we did some research and we changed it and we found that we would actually get more people if they didn’t have to be here for a week and a half; if they could come in on a Sunday, leave the next Saturday and get a week’s training. So that was just one change. Um, but I think it was important to… and I think that came both from Sue and also just from my degree at CJP that, you know, if something’s not working, continuing to do it does not make sense, and so we need to figure out what will work.

patience kamau:
[Chuckles] And putting into practice the conflict transformation procedures that we teach…

Bill Goldberg:
…right…

patience kamau:
…because that ruffles some feathers sometimes when you’re changing something.

Bill Goldberg:
It definitely does! But it’s also, you know, from the very beginning, the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding and the Summer Peacebuilding Institute had a huge focus on international students and international problems almost to ignoring things that were happening in the U.S. Restorative Justice worked in the U.S. as well as internationally, but it, it seems like we weren’t looking into our own problems, whether it was in the U.S. or in the community of Harrisonburg.

And I think that’s another thing that we as CJP have changed a lot in the last few years. Granted, part of it is because it’s much harder to get visas, so it’s much harder to get people here. But even from my early time here, we always had international students who were kind of challenging us and saying, you have to fix your own problems as well as help us fix ours, and I think it took 10 -15 years for that realization to sink in.

patience kamau:
Why do you think it took so long?

Bill Goldberg:
I think it’s two-fold. One international work appears sexier than domestic work. Several people who’ve been hired here to focus on more domestic work, started working internationally and started teaching internationally and traveling internationally. That looks good on the CV and you get, you’re not just stuck in Harrisonburg. I mean from my own perspective, I co-led a study abroad — 91����Ƶ’s cross-cultural program to the middle East two years ago and it was really energizing, and it got me out of a bit of a rut, I had had after being director for two or three years and when I came back there were a whole lot of new initiatives I wanted to do, so I understand that, but at the same time there has to be an acknowledgement that we have problems in this country that we need to fix.

I think the other is the ability to…the fear of failure and the ability to walk away from failure if it’s not in your backyard. If we go help…try to help a conflict in Zimbabwe, in India, in Croatia, and it doesn’t work, we don’t see our failure everyday. If we try to help a conflict in Harrisonburg and it doesn’t work, we drive by it every morning…

patience kamau:
…mm, and it’s a constant reminder…

Bill Goldberg:
…and it’s a constant reminder of that failure. And I’m not saying that peacebuilders are afraid of failure, I’m just saying that subconsciously it’s easier to work internationally and then to leave that situation, if something goes wrong than it is domestically. Probably have a lot of people challenged me on that.

patience kamau:
[Chuckles] Maybe, but you know, this is how conversations begin…you know, you voice…

Bill Goldberg:
I think we have changed that. I mean, and maybe it’s that there’s finally more of an acknowledgement of the problems in this country. It’s not that there wasn’t before, but it’s problems are getting worse or they’re appearing to get worse because they’re more in the open, and so I think…

patience kamau:
…do you think that’s because it’s happened in the last two and a half to three years or has that been a change that’s been coming?

Bill Goldberg:
I actually think that’s a change that’s been coming here, at least since the early two thousands.

patience kamau:
To CJP?

Bill Goldberg:
Yes, to CJP. Um, it’s gotten harder and harder to get visas since early two thousands, …

patience kamau:
Mm, after 9/11?

Bill Goldberg:
After 9/11, to bring people here, and so we’ve actually been forced financially to push into doing more domestically while at the same time, those of us who wanted to work domestically kind of felt more empowered to do so because of this financial push. So it worked together as much as the tragedy of 9/11 and the U.S.’ reaction to Muslims and people around the world was negative, it actually helped push CJP into doing more positive things domestically.

patience kamau:
Into trying to tackle problems within the country?

Bill Goldberg:
Yes. And in fact, the last two years, it has been the worst ever to get visas and there’s been a lot more uncovering of the negativity within the U.S. –the ripping off the bandaid, seeing what’s underneath the, you know, the, the scabs and seeing how bad it is around here because it’s just become much easier to be open about racism and bigotry and to actually be a racist and a bigot out in the open. And so we’re now seeing the need to combat that more to do more trainings, to get more people to understand where social injustice is and how we can remedy it.

patience kamau:
And also how we deal with…because there’s extremism really within the United States also, I think that’s risen in a very alarming state. Maybe it always was there, but now, like you said, it’s just out in the open.

Bill Goldberg:
I, yeah, that’s, that’s my feeling is that it always was there. There were always these groups, but the ability to publicly own racism has opened up in the last few years. Um, and so those people who could ignore it because it was just that, those crazy people over there with, you know, now see that those crazy people over there live two blocks from them and, and they’re actually spewing hate speech that kids all around are seeing and they spew it in such a, such a way that it doesn’t always even appear as hate speech and that it, and so, until the kids get hooked onto it, they don’t even know they’re being hooked.

patience kamau:
What do you mean it doesn’t appear as…

Bill Goldberg:
So just one example, there’s…near 91����Ƶ there’s a, there are two white supremacists who live and who have a radio, an internet radio and TV station. And their goal is not to be overtly racist and bigoted. They’re not screaming racial epithets. What they do is they try and convince people that white people are beat down. So one example that they give, which from a logistical standpoint makes a huge amount of, I can see, of a sense, I can see why people would understand this, is “why can’t there be a White Student Union on college campuses? There can be a Black Student Union, there can be a Jewish Student Union, there can be a Muslim Student Union. Why can’t there be a White Student Union?” And this hooks people? I mean, the reason is because the rest of the campus that’s not part of these groups…

patience kamau:
…is the dominant culture.

Bill Goldberg:
Right. But I can understand how people get hooked on that one little thing, and then they start questioning like, why can’t there be this for white people? And it’s like they don’t see that they’re the dominant group and that they get all of those privileges already. They’re drawn into believing that they’re not doing as well and this has become easier to do.

patience kamau:
Mm. I mean, as you say that, it brings to mind a saying that I’m probably going to butcher right now, but that when you are accustomed to something being unequally favoring you, that actually correcting that feels like it’s attacking you, like it’s disfavoring you.

Bill Goldberg:
Right, right.

patience kamau:
You know, like when you’re trying to make everything equal for everyone, those who’ve always been accustomed to having more feel like it’s been taken from them.

Bill Goldberg:
Yeah. I remember reading some of this group’s literature that, you know, “we have Black history month in February, why can’t we have White history month?” And the realization is the other 11 months of the year are white history months –that’s what gets taught in schools, so why can’t we have that? Cause we already have that, you know, …

patience kamau:
…because it is the water we swim in.

Bill Goldberg:
Exactly that’s, that’s the correct phrase –It’s the water we swim in!

patience kamau:
Yeah, yeah.

[Transition music plays]

patience kamau:
So how has programming within SPI since you’ve been in it –and I like how you’ve said…so you’re the third, fourth or you co-directed?

Bill Goldberg:
Uh, so Gloria Rhodes was the first director and Pat Martin and Pat Spaulding were co-directors after her and then Pat Martin was a solo director. Pat Spaulding was, let’s just say forced to leave because she was…came out as a lesbian.

patience kamau:
Oh, that’s when 91����Ƶ was going through the challenges…

Bill Goldberg:
Yes. That was before 91����Ƶ’s policies changed. And after Pat was Sue and then Valerie and I and then myself. So that’s like fifth-ish generation of directors, I guess.

patience kamau:
Yeah. Yeah.
How, how has programming changed in, in that time, in your opinion, especially to address these changes that we’re talking about? Like looking more domestically, how would you say programs, programming has changed?

Bill Goldberg:
Well, so I’ll start with saying that almost all, if not all the faculty at the Summer Peacebbuilding Institute, as well as the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding, are practitioners as well as academics. They have their Ph.D. or maybe some of them even have, only have their masters, but they have years of experience working in the field. When I was first here, and still some degree today, most of the experience that people had was international. They lived in another country for a time for you know, months, years. In fact, Lisa and I lived in Africa for a year in the early two thousands and I think that really helped her credibility.

patience kamau:
Which part of Africa?

Bill Goldberg:
We lived in Ghana for six months, in Kenya for six months –she was on a Fulbright fellowship and it had to be split between two countries, to kind of look at…teach and also look at the diversity of the different countries.

patience kamau:
Okay, West and East?

Bill Goldberg:
Yes. But anyway, so when I was here earlier, most of the classes were geared towards international people. A lot of the examples that were used in classes were case studies, usually from the instructors own cases of their work in other countries, and most of the students were international. I mean, it used to be probably 60 – 70% international back back in the days. Um, and there were domestic people here and they were kind of almost shoehorned in. To get some of the case studies to be about them, they had to make, they had to make requests, they had to ask like, you know, can we talk about how this is affecting the U.S. or, it was international and this is how the parallel works in the U.S. Whereas that’s almost switched completely –I mean, we’re now at 60 – 70% domestic because of problems with visas, problems with finances and at the same time acknowledging that…the need for domestic problems.

In fact, last Summer Peacebuilding Institute (SPI), our two instructors for our restorative justice class were graduates from the early to mid-2000s who were here when we were mostly international, and they created the class based on what they had been taught. And it was after they got here that they realized that three-fourths of their class were domestic. They had issues…they wanted to talk about issues of racial justice and racial healing and social justice and how restorative justice works there. And to the credit of the instructors with the help of the students in the class, they completely revised their syllabus almost on a daily basis to, to change what had been international to make it more domestic. They also acknowledged that the course needed a much more domestic focus in the future, and had they known how many changes had occurred in the makeup of SPI, they would have planned differently.

patience kamau:
That’s really cool that they were actually revising the syllabus on the fly, pretty incredible.

Bill Goldberg:
And that happens a lot at the Summer Peacebuilding Institute because we never know what, we never know what mix of people we’re going to get. Um, a class could be three-quarters domestic, it could be three-quarters international, it could be people from 10 to 15 different countries, it could be people from two countries that do not get along. And so the syllabus that the faculty member may have prepared has what they hope to cover, but then you might get into the class and find that…

patience kamau:
…the need is different.

Bill Goldberg:
Right, exactly. It doesn’t, it doesn’t fit at all, and so you know, in order to serve the students who are in the class better, you make changes as much as you can, and it’s amazing to see the faculty is able to do that. Even during the school year, our faculty seems really good at, if not reading the mood of the class, hearing from those in the class who have concerns and making changes to include what they want in the class. I don’t see that done as much in other organizations, and you can’t do that as much, even in undergraduate or in large lecture. It’s only in these settings that you can.

patience kamau:
It is really challenging to do that. So that’s pretty impressive that it does happen.

Bill Goldberg:
It is. I’m always impressed with our faculty that they can teach, especially at the Summer Peacebuilding Institute and the STAR program, they teach people from age 20 to age 80 who may not even have their bachelor’s degree through not only has their Ph.D., but could teach the course themselves through no…from “no field experience” through “working for 30 or 40 years in the field” and they don’t teach to the lowest common denominator. They teach so that everybody in the class gets what they need…

patience kamau:
…mm-hm, can participate…

Bill Goldberg:
…as best as they can.

patience kamau:
Of course. Who were these two instructors that you alluded to who returned last year?

Bill Goldberg:
Um, it was, uh, Judah Oudshoorn and Michelle Jackett who were, who as I said, they’re both restorative justice practitioners in Canada, and I mean, and they had a great time teaching here, but they actually also acknowledged that the class in the future would need more diversity, and as much as they enjoyed teaching it, there needs to be more diversity than just a white male and a white female teaching the class. And so they said they’d love to come back, but not necessarily together to teach that and work on, you know, and of course with more diversity.

patience kamau:
Oh, so diversity within the instructors?

Bill Goldberg:
Yes. Or at least diversity within the instructor’s knowledge. In their class they had several people who were really interested in using restorative justice in school systems that were overwhelmingly African American and Hispanic, and that just wasn’t in their knowledge set. So they did as best they could, in fact, they used some of the women who had these questions to bring up case studies and then have the class analyze what they should do. But they realized that if this is the makeup of the course, it needs someone with at least a background in having dealt with these issues.

patience kamau:
Mm-hm, that makes sense. In your opinion, what is, uh, something unique that we can celebrate about CJP at this milestone at 25 years?

Bill Goldberg:
I think the most unique thing is that we have always worked with grassroots peacebuilding efforts and we continue to do so, starting at the community levels, building up momentum. That’s something that has caught on in the last 20, 25 years or so. But when I was an undergraduate in the late 1980s, like I said, international relations conversations focused on the leaders of the countries and peace from top-down and military use, you know, peace from top down and it didn’t last. And it took a long time I think, for the international community to kind of come around to that. There were always people doing grassroots peacebuilding, there were always people doing community peacebuilding –It took a long time for their work to get acknowledged as, as important, if not more important than the high level peacebuilding.

So I think that’s something that has been very unique here, and it’s something that has turned off some students from coming here because they wanted the high level negotiation, but at the same time it’s brought in students from some of our colleague, collaborator, competitor, whatever you want to call it, organizations who would go there and realize they didn’t want the high level, they actually wanted the grassroots. And then even some of the faculty at these institutions would say, well, you should be at the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding, not here. So yeah, I think our continued use of grassroots community organizing sort of peacebuilding isn’t, it is very unique and something we should be celebrating.

patience kamau:
What are some of the outcomes of your time within CJP in your experience? Just as you reflect…

Bill Goldberg:
The people who’ve come through are the most positive outcomes. And I’m not just talking about people like Leymah Gbowee who won the Nobel Peace Prize or the former president of Somalia who was an SPI participant in the early two thousands. It’s all of the people who’ve started their own organization and are doing incredible peace work, incredible justice work in their home communities and are getting acknowledgement from those communities, not as much as they deserve. But, you know, it’s these small changes within communities that grow and grow and grow and eventually have, uh, you know, the outcome we hope of a more peaceful, less violent society.

[Transition music plays]

patience kamau:
Do you have any ideas about what CJP could be doing better?

Bill Goldberg:
Um, I think as we, I have two hopes as we move into the next 25 years. Uh, the first is actually to get the word out to people in the U.S. about who we are and what we do. As I said, we, we, most of our work has been international in the past, so that’s changed some, but we really don’t have a great way of marketing to all of the domestic groups that we should have. We’re just, we’re still breaking into that because we spent so many years working more domestically, working more internationally than domestically, and so I think we need to figure out how to get our message out of what we do, to a lot of these organizations that really could use the training, whether it’s leadership or trauma awareness or community organizing and development.

I think we’re one of the better places that can do that –not just saying that cause I work here, but we don’t have as great a domestic-base as international. I mean there were places that I would travel all around the world and I would mention the Summer Peacebuilding Institute or the Center for Justice Peacebuilding and people knew of us. There are not nearly as many places in the U.S. that way.

patience kamau:
That recognize us like that…

Bill Goldberg:
When I’m at conferences that aren’t specifically in our field, or new ones, I always get people who do almost a double-take. When they look at the sign, they see the word peacebuilding and justice and they walk away and then they see something on our table –it’ll say racial healing, it’ll say community development, it’ll say trauma and they turn around and look, but just looking at our name, they would shrug and walk.

patience kamau:
We don’t have that brand recognition.

Bill Goldberg:
Exactly! So yes, growing brand recognition. And the other thing is that, I don’t think this is contentious, but others at 91����Ƶ might, I think CJP needs to continue to push until we can break through the wall of hiring only Christian faculty. 91����Ƶ as a university has a policy that 100% of full-time faculty must be Christian. I can hire adjuncts for the Summer Peacebuilding Institute, we can hire adjuncts at the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding who are not. But we can’t hire non-Christians as full-time faculty and that…

patience kamau:
…so you can’t even be a full-time faculty member here?

Bill Goldberg:
Exactly! And in fact, you know the, the joke t-shirt I’ve wanted to make for years was that…would say “even Jesus couldn’t get a job teaching at 91����Ƶ,” …

patience kamau:
[Chuckles] Oh dear, right, right…

Bill Goldberg:
…because unfortunately that’s the policy. And I get it we’re, we’re a Christian Mennonite university, I understand that. But by saying only those who are Christian can teach here, it implies to others, “only those that are Christian have the values to teach here,” and I find that frustrating, um, especially as a non-Christian. And we’ve lost several people who either taught for us once or just refuse to teach for us because they found out about that policy and they basically said, you know, “I, I’m busy and I don’t want to spend my energy working at an institution that has this policy.”

patience kamau:
Mm, cause it feels like pushing against the grain? There’s too much energy one’s spending in that way…

Bill Goldberg:
Right. Or even if there’s, you know, they’re just adjuncting one class, they don’t want to contribute to what they see as that policy. Now, I had several people who felt the same way about our LGBTQ policy and now that it’s changed, they’re willing to take another look at working here. Um, and I mean the problem is that 91����Ƶ as a university pays lip service to diversity –all of the hiring applications that go out say we want a diverse faculty and staff, yet by diversity they mean people of color who are Christian and Christian sects other than Mennonites, they don’t mean diversity of religion necessarily, and I think that needs to change.

patience kamau:
Mm, have you had conversations about this elsewhere?

Bill Goldberg:
I have. I actually gave a talk several years ago at our faculty staff meeting and ended with that hope that…I showed our current hiring page, which has at the bottom, wanting more diverse staff and followed that with a slide that showed the current hiring policy, which says 91����Ƶ respects all federal guidelines on hiring diverse people of, and it named races and creeds and it didn’t name religion and it didn’t at that time name, um, sexual orientation. And now at least it has sexual orientation, gender policies in it as a protected class here, but it still doesn’t have religion. And they would say, well, we’re a Christian university, we can’t do that. And I would say, well, you’re a Christian university, hiring people with similar values to you doesn’t mean they all have to be Christian.

patience kamau:
That’s right. That’s right.
How has your time within 91����Ƶ and CJP has…is there a difference between you not being a Christian, working within CJP versus 91����Ƶ, which is a larger umbrella?

Bill Goldberg:
I think so. Um, I will say I’m more of a cultural Jewish person than a religious Jewish person. Um, but there are times that I feel awkward, uh, especially in large gatherings when there’s prayers before the meeting starts that the meeting would be a success, which or whether they, you know, they sing hymns but they only refer to them by the number or something, and then everybody can recite them from memory. And that’s just not something I can do. I never felt that I have been persecuted for not being Christian, but then again, I’m not trying to teach full-time. So I, and I have felt CJP as much more open to people of all…to a much more diverse group of people teaching here, being here much greater understanding –I mean I’ve participated in, in Eid fasts and breaking, you know, fasts…

patience kamau:
Ah, that always happens during the summer –during the Summer Peacebuilding Institute…

Bill Goldberg:
…well, actually it changes because it, because of the, uh, lunar calendar. So at the moment it’s moving through SPI and then in another two years, I think it’ll be before the Summer Peacebuilding Institute starts. But when I got here, it was in December, which is weird. Um, you know, and I’ve actually held a Passover Seder for all 91����Ƶ students in the past, so there’s an openness here –for all CJP students, sorry– there’s an openness here to learning more about that. Um, I’m not saying that 91����Ƶ as a whole is closed to that, but at the same time, I don’t think there’s as inquisitive a nature about other religions, other groups that you’re not part of to learn more about them.

patience kamau:
Yeah, I, right now I’m thinking that there was, maybe it was just this past summer, there was…or was it two years ago? There was actually a gathering for, is it Iftar, the breaking of the fast for the day?

Bill Goldberg:
Yeah, I mean we’ve done that several times over the years.

patience kamau:
Yeah, during the summers…and I’m not aware that it happens during, in the wider 91����Ƶ community, but maybe that’s because school isn’t on.

Bill Goldberg:
That’s true. But, well, no, I mean, I remember doing it with some graduate students from the Middle East who were incredible cooks and we did an Iftar and it was during the school year, so in the fall semester, so that was, I don’t know, 10, 15 years ago probably, but it was just, it was, there were CJP faculty, staff and students there. I don’t remember if it was open wider or it was just, they were only cooking for CJP, but I don’t remember very many, if any non-CJP people being there.

patience kamau:
And how have the Passovers gone when you’ve hosted them?

Bill Goldberg:
I only hosted one or two. It was good. It was, you know, it was a very inquisitive group who were…and I also did this, Lisa and I did this at a very conservative Christian university in Kenya –Daystar University — and that was actually much more interesting because the students there had never participated in any sort of Jewish rituals and they realized, you know, this Passover is Easter. So it was very interesting participating with them there and going through all the customs that happened, and the same thing happened at the Passover Seders here it was, it was well attended.

patience kamau:
I know you said you are more culturally Jewish than practicing, uh, do you do Shabbat regularly on Fridays?

Bill Goldberg:
No, not regularly. Um, very occasionally, but we do, I do a Passover dinner every year with, with a group of people in town who are all Jews married to Christians. And we did this because our kids were getting a good Christian education in Sunday schools at churches and they weren’t getting nearly as much of a Jewish education. So we decided to hold this yearly Passover Seder to teach them about that. We did Hanukkah sometimes and told the stories of that. And I’ve tried occasionally to bring in Jewish things here, like every…at Purim, I usually make pamen tash, which is the, the sweets for Purim, and in the past we’ve, I’ve actually had like a retelling of the Purim story to CJP while we ate these, these treats. So, we try, I mean, you know, CJP brings in, is willing to, to have people from all religions bring in their customs and, to explain more about them and have us all participate in them.

patience kamau:
Yeah, those are the cultural nights!

Bill Goldberg:
Yeah. This is how my, this is how my kids grew up. I mean, I think one of the reasons my kids are so open to other…people of other religions, people of other colors, people of other ethnicities, is because they spent their early years going to Summer Peacebuilding Institute potlucks and cultural nights where there’d be people from all over the world speaking different languages and different looks to them and that…they just became accustomed to it.

patience kamau:
Right, right –it was their normal…

Bill Goldberg:
…it was their normal.

patience kamau:
Oh, what a blessing.

Bill Goldberg:
I agree…

patience kamau:
That’s just wonderful.

[Transition music plays]

patience kamau:
Let’s see. So within your time here at CJP, what, is there anything that comes to mind that you are puzzling with or have been struggling to…

Bill Goldberg:
Well, at CJP, at 91����Ƶ and in the wider world, I think what I have learned over the past 20 years is just because my opinion feels correct and even if it’s supported by many, many people around me, those in power can still stop any actions or changes that we feel are correct. Um, speaking truth to power is one thing, getting power to listen to that truth is a whole other thing. And it takes communities of people willing to stand up to get that to occur.

And I’ve seen that happen here –I mean, just looking at the change to 91����Ƶ’s LGBTQ policy. I give former president Loren Swartzendruber, you know, huge credit for, for bucking the trend, which was keep the status quo and having listening projects with students and faculty and staff and donors and parents of students and alumni and the entire 91����Ƶ community, before making the decision that this policy needs to change because it’s overwhelmingly supported. But that took, you know, 10 years to get to that point.

patience kamau:
Probably even longer…

Bill Goldberg:
Maybe…

patience kamau:
…you alluded to Pat Spaulding.

Bill Goldberg:
That’s true. And before Pat, there were other people who, when, when 91����Ƶ found out that they were gay, just basically said, “I want your resume on my desk by today at five”…

patience kamau:
…yeah, resignation…

Bill Goldberg:
…and nobody fought it because it’s still not necessarily a protected class in Virginia, so there really isn’t a way to fight it. The court of public opinion is really the only way to fight that –and yes, so it took several people being forced to leave…

patience kamau:
…unceremoniously fired…

Bill Goldberg:
…well, they were never fired. They were all forced to resign on their own, um, because that’s what people do around here, they don’t rock the boat. So, you know, they didn’t even really have legal recourse because they left themselves. But it took, yeah, 10 to 15 years of that happening, at least –of it being more and more public and there just being an, it basically the grassroots effort that CJP promotes, on that issue worked. It took a small group of people to continue to raise the social justice aspect of it larger and larger, and you know, there were still people on this campus, and there still are now, who are against that…”biblical teachings,” whatever they want to say. Um, but the majority supports it and that policy changed –that doesn’t happen all the time, that’s rare. Um, but you can get attacked, but like I said, for the most part, what I’m still puzzling through is how to make that happen when I know what I’m engaged in is correct and I cannot get people who have the power to see that.

patience kamau:
Mm, you are reminding me of a quote I think I read this morning by Beyonce Knowles. I think it said something about power is not just given to you, you have to take it. [Chuckles]

Bill Goldberg:
Right.

patience kamau:
So that’s just interesting that…

Bill Goldberg:
…and you can speak out and you get labeled as a troublemaker, but when 10 people speak out, they still might get labeled as troublemakers, but like they’ve also influenced a hundred more people to just question that. You can see that happening in this country right now with this impeachment that, you know, I used to think that, why aren’t we like why isn’t there just a vote on impeachment? Why don’t they just impeach him and get on with this? And you see more and more momentum growing for it as each new person comes out and says like, this is the experience and this is the reason why. I think it would have failed if it had been started bluntly several months ago.

patience kamau:
So that’s fascinating to me because what you are saying, what I hear you saying is that people do need to speak out, but also there are the people within power. I mean we are, we’re humans at every level, and so we react to that. People within power, if they feel attacked, will close up and will not engage. So there’s this in and out sort of process so that those who are speaking out…those who can energize, versus those who can work within and actually bring people within the power –who have the power– to actually want to work to make the change.

Bill Goldberg:
Right. I think it takes two types of people to speak out like that. It takes someone who doesn’t care about the reputation, who doesn’t mind that they are about to be slandered and shamed and shunned because the truth that they’re speaking is so important that it overrides that. And it also takes people who are either high up in power or high up in perceived power to back them, and you don’t always have both of those. Um, but it takes, but, but it, it definitely takes several people willing to, well we would call it political suicide, you know, or academic suicide or whatever, willing to put their, their job and their life on the line to push a policy that at that time is not only undesirable but seen by those in power as not a good idea. At least public…and the wagons gets circled and the person gets demonized, but, but then the next person speaks up and a little crack in the wagons appears. Maybe they’re not demonized as much and then several more people speak up and then it steam rolls into a policy change.

patience kamau:
You, uh, you gave credit to former president to Loren Swartzendruber –what do you think…what do you feel he did differently or how did he usher 91����Ƶ in this direction? I mean, it took years, like you said. Um, and when he came, he stabilized the campus quite a bit cause it was…

Bill Goldberg:
…yeah…

patience kamau:
…there was that whole, CJP students unfurling that great rainbow flag…

Bill Goldberg:
…right, that happened, that happened right at the beginning and it kind of shook things up a little. If I, if I could go back in time, I’d probably still have them do it, but maybe a little later. Um, I, I mean, I think it was multi-fold one, he was towards the end of his presidency and I don’t, I don’t actually know what his personal opinions are on it. He was very good in supporting 91����Ƶ without pushing his personal opinions –and maybe his personal opinions are social justice for LGBTQ and that’s why he pushed it, or maybe they’re not, and he just felt as a steward of 91����Ƶ, he needed to follow what the will of 91����Ƶ was. So I think being late enough in his term that he had political capital both in the Mennonite world as well as at 91����Ƶ, to push this plus enough people counseling him to push it. And other schools and other churches and other institutions that were opening up. So, I mean, I give him credit for making the bold final step, but there’re untold number of people beneath him, before him, that did the legwork that you know, that spoke up, that were fired for being gay and you know…

patience kamau:
…or even supporting people who were gay…

Bill Goldberg:
…or right, or were fired for supporting people who were gay, right! So all of those people before him just push the momentum. But I give him credit because he had the courage to buck the Mennonite church to stand up against the Mennonite Church and the Mennonite Education Agency and say, “no, we’re going to do this.” He had the, you know, he had the courage to say, we’re going to get kicked out of the council for conservative churches…

patience kamau:
…CCCU…

Bill Goldberg:
…universities, yeah, CCCU, we’re going to get kicked out, but this is the right thing to do because this is what the university wants to do. So, you know, there were a lot of people that came before him, but there has to be a public face that either gets crucified or that gets lauded and you know, he got both for it.

patience kamau:
He got quite a beating for it too.

Bill Goldberg:
He did get quite a beating for it!

patience kamau:
Yes. Um, yeah. You, you mentioned CJP had, a role with the listening process that led to the change of the policy?

Bill Goldberg:
I don’t know if CJP specifically had a role, I know that there were a lot of different facilitators. I was in those sessions, but I was not part of the formation of those sessions, so I don’t actually know much about how they formed. I just, I know that there was a lot of push from CJP to start it.

patience kamau:
That was, that was a good change for the campus in general.

Bill Goldberg:
Definitely!

patience kamau:
So how have you experienced community within CJP and you know, the definition of community within 91����Ƶ in general, but how do you define community and have, have you experienced it?

Bill Goldberg:
Um, I mean I define community as a group of people who don’t necessarily all have the same opinions, but a good or well-working community would be people who are willing to listen to those they disagree with and acknowledge that even if they disagree on issues, there are always issues, they agree with. Um, you know, I’ve been trying to figure out how to make Harrisonburg a better community in groups that I’m involved in trying to do that. And the realization is most people who live here love the area, whether it’s the mountains, whether it’s the fact that we have, you know, nice fall sunny days like today –they all love it.

So even if they disagree on how to do some policy –more for schools, more for education, more tax breaks, whatever, they can all acknowledge that they love the area and that’s why they’re here and that’s a building block. So then we move on to the next issue –you know, you want kids to have better schools and education. Anyway, that’s how I define community as groups of people who don’t necessarily agree on all issues but are willing to listen to each other and work toward a resolution.

patience kamau:
How hve you felt that within CJP for yourself personally?

Bill Goldberg:
There are times that CJP has felt like a family, there are times that CJP has felt like a dysfunctional family and the community aspect has definitely changed over the last 20 years. When I was first here, it was much smaller — all of the faculty were much tighter; dinners at their houses back and forth. There was, you know, uh, there was a monthly potluck like we do now except all faculty, all staff, all students went to it every time it was, you know, unless you were traveling, you just went and that was just the norm and now that’s kind of dropped off quite a bit. Not nearly as many people go –it seems like the student group community is still functioning well as a community, but the staff and faculty don’t function nearly as much of a family community.

patience kamau:
Why do you think that is?

Bill Goldberg:
I don’t…I think it’s growth, I think it’s, it’s much less, much more, you know, there’s, there’s much more diversity of people than there used to be.

patience kamau:
You mean in thought? Diversity in what way?

Bill Goldberg:
Ah, I mean, CJP used to be basically a white Christian bunch, mostly male almost, you know, and that has changed a huge amount and I don’t think that’s the reason for breaking of diversity, I think it’s just the people with less in common. I mean, everybody here went to one of two or three churches –20 years ago and everybody went, um, you know, now there’s such a huge, there’s such a huge diversity both in the student population and the faculty population of people and people are just busier than they were, I think.

patience kamau:
So maybe we’re just trying to reconstitute, who knows? I mean, we’re different and so we’ll find a new rhythm that addresses the new constituency…

Bill Goldberg:
I would hope so, I mean, I don’t see this that, that is a bad thing. Community, community, you know, waxes and wanes.

patience kamau:
Of course. It reflects the people who are in it at the time. Yeah. That’s good.

[Transition music plays]

patience kamau:
What’s been the most pro…most challenging professional thing that you’ve done?

Bill Goldberg:
Ah, Okay. That actually goes back to the puzzling and wrestling. So I have had some incredibly difficult conversations with 91����Ƶ administrators over actions they took that I felt were incorrect or just plain wrong and or actions I took that they felt were wrong. Um, many times I felt shut down by that and as if it was basically a “father knows best” sort of situation. This is, you know, they knew what was right and I should just let them continue to do it, and that’s not something I experienced much at CJP and that’s not something we teach –we teach to speak truth to power.

So like I said before, when you speak truth to power, and power doesn’t listen then what? I will say that when these events occurred, for the most part, I felt overwhelming support from CJP leadership and CJP colleagues and that actually, really helped sometimes, really helped get things moving that were stuck. So it’s been challenging. The other challenge, and the other challenging thing actually has been the difficulty with getting visas. It’s been really challenging and frustrating to have so many people who want to be here, who want to study, who want to learn, just be told, no, they can’t by the U.S. government, you know, they have funding, they have the ability to get here, they really want to bring peacebuilding knowledge back to their countries and they just get stopped. And that’s incredibly frustrating because you can’t even speak truth to power to that you can’t…there’s no one speak to, it’s just such a giant, you know, mess…

patience kamau:
…bureaucracy. Yeah. Um, on your personal challenges within the campus, um, in your own reflections, is there anything you could have done differently?

Bill Goldberg:
Uh, there always is, I mean, I, I, I look back and think, you know, if I, if I had called that person and asked them to just, you know, take a walk with me and meet off campus, somewhere more neutral and, and we talked things out, would it have gone more smoothly and, and maybe, maybe not. Um, would it have worked better if I had held off until I got a larger coalition of people who agreed with me? Maybe, maybe not. But as I said before, sometimes it takes that person to be willing to be crucified or, or demonized –maybe I was supposed to be that person. Not a very pleasant role to be in. And I’ve never really been in it that strongly. Others I know have. But, you know, I, I’ve always been a support person here. I’ve always said that my role is not to be the peacebuilder out in the field, but to support that peacebuilder, to get their training, to do the logistics for them –so it’s difficult when I feel like I’m thrust into that role of, of like the person who has to push the change.

patience kamau:
Well, it’s a role that needs to be filled.

Bill Goldberg:
True, true.

patience kamau:
Um, I know that you spent a lot of time with some of the Fulbright Scholars here at the beginning, uh, when they started coming to CJP –can you talk a little bit about that, the friendships you formed through that and…

Bill Goldberg:
Sure. Um, for several years CJP was the State Department’s Conflict Resolution program for Fulbrights. We got Fulbrights from either the Middle East or from South Asia, rotating –we’d get some from the Middle East one year, then from South Asia the next, so they actually had some overlap as well. And I was the coordinator for that grant that, that brought them here. I handled the logistics, I made sure all of their school fees were paid and that their per diem for the month were here. I arrange trips for them. Um, I had my degree by that time, so I was kind of a unofficial advisor when they would want to ask questions, whether it was about classes or whether it was about community or Harrisonburg in general.

So I got to be friends with quite a few of them. Friendships, I’ve still kept, in fact, one of the, one of our graduates who is a Palestinian-Israeli citizen is now a tour guide , and when we were in the Middle East two years ago, was the Palestinian person who did, uh, that side of our dual narrative. We had an Israeli and a Palestinian; so it was a lot of fun actually having this person that I had become good friends with when he was a student here actually be our tour leader, and have us learn from him in the way he learned from folks around here. Then yeah, I’ve kept in touch with quite a few of them and tried to have people back as teachers or guest speakers when they are around. I mean I would say not just the Fulbrights, but the most fun part of working here is sitting in my office and, there’s a knock on the door, and it’s someone from some other part of the country or some other part of the world who just happened to be on campus. I didn’t know they were coming, they just happen to show up, you know? They were in Washington for a conference and wanted to, wanted to come visit CJP and spending a half hour sitting and talking to that person that I may not have seen for five or ten years and just catching up with them. It’s a great way to, you know, break up the day when that happens. And it happens more than you would believe!

patience kamau:
Maybe…probably because we’re not so far from Washington D.C.

Bill Goldberg:
True. And because people really feel CJP becomes a family, becomes a community, so they want to come back, they want to be part of it again.

patience kamau:
Mm-hm, I’ve been struck by, so we’ve been doing –as part of the anniversary process– these blogs that a lot of our alumni from years past are writing about these things. And it’s just fascinating to sort of watch them talk about their time here in the late nineties or in the early two thousands and they speak a lot to what you’re talking to…

Bill Goldberg:
…and they can come back now and just take a class for training or something like that. And it’s like they’re home again.

patience kamau:
Right. It feels that way –that’s, that’s quite unique. Um, are there significant changes that you’ve seen in the peacebuilding field in your time working within CJP? Do you consider yourself a peacebuilder?

Bill Goldberg:
I do! I mean, I consider all of the learning I got here to be life lessons. I don’t go into the field, I don’t necessarily work, you know, with organizations helping them bring peace. Like I said, I feel like I support them all of the knowledge and learning and facilitation, negotiation and mediation, helps me on a daily basis work with other departments at 91����Ƶ, um, helps me understand, you know, other organizations and whether or not they’re sending people to take our courses and whether or not we have issues with them and even helps me understand, you know, why visas get denied and how I can try and help people do a better job at presenting themselves and maybe get a visa.

So yes, I consider myself in the peacebuilding way, I guess you’d say. As for the field itself, I think just the growth of it has just been amazing. I mean, when, when I was here 20 years ago, we were one of the few master’s programs that taught this sort of work. Um, Summer Peacebuilding Institute was one of the few institutes that did this. Now there’s at least seven or eight institutes that were started by people who’ve been here much less…

patience kamau:
…I think there are twelve…

Bill Goldberg:
Well, I was gonna say, and there’s plenty more. So the growth of it, but the problem is it’s also become an industry as any, as almost any field becomes over time.

patience kamau:
It’s been commodified?

Bill Goldberg:
It’s been commodified –there’s a cookie-cutter approach that certain organizations use. So you kind of have to, that’s what I meant earlier when I said we need to get the word out about who we are. You know, if you’re going to have a training in trauma, our STAR trauma training I think is incredible. It helps…

patience kamau:
“Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience.”

Bill Goldberg:
Right. But there’re other similar organizations out there that do training –some of them are amazing, some of them have a very cookie-cutter approach and they wouldn’t do what I talked about before of changing their approach just because the people in the room want something different. You know…

patience kamau:
…mm-hm, but we do that…

Bill Goldberg:
…but we do that. Um, so yeah, I mean that’s, the growth has been significant, but also the growth of positive and negative aspects of it.

patience kamau:
Mm-hm, well, what’s that term? Uh, peace industrial complex? [Chuckles]

Bill Goldberg:
Right, exactly!

patience kamau:
Anyway, we do what we can to counter that…

Bill Goldberg:
…we do…

patience kamau:
…as much as we can. Uh, are you working on anything yourself within, would you want to talk about what you’re working on, if anything?

Bill Goldberg:
Sure. For years we have tried to use the structure of the Summer Peacebuilding Institute to hold courses that weren’t just on peacebuilding: education counseling, seminary and religion courses –and it’s, we’ve always run into a block and basically the block has been financial. The, you know, the other programs don’t want to give up the money they’re making or really can’t afford to pay for our services to do this.

So either they don’t do short term trainings or they do them themselves running kind of parallel and it takes up a lot more staff time than it would. More recently, the university as a whole has acknowledged that, and acknowledged that we need the ability to do professional development and academic training other than just the two semester format that’s standard at universities. We need to be able to do short term, we need to be able to do online, we need to do things that people who can’t just drop everything and come to class for a semester can, can handle. And so we’ve been working on how we can put that in place. What are the stumbling blocks both financially and structurally to doing that? How do we work together? Um…

patience kamau:
…basically, it sounds like we just need to be nimble, to respond to…

Bill Goldberg:
…pretty much…

patience kamau:
…how people are getting their education nowadays.

Bill Goldberg:
Right! We’ve also realized that we have, uh, we have the ability to do short-term workshops and conferences that are similar to the Summer Peacebuilding Institute, similar to the STAR program where you bring a group of people for a week and either you teach them something, or you bring a large group of people and they have workshops on a daily basis for a couple of days. In fact, we just did a conference last week on community criminal justice where we brought a hundred to 150 people a day for two days to 91����Ƶ to sit in workshops and hear about different aspects of criminal justice and to work towards better criminal justice policies in the Shenandoah Valley.

And so we also realize that’s a niche specialty that we have the conference space on campus to do that –whether it’s the whole thing with lodging and meals or whether it’s really just having people come, and them using our rooms to have these conferences. We have the ability to do that, and we have the ability to plan conferences off-campus too, so I’m part of a Professional Education Team that is working at getting the word out that we can design training specifically for you. We can design workshops and conferences specifically for your needs, we can do it here, we can do it at your organization, and trying to build that up.

patience kamau:
Yeah. Um, you also hosted a whole bunch of Brazilians last summer and it was something similar, but only these ones came from, from an international source. Can you say a little bit about that?

Bill Goldberg:
Sure! Over over the last several years, we’ve built up a really good relationship with people in Brazil. It started, I can’t even think of how many years ago with Howard Zehr, who’s a, who used to be a faculty member here and with Kay Pranis, who’s amazing at teaching about circle processes, uh, going to Brazil, presenting to different groups on restorative justice –and Brazil is really trying hard to change their entire justice system. This is the court system, the police system –there’s a big push from within to change this.

And so starting several years ago, we had one or two or three people from Brazil who came and took classes at Summer Peacebuilding Institute, came and took our trauma classes through the star program, and that’s just kind of spiraled. And last year we got a request for, if we could handle 50 people who all wanted to take classes on trauma, and all wanted to take classes on victim-offender conferencing. And, it sounded a little overwhelming at first because this was happening during the Summer Peacebuilding Institute, sort of tangentially to it. But yeah, so we brought people here and split them into two groups, and one would take trauma-STAR and one would take victim-offender conferencing, and the next week they flipped. And this was Brazilian judges and lawyers and court clerks and staff and police officers…

patience kamau:
…mm, and prosecutors…

Bill Goldberg:
…prosecutors, right. Their stories about the work they’re doing in Brazil were incredible. The fact that the, the restorative justice police in Brazil have their own vehicle, that is, –and they brought a model to give to Howard Zehr cause they all idolize him– um, and that way when they go into communities, the communities know this isn’t the normal police force, that the communities are sometimes afraid of. These are the people who are here to facilitate and to help with community organizing and they get, they get a very different reaction than the regular police. Um, there were some challenges with this group –they, that we taught the courses in Portuguese because many of them spoke English, but some didn’t, and learning in English was difficult. So they brought translators with them, so it slowed the courses down some, but…

patience kamau:
…but you were able to accommodate them.

Bill Goldberg:
We were able to accommodate them, it was a wonderful time. Um, they fit into the Summer Peacebuilding Institute and were at all the lunches and the guest speakers, and they just brought, they brought an energy to the program that the program may not have had without them.

patience kamau:
Yeah. And this is, I mean it was an outgrowth from, uh, I believe that they say that they passed on the leadership because Isabel Lima had, uh, brought in a group in 2017 and then they were here for a week for an intensive course, restorative justice, and then from that, two more younger leaders emerged and she passed on the Baton. And um, can you talk about the two people that you worked with? Diego and his wife, Fe?

Bill Goldberg:
Diego, yes. Danielle was one of the other people that was instrumental…

patience kamau:
…Dani-e-lle, I guess she says her name “Dani-e-lle.” Yeah…

Bill Goldberg:
Yeah. Diego and Fernanda, both, both of them took on an incredible organizing job themselves to get the 50 people here. I mean, Diego was the off-campus organizer that I was working with and he arra…he helped them arrange airfare, made sure that they were all arriving at the airport close to a similar time. So that we could pick them all up, helped arrange their, you know, who was, who was going to stay with whom lodging wise. And so the two of them did this…so much work for it. And this year actually I think we’re offering them a free class as that…it was, I had a conversation with them about how much they did and they said, yeah, I wish you would have talked to you in advance. And I was like if you would have talked to me in advance, I would have given you free classes as “thanks” for all of this work.

So yeah, it’s been wonderful to work with the two of them as well, and this year they’re coming back hopefully with a new group of 25 people who want to take a restorative justice course, and I’m not sure if they’ll take a second course or not. The original 50 actually from last year, I’ve been talking about coming back next year to take advanced courses an advanced STAR course, a more advanced course on restorative justice and criminal justice system, that they can take back to Brazil. So it’s definitely a relationship that’s grown over the years and that I think we’ll have for several years; and their restorative justice within their criminal justice system surpasses ours. It’s incredible to see like what they’re doing. I mean, they still have problems just like we do, but they’re training a lot of people, they’re using it in actual like, you know, in criminal cases.

patience kamau:
It’s pretty amazing to me because Fernanda herself, she’s a judge.

Bill Goldberg:
Right.

patience kamau:
So it’s, it’s interesting to me how…

Bill Goldberg:
…and Diego is a lawyer.

patience kamau:
Right. So, it’d be fascinating for me to actually see how she implements this within her court and how these things work out. It’s, and many of them, like you said, are judges and prosecutors and Supreme Court Justices.[Chuckles] It’s pretty amazing.

Bill Goldberg:
I couldn’t actually, I can’t actually see our legal system doing that. I mean, we have enough time trying to get, uh, the prosecutor from Harrisonburg to come to our events much less, you know, prosecutors and judges and lawyers, not just from Harrisonburg but from Virginia and federally. We’ve never been successful in doing that on a large scale. Every once in a while we get some people who are either retired judges or lawyers or, but it’s been rare.

patience kamau:
So maybe we can learn something from Brazil!

Bill Goldberg:
Hopefully.

patience kamau:
Yeah.

[Transition music plays]

patience kamau:
So what do you do outside of your work at CJP for fun that is life-giving to you? I know you have a full life.

Bill Goldberg:
Hm, well I will start off by saying that I’m a science fiction geek and so reading, watching movies, watching TV shows that are science fiction is one of the things that I use as a huge relaxer. I also love to hike and camp and bike, used to run, but, but I’m getting too old and my knees don’t want to handle that. But you know, as a family we’ve done lots of hiking trips, lots of biking trips. We actually biked 200 miles in five days when we were in Israel. Um, as…

patience kamau:
…you were leading a cross-cultural…

Bill Goldberg:
…we were leading a study abroad, cross-cultural in Israel and we, not the students, but just our family did this 200 mile bike trip from Jerusalem all the way down to the Southern tip of Israel. So we love doing that as a family. And so, you know, we, we try and get out in nature as much as we can. Um, another project that I hesitate to mention and hopefully by the time this is published, I’ve made progress on is that Lisa and I are, have started a business to build out Mercedes cargo vans into camper-vans and sell them in the hopes of having one ourselves. Because as much as we love hiking and camping, we’re getting to that point in life where camping on the ground is just not nearly as fun or restful. And traveling around the country is just not nearly as easy with two grown children.

And so having a, not a, not a full-fledged camper, but a camper-van gives us the ability for the four of us to travel to sleep in a bit more comfort, deal when it’s pouring down rain, not having to like pack up a tent. So we’re, we’re kind of that, that’s, that’s our newest hobby/preoccupation is…we haven’t really started yet because we haven’t got the van that we won’t get that until December. But hopefully by the time this comes out I’ll have made more progress on it and have it completed. So yes, but that’s what we’re doing.

patience kamau:
What are you actually going to be doing to it?

Bill Goldberg:
Taking a completely empty shell and putting in insulation, and electrical and plumbing so it can have a shower and a sink and a composting toilet and fans and lights and power ports for plugs, um, and putting a kitchen and beds and extra chairs and windows.

patience kamau:
That’s very ambitious and very impressive!

Bill Goldberg:
It’s very ambitious. We’ll see, like I said, we’ll see when this comes out, how it, how, how impressive it is.

patience kamau:
We can all come take a tour of it…

Bill Goldberg:
…there we go…

patience kamau:
…in the summer…

Bill Goldberg:
…maybe…

patience kamau:
…maybe give us a ride around…

Bill Goldberg:
…if possible.

patience kamau:
That’s fantastic.

Bill Goldberg:
If anybody wants to buy one, we’re selling them! :)

patience kamau:
So you’re going to do one and then…

Bill Goldberg:
Well we kind of figured that, and this was a, this kind of grew out of the fact that if we’re looking to move cross country in a couple of years and we realized with five animals, it’s very difficult if not impossible to get across country easily. And we realized we should, if we’re going to do this, which should be in an RV, which are also very expensive to rent one way, and then we looked into them and they’re not expensive to buy if you buy like the cheap ones, which we didn’t want. And then we realized that we could build our own and if we’re going to spend the time and energy to learn how to build our own, why stop at one, once we built it, the second one gets easier and so, and apparently more affordable for our, to build our own because you know, we’ve bought and sold several of them.

patience kamau:
You said you have five animals, what are they?

Bill Goldberg:
We have three cats and two dogs. Um, I should say the other hobby I have is I’m a beekeeper and a wine maker, which go together well. Um, I’ve had bees for four or five years now and unfortunately most of them have died– most of the hives die either during the year or in the winter that, that community collapsed. That’s just prevalent and we think it’s probably from neonicotinoid poisons that farmers use.

patience kamau:
Yeah, you do live right out there with a lot of farmers…

Bill Goldberg:
We do! Um, but the last couple of…last year or two, we’ve actually had a couple of hives that made it. We’ve got a lot of honey and I use that honey to make Mead, which is a honey-based wine for those who don’t know. So.

patience kamau:
And you shared both with us…

Bill Goldberg:
…and I do share them here.

patience kamau:
Yes, yes. You are very generous that way.

Bill Goldberg:
Yup.

patience kamau:
All right. Is there anything else you’d like to talk about that we haven’t addressed?

Bill Goldberg:
Um, only to say that you know, it, I find it difficult to believe sometimes that I’ve been here for 20 years cause I’ve never expected to work at a religious institution, much less being Jewish and working at a Christian institution, but I have really enjoyed my time, especially at the Summer Peacebuilding Institute, growing from just working on transportation to eventually being the director was kind of a dream that I expressed years ago, half jokingly, half seriously.

And now you know, I, now I am and I’ve been for the last four or five years, I don’t know how much longer I’ll be here because 20 years is an awfully long time. But I still enjoy it and I still enjoy my colleagues and meeting new students and learning about them is still a lot of fun. It’s interesting that some of them are the same age my daughter was and when I started here, she had just been born…

patience kamau:
…that’s perspective, isn’t it?

Bill Goldberg:
That is definitely perspective! But yeah, I still really believe in the work that CJP and the Summer Peacebuilding Institute and STAR do.

patience kamau:
I have to say you’re among the most joyous people to work with.

Bill Goldberg:
Oh, thank you!

patience kamau:
I enjoy getting to know you more as we work together.

Bill Goldberg:
[Chuckles] I have my grumpy moments, but usually that can be taken care of by coffee.

patience kamau:
[Laughs] Well, you know, you’re authentic and that’s, that’s what’s refreshing about you and that’s what’s endearing about who you are.

Bill Goldberg:
Thank you.

patience kamau:
It’s a joy. Thank you so much for doing this Bill and…

Bill Goldberg:
…thank you patience for interviewing.

patience kamau:
Yes, indeed! Have a good one. :)

Bill Goldberg:
You too! :)

patience kamau:
Bye!

patience kamau:
Though our usual, in-person, Summer Peacebuilding Institute this year has also been canceled, we have a team –led by Bill Goldberg– working fervently to put together some online courses that might be of interest to you. If that’s the case, please check out emu.edu/SPI for more information. Who knows? These courses could be the way to break the monotonous pace of the #QuarantineLife in which we find ourselves. Once again: emu.edu/SPI.

[Outro music begins and fades into background]

patience kamau:
All the music you hear on this podcast has been composed by: the one and only Luke Mullet. Our audio mixing engineer extraordinaire is: Stephen Angello. Audio editing support was generously provided by: Michaela Mast. And I am the podcast executive producer, audio recording engineer, editor and host: patience kamau. As you are able, please remember to subscribe, rate and review this podcast so that other peacebuilders may find it. We’ll be back with a new episode in two weeks! Thank you so much for listening and join us again next time!

[Outro music swells and ends]

This sixth episode features Dr. Johonna Turner, assistant professor of restorative justice and peacebuilding here at The Center for Justice and Peacebuilding (CJP). In the episode, Turner speaks about her history of community organizing, activism, and youth development work in Washington, D.C.; the Faith Integration Task Force she helped form at 91����Ƶ (91����Ƶ); and her vision for CJP’s role in transnational movement-building.

Turner first came to CJP in 2010 as a participant in the Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience program. She had been doing a variety of organizing and arts-based activism in Washington, D.C., and “was looking for a place where I could get some more skills to supplement and to really support me in the work that I was doing … the youth identified trauma healing as an approach that was especially important for breaking cycles of violence that depend upon repressive, state-sponsored punitive measures.”

She joined the CJP faculty in the fall of 2015, and became the co-director of the  in 2018.

91����Ƶ three years ago, Turner found herself in a number of conversations with faculty and students who wanted “to be more intentional about creating spaces for deliberate reflection on faith in the classroom, and spirituality writ large.” She banded together with Carl Stauffer, Tim Seidel, and Amy Knorr to create the Faith Integration Task Force to facilitate 91����Ƶ as a “multi-faith space in a Christian university,” that both welcomes perspectives from other faiths while honoring its roots in Christian theology and spirituality.

Out of those conversations, Turner has created classes such as “Peacebuilding Through Biblical Narrative” and “Justice, Peace, and the Biblical Story.” One of Turner’s goals through these courses is to understand the injustice, oppression, and violence “that are preventing abundant life for all people,” and find ways to discuss these issues in the church – a space she says is “often depoliticized.”

While Turner says that CJP’s sense of community is a great strength, she also sees “the need for more intentional integration of critical theory within the curriculum, particularly feminist perspectives, critial race perspectives … queer perspectives in our curriculum and pedagogy as well, attention to racial and gender justice, attention at large to how systems of oppression are at the root of violence.”

And her vision for CJP at 50? 

“A crucible, an incubator, of peacebuilders, organizers, artists, and activists who are not only able to connect their work to what’s happening in their own local contexts, but also able to see the linkages between what’s happening at their own places and what’s happening at other places. Who are able to challenge the systemic roots of oppression that give rise to acts of direct cultural and structural violence. And who are able to more deeply work at challenging all systems of oppression, including heterosexism.”

Guest

Dr. Johonna Turner

Dr. Johonna Turner is assistant professor of restorative justice and peacebuilding here at CJP and co-director of the Zehr Institute for Restorative Justice. For over 15 years, she has worked as part of arts collectives, community-organizing coalitions, and other social movement organizations to develop youth leadership, empower disenfranchised people, and cultivate transformational approaches to safety and justice. An interdisciplinary scholar, Turner received post-graduate training in U.S. cultural studies, women’s studies, and biblical theology/urban ministry. Her areas of scholarship, practice and teaching include restorative and transformative justice, trauma healing, faith-rooted peacebuilding, and critical race feminism. She has a PhD in American Studies for the University of Maryland.

Transcript

Johonna Turner:
Last spring I had the opportunity to teach nonviolent mobilization for social change because Carl Stauffer was on sabbatical and as a part of that class, we read Patrisse Khan-Cullors’ book “When They Call You a Terrorist,” and it was an opportunity –and she’s one of the founders of Black Lives Matter– but it was an opportunity for us, yes, to talk about the situation in the U.S., but also in our conversations we named and we talked about these connections of what’s happening globally. For example, with the global war on terrorism.

[Theme music begins and fades into back ground]

patience kamau:
Hey everybody, happy Wednesday to you!
Welcome back to Peacebuilder, a Conflict Transformation Podcast by The Center for Justice and Peacebuilding.
My name is patience kamau and with us this episode:

Johonna Turner:
Dr. Johonna Turner, assistant professor of restorative justice and peacebuilding, as well as the co-director of the Zehr Institute for Restorative Justice.

patience kamau:
Dr. Johonna Turner is assistant professor of restorative justice and peacebuilding here at The Center for Justice and Peacebuilding, and co-director of the Zehr Institute for Restorative Justice. For over 15 years, she has worked as part of arts collectives, community organizing coalitions and other social movement organizations to develop youth leadership, empower disenfranchised people and cultivate transformational approaches to safety and justice. An interdisciplinary scholar, Turner received postgraduate training in U.S. Cultural Studies, Women’s Studies and Biblical theology/urban ministry. Her areas of scholarship, practice and teaching include restorative and transformative justice, trauma healing, faith rooted peacebuilding and critical race feminism. She has a Ph.D in American Studies from the University of Maryland.

___

However, before we begin it is with great sorrow that we have decided to cancel the CJP at 25 gathering this June. Circumstances surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, caused by the Coronavirus, have left us no choice. Instead, we will postpone the event exactly a year and hope that you will join us in June 2021. Those of you who had already registered, we thank you, and we will be in touch regarding your options including receiving a full refund.

[Theme music resumes, swells and ends]

patience kamau:
Good morning, Johonna?

Johonna Turner:
Good morning patience.

patience kamau:
How are you today?

Johonna Turner:
I’m doing well, thank you. How are you?

patience kamau:
I’m fine, thank you. Thank you for doing this.

Johonna Turner:
It’s a pleasure.

patience kamau:
Uhm, how long have you held each of those roles?

Johonna Turner:
I came into The Center for Justice and Peacebuilding as assistant professor in fall 2015, I began serving as the co-director of the Zehr Institute for Restorative Justice last fall.

patience kamau:
Let’s talk about your journey –how did you end up here at CJP or what it was before…for you it’s always been CJP.

Johonna Turner:
For me it’s, it’s always been CJP.

patience kamau:
So 91����Ƶ and CJP –How did you end up here?

Johonna Turner:
I first came to The Center for Justice and Peacebuilding in 2010 as a participant in the Summer Peacebuilding Institute. I was participating in the STAR program, the Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience level I and that, that was really my first experience. I came, in large part at that time of my life, as someone who had been doing community organizing work, youth leadership development work, peace education, anti-violence activism, work in Washington, D.C.

I was looking for a place where I could get some more skills to supplement, and to really, uh, support me in the work that I was doing, and I found 91����Ƶ in an online search; it appealed to be for a number of reasons because of its strong practice orientation specifically in terms of the CJP program, but also because it was housed in a Christian university that was really committed to faith-based work and our faith, faith rooted and faith integrate at work, and at the time of my life I was really looking for an opportunity to ground my own justice and peacebuilding work within my faith, much…in much deeper ways.

patience kamau:
Wow, so it was just a random online search?

Johonna Turner:
It was an, it was an online search.

patience kamau:
Oh my goodness! Do you remember what you searched for or was it…

Johonna Turner:
I don’t remember. I was, I was actually taking breaks in 2009 from working on my dissertation and in between, and so in between uh writing, I would take breaks and look for, where can I go to learn more [Laughter]…

patience kamau:
…[laughter continues] to gain more tools and STAR is what caught your attention…

Johonna Turner:
…and STAR caught my attention for sure. I had just recently, that year in 2009, led a trauma healing program. I directed a trauma healing program with youth that was a part of an organization that I founded and led in Washington, D.C., called the “Visions to Peace Project.” We had a program called “Let’s Get Free,” and it was an arts-based trauma healing program that went on for 6 weeks. I was the director and convener of the program, but partner with a good friend of mine, a colleague who’s a counselor, and was the facilitator of the program.

We developed a curriculum together and, and so I was especially thinking about trauma healing and wanting more tools and more knowledge so that I could be more effective in that. In part because the work that I was doing with young people, we identified, and particularly the youth, identified trauma healing as an approach that was especially important for breaking cycles of violence, that didn’t depend upon repressive state sponsored punitive measures.

patience kamau:
Wow. Is the organization still functional?

Johonna Turner:
No, it was really a short-lived effort. It was a, it was a project that was funded by a Soros justice fellowship, which I received in 2007.

patience kamau:
Oh, that’s awesome. “Short-lived” –how long?

Johonna Turner:
Oh, let’s see here. It, I started in 20, in 2007 and uh, continued as a volunteer effort –the primary funding came from that fellowship, which was an 18 month fellowship. And then I continued to lead various projects and programs for the next uh, the next few years after the fellowship ended. Um, we didn’t have a very clear closing date but probably activities continued until, um, perhaps 2011 or 12.

patience kamau:
So you work with youth a lot –why is that?

Johonna Turner:
I have, I have…

patience kamau:
…you have, in the past?

Johonna Turner:
…in the past…

patience kamau:
…what caused your, what was your path to that?

Johonna Turner:
Initially, the, the work actually began when I, myself was still a young adult, young person at the age of 18. I was very much involved in D.C.’s arts scene, particularly the poetry scene in D.C., and uh, that was very much connected to arts activism work. And I was a part of an arts collective that used arts, particularly performing arts, literary arts, poetry, drumming as a vehicle to engage young people in literacy efforts. And, and the art collected that I was a part of, most of us were invited to serve as teachers in a summer program for young people living in the D.C. Housing Authority, in the housing projects.

So that is how at the age of 18, I began working with other young people but in a very, not as much in a peer position, but as an educator. And I continued to be involved in that both in college, leading rites-of-passage programs with young people in the housing projects that work, uh, in the same city where I went to, went to college. And then I continue to be involved in youth organizing groups and, um, really inter-generational activist efforts, when I returned to, to D.C. after college.

patience kamau:
“Rites-of-passage programs” –what, what kinds are those?

Johonna Turner:
A “rites-of-passage program” is a program that enables young people who are really at the, the age of transition between, you know, childhood and adolescence to have an intentional entryway into particularly adolescence and young-adulthood, so it’s generally around middle school age in the U.S., and many cultures have a rites-of-passage –an intentional, you know, cultural, um, journey. But in the United States, many of our communities, especially communities of color, we’ve been separated from those, those, those passageways because of processes of enslavement and you know, colonialism and so on.

And so it’s a program that actually still provides something like that for young people, and so we used poetry and dance as methods for engaging these young women and thinking more about their identity and their culture and deeper self-awareness, and so through those, those methods, we met with them, um, weekly and we engage in particularly dance, dance and poetry as part of this program for them to think more about who they are and to really deepen their sense of self and, and their agency and, and the contributions that they want to make in their community, in their life overall.

patience kamau:
Yeah, so it’s a reflective processes it sounds like…

Johonna Turner:
Absolutely!

patience kamau:
Um, did anything emerge from that that was surprising to you? That was unexpected?

Johonna Turner:
It was actually more than 20 years ago when I was involved in, in that program. It, as I said, it was something that I, I was involved in when I myself was a college student, so I think it, I think, I guess I would say reflecting back all those all of those years ago, one of the powerful things that is very much resonant with the work that we do here is the sense of community that the young women were able to build among one another and that we were all able to build together.

patience kamau:
It was only women?

Johonna Turner:
Only young women in this program. There was a different program…

patience kamau:
…for young men?

Johonna Turner:
…in the same community center, based at a community center in Columbia, Missouri, which is where I went to college and and so that –there was a program with young men and there was also a program with young women and so the rites-of-passage programs are often gender specific.

patience kamau:
Hm-hm. Wow, how does that cater to people who are non-gender specific? I mean, you’ve been out of it for a while…

Johonna Turner:
At the time that, that was not as common as it is today. That was more than 20 years ago.

patience kamau:
Of course.

Johonna Turner:
Yes.

patience kamau:
Okay.

[Transition music plays]

patience kamau:
So what do you teach here at CJP?

Johonna Turner:
Currently I’m teaching Restorative Justice: history, theory and application –t’s our foundational restorative justice course. In the spring I will be teaching Foundations of Justice and Peacebuilding level II. Those are courses that I commonly teach, but I often get the opportunity to teach some new courses as well.

So this semester I’m also teaching a course that’s cross listed with the Seminary. It is entitled “Justice Peace and the Biblical Story.” I’m co-teaching that with a colleague in the seminary and also in Bible and Religion [dept.], Andrew Suderman, and we’ve been really having a wonderful time with our large group of, of 20 students, two-thirds of whom are our seminary students, and one-third are our CJP students.

patience kamau:
How did that come to be? Like how did you, how did you and Andrew development it?

Johonna Turner:
We co-developed this course, but it actually, I would say that the roots of the course began long before our collaboration. And it traces back to the work that we’ve been doing in CJP over the last few years with our Faith Integration Task Force, which started four or five years ago? When did that start?

Johonna Turner:
91����Ƶ three, three years ago, the Faith Integration Task Force, so…

patience kamau:
…how did it start –talk a little bit about the Faith Integration Task Force?

Johonna Turner:
Sure. The Faith Integration Task Force really began with conversations among colleagues about our desires to be more intentional about creating spaces for deliberate reflection on, on faith in the classroom, and spirituality writ large even for those who have no explicit, um, connection to, uh, a religious group, but for whom, you know, all of us have some sense of spirituality. And, and it also began, not only actually among conversations with colleagues, but also students coming to us and asking for more conversation about faith in the classroom. And so out of that, uh, four of us came together…

patience kamau:
Who are the four?

Johonna Turner:
Myself, Carl Stauffer, Tim Seidel and Amy Knorr. And, and we came together to really think about what does it mean for us to…and how do we…both, what does it mean and how do we integrate more intentional conversations about faith in our community at large, not just in the classroom, in ways that are inclusive, in ways that are meaningful, and in ways that people can speak from the particularities of their experience. And also how do we meet the needs of those, who like myself, came to 91����Ƶ in large part because it is a Christian university.

So how do we exist as a multi-faith space in a Christian university, meeting the needs for whom…that they were, those students who were expecting to get some clear integration or some clear grounding, um, for their justice and peace practice within Christian theology or Christian spirituality, but also those from whom, from other faith traditions who were telling us, we also came, um, for example, Muslim students have said, we also came because this is a Christian university and we wanted to hear much more about Christian faith and spirituality and how that informs peacebuilding, and we’re not getting as much of that as we expected either. And so, uh, so we began to think about what is, what does it look like, and to do that also through intentional dialogue with students.

patience kamau:
Is this work you’re still doing besides the class that you’re teaching? Is this a task force that’s still doing that work?

Johonna Turner:
It still exists.

patience kamau:
It is still ongoing…

Johonna Turner:
…it’s still ongoing.

patience kamau:
What are the most recent conversations you’ve all had?

Johonna Turner:
Most, most recently we did a survey with students and we are in the process of, now I’m reviewing this that we partnered with…I actually contracted with one of our alumnae, um, Bex Simmerman who surveyed recent students and ask them about what their desires are for faith integration, what does it mean to them, what does it look like, what are their concerns? And, and that reflects some of the earlier initiatives that we’ve done, so we’ve, early earlier on when we started the task force, one of the initial projects that we took on was to facilitate, to have a facilitated dialogue about faith integration.

And so we had two students, Jennifer Lee and um, was, was, was, and Brenna Case, who took that project on as part of their Facilitation Class to design and facilitate a conversation with students around faith integration and, and that conversation going back to the, the class, that conversation led to identification of really two needs here. One need was around, uh, interfaith conversation or, or more so conversations that enable people to speak across diverse faith and spiritual, um, beliefs to one another about what they believe and how it informs, um, their work in justice and peacebuilding.

And the other was a desire for particularly those who came here to learn about how this work connects and, and it can be rooted in, and also be informed by the Christian tradition. We needed to create spaces to meet that need specifically, and so one of the curricular efforts that came out of that was a one credit class called “Peacebuilding Through Biblical Narrative.” We piloted that in, in the fall directly after we had done that dialogue in the spring, and in part because there were students who participated in that dialogue who were going to be going on practicum the following year, and in order to get that need met, we needed to work fast. And so over the summer we put together this 1-credit course and students were, the students who took the course, continued to, continued to share about how, um, how influential and how important it has meant to them.

patience kamau:
So it was quite impactful.

Johonna Turner:
It was quite impactful! And then another course that came out of that was a course that I co-taught with Jennifer Lee, who facilitated that dialogue as a student during SPI one summer, which is called “Christian Spirituality for Social Change.” And, and so this current class, “Justice Peace and the Biblical Story” is really integrating some of the content from the “Peacebuilding Through Biblical Narrative” class informed by my experiences teaching “Christian Spirituality for Social Change.” And also Andrew having, uh, designed classes on Biblical perspectives on peace and justice, and also as someone who teaches “Biblical Theology for Peace and Justice” at the undergraduate level and teaching “Liberation Theology.” And so we really have put our experiences, uh, our, some of our content together to create this new course that could be of benefit to not only CJP students, but seminary, given that it’s really at the intersection of what we’re teaching in our programs.

patience kamau:
Yeah, this sounds very fascinating. What sort of conversations happen in the class?

Johonna Turner:
Wow. So many conversations. Most recently we have been reading the gospel of Mark and along with a book called “Say to this Mountain” and it provides a, it’s based on a, a much longer, more extensive book called “Binding the Strong Man,” but it’s, it’s a political commentary on the gospel of Mark. And so what the authors, it is a group of authors, uh, Ched Myers being the lead author are doing, is saying that we need to be able to, it’s important to understand the social, political, economic context of the gospel and to be able to understand Jesus’ life and ministry in terms of the really subversive work that, that he was doing, the teaching and, those qualities, and, and, so there’s a really heavy emphasis on that, and students just last night in our class were, were sharing about how much, uh, that has impacted their own understanding of, of Jesus.

So for example, one person, a couple of people said, you know, I always had this idea of Jesus Christ being very gentle, uh, and very, um, very kind of weak actually, and now I have an understanding of, of Jesus as being someone who was very, uh, very radical in his stance against injustice and oppression and that has impacted their understanding of then what it means to follow Jesus.

patience kamau:
Mm-hm, that’s amazing that, I mean, Jesus –the way he lived his life was very subversive for the times and he ended up being crucified for it, and that was a very political gesture.

Johonna Turner:
Yes, yes! And so even asking why, asking why, why was he crucified? Right. And…

patience kamau:
What sort of answers are coming to…why was he crucified?

Johonna Turner:
I mean, I think that, I mean actually last night we didn’t get to as much discussion around some of the, we just actually wrapped up the book yesterday as much as the text, in part because we take time in these classes, we do in, in most if not, not all CJP classes to check in with one another about what’s coming up, and there were some things that were coming up that really needed, um, space and attention.

patience kamau:
Yeah. I wonder how –in your reflections, how are they, how are they coming into what…how life is today, and because you’re taking this angle of looking at the political…

Johonna Turner:
Mm-hm…

patience kamau:
…aspects of Jesus, Jesus’ life. How is that happening? I mean, how is that crossing over to contemporary life right now? How does it appear in class?

Johonna Turner:
I mean, that has definitely been an aspect of the course, most, most recently we have also talked about, um, which definitely touches on contemporary life, but we’ve also talked about “how do we understand violence?” “How do we understand peace?” What does the Bible say about that in terms of the sense of Shalom and then thinking about what are the situations in our everyday lives, what are the situations going on today that, um, of course, even just the everyday way that we live under our systems of capitalism for example, that are preventing abundant life for all people.

And so being able to name those issues as, as issues that are pertinent to not only individual Christians but uh, but the church at large, as people seeking to follow Jesus in terms of seeing those issues as part of what it means, um, to quote-unquote “do ministry” in a sense that we have two-thirds of the class being people in seminary and are…and so seeing social justice, seeing…understanding and the importance of deepening awareness of what’s happening and bringing that into spaces that are often de-politicized.

patience kamau:
That’s quite a crossover. That’s really good. How, how does the life of Christ, uhm, manifest in how you live your life and how you teach?

Johonna Turner:
I can talk about how, how I hope, how I hope it, it manifests for me how, and some of the ways that it informs me. One is I, I remember a moment when I was engaged in biblical reflection and it was, uh, I was reflecting on the story of Jesus in the temple as a boy –it’s a story about him, his parents have come, are traveling and he goes, he basically gets separated from, from his parents and he’s, …

patience kamau:
…he stays behind…

Johonna Turner:
…he stays behind. Yes…[laughs]

patience kamau:
…[laughs] having a debate with a rabbi.

Johonna Turner:
[Continued laughter] Yes, exactly. And so I remember one of the ways that I enjoyed doing biblical reflection is, is through visual arts. I was journaling, um, but with doodles in my, in my Bible and I remember journaling that story through art and drawing, um, a really big ear because I, one of, they were, there were really three verbs that, um, was mentioned in terms of what Jesus was doing as a boy. One was listening and the other was, uh, was asking questions. I don’t remember the third one right now, but…could be answering, but, but I think about, um, Jesus as someone who listens very deeply and who asks questions, um, in a variety of different ways, for a variety of different purposes. And so I think even in those more mundane ways are ways that I seek to follow Jesus in my pedagogy.

patience kamau:
Hmm, that’s beautiful.

[Transition music plays]

patience kamau:
So you’ve been at CJP for five years now?

Johonna Turner:
This is my fifth year.

patience kamau:
This is your fifth year. All right. Um, so in your five years here, what do you think is something unique to celebrate about CJP at 25?

Johonna Turner:
I was recently meeting with a group of recent alumni, and they were sharing one of, um…in another graduate program, and they were sharing collectively about how some of their experiences, a couple of them have actually gone on to other graduate programs and they were sharing about how their experiences in those programs have been devoid of an intentional sense of community in the classroom, and how they had expected that much more because of their experience at CJP.

And so I think, and I myself have even taken some classes even in uhm, other classes here at 91����Ƶ –I enjoy learning– and I think that the way that we build community and really spend time not only about just the content, but really connecting how, how are we entering this space? How are we doing together? What, what is our, the relationship of our bodies and our spirits to the content that we’re approaching together, and how is that interacting with whatever else is going on in our lives? How do we develop relationships, um, among us in this room so that we can have the kind of conversations that are needed. And so that intentional development of, um, of a container for learning that that engages the body, the mind and the spirit, I think is definitely something worth celebrating, even as it exists in other places –I don’t think that it needs to be unique to CJP to celebrate it.

patience kamau:
It exists in other places within the campus you mean?

Johonna Turner:
No, I think it exists in many other programs as well –it’s something that even as I was teaching at the University of Maryland, when I was an instructor, I sought to do. But I believe that definitely my, my intentionality and my skills and doing that have grown since I’ve been here.

patience kamau:
Mm, that’s great! And as always, as we celebrate something, there’re always two sides of a coin –what could CJP be doing better?

Johonna Turner:
Some of the concerns that students have brought, and I understand some of these concerns have definitely…they’re new to me because I’m new here, but as I have talked with colleagues who’ve been here much longer, I understand that they’ve also been brought up before and these concerns relate to the need for intentional, more intentional integration of critical theory, within the curriculum, particularly, um, feminist perspectives, critical race, um, perspective, much more attention to, um, even I will say, uh, queer perspectives in our curriculum and pedagogy as well — attention to racial and gender justice, attention at large to how systems of oppression are at the root of, of violence, both direct and structural violence and then the need to transform those systems as part of work to in violence.

patience kamau:
Are you hopeful that CJP will do better? Are foundations being laid to do better?

Johonna Turner:
Absolutely. And I’m, I’m very grateful for the work that students have done –I would say that they have bourne, um, much more, uh, of the, of the, I don’t, I don’t want to use the term burden, but they’ve put so much effort and labor into strengthening our program in those areas because I think they see it as worth strengthening. They, because they, they value the work that happens here and they want it to be better and to grow in those ways, which is very different from coming somewhere in which you experience frustration. You experience this sense of, um, sometimes even invisibility in terms of whose voices and whose, whose perspectives are not centered in the curriculum and that can lead you to detach. But rather than detach, so many of our students have done the opposite thing, which is…

patience kamau:
…they’ve engaged…

Johonna Turner:
…indeed to dig deeper, to engage and to challenge and to inspire. And I would say for myself as someone who was not trained in a formal peace and conflict studies program, my Ph.D. is in American studies, which is U.S. Cultural Studies, and, and I also have a graduate certificate in Women’s Studies and then a separate graduate certificate in Urban Youth Ministry. And so in my, in my formal training in academia and in my training and community organizing and activism, the social movement spaces that have also been a part of my training, all of those have, have really centered these critical perspectives around race, gender, class, sexuality, and their intersections, have centered an intersectional understanding of oppression, have centered an understanding of the relationships between oppression and violence, and so for me, that is something that has been germane to thinking about peace and justice.

And so I was actually quite surprised to find in peace and conflict studies –as a formal field– that to be so absent. And there are many conversations happening not just as CJP, but these conversations about the dearth of these approaches and also about the, the kind of the Eurocentric, patriarchal center of the field –these conversations are not unique to The Center for Justice and Peacebuilding, they’re happening in many other programs right now.

patience kamau:
And thank God that they are!

Johonna Turner:
Absolutely.

patience kamau:
So you’ve used critical theory a number of times –can you define that?

Johonna Turner:
Critical –I would say, I mean specifically for me, I think about um, particular sites of critical theory. And so for example, critical race theory is a, a body of theory, it is really two different kinds of bodies of theory –there’s a formal critical race theory that’s come out of the work of legal scholars of color who were positioning themselves in part, in relation to the critical legal studies, um, movement, which was looking at how law is not objective, it’s not neutral, right?

But it has historically been at the service of, you know, dominant institutions. And then critical race theorists were saying we need to put a racial justice lens on that critique and understand that critique in relation to race, um, critical race theorists have also, um, there’s another, uh, a few key ideas in critical race theory. One anti-essentialism. So anti-essentialism is saying that there’s not an essential, um, for example, black person, there’s not an essential Latino person –there’s nothing innate about what it means to be a particular race. Race is socially constructed. And so in talking about race, we know that it is real, but it has also been created. And so there’s attention to it as a social construction, and then what it means in our lives, and how that interacts with, for example, law and policy…

patience kamau:
…of course, how it actually impacts individual lives as it unfolds.

Johonna Turner:
Yes, how it impacts individuals. And another aspect of that also relates to epistemology, which is, which is about the way in which our lived experiences are important sources of knowledge and, and how we, how we can know through our experience. And so much of a legal scholarship has been very much um, uh, about kind of this neutrality and objectivity and what you can prove through cases, and these critical race scholars were coming in and saying, well, our experiences, our sources of data that speak back to these dominant narratives and, and so that those ideas are not specific to, of course, kind of the legal field, but they’ve come out of other areas. They’ve informed that area, and then they’ve also, the work in critical race theory that’s come out of even the work of legal scholars has informed many other areas such as education, sociology and so on.

And then there’s critical race feminism, which takes an even deeper attention to gender and sexuality, um, as a part of that analysis and centering the experiences of women of color, and the many ways in which the, the kinds of experiences that women of color have had at the intersections of racism, of classism, of patriarchy, um, sometimes heterosexism because of their…there is this multiplicity and these experiences of, um, multiple systems of oppression in many lives, in many women of color lives, and of course with differences. Um, then because of that, it’s that if we look at groups that experience multiple layers, then that actually can be so important for yielding insights, of relevance to a wide range of people who might experience, you know, perhaps not as many layers…

patience kamau:
…as many obstacles…

Johonna Turner:
…exactly. So really looking at, um, groups as, as not just as marginalized, um, defining as oppressed, but as rich sources of insight because of the many cultural differences, but also because of, um, what people see when they’re positioned, uh, in particular ways in society…

patience kamau:
…because of their lived experiences…

Johonna Turner:
…because of their lived experiences. And so bringing those experiences to the forefront, bringing those stories and looking at how they talk back to the dominant ways of thinking and dominant ways of believing, dominant narratives, dominant, um, stories. So that that’s a really a big emphasis also in critical race theory and critical race feminism, which are particular areas of critical theory that I, um, I write about that I research in that I, I integrate into my teaching.

patience kamau:
So in general, I don’t know, I might be wrong, but I don’t think that I am. But in general, a lot of these lived experiences when they’re injected into uh, dominant culture are perceived as uh, threatening. Why do you think –off the top of your head– why, why, why do people who are in dominant culture feel threatened when other voices are centered in different ways, or at least invited to the conversation to actually shape how things then look going forward?

Johonna Turner:
I think this is a, is a, is a very relevant question to many um, of the situations, events, our contemporary contexts in which, well, one, if I have always been at the center, then if my experience has always been at the center, then if someone else’s experiences/identity is centered, it can feel disempowering –and actually because it is. Because if I have had, um, if I have been, if, if my worldview reflects experiences that are like mine and then being, you know, um, confronted with others’ experiences, that can also be very shattering in terms of the, the ideas that I have been taught to believe. Right?

So it can, it can feel threatening, I think for very valid, valid reasons in terms of sense of disempowerment, a sense of, um, disenfranchisement, but also way that that can be very, um, disruptive to one’s own worldview and what one has been taught to believe. I’ll give you an example, specific example, the dominant narrative of the American dream and the ways in which we are told that, you know, related to the American dream of meritocracy. Uh, if, if we only work hard enough, we will succeed in the United States. This is a very specific right, um, idea that not only exists here, but particularly in relation to also the American dream –it’s this myth of meritocracy.

And so then if I’m being confronted with experiences that say, well, I too have worked very hard but I’m not thriving and I’m not succeeding, and if, if then I am, it can feel like you are saying that I didn’t earn or I don’t, I shouldn’t have what has been, you know, if I have a good salary or I own a house, that that has just been something given to me, can feel like it is demeaning, right? Maybe my efforts, um, and it can also feel in some, in many ways unpatriotic, uh, because it is confronting some of the very ideas that have been central to, um, a love of country.

patience kamau:
So how do people disentangle that, and navigate that? I mean, what would your advice be to someone who is genuinely feeling threatened, but they ought not to, and we just can’t tell them, “don’t feel threatened,” because the body reacts like it does.

Johonna Turner:
I think history, history has so many answers for us patience. If we look at the history of cross-racial working class organizing in, in the United States, uh, for example, after the civil war –there are different points in history– after the depression, there are…or at the time of the depression, there are these points in our history, in U.S. history specifically where there have been, um, coalitions of, of, of white folks, of black folks, in particular, um, that’s also happened with, with other racial groups as well, but I’m going to give, give some examples here that focus on kind of the uh, white-black organizing across, um, across race but among working class people.

And then there have been deliberate attempts by white elites to disrupt that using racial narratives. So I think that one of the, uh, one of the things we can do better at, in our time is to really not forget about class, and to build bridges with, I think white working class people who are especially, um, experiencing those feelings of disenfranchisement. I think there’s many other things as well. And I think for that we can also stand to learn a lot from what’s happening outside of the U.S. I think that in looking at many of the issues that we face and challenges in the U.S.

We have a very, um, really narrow lens of thinking, um, and this has been the case I think very much so in peace and conflict studies that, that we, we have issues here, but the issues in other places, um, are those that that also need attention by U.S. Americans, and so that our approach has been quite interventionist, um, in terms of, um, looking…outward, looking in terms of us taking solutions over, taking our resources. So what I’m suggesting is that rather than having a view of only what we can contribute, actually looking to what other, what’s happening in other countries, what’s happening in other communities and other cultural contexts for answers, to some of the domestic issues that we face today.

patience kamau:
[Chuckles] Yeah, yeah –what a radical idea– bring ideas to the U.S. from other places?

Johonna Turner:
And I think that’s something that, that, that has been happening at, at CJP in part because of, uh, the, the diversity, the national diversity in our program. And I think it’s something that we can continue to do, um, when students, both students who have been immigrants to the U.S. who are here, who are able to, to class because they don’t have to get visas, um, and students who are able to gain entry into the country. Um, we can continue to really, I think, imagine ourselves cultivating or contributing to transnational movement building.

And, and that’s really, I think about, you know, my vision for CJP in the future. It’s related to this vision of transnational movement building. So how, how do we not only provide or support the development of analysis and, um, creative thinking about solutions, but how do we also dig deeper into issues that are shared across our national context? For example, climate justice, um, issues related to forced displacement, xenophobia –these are issues that are common…

patience kamau:
…worldwide…

Johonna Turner:
…worldwide, right? They’re, they’re here very much present in the U.S. but we can look to many other places we can look to, to places in Europe, right, where there’s increasing xenophobia, um, places in Africa, South Africa, specifically –all over the world. And so, rather than think about, you know, issues of –they domestic or are they, are they, um, in another national context or globe? How, how can we identify those issues that are very common and then dig deeper into how do we understand them? What are differences, yes, in our contexts, but how do we understand them? And then how do we build transnational movements that allow us to connect, connect our work that is local but also has these international linkages as well.

patience kamau:
Have you dreamt about that? How, how do you think we can build that?

Johonna Turner:
I think this, I mean, this, this transnational activism is already happening –it’s actually something that we talk a lot about in Foundations II. We read case studies of, of it and…

patience kamau:
…what are some of the case studies? Does any come to mind?

Johonna Turner:
There is a chapter in a book by Patricia Hill Collins and Sirma Bilge on intersectionality. It’s a book called , and they actually, they talk about a few case studies and in that book of these transnational linkages that have happened, for example, um, of protest movements really, and how people in, in protest movements that have erupted have these, uh, these ways of communicating to other people that says we, you know, for example, in, in situations of police violence, right, that this is something that’s happened, yes, in the U.S. but it’s also something that people are experiencing in many other places.

And so they’ll, they’ll have, for example, signs that connect what’s happening where they, there’ll be protesting where they are, but they’ll have signs that relate back to what’s happened in other places. And, and so I think these are examples, and in another example is a, is a specific example is in relation to the, um, the incredible work that’s happened between black and black Palestinian solidarity. Uh, so for example, the connections between Ferguson and Gaza, you know, so, so what’s happening.

patience kamau:
What are some of those connections between Ferguson and Gaza?

Johonna Turner:
So just thinking about, again, state violence against communities of color, repressive policing and the ways in which that is happening in Palestine, in Gaza and the ways in which communities of color, again, it’s not the same. It’s not a parallel…

patience kamau:
…it’s not, but there’re similarities…

Johonna Turner:
…if people are using, in some ways its metaphors. Um, there has been, there have been some incredible projects that I had the opportunity to learn about when I was involved in youth organizing. And one of the projects was based at a school in the Bronx where they were learning about the situation under which, you know, Palestinians are facing, as a way of um, deepening their understanding of, of yes, what’s happening there, but also deepening their understanding of how to analyze their own situations of forced displacement in the Bronx, in New York and, and also forging solidarity, so they, the students were actually communicating with students in, in Palestine and they were using hip hop also as way to do that, and they, they actually, some of them took trips over, they created some documentary films about this. There’s also a similar solidarity with native people, indigenous people in the U.S., there was a trip where they also took a trip to connect with young people in Palestine. And so these are some of some of these examples where again, they’re different situations, but there are some, some resonances…

patience kamau:
…connecting threads…

Johonna Turner:
…connecting threads, for example, about space. Um, and who’s allowed to be where and whose bodies are always already deemed as violent, whose bodies are always already deemed as criminal, whose bodies are always already deemed as terrorist…

patience kamau:
…mm-hm, and therefore easily discarded..

Johonna Turner:
…and therefore easily discarded. Last spring I had the opportunity to teach nonviolent mobilization for social change because Carl Stauffer was on sabbatical and as a part of that class, we read Patrisse Khan-Cullors’ book “When They Call You a Terrorist,” and it was an opportunity –and she’s one of the founders of Black Lives Matter– but it was an opportunity for us, yes, to talk about the situation in the U.S., but also in our conversations we named and we talked about these connections of what’s happening globally. For example, with the global war on terrorism.

patience kamau:
Yeah, I mean, as we speak right now, we’re recording this in early November –right now, there are all these, uh, protests happening in so many countries in Chile, in Lebanon, in Iraq,…

Johonna Turner:
…Hong Kong…

patience kamau:
…in Hong Kong. That’s right. I mean, they, it’s happening all at the same time, and Ecuador, I mean, they just are very similar. That’s right. They’re not parallel like you said, but they are very, they have very connecting, all these threads connecting them, and so it goes to your point of transnational…

Johonna Turner:
…transnational movement building. And then we also see many examples –I mean with, uh, the recent, um, um, March by young people around climate justice, that happened in hundreds of countries I think all around the world, on the same day, very similar with the Women’s march. And so this is also an example of these, uh, transnational protests where people are saying it’s not enough to just do something in my one city or in my one country, but let’s actually do this all together, connected in different places. And then there’s, there are these very, these various ways through social media, um, through video that people in those places are also connecting and talking with each other, using some of the same symbols, some of the same language, some of the same, you know, visual motifs, um, trading, uh, different kinds of practices of, of protests.

patience kamau:
Yeah, yeah. So given that, that is something that you envision for CJP, so what do you think around –of course this is completely hypothetical and what we hope for– but things come to manifest because we actually dream about them and work toward them. So what is CJP at 50 in a world that supports this sort of world?

Johonna Turner:
I think, I think that that really is a big part of my vision, you know, for CJP at 50 really is a crucible, an incubator of peacebuilders, organizers, artists and activists who are not only able to connect their work, um, to what’s happening in their own local context, but also able to see the linkages between, um, what’s happening in their own places and what’s happening at other places who are able to challenge the systemic, um, roots of oppression that give rise to acts of, of direct cultural and structural violence. And who are able to, um, more deeply work at challenging all, uh, systems of oppression, including heterosexism.

So for example, when we talk about, um, homophobic violence, um, we, that’s not something that’s specific to the U.S. we can think for example, um, about what’s happened in Uganda, right? And the, again, this is not just specific to, um, to East Africa or the…it’s all over the world, the ways in which people who are gay, lesbian, transgender, bisexual, in some places they are targeted for violence, by strangers, everyday people that they don’t know and in, in some places that is very much state supported, formally. In other places it’s not, maybe not state supported formally, but there, there are many people who, um, I mean, even in, we can talk about the, in the U.S. context, it’s not against the law to be gay, but at the same time we are reading a book, um, some excerpts of a book called “Queer Injustice” in my restorative justice class, and in that book there is a lot of documentation about people who’ve called the police when they were attacked, and they also experienced brutality by the very police that they call for help.

And so I, I’ve mentioned that to say that, I think that in our work that we have been historically at CJP, we have, um, had the, I think, um, a focus on tools and resources that, um, and teaching that allowed us to challenge violence, for example, directed at people because of their ethnic identity, and I think that we also need to, um, to, to have as much attention, to, to people experiencing violence because of factors such as sexual identity or gender identity. Um, and, and that is all to say that every life is valuable, and of worth, and of dignity, and I think while we teach that, um, overall it’s very important to dig into the specificity of what that means for different individuals, for different kinds of bodies, for different kinds of communities.

And also to be able to draw connections between, for example, violence that people experience in relation to their ethnicity in relation to their national identity in relation to their gender identity, uh, sexual identity –and, and to really have a much more, um, robust understanding of the many, of the, the, vulnerabilities that people face to violence that are very much connected to those systems, which requires us to be much more intentional about teaching on those systems of oppression and understanding what it means for us even as educators to challenge them in our own thinking and beliefs. It’s as simple as who gets to speak, who do we get to hear from? Do we get to hear from the perspectives of people who define themselves as queer in the classroom? Do we get to hear from them about their experiences of violence and injustice, and their efforts working for safety, peace and justice? It can just be that simple. Do we have those conversations in the classroom?

patience kamau:
How do we even open up the spaces for those conversations?

Johonna Turner:
And how do we open up the spaces for that? And so that, that is a, um, in my, in my restorative justice class, we actually very early on read an excerpt from, from Queer Injustice, which it’s about policing and criminalization of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, plus, you know, people –people, um, who define themselves as queer in a variety of, of ways. One, one of the specific ways, this also connects to conversations right now about migration and immigration –it’s because our immigration law has actually been attentive to issues of sexuality. So it has been, for example, illegal in the past for people who define themselves as gay to come into the U.S. and they’re also at the same time people who are coming to the U.S. for asylum because of threats to their sexual…

patience kamau:
…because of their sexual identity.

Johonna Turner:
…sexual identity, right? And so then thinking about us policy and the the barriers that people face, and then so there, uh, for example, I met, um, someone who created a, um, it’s a, I think it’s called the Black Queer Migrant Justice Project –something of that sort, um, to really think about the intersections of that. And so all, all that to say is that there are some spaces, some conversations that I, where I think we can grow. Uh, it’s not to say move away from the conversations that we have, we have been having, um, around war, around civil war, um, um, that structure, for example, around ethnic identity, but it’s to say, how do we also think more intersectionally when we even have those conversations?

patience kamau:
Yeah, how do we augment those conversations?

Johonna Turner:
Absolutely. And thinking about even within those conversations, well, how do we dig deeper into how people are impacted differently? How people have, have different kinds of access to resources, different kinds of access to, um, our experiences maybe within refugee camp, um, depending on who, um, who they are, um, their gender identity, um, how do we think about a disability justice as a part of this is another area that I think we, um, we can also bring, uh, into our conversations in a deeper way.

So that is all to say that, um, intersectionality is an approach that allows us to think about the, um, the many facets of identity and experience –um, whether someone is, is formerly incarcerated, whether someone is a survivor of, of intimate partner violence, um, whether someone is, um, has, has certain kinds of, um, you know, um, maybe relegated to certain kinds of labor. And, and I think all of these experiences connect to the issues that are, um, that are already a part of our conversations. But how, how do we bring an in depth look at, um, some of the, the components maybe, um, that are a part of the picture that we haven’t been as attentive to in the past.

patience kamau:
Right. Oh, I’m, I’m glad you’re bringing that in into the mix. That’s, that’s a huge blessing!

[Transition music plays]

patience kamau:
Um, what are you working on? Uh, do you have a project that you’re working on currently that you would like to talk about?

Johonna Turner:
Sure. I have been working on, a series of essays about the contributions of women of color, um, to restorative justice theory and praxis. And that, uh, I’m now on the fourth in that series of essays.

patience kamau:
How can people access these?

Johonna Turner:
So the first one is already published it, it was a, it’s part of an article on a much broader topic called The New Generation of Restorative Justice –it’s uh, this, this article it was co-authored with Carl Stauffer and in, in this article we are really imagining what is, what is needed for the new generation of restorative justice was needed in this moment in restorative justice. And so the , conducted a where, you know, we, we went to different places and asked people, what’s needed in restorative justice, what’s happening –and that’s discussed in this article. Carl was the director of that project and in conjunction with Sonya Shah of the, who’s based in Oakland.

And so he talks about that, and one of the primary contributions, and for me in that chapter related to this larger project is, I interviewed a few women of color –restorative justice practitioners– and specifically asked them, well what does the field need to deepen and what, what can we learn from your praxis? And, and so that was the first in that piece. The second one is coming out in a forthcoming book called “,” it’s edited by Edward Valandra by living, it’s published by Living Justice Press.

So that’s not yet out, but it should be out, uh, either…I would, probably not later this year, but sometime next year, 2020, and I have a chapter in that book called creating safety for ourselves. It’s about the transformative justice movement, which is a movement, contemporary movement, primarily created by women of color, many of whom are queer, not all, and they talk uh, and I talk about what transformative justice analysis, vision and practice can contribute to restorative justice given that particularly, it’s rooted in the lived experiences of women of color, um, and, and their experiences and their analysis of both individual violence as well as institutionalize, and often, state sponsored violence. So those are two ways, two pieces, uh, that are, that are…one has been published and one is in the, in the process of being…of coming out.

patience kamau:
All right, all right.

[Transition music plays]

patience kamau:
What do you do for, for recreation, to just help your soul recover or, yeah…what do you do for fun?

Johonna Turner:
Sure! Well, well, I mean…the…recovery and, and fun, uh, they’re, they can be the same and sometimes they’re not. For recovery, I enjoy silence, and so sitting in silence has, um, silence and solitude, those kind of spiritual formation practices, spiritual disciplines –people call them those– have been important for my journey. I’m not getting as much time as in silence, um, currently as I’d like. So that’s a, a practice, a practice that I am, I am leaning into, I’m trying to lean into more this season on busy season in my life. In general, one of the things I enjoy both for recovery and for fun, is swimming, and I’ve actually been uh, really, I’ve been really, um, enjoying swimming with a couple of my colleagues here actually. So that has been really nice.

patience kamau:
How often do you do it?

Johonna Turner:
A couple of times a week at least –I try to, to go to the fitness center and get in the pool.

patience kamau:
That’s exciting. That’s good. All right. Um, I don’t have anything else, but would you like to add, do you have anything else you’d like to add?

Johonna Turner:
I would say, well, um one of the special things, uh, another thing I want to add in terms of celebrating CJP is the care that, uh, I think we experience together, not just the care that we give to students and that students give to one another, but the care that’s given to colleagues. I remember a very difficult time in my own life and my family’s journey where we experiencing some family health emergencies and I experienced so much care from, from colleagues and also from students who heard about it. Food that was given check-ins, encouragement, um, notes of prayer and that went on for, for months. You know, this, this care. And I think that’s also, that’s something really special, uh, that I wanna name and that I continue to appreciate and it’s definitely worth celebrating.

patience kamau:
Mm-mm-mm. Thank you! :)

Johonna Turner:
Thank you. :)

patience kamau:
Dr. Turner is the author of “Transforming Trauma: Wounded Healing in the Way of Jesus.” It is a chapter in the book “.” She’s also author of “Creating Safety for Ourselves,” a chapter in the book, “.”

[Outro music begins to play and fades into background]

patience kamau:
All the music you hear on this podcast has been composed by: the one and only Luke Mullet. Our audio mixing engineer extraordinaire is: Stephen Angello. Audio editing support was generously provided by: Michaela Mast. And I am the podcast executive producer, audio recording engineer, editor and host: patience Kamau. As you are able, please remember to subscribe, rate and review this podcast so that other peacebuilders may find it. We’ll be back with a new episode in two weeks! Thank you so much for listening and join us again next time!

[Outro music swells and ends]

This fifth episode features Dr. David Brubaker, dean of the school of social sciences and professions at 91����Ƶ, which includes the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding (CJP). In it Brubaker talks about the environmental and generational changes that organizations now face, the tension between focusing on international versus domestic conflict, and global trends of income inequality.

Brubaker came to CJP in 2004, when it was known as the Conflict Transformation Program. At the time, he taught organizational studies; he now teaches organizational behavior, development, and leadership. He’s also worked as a consultant with over 100 organizations, from non-profit to for-profit to governmental, in 12 different countries.
“There are just some really classic issues that tend to produce stress and conflict in organizations, no matter what part of the world they’re in or even what sector they’re in,” Brubaker says. Two major challenges that all organizations are now facing, Brubaker explains, are changes in the environment and the generational shift away from baby boomer values to those of Generation X and millennials.“ Generational research has found  that millennials, for example, have a much higher priority on work-life balance,” Brubaker says. “People aren’t willing to just sign over their lives to organizations, as happened with my parents’ generation and with mine as well.”

In his consulting practice, Brubaker has relied on all three academic pillars of CJP: conflict transformation, restorative justice, and trauma awareness and resilience, which he says are unique to be housed within one program.

As to what CJP could be doing better, Brubaker says that many practitioners have been attracted by the “siren song” of international work, “often at the cost of paying attention to growing economic and social polarization in our own country.” At the same time, though, the trends we see in the U.S. are happening on a global scale, he says. “As the gap between the rich and the poor has grown around the world, we are seeing the rise of populism and nationalism because that’s how people give voice to their grievances,” says Brubaker. This feeds directly into his vision for CJP 25 years from now. He hopes by then the program will better address the intersection of politics and economics, by supporting those on the front lines of those conflicts.“ Those who are closest to the problem or the challenge are the ones best able to figure out how to beat it,” Brubaker says.

Guest

dr. david brubaker

Dr. David Brubaker is dean of the school of social sciences and professions, to which the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding belongs, here at 91����Ƶ. He has trained or consulted with over 100 organizations all over the world: in Africa, Asia, Australia, Latin America, North America, and Europe. He hold a Ph.D. from the University of Arizona, specialized in the study of change and conflict in religious organizations.

Transcript

David Brubaker:Yeah. Organizational Behavior simply looks at how do organizations tick as organic systems, and we basically review the structure, the culture, the leadership, the environment of an organization –organizational basics. In Organizational Development, we ask, uh, how can we help organizations to change in adaptive, strategic ways? Organizational Leadership, we could take a decade to explore and I typically do that in a Summer Peacebuilding Institute course.

[Theme music begins and fades into background]

patience kamau:
Hey-hey everybody! Happy Wednesday to you and welcome back to Peacebuilder: a conflict transformation podcast by the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding.
With us this episode.

David Brubaker:
Uh, David Brubaker. I’m currently the Dean of the School of Social Sciences and Professions at Eastern Mennonite university (91����Ƶ), having taught the last 15 years at 91����Ƶ.

patience kamau:
Dr. David Brubaker is Dean of the School of Social Sciences and Professions to which the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding belongs, here at 91����Ƶ. He has trained or consulted with over 100 organizations all over the world in Africa, Asia, Australia, Latin America, North America and Europe. He holds a PhD from the university of Arizona, specialized in the study of change and conflict in religious organizations. Just a quick reminder though before we begin registration for our ultimate weekend gathering is now open. Join us on June 5, 6 and 7; seriously guys, you do not want to miss out on this. For details about events and activities, go to emu.edu/cjp/anniversary.

[Theme music fades back in and ends]

patience kamau:
Hi Dave?

David Brubaker:
Hi.

patience kamau:
How are you today?

David Brubaker:
Lovely. I enjoy this weather –had lunch outside, it was beautiful.

patience kamau:
All right.
Being dean is just a recent occurrence –how did that happen?

David Brubaker:
We went to a 3-school model after having two schools –undergraduate and graduate– and it made more sense to have integration across that division, so now we have a Natural Sciences School, a Social Sciences School, and a Humanities and Seminary School. So I have two colleagues as well.

patience kamau:
All right. And CJP is part of the…

David Brubaker:
…School of Social Sciences. Yes.

patience kamau:
What was your journey –what brought you to 91����Ƶ, CTP/CJP?

David Brubaker:
Yes, when I came, it was CTP — the “Conflict Transformation Program” and I came in 2004, I had just finished my graduate work at the University of Arizona and was “ABD,” had not finished my dissertation, but came in 2004 and asked to teach organizational studies, which at that time was a new part of CJP. That same year, fall of 2004 was the name change to the Center for Justice and Peacebbuilding and the 10th anniversary.

patience kamau:
Right, that’s right! So you’ve been here for…

David Brubaker:
…15 years.

patience kamau:
15 Years now! Your expertise is in organizational…

David Brubaker:
Yeah, I would say organizational studies in general and I teach courses in organizational behavior and organizational development, which is a fancy way of saying organizational change as well as organizational leadership –those three areas.

patience kamau:
What’s unique about each one? Can you tell us a little bit about each one?

David Brubaker:
Yeah. Organizational Behavior simply looks at how do organizations tick as organic systems and we basically review the structure, the culture, the leadership, the environment of an organization –organizational basics. In Organizational Development, we ask, uh, how can we help organizations to change in adaptive, strategic ways, and I have students work on a specific project with an organization during that semester to at least have the experience of walking with organizational change. Organizational Leadership –we could take a decade to explore, and I typically do that in a Summer Peacebuilding Institute course, so we do what we can to look at various models of leadership. Uh, this year Carolyn staffer will be teaching that course and she brings a lot of resource to that area of Organizational Leadership.

patience kamau:
And you’ve done consultancy work, you do that, at least on…

David Brubaker:
…mm-hm, done that for 30 years and currently working with a client and typically you will work with one or two clients each year, and that’s about what I can manage with a full-time job here.

patience kamau:
What has been surprising, the most, about your work consulting with organizations?

David Brubaker:
Well, I would say two things. The first that has surprised me is uh, how common some of the issues are, because I’ve worked with over a hundred organizations in nonprofit, for-profit and governmental sectors. I’ve worked in 12 different countries with international NGOs as well as domestically, and there are just some really classic issues that tend to produce stress and conflict in organizations no matter what part of the world they’re in or even what sector they’re in. So that kinda surprised me. The second thing that surprised me is the degree to which right now, and this has been building the last five years, almost every organization seems to be undergoing some profound transformational change. Not necessarily because they want to, but because how the environment is changing so rapidly. So some of the changes that 91����Ƶ has experienced are classic right now for many other smaller private colleges and universities. Uh, the, the large publics have a different set of challenges, but the environment is changing much more rapidly at a, at a faster pace than it was certainly 20 or 30 years ago.

patience kamau:
What do you think is causing that change?

David Brubaker:
Part of it is technological have picked up such a rapid pace so that we could install new software systems every year and not keep up with how fast that field is changing. Uh, part of it is globalization and so change in one part of the world, rebounds to another part of the world in a way that would not have happened even 50 years ago. And I think part of it is generational. The uh, the transition from the baby boom generation now to millennials, well, gen Xers, millennials, there’s a desire to see a different kind of engagement with the environment and with different identities. And some of that is very positive, but it is producing –much of it is very positive– but it’s producing stress and change as organizations feel that tension and adapt to it.

patience kamau:
Could one aspect of that tension be how people define how they see “work” and what actually counts as “productivity” or the culture of what work is supposed to be?

David Brubaker:
Yeah, so research, generational research has found that millennials for example, have a much higher priority on work-life balance than baby boomers did, uh thank God –so that, that’s bringing a new set of expectations on organizations that people aren’t willing to just sign over their lives to organizations as happened with my parents’ generation and I think with mine as well, being a baby boomer, and I think part of it is a much greater respect for each individual, the identity that he or she brings into the workplace and how we create space for those diverse identities, instead of assuming people assimilate into a dominant organizational culture as would have been the expectation not that long ago.

patience kamau:
Mm-hm, mm-hm, so there’s push back to create boundaries…

David Brubaker:
…to create boundaries and to create more inclusive organizational cultures, than would have been the case 20, 30 years ago.

patience kamau:
Okay. Does that open up spaces for people to bring more of who they are within the work spaces?

David Brubaker:
Oh yes, this is what’s so positive about it, but does it also create stress as dominant culture pushes against that? Yes.

patience kamau:
Mm-hm, wow –how do you navigate that when you are helping organizations in your consultancy work?

David Brubaker:
Well, what I always start by saying is “we can’t change what we won’t name.” So let’s name that these changes are happening, these generational shifts and uh, let’s have an honest conversation about what it is that people really want in their organizational context. I’ve seen organizational culture change, but it changes slowly and it’s typically a three to five year process and it requires a team of really dedicated people. So I say if we, if we want successful change, there are three T’s that we have to bring to it.

And the first is “team,” we were just talking about the team that you’re working with. Uh, the second is “time” to not expect that it’s going to happen in three to six months because that kind of change won’t. And the third is “tone,” and having a, a positive tone, i. e. we’re working towards inclusion and equity, is normally more effective than a tone that people might experience negatively, even though people are often experiencing the organizational barriers and dysfunctions very negatively, to name a positive vision for what we’re trying to move towards –now, this was Martin Luther King’s genius. The, the ability to, to frame, uh, this new community, new beloved community that all of God’s children would be part of. That is usually also key to successful change.

patience kamau:
Mm yeah, I think I remember you once saying that he’s not remembered so for saying…he’s remembered for saying, “I have a dream,” not “I don’t have a dream” or how did you put that? [Laughter]

David Brubaker:
[Laughter continues] That we don’t remember Martin Luther King for his, “I have a grievance speech.”

patience kamau:
That’s right.

David Brubaker:
Even though he had very significant grievances, but he could articulate those and then shift to –and here’s what I see in the future, where little black boys and girls and little white boys and girls will play together in…uh, Alabama.

patience kamau:
Mm-hm, mm-hm, yes. The content of their character.

David Brubaker:
Yes.

[Transition music plays]

patience kamau:
So at this time, at this milestone for CJP at 25 what do you think, from your experience that we should be celebrating about the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding?

David Brubaker:
Yeah, there’s much to celebrate. I think the three academic pillars of CJP have been really significant and that is bringing together “conflict, transformation,” “restorative justice” and “trauma awareness and resilience.” Those, those three pillars are unique, there’s no other program that I’m aware of in the country or around the world, that brings together those three pillars in the same way. And I know in my my own consulting practice, I often need to rely on all three of those and I sometimes have to bring in people with more expertise than I have in say, restorative justice or trauma awareness because my background is conflict transformation.

But I’ve often seen how all three are needed, particularly when harm has been done in an organizational context. So that that for me is one. The other I think is the emphasis that CJP has had, not just on academics but on practice and uh, not just on classroom teaching but on scholarship. So the ability to produce The Little Books series, one of Howard Zehr’s, visions that makes a really solid scholarship and practice available broadly in 80 to 90 pages rather than academic tomes that no one’s going to read. I think making, yeah, making that kind of learnings from the field accessible, emphasizing practice rather than just scholarship, has been an important gift of CJP.

patience kamau:
What do you think we could have done better in the last 25 years?

David Brubaker:
I think we were attracted by the siren song of international work, and that started with John Paul Lederach who had a very deserved reputation for his ability to work interculturally, but many of us were caught up in it. So I first went to Mozambique in ’93 just as the war was ending and I found it very exciting to work there. And as I mentioned earlier, had the opportunity to work in 12 other international contexts. But I think it was often at the cost of paying attention to the growing economic and social polarization in our own country. So now we’re, now that all of us have to pay attention to those realities here in the U.S. because we can no longer ignore them. I’m wondering if, if we shouldn’t have started that 25 years ago rather than just in the last 5 to 10 years, I think there’s been a renewed emphasis on domestic issues.

patience kamau:
Why do you think we can no longer ignore it?

David Brubaker:
[Chuckles] Well, there…I’ll just speak as a sociologist. The, um, the income gap in this country has been growing for 38 years since, uh, since 1981. And it’s, it’s been a factor of several things, including significant tax cuts. So now the wealthiest Americans actually pay a lower percentage of their income in taxes than the poorest Americans, so we clearly got very much out of whack. As the income gap –income stratification– has increased, polarization has increased! And the reason that happens is millions of people are falling out of the middle class and they’re upset about that, they’re angry, they’re wondering why they can’t afford a home, why they can’t afford to send their children to college. They were promised “the American dream,” now it’s gone, and so the voices of those, either on the right or the left, who can articulate a grievance, a reason for why this is happening to you and identify scapegoats for that, that has, that has become very significant in the last 5, 10 years, and particularly, obviously, with the 2016 election and Donald Trump’s ascendancy.

So to be able to, to blame, uh, immigrants or Muslims or, uh, China for all the problems we’re experiencing –for some, that’s an attractive argument and it’s a false one, completely false. But unfortunately, when people are feeling that marginalized, they respond to grievance narratives. So what we have to do is offer a counter narrative that is hopefully even more compelling than the grievance narratives, and I don’t think we’ve yet quite constructed it, um, as say, Martin Luther King had with the “beloved community” in the 1950s and ’60s. We need to have something similar now in our generation that reaches people with a unified message rather than a polarizing message.

patience kamau:
Do you see CJP –how do you see CJP stepping into that gap?

David Brubaker:
Well, I think there’s always been attention in the 15 years that I’ve walked with CJP, between the, um, those who see peacebuilding as primarily “conciliation process” and those who see peacebuilding as primarily an “advocacy process.”

patience kamau:
What’s the difference?

David Brubaker:
[Chuckles] I think you know the answer to that, but I’ll give my answer. So those who believe that, um, through dialogue and other ways of bringing people together, that’s how we can best address the challenges in our society. And those who believe that by challenging unjust structures, uh, we can best change this dysfunctional dynamic that we now have. And of course both are true and both are necessary. It just that in reality some people seem more drawn to one piece of that, the “conciliation” piece and others more to the “advocacy” piece.

So I, I think CJP can best address that by embracing that paradox and not creating yet another “either/or” binary in our culture, which we already have way too many of, that it’s not, you know, “are we going to do advocacy” or “are we going to work at reconciliation,” but how do we respect each other and the various callings that people have and find ways to integrate, à la “the Curle model,” the, the necessary efforts at confronting structures and systems and uh, raising voice for those who have been dispossessed so that there can be genuine possibility for conciliation and reconciliation.

patience kamau:
Mm, you mentioned the “Curle model,” can you define that?

David Brubaker:
So when there is a significant power imbalance, which obviously we have many of them in our society and within the world, um, in order for there to be the possibility of a fair negotiation and genuine conciliation, those who are at the bottom end of the power imbalance usually have to find some way to, to find voice and have the possibility of uh, face-to-face and uh, equitable conversations. So that’s why Curle, Adam Curle –a Quaker– recommends that initially the stage is to, the first stage is to raise the tension and to have a group that has been disempowered, find their own voice and find their power. We can often walk with individuals and groups like that, but we can never “do for” because that’s just more disempowering. So I think the other thing we need to be keenly aware of is what’s the proper role of an advocate –it’s not to “take voice,” it’s to “help support voice.”

patience kamau:
Mm, it’s not “to speak for,”…

David Brubaker:
…it’s not “to speak for,” sometimes “to speak with,” but only at the invitation of the group that is doing the primary activism.

patience kamau:
How do we call forth such virtues from CJP to encourage this ability to invite people to “engage with,” to “speak with” and not “for” –how would you envision that developing?

David Brubaker:
Well, I think the first thing we need to do is to model it in our own conversations with each other, whether it’s in the classroom or colleague-to-colleague in the hallway. What does it mean to respect the diversity of voices that there are, and how do we try to ensure that those who maybe, have traditionally spoken less in our cultural context have the opportunity to speak more. I think that’s where “circle process” as simple as it is, is often a very effective mechanism.

And I’ll use it in classes, not every week that we meet, but particularly if I notice that not hearing from some voices, um, breakout sessions where people who won’t speak with a group of 25 or 30 might be very comfortable speaking with three or four. I mean, there’s so many different ways that, that we do teach and practice that, uh, at least allow for the possibility of greater voice in our own organizational context. I think we’re still struggling to find that at a societal level. There’s no question that voice is inequitable.

patience kamau:
You mentioned how CJP probably at the beginning, toward…I mean the first 25 years looked internationally and now we’re probably…circumstances are causing us to look more internally –are some of these problems that we’re seeing internally within the United States also echoed internationally? They seem like they are, uh, in some ways. So how do you –how would you see that working out with, with CJP having worked previously internationally and now looking locally? How do both…how can we do “both and”?

David Brubaker:
So yes, we have globalized a lot of the trends that we were talking about here in the States are taking place in many other parts of the world. So the country with the greatest income inequality in the world, this won’t surprise you, is South Africa. They may have eliminated apartheid as a legal structure, but that unfortunately did not dismantle the economic forms of apartheid that were there. So they also have extreme political polarization. Brazil, number 10 in economic inequality, also has great political polarization. So as the gap between the rich and the poor has grown around the world, we are seeing the rise of populism and nationalism because that’s how people give voice to their grievances. And South Africa driving out, uh, migrants from other of Southern Africa, for example, seeing them as the scapegoat for unemployment and other things, that is a global phenomenon. We’re seeing it in Europe as well.

patience kamau:
Right, “Brexit.”

David Brubaker:
Yes…[chuckles].

patience kamau:
…and it’s interesting that you mentioned Brazil. You’ve lived in Brazil, right?

David Brubaker:
Mm-hm…

patience kamau:
Um, tell us a little bit about that. When did you live there and what were you doing there?

David Brubaker:
Probably before you were born? Um, ’82 to ’85.

patience kamau:
Oh, I was born! [Laughter].

David Brubaker:
[Laughter continues] Oh, okay. So we were there for three years and um, we were living two of the three years in a favela, which would be like a shanty town on the edge of the city of Recife, city of about 2 million. And it was during their, “crise economica” the economic crisis that Brazil was experiencing, they’re back in it now, but this was an earlier round of hyperinflation and uh very high crime. It was a, it was an intense three years, but also a wonderful experience because we were placed with a Catholic lay community in the neighborhood of Nova Descoberta, and we were fully invited into the life of that community, and part of the reason that Catholic spirituality matters a lot to me because we experienced it for those three years.

patience kamau:
How does it matter to you –“Catholic spirituality”?

David Brubaker:
[Chuckles] Uh, it’s much more contemplative and reflective than the spirituality that I was raised with, so…

patience kamau:
…which is Mennonite background?

David Brubaker:
Yes, raised in the Brethren in Christ Church, but that’s an offshoot of Mennonite and a wonderful emphasis on being an active presence in the world and much less emphasis on spiritual direction and contemplation. Recently there’s been a movement among many Mennonites to embrace that, but they often end up at Jesuit retreat centers learning the skills to do that.

patience kamau:
Were you, the Catholicism that you were exposed to when you were in Brazil, was that Jesuit?

David Brubaker:
No, uh, the priest in our parish was a fellow from Detroit. American priest who had gone to Brazil, learned Portuguese and served that parish. There was, uh, an American nun from the Bronx who also worked there and another four Brazilian sisters who were very active, but they, they themselves had a wonderful supportive community. And then there were lay folks like us who were involved in the parish.

patience kamau:
Uh, I’m fascinated by, you mentioned that the, the crisis was there when you were there and that they are back to it –so that means that there wasn’t for a while there. What do you think caused it to end and what has caused it to return?

David Brubaker:
Right, well, that’s a great question!

patience kamau:
What are your reflections on that?

David Brubaker:
So you remember when they were talking, I don’t know, 10 or so years ago about the BRIC countries?

patience kamau:
Mm-hm…

David Brubaker:
It was Brazil and Russia and India and China, and Brazil was part of that economic miracle. Things were taking off in the 2000s and then the economic crisis in 2008, that was a global crisis seemed to really impact Brazil and just sustain, they’ve not been able to pull out of it in part because of a political crisis. And in part because of political polarization, shifting from a far left president to a far right president now, and not having the kind of political stability that helps a country to recover economically.

patience kamau:
Far left — was that Dilma Rousseff?

David Brubaker:
Uh, and particularly Lula and you know, there’s much about his policies that I really admired including the “Bolsa Familia,” just offering every family a, not necessarily a living wage, but enough to educate their children with, um, but he was seen as too far left by many in Brazil, and so the reaction was to elect Bolsinaro after Dilma and he has swung pretty much to the right.

patience kamau:
Yeah. It’ll be interesting to our listeners in Brazil. [Chuckles]

David Brubaker:
Oh, that’s right. Well I am not an expert on Brazilian economics or politics.

patience kamau:
Right, right, I imagine that they’ll, hopefully they’ll send us some, some of their own reflections on what they think…

David Brubaker:
…I would welcome that.

patience kamau:
You also spent some time in Mozambique, you said, how long were you there and what were you doing?

David Brubaker:
Initially, just for three weeks in 1993 on a UNICEF consultancy. And they had put together an amazing group of artists from around the country and included, um, theater artists, musical artists, dance visual artists, and they called it “circo da paz,” which meant, um, a “circus of peace.” And it was designed really as kind of a trauma-resiliency model for children and youth because they went to every province in the country and they would engage children and young people in all of these various methodologies, as a way of expressing what they had experienced during the war.

And, uh, it was a two year project –I did some initial training in conflict resolution, conflict transformation skills and then they, they had other experts from Mozambique and um, Brazil come in to do additional training in the methodologies. But the really gifted folks were the artists themselves from Mozambique, they were amazing to watch!

patience kamau:
Yeah –why is that?

David Brubaker:
Their ability to transform some of the concepts that we were talking about into, um, messages that resonated with children because we were able to watch them do it in one kind of pilot project that we did outside of Maputo. And it was, it was remarkable how the children engaged it and were able to express some of the harms that they had experienced, but in ways that were transformative, in ways that were life-giving, ultimately.

patience kamau:
Are you particularly thinking of any specific example that you can tell us?

David Brubaker:
Well, this was 1993 so it’s been 26 years. Um, I just remember a, a circle of children doing a traditional dance that also incorporated some of the, the trauma, some of the soldiers coming into their community, that the actors were, were acting out and how they, how that split the circle, how that, how that shattered the circle and the children actually scattered. And then what was bringing them back together where some of their traditional songs and spirituality and elders from the community. It was really powerful to, to see both the shattering and the, and the regathering.

patience kamau:
Okay. Wow. That does sound powerful.
Um, and you returned not too long ago, were you there in 20…?

David Brubaker:
…’12.

patience kamau:
Okay, yeah.

David Brubaker:
Great memory! Yeah. I went back to interview 10 religious leaders, including three Muslim leaders about their work to end the war. And, uh, particularly the, the San Egidio community in Rome that brought the warring factions together, but they were only able to do that because of the work on the ground of religious leaders going back and forth between the government and the bush, between Frelimo and Renamo, to get an agreement to meet outside the country. So I, I wanted to interview them about that process and a number of them risked their own lives, they certainly risk their reputations, by going out and meeting with Renamo leaders who are considered at that point to be “enemies of the government” and yet trying to find a way to connect the two sides.

patience kamau:
Hmm, what did you do with your work with those interviews?

David Brubaker:
I produced two chapters on Mozambican and Angola cause I also spent some time in Angola –was unable to turn it into a book project, so I transformed it into a book project instead on polarization, which was just published, and it includes a story from a Bishop Sengulane in Maputo but only a story. I’m still hoping to do more with the broader story.

patience kamau:
Where would people be able to access what you put together?

David Brubaker:
The, uh, the book is available for sale, uh, at, um, Amazon, but it’s published by Fortress Press.

patience kamau:
What’s the title of the book?

David Brubaker:
It’s called “When the Center Does Not Hold: Leading in an age of polarization.”

patience kamau:
Okay. All right, great. Thank you!

[Transition music plays]

patience kamau:
What would your vision be, particularly now that you are a Dean of the school that CJP belongs to –what would your vision be for CJP at 50? So in the next 25 years, what do you hope we do and how will you lead in that direction?

David Brubaker:
Well, you probably heard me say that I’m a firm believer in the principle of subsidiarity, which is from Catholic social teaching, and it simply means that those who are closest to the problem or the challenge are the ones best able to figure out how to beat it. So my first response would be, I would be most inclined to trust CJP folks, in conversation with the many partners that CJP has, to figure out “what is the vision for the next 25 years?” Since you are asking about mine, I’m willing to offer it.

patience kamau:
Yes indeed, please do!

David Brubaker:
I’m personally convinced that we have to pay more attention to political economy; to the intersection of politics and economics. And that’s because in my own research on polarization, I came to realize that around the world as income inequality has risen, political polarization has, has also grown. And that that’s, I mean, we could mediate 20 cases a day for the next 25 years and that wouldn’t address growing income inequality, which is really driving a lot of the polarization that we’re seeing.

So I think we, we at CJP need to figure out how to maybe bring in additional folks with expertise in economics and political structures and think very clearly about what is needed to change, what has become a destructive and dysfunctional economic and political system in this country, and in fact, in much of the world. And I don’t think the answer is just to burn down one system and create another, but I do think we have to have an honest conversation about what would it take for uh, say, the American economy to work for all members of this country, not just for some, and it’s working really well for 1%, arguably maybe even 10% of the country, but it’s not working well for 90% or more. And that’s why there’s increasing alienation and increasing despair, and people just basically saying, “I’ll vote for anybody if, as long as (usually he), can promise to change my reality.”

patience kamau:
And when you say not burn one economic system for another, it’s, it brings to mind that people are constantly saying, “let’s get rid of capitalism” or “this is socialism,” and there are those corners that people just go to. Um, so are the ideas to maybe have a…not necessarily go to either one, but maybe have a kind of mixed economy, mixed economic system?

David Brubaker:
Yeah, we already have a mixed economic system –we don’t have anything resembling pure capitalism, pure Adam Smith capitalism, we haven’t had that for probably well more than a hundred years.

patience kamau:
Say more about that.

David Brubaker:
Once um, large corporations are able to form and control a segment of their, of the economy, then uh, capitalism as we traditionally understood it, which was a multitude of producers offering their products to a multitude of consumers, that no longer exists. We still have a multitude of consumers, but we have two or three very large corporations controlling virtually everything…

patience kamau:
…monopolies!

David Brubaker:
…and often subsidized by the government. So in fact, it already is a mixture of socialism and capitalism, it just happens to be “corporate socialism” and that clearly is not working. It’s part of the reason we run $1 trillion deficit every year in this country, and it’s also part of the reason that say, a few drug companies can continue to market and sell products that they know are killing people –such as opioids– and takes years for the government to actually intervene, and in fact, it wasn’t the Federal government, it was States that started to say, “you can’t do this anymore.”

So because of the fact that corporations are so embedded with those who are making laws and the revolving door between Congress and corporations, we have nothing resembling pure capitalism. It’s “predatory capitalism,” unfortunately, that has been bought and paid for by a few lobbyists representing large corporate interests. So I’m actually a fan of capitalism as it was originally designed, but one would have to be almost insane to believe that what we have now is the best model.

patience kamau:
Mm. I like the term “predatory capitalism” because that’s, that’s probably been what’s driven a lot of the conflicts around the world because it’s this extractive mindset…

David Brubaker:
Exactly!

patience kamau:
…going in and stripping a country of their resources to enrich another…

David Brubaker:
…yeah, extractive/predatory capitalism. And then not only do many people suffer, but obviously the creation itself, the environment is suffering.

patience kamau:
The way you articulated the vision for what CJP could do in the next 25 years –um, so are there “economic peacebuilders”?

David Brubaker:
Yes!

patience kamau:
Is that, uh, would that be a term that maybe that’s where we should be, we should be training toward that, maybe bring in minds that think that way?

David Brubaker:
Yeah, I mean when I mentioned earlier the three pillars of CJP, which I think has served the organization very well the last 25 years. So “conflict transformation,” “restorative justice,” trauma healing” –those are wonderful bodies of knowledge and skills, practice skills that are very effective at the personal level, I would say also at the community level, the organizational level, they’re not necessarily as effective at the societal level. So if, if we can employ additional kind of “macro analysis tools” and looking at macro economic and the larger political analyses, I think that’s what will be necessary in the next decade.

patience kamau:
Wow, I hope we can do that! Do people come to mind that we…are there…?

David Brubaker:
Yeah, Tim Seidel would be an example of someone who has very carefully studied political economy and writes about it, teaches courses at the undergraduate level that graduate students can also take. My son who’s a senior here, Emerson has taken two courses with Tim and comes home talking nonstop about the insights from, from those courses. So I think many of the young people in this millennial generation realize that if we’re going to make it another 50 years, we’re going to have to radically change how we now do things because this extractive model is killing the earth. And when the Amazon is burning, when rainforests in Indonesia are disappearing, we know that it’s a matter of time until that course is irreversible. So there’s a real desire, I think now to look at what are other ways of relating to each other politically and economically that are less extractive and less destructive.

patience kamau:
And hopefully adopt some practices that actually begin to mend…

David Brubaker:
…yeah…

patience kamau:
…the mistakes that we’ve made…

David Brubaker:
…that are restorative.

patience kamau:
Mm-hm.

David Brubaker:
So the principles of conflict, transformation, and peacebuilding, the principles of restorative justice and the principles of trauma healing and resilience are all very relevant at the macro level. But we’ve employed them almost exclusively at the intra-personal, inter-personal, community, organizational level. I think we need to learn, what will that look like at the macro level, at the societal level?

patience kamau:
Have you given that thought? How do you think it would look, in your mind?

David Brubaker:
[Laughs] Um, I’ve given enough thought to realize we need to do it, but I think it would require a lot of wise people talking together about it, um, so I’m, I’m not prepared to give an answer alone.

patience kamau:
Right, okay. I respect that. We should have a sit down with Tim Seidel and any other people like that.

David Brubaker:
Yeah.

[Transition music plays]

patience kamau:
So within CJP, what academic changes have happened in your time here? What have you seen that has changed?

David Brubaker:
Well, there have been a couple of significant rounds of curriculum redesign and it’s probably easiest for me to speak about the academic side since I came as an instructor. I’ve also seen two major reorganizations structurally, in terms of forming a practice Institute and then not having a practice Institute. But academically, the uh, the most significant change was four or five years ago when Jayne led a process to move to foundations I and foundations II…

patience kamau:
…this is Jayne Docherty.

David Brubaker:
Thank you. And then to have specialized courses, seminar courses available for 2nd-year students and to really strengthen the core and have it more integrated. When I came there was a theory course, a practice course an analysis course and a research course and there’s been more integration of those. And I think a clear distinction between “here’s how things work at that micro level, micro and mezzo level” that we were talking about earlier and “how these things might work at the macro level.” So students who have come through in the last four or five years I think have benefited from those changes. I’d be interested to hear what they say, but I, I think they’ve benefited…

patience kamau:
…you think they’ve benefited –in what ways do you think they’ve benefited?

David Brubaker:
Yeah, so um, I remember assisting Nancy Good one semester with the practice course, very focused on practice skills and assisting Sam Rizick one year with the theory course, was very focused on “here are all the theories.” There’s been a real emphasis on integrating theory and practice and analysis in a single course –all be it for six credit hours— rather than three, instead of having those two quite distinct.

patience kamau:
You talked about other structural changes, the introduction of a practice Institute and then not, can you talk a little bit more about that?

David Brubaker:
Yeah, and I think the practice Institute was one of the best ideas that CJP had evolved over the last 20 years and certainly served a very important function, getting STAR launched after 9-11 and funding was available for that. I would have loved it if there had been other practice models that we continue to develop and spin-off, and there were some, but ultimately there just wasn’t the funding to support full-time staff for a practice Institute, as projects came and projects went because you know, the grant cycle, sometimes there’s money there and sometimes there’s not.

So what we have now are two very solid programs with a strong practice emphasis –the STAR (Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience) and SPI (Summer Peacebuilding Institute) and other ideas that continue to emerge such as the Women’s Peacebuilding Leadership Program. But then when funding is not available, those programs can, can dry up. So I’m hopeful that this new emphasis on “professional development education” that we’ve been talking about, that a couple of CJP folks are part of, will look at other models that might be more sustainable in a tight financial environment.

patience kamau:
That makes me think of, um, because of the three parts of CJP that you said, uh, STAR, SPI and now the Zehr Institute, which is newer –it started in 2012, but isn’t structured in the same way as the other two. There’s tremendous demand out there for what restorative…for what the can offer, but they, it’s limited by capacity…

David Brubaker:
Yes.

patience kamau:
What are your thoughts on how practice within the can be grown so that there are independent income streams that support that? Do you have any thoughts on that?

David Brubaker:
Well, I think you’ve analyzed the adaptive challenge correctly, and I’ve talked with Kirby about this and she said the same thing, that the primary adaptive challenge for the right now seems to be growing and significant demand and very limited capacity. And when an organization is facing that conundrum, it’s usually because what they’re offering is what the world needs –people really want it, but we haven’t yet figured out a way to commodify it, i.e. to price it in a way that that works. Uh, and the reality is in order to be sustainable, we have to have, um, not only products that people want, but that people are willing to pay for.

So are a great way to build buzz and to get information out there, but they’re not self-financing. And so I think we, we have to think about what are the possible ways to meet this growing demand for wonderful products and services, particularly now with restorative justice in education, uh, well beyond restorative justice in the criminal justice sector, which we’ve been familiar with, and expanding restorative processes and practices now in many organizations, particularly larger corporations and universities, uh, how do we take the Zehr Institute resource and make it available at a fair price for those institutions that can afford to pay for it so that we can continue to offer it for little to no charge to those organizations and individuals that can’t. So we are going to have to figure out how to price.

patience kamau:
It’s a challenge we need to face.

David Brubaker:
Yeah.

patience kamau:
But do you think it’s normal that that’s a struggle for, for, for Zehr Institute being so young? Is it, is it a growing pain? Is it a normal growing pain? It seems like it is….

David Brubaker:
Yeah, I think it is absolutely normal and you know, there’s a wonderful name attached to it in terms of Howard Zehr and his legacy. There are wonderful people connected with it in terms of yourself and Carl and Johonna and others in the network that you’re pulling in and all of those people are really busy and have day jobs, and so is it possible that there could be someone in the broader network, uh, that has some consulting experience and is willing to be more available around the country and around the world, than some of you who have commitments here are.

patience kamau:
Mm-hm, mm-hm, you mentioned Kirby. I want to clarify that that’s Kirby Broadnax. Um, what, what is she doing with this, with this process?

David Brubaker:
So she’s enrolled in a course, I’m teaching this semester called “leading organizational change” and that’s the organizational development course I mentioned earlier where students need to accompany an organization through a change process, which these days –you accompany any organization, it’s probably going to be in a change process. But since the Zehr Institute recently went through strategic planning and is now thinking about how to implement some of those pieces, that was her interest in working with the Zehr Institute, and as you know, she’s extremely capable and…

patience kamau:
…yes, she is a very talented person and student.

David Brubaker:
Lucky to have her!

patience kamau:
Yeah.

[Transition music plays]

patience kamau:
Outside of CJP or in your new role as Dean, what…and, or consultancy -what do you do that is life-giving to you, that you enjoy doing?

David Brubaker:
Oh well, that’s easy…

patience kamau:
…yeah?

David Brubaker:
Because I had a grandchild born in January and we spend every Sunday afternoon with him and that has been very life-giving –brings back lots of memories of when my boys were that size. Um, I love to go biking out in the countryside around Dayton, Virginia where we live. I really enjoy working with organizations if I can do it over a 6 to 9-month period, not just a real short term consultancy, but the possibility of working with a reference team through the information gathering, and through the analysis, and through the recommendations and implementation, that where I’ve actually seen genuine transformation occur –that is life-giving. And I love teaching –so administration, I’m willing to do it, somebody has to, but it doesn’t necessarily make my heart sing.

patience kamau:
How much teaching are you able to do in your new role now?

David Brubaker:
Just one course per semester.

patience kamau:
How many were you teaching at your peak?

David Brubaker:
Three. I had a three-three load when I was a full-time instructor, and that’s fairly typical here at the graduate level. Then when I was department chair, I had a two-two load and a one course release to be department chair.

patience kamau:
What’s most optimistic about your role with the new structure of the university?

David Brubaker:
I really respect my colleagues –the other deans that are here, both the two academic deans and our new Dean of Students, Shannon Dycus, who is very impressive, and when I found in previous organizations, when I respect the people that I work with and trust them, life is beautiful and when I don’t, it can be really tough.

So right now that’s what I’m feeling best about. That. And the eight program directors who are in this school, including Jayne Docherty, are all very capable, and so when we’re together, uh, either with the deans or with program directors, department chairs, I have the sense I’m with people that are really good at what they do and I can trust them and we can work together as a team.

[Transition music plays]

patience kamau:
Returning to peacebuilding –um, what have been the most significant changes that you’ve seen in the field? Uh, in the last 15 or…how long have you been in peacebuilding?

David Brubaker:
33 years.

patience kamau:
33 years. So how long, what are the significant changes you’ve seen in that time?

David Brubaker:
Oh my, there’ve been so many from when I first started with Mennonite Conciliation Service in 1986, we would not have used technology for anything other than typing up a report at the end of working with a client, and we would have done so on word processors back then.

So, but that was technology and now it’s used in so many different ways, uh, including as methods of data gathering, uh, using survey monkey and other ways of analyzing information we get from people that those tools just weren’t available 30 years ago. But some things, some things don’t change –I still think we have our best conversations when we’re face-to-face as we are now, and although I use zoom, I’ll be using it tomorrow morning working with a client, but most of the participants will be around the table –one person’s in North Carolina– and so we’ll zoom her in, and that’s okay because people are used to that and it works. But it would be even better if she were here, and it’s just not realistic for a three hour meeting.

patience kamau:
So we are almost done. But just, um, do you have a pet now? You lost Latte, didn’t you?

David Brubaker:
Yeah, well we have a Jane Ellen’s dog Tucker, next door.

patience kamau:
Yeah, Jane Ellen is your neighbor?

David Brubaker:
Right, and so I will –about every other day– I walk him because I need it and he needs it. And Jane Ellen and Mert, my spouse, often the three of us will walk together with Tucker. So, but I, I do miss Latte, you know we have two beloved pets buried in our backyard. [Sad chuckle]

patience kamau:
Did you come with Latte from Arizona?

David Brubaker:
We came with Jakeli from Arizona, a golden retriever who died at 15. He helped us raise our boys as did Latte.

patience kamau:
How old was Latte when he died?

David Brubaker:
She was only 12.

patience kamau:
She! Oh, she was young.

David Brubaker:
Yeah,

patience kamau:
…but a lab.

David Brubaker:
Yeah, chocolate lab, and they tend to not go much past 12 or 13.

patience kamau:
Okay. Okay. Um, is there anything else you’d like to add to this conversation that we might not have covered?

David Brubaker:
How long have you been at CJP?

patience kamau:
Uh, this is my fifth year, I believe. Yeah, January, 2015.

David Brubaker:
What’s the most significant change that you’ve seen in 5 years?

patience kamau:
[laughter] You are turning this around?

David Brubaker:
Well, I am really interested [laughter]…

patience kamau:
[Continued laughter] Um, wow. Um, I hadn’t thought about that –in the last five years. Um, it’s been interesting to, to watch the growth of a new program because when I came, when I joined CJP, I believe the Zehr Institute was pretty young…

David Brubaker:
…very new!

patience kamau:
It was just new-ish, and it’s been, it’s been fascinating to sort of watch the growing pains that I referred to earlier because there’s so much potential, but how to meet that potential –and it’s global –there are people calling from Brazil and saying, we want to have this done, and others from Columbia…and others within the United States. And so that’s fascinating to me to sort of watch –I’ve never seen any, an organization, um, from its infancy and growing into what it could be and struggling to get there, but with so much potential ahead. So that’s an interesting thing to witness.

David Brubaker:
And you’ve seen significant turnover in leadership?

patience kamau:
This is true. Well, um…

David Brubaker:
In five years?

patience kamau:
Mm, no, it’s uh, maybe it’s been less. No, it was just, just Daryl who was the executive director…

David Brubaker:
Oh, Lynn Roth wasn’t here when you came?

patience kamau:
No, no, no, no. He was not.

David Brubaker:
Okay.

patience kamau:
I came, I think soon after Daryl started, um, and then he just recently moved on in May and so now we’re on to Jayne –two very different individuals with very different leadership styles and, both have their pros and cons, as any human being does. So yeah…

David Brubaker:
It’s good you’re flexible.

patience kamau:
Well, it would be hard if we’re not –kind of just break if we become that brittle.

David Brubaker:
Mm-hm! So I will add one thing that Ruth Zimmerman said earlier, serving as administrator for CJP, and it was something she said publicly at the 10th anniversary, which is the one that I experienced in my first year here. And she was spot on –she said, our first 10 years as CJP, we were known primarily for our faculty, and our next 10 years, we will be known primarily for our alums.

And it was prophetic because it was during that second 10 year period that Leymah Gbowee was granted the Nobel Peace prize, and that increasingly alums around the world, were being recognized for starting peace centers, for doing very significant peacebuilding work in their own context, restorative justice programs started to emerge. And this network of more than 600 CJP alums is an incredible resource! And it’s an incredible resource, not just because of the stars like Leymah herself, but because of the reality that they are scattered around the world in 50 or 60 countries, I’m guessing, and those are just the MA alums in addition to all the STAR and SPI, …

patience kamau:
…right, all the others trained…

David Brubaker:
…and the work that they’re doing in their own communities, including here in the U.S. is by definition far more significant than what we can do here in Harrisonburg, Virginia because it’s global. So CJP, Harrisonburg could disappear tomorrow and the legacy would only continue to grow.

patience kamau:
Ah, that’s, yeah, you’re right. I was just, uh, we’ve been, we’ve had a series of guest bloggers who are alumni who are…each month are blogging about their, their experience here at CJP, and the impact that it’s had on their lives. And we’ve had two that have been published so far and a couple that are lined up and almost all of them are doing incredible work within their areas where they live, and it’s all global and it’s pretty amazing,

David Brubaker:
Including the Kenyan mafia I hear…

patience kamau:
The Kenyan mafia?

David Brubaker:
[Laughter] That’s how Jayne refers to those in East Africa, who are doing amazing work.

patience kamau:
Yeah, there’s quite a huge contingency, that’s right. Um, yeah, and uh, WPLP had at least two cohorts within East Africa, so that’s…the Kenyan mafia –I’d never heard that reference… [Laughter].

David Brubaker:
[Laughter continues] …it’s a very good mafia, but it’s the same kind of idea –it’s a network of people who are doing amazing things working together and there’s no kind of “central control,” it’s just a powerful network.

patience kamau:
It’s a new way of organization where there isn’t necessarily, someone at the top, it’s just things organically developing. There’ve been, what, 12 peace centers that have developed that are modeled to the Summer Peacebuilding Institute?

David Brubaker:
Yeah.

patience kamau:
Yeah, that’s pretty cool.

David Brubaker:
So, and you know, not bad for 25 years to have that worldwide impact in such a short time in human history.

patience kamau:
Yeah, that’s –I like that. It was very uh, prophetic of Ruth Zimmerman…

David Brubaker:
…of Ruth –she nailed it and it’ll be interesting to see what, what the next 10 years are primarily going to be about, but I don’t think it will be primarily about the faculty –as wonderful as they are– and not even necessarily just about the current students, but about what students and alums and faculty and staff are doing together for societal change throughout the world.

patience kamau:
May God go with us in the next 10, 15, 25 years!

David Brubaker:
Amen!

patience kamau:
Yes.

David Brubaker:
It does require a faith in the middle of our current realities.

patience kamau:
It does, quite a bit, quite a bit! Looking beyond, we have to dream and keep our faith.

David Brubaker:
Mm-hm…

patience kamau:
Yeah. All right –that’s all I have.

David Brubaker:
Well, thank you –that’s all I have.

patience kamau:
Thank you very much Dave!

patience kamau:
Dr. Brubaker is the author of The Little Book of Healthy Organizations published in 2009, he is also author of When the Center Does Not Hold published in 2019.

[Outro music begins to play and fades into background]

patience kamau:
All the music you hear on this podcast has been composed by: the one and only Luke Mullet. Our audio mixing engineer extraordinaire is: Stephen Angello. Audio editing support was generously provided by: Michaela Mast. And I am the podcast executive producer, audio recording engineer, editor and host: patience Kamau. As you are able, please remember to subscribe, rate and review this podcast so that other peacebuilders may find it. We’ll be back with a new episode in two weeks! Thank you so much for listening and join us again next time!

[Outro music swells and plays till end].

In this episode, academic program coordinator Janelle Myers-Benner, who has worked at CJP in various capacities for 20 years. speaks of her formative experiences volunteering in Bolivia; the many programmatic shifts she’s helped usher through CJP; and memories of her second daughter, Nora, who died in 2008.

As young adults, Myers-Benner and her husband, Jason, spent a year working at an orphanage in Bolivia. They returned to Harrisonburg “struggling with big, big questions, and [CJP] was a place where questions were welcome, and not only welcomed but engaged,” she says. Myers-Benner then got her first job with what was then called the Conflict Transformation Program in 1999 as a work study student.

“I cannot reflect on my 20 years at CJP without Nora coming prominently to mind,” Myers-Benner says. Nora, the Myers-Benners’ second daughter, was born in October 2007 with a rare genetic condition. Myers-Benner worked from home and hospital throughout Nora’s life and returned to the CJP office when Nora was about four or five months old, baby in tow.
She remembers the community rallying around her family during this time. In one story Myers-Benner recounts that Linda Swanson, a student at the time, “almost filled the CJP freezer with these big trays! I think she fed our family for a couple weeks … that was this abundance of generosity and this outpouring of love.” A CJP alumna, Ann McBroom, took Nora for long walks while Myers-Benner helped the program transition to 91����Ƶ’s new database.

“Many of the people who come through our doors are just unforgettable people … the roots feel very deep, and the connections feel very deep,” Myers-Benner says.
Her hopes for CJP going forward are also focused on the people. In another 25 years, Myers-Benner says she hopes the school will further “center the leadership of indigenous people and people of color.”

“We need leaders who are creative, who can dream, who can hope, who can envision something different than what we currently have, who’ve shown the ability to rise above immense challenges.”

Guest

Janelle Myers-Benner

Janelle Myers-Benner completed studies in justice, peace and conflict studies at 91����Ƶ in 2001; she began working at CJP in 1999 while finishing her bachelor’s degree. Her childhood years in Jackson, Miss. and time living in Immokalee, Fla. and Santa Cruz, Bolivia have been significant parts of her life journey. Since 2005, she has been putting roots down in Keezletown, Va. on a 6-acre homestead with her husband, Jason and daughters Kali, Alida, and Terah, along with the memories of their daughter, Nora, who died in 2008. They are focused on learning to gain their dietary needs from the soil in that place, which is very connected to their desire to find a just way of living. When not working for CJP, she can probably be found in their gardens, tending animals, making cheese or working on some other food-related project.

Transcript

Janelle Myers-Benner:
When you’re out there looking for resources on organic gardening or permaculture or other things about food systems, you see a lot of white faces on the books and in the magazines and yet many, many, many of the practices that we use now in agriculture that people have earned lots of money from writing books about, came over on slave ships with people from West Africa and like, and we don’t, we don’t give the credit to the communities that actually developed and maintain these practices and taught other people, sometimes not with a desire to teach people, you know…

[Theme music begins and fades away…]

patience kamau:
Hey everybody, happy Wednesday to you! Welcome back to Peacebuilder, a conflict transformation podcast by The Center for Justice and Peacebuilding. With us this episode:

Janelle Myers-Benner:
Janelle Myers-Benner and I’m currently the academic program coordinator here at CJP.

patience kamau:
Janelle Myers-Benner completed her studies in justice, peace and conflict studies at 91����Ƶ in 2001; she began working at CJP in 1999 while finishing her bachelor’s degree. Her childhood years in Jackson, Miss. and time living in Immokalee, Fla. and Santa Cruz, Bolivia have been significant parts of her life journey. Since 2005, she has been putting roots down in Keezletown, Va. on a 6-acre homestead with her husband, Jason and daughters Kali, Alida, and Terah, along with the memories of their daughter, Nora, who died in 2008. They are focused on learning to gain their dietary needs from the soil in that place, which is very connected to their desire to find a just way of living.

When not working for CJP, Janelle can probably be found in their gardens, tending animals, making cheese or working on some other food-related project. Just a quick reminder though before we begin, registration for our ultimate celebration gathering is now open. Join us on June 5, 6 and 7; seriously, you don’t want to miss out on this! For details about events and activities, go to emu.edu/cjp/anniversary.

[Theme music fades in, swells and ends]

patience kamau:
Hi Janelle.

Janelle Myers-Benner:
Hi patience.

patience kamau:
How are you today?

Janelle Myers-Benner:
I’m good. I’m enjoying the beautiful leaves…

patience kamau:
Mm, cause we’re recording this in the fall, even though this will air in the spring, there’ll be no leaves…

Janelle Myers-Benner:
It’s a beautiful time! It’s kind of at its peak right now.

patience kamau:
Yes it is. Yes it is.
How did you end up at CJP, 91����Ƶ, CTP, or rather 91����Ƶ, CTP now CJP – what was your journey here?

Janelle Myers-Benner:
My journey here. So I came to 91����Ƶ for school in 1996…

patience kamau:
Undergrad?

Janelle Myers-Benner:
…as an undergraduate student. Um, and then left shortly after I came to do a stint of voluntary service in Bolivia. So when I returned to 91����Ƶ after that stint, um, I took my first justice, peace and conflict studies class as part of my undergraduate degree, and in that first year had classes with Vernon Jantzi, Lisa Schirch and Ray Gingerich. And at that point I hadn’t declared a major at 91����Ƶ at all –I was still exploring what I wanted to do or be…

patience kamau:
Yes…

Janelle Myers-Benner:
Still am…

patience kamau:
Uh-huh, it’s a journey.

Janelle Myers-Benner:
Um, and yeah, those…the two classes that year that I remember was “peace and justice in the global context” and “peace and justice in the American context” and by the end of that year I had declared my major in the Justice Peace and Conflict studies Program. And at that time there was a lot of overlap between then, CTP and CJP and so I also was able to take classes with other CJP faculty, John Paul and Vern…I already said Vernon, Howard and Nancy Good, and when Jason and I, my husband Jason and I got married in the spring of 1999, I still had two more years of undergrad and Ruth Zimmerman approached me at church one Sunday to ask if I wanted a work-study job, and so I started in the fall of ’99 as a work-study student and that was 20 falls ago and I got stuck and never left.

patience kamau:
Has it felt like you got stuck?

Janelle Myers-Benner:
No, it has been deliberate choices along the way to stay.

patience kamau:
Mm-hm, mm-hm. Okay. All right. Um, [laughter]
…tough question? [laughter]

Janelle Myers-Benner:

[laughter] I’m glad some editing will happen. :)

patience kamau:
[Continued laughter by both]
It’s good, but that’s the point of the podcast, to actually capture thoughts as they…

Janelle Myers-Benner:
…emerge?

patience kamau:
As they merge, exactly!
Um, so what have been your title changes from work-study to the current title that you just told us?

Janelle Myers-Benner:
So actual title changes. I, so I started as a work-study student and did that for two years. And then, um, right when I graduated I then became office coordinator and I don’t remember, I don’t remember years, but um, it was more a process of like adding things on, and then kind of taking things away, and so my next title was probably academic program coordinator. Um, but at that point I was also working a lot with admissions, so kind of doing admissions and registration. So I think I’ve really only officially had three… [Laughter]…

patience kamau:
Oh, but unofficially, you’ve been a “Janelle of all trades”?

Janelle Myers-Benner:
I’ve had my fingers in multiple different things along the, along the way.

patience kamau:
And I think the benefit of that, that we as your colleagues have come to see is that you’ve, you probably have interacted with most of the students who’ve gone through here, and you remember many of them, …

Janelle Myers-Benner:
Mm-hm…

patience kamau:
…talk a little bit about that. What’s that process for you? How does it feel when someone comes and says, “do you know this person?” “Where are they?” And all that sort of stuff. How do you keep up with people and how do you keep their memories fresh in your mind?

Janelle Myers-Benner:
Wow! Many people that come through our doors are just unforgettable people. I mean, as I’ve been reflecting on 20 years, I don’t remember everybody and I definitely am not keeping up with everybody as much as I would love to, but I do feel like each name usually brings like a little warm, warm feeling even if I can’t place the year or it’ll be more like, Oh, that was in the early years or that was more recently. Um, but yeah, I do, I do feel like I, I know most names and most names’ faces also come to mind and it feels special.

I mean, it’s probably one of the things, and “stuck” isn’t the right word, but like the roots feel very deep and the connections feel very deep. Um, and it feels like, well, it’s a place I’ve spent half my year…half my life now. So some names are more like a vague recognition and a remembering and others like specific stories or conversations or interactions come to mind and people come to mind when you hear about places too. So it’s, there’s lots of hooks and reminders and…

patience kamau:
…yeah, half your life! So you’ve basically grown up here? I mean…

Janelle Myers-Benner:
I actually wrote that in some of my notes as I was reflecting on questions that might come up in this. I, I often have reflected to people that I feel like I’ve kind of grown up at CJP.

patience kamau:
What does that mean for you?

Janelle Myers-Benner:
Well, I, so when I started I would have just turned 21, when I started at CJP and also had just gotten married and still was in undergrad, which is often a time of a lot of change for people and their thinking and worldviews and just kind of embarking on life, uhm, away from my family of origin, my home for the first time. So when I think about how my CJP experience has changed me, it’s a little hard to extrapolate it from just like normal growth and maturity that happens when you’re 20, and you’re still like exploring and learning a lot about the world.

So the time that Jason and I spent in Bolivia was pretty life altering and transforming and we were still really sorting through a lot of those experiences. And I feel like CJP was a really amazing, beautiful container for me for that because it was among other people who were asking similar kinds of questions about the world, were feeling similarly, um, struggling with big, big questions and it was a place where questions were welcome and not only welcomed but like engaged, and so I couldn’t imagine kind of a better place to be…

patience kamau:
…to have expounded on those…at least explored those questions.

Janelle Myers-Benner:
Right.

patience kamau:
Why was Bolivia so formative for you?

Janelle Myers-Benner:
So our time in Bolivia, we were there for about a year and we were, um, we spent most of that year serving as house parents in an orphanage in Bolivia. We were there under the auspices of a fairly conservative Christian organization doing short term missions. And it’s, it’s actually painful for me to reflect on even to this day, 20 plus years later. Um, I feel like I learned so very, very much, um, by that year and especially by the children. But I struggle a lot with the cost that it was to them.

patience kamau:
What do you mean?

Janelle Myers-Benner:
Um, so these children had in that time, at that time in the way the home was set up, and I feel really grateful for the way some alterations have been made to the orphanage there. I’m super excited that some of the people that have worked there have gone through the star training and have become more aware and educated around issues of trauma, um, especially in children. But at the time that we were there, the home was basically resourced largely by white North Americans who came for short amounts of time. So children were basically given new parents every couple months or at most like a year was a long time for someone to be there. And so a number of the children in the home, especially the teenagers, when I came back to 91����Ƶ and was back in classes, I, I basically felt like they were a little prophetic voices in my life because they asked a lot of hard questions in Bolivia that I didn’t have answers to.

patience kamau:
Do you remember some of these questions?

Janelle Myers-Benner:
I do. I will never forget –Miguel was about 16, I think at the time and I was only 18 at the time…

patience kamau:
…and you were parenting?

Janelle Myers-Benner:
…and I was parenting! There’s a number of problems with this scenario, but I so well remember Miguel coming up to the, the Casa Esperanza, which was kind of our volunteer living quarters and in Spanish, he basically said to us, you know, “why do you come here from North America and think you can have power over us?” And kind of wanted us to leave. And…

patience kamau:
Was he angry?

Janelle Myers-Benner:
He was very angry. Yeah. And there were a number of reasons for there to be a lot of anger. Um, there had been a lot of, a lot of really painful things happening at the home that we were unaware of prior to arrival. But for me it was the first, Miguel was one of the first people to poke a little hole in my, like, “here I am giving a year of my life and coming to serv” and here’s this person that I’m here to serve, telling me I’m not really wanted. And Miguel and I think formed a very good relationship over the course of the year, but then I left, you know, like everybody else.

And so I, Miguel in my mind a lot and some of the other children, as I came back, both at 91����Ƶ and classes and in my work at CJP, especially thinking about how we equip ourselves for whatever type of life or service that we want to do. I feel, I feel really supportive of what CJP is trying to do. I know we don’t always get it right and we’re still learning a lot too, but it felt to me like I was given a very limited package of tools for my time in Bolivia and they were all spiritual tools. Um…

patience kamau:
So you didn’t feel equipped?

Janelle Myers-Benner:
No, I had three months of training that was all on…all very narrowly focused on like prayer and fasting and things like that, but no…

patience kamau:
No tools…

Janelle Myers-Benner:
No tools for… no understanding of child development, no trauma awareness. I don’t know that I heard the word trauma. Um, and then landed in a home that was riddled with cycles of sexual abuse among the children. One of the teens had committed suicide the year before we came. Um, and a lot of these children were not orphans, they had families that just economically couldn’t afford to keep all of their kids, so in some cases, some of the children were in the home and others were still with family.

So there was just so much there and I just, I felt like I came home with just like a suitcase full of questions. Um, and why I say that was such a growing experience for me is I don’t know if I would have, I don’t know if I would have taken peace and justice classes if I wasn’t really yearning for like some space to, to look at these big questions that I felt like I wasn’t finding receptive places to take them to. And I also think CJP felt like a really good landing spot and, and place for me too because a lot of, I mean I continually keep unpacking that year in different iterations.

patience kamau:
Of course, yeah…

Janelle Myers-Benner:
…as different things come up at CJP too.

patience kamau:
I mean, things that we categorize as very formational as you describe this as, they probably shape us for the rest of our lives and we just, over time, just keep thinking “oh right, that’s what this was about.”

Janelle Myers-Benner:
Right. There’s a new twist,

patience kamau:
i know! But I am curious, um, you said that you didn’t feel prepared –were you aware of that while you were there? Or is this something that, retrospectively, you’ve come to recognize how woefully unprepared you were with these sorts of tools?

Janelle Myers-Benner:
Very aware then!

patience kamau:
Very aware on the ground! Ah, why was that?

Janelle Myers-Benner:
Because I felt like I was drowning.

patience kamau:
Oh, mm…

Janelle Myers-Benner:
I’m, I just was grasping, you know, and um, for better or for worse, I think that my, my own childhood up to 18, while there was a fair amount of kind of tumult in my, in my home at various stages, I think it was the first, it was the first time in, in this way, that kind of my package of tools let me down. Like in most of my other instances, it kind of got me through or, or I think it was just the first time that, that I just felt like this is not working for anyone. It’s not, it’s not helping me have clarity. It’s clearly not serving these kids well. They’re clearly needing something that I’m, I’m not able to provide and I’m probably not the person to provide it, which was another learning.

And that that particular learning I think has, has more kind of sunk into me more over the years of like even if I had been well prepared for the job…you know, even if I had been a trauma expert or a child development specialist, I may have not been the right person to be there anyway. Um, which again is why I’m so glad they’ve completely rearranged the home to be in small casitas -small houses- where house parents are largely Bolivians and others from South America and then volunteers still come in to do building projects, to do fun things with the kids. Like there are still volunteers –that’s still definitely part of the way they’ve organized it. But I feel like it seems to me from the outside looking in that there is more of a, the kids have a little more of a grounded sense of home than I think they did when we were there. So I’m grateful for that.

patience kamau:
Do, do any particular examples come to mind when you said that some of these tools helped you deal with your own tumult in your own childhood that did not then work here? Do any examples come to mind?

Janelle Myers-Benner:
Yeah, as I was talking about it, I was like, “I don’t, I don’t know exactly what I mean by that.” Um, so there were certain things for me that were helpful. Well, let me back up. I think that the group that I kind of, my, my friendship, my community group as a teenager and through my high school years, we kind of shared, we shared the same toolkit. Um, and we also utilized that in our, in our relationships. And again, I would say this is largely things that I still think are, are really good resources for, for some people and in some instances, and I think partly because of negative experiences in Bolivia… um, this is actually another thing CJP has done for me and this is a slight tangent, but I think it fits here.

patience kamau:
Go for it…

Janelle Myers-Benner:
Mmm. I feel like my experience at CJP has also opened my eyes to a new way of living out one’s faith in the world that has been really inspirational and um, hopeful for me. I feel like my experiences of faith-based living or, or, um, were much more about how do I get someone else to think the same way I think, to believe the same things I, I believe and to do things exactly the way I think they need to be done because God told me or, you know, it was, I feel really grateful and I really, I feel like I had some examples of this in my growing up years for sure, but I’m speaking specifically of my teenage years and the places that I went to get mentorship and influence was much more kind of a perspective of like, “we have what you need, and so we just need to figure out how to get you what we know that you need.”

And in terms of faith being a resource, personally for me it was, it was less, it was more of a struggle and less of a source of sustenance. And I can remember a couple of the first times at CJP where a student, I’m thinking specifically of students but, where a student in the program, like the Conflict Transformation Program at the time also sang at a CJP event, uh, like a worship song, that was one I had sang as a teenager and I had this moment of incredible cognitive dissonance where I was like,… [laughter]

patience kamau:
“Okay, what’s happening?” [laughter continues]

Janelle Myers-Benner:
I’m at a CJP party…

patience kamau:
Right…

Janelle Myers-Benner:
They’re singing a worship song that I would have sung and like, –but it was a good moment of cognitive dissonance. Like it made me stop and think, because I do think that for some of us, when we have negative experiences, it’s possible to want to throw the whole thing out. It’s like a human tendency I think to be like “…that was hard and painful…” and was like actually genuinely did contribute to something that wasn’t helpful, we can just kind of want to like package it up and get rid of it.

And I think CJP, I’m still on this journey, but I think CJP has been…and since that, that student singing the song since then, there’ve been other instances too and in my conversations with faculty where being able to interact with people for whom I feel like their faith is not only a source of inspiration and discernment and guidance for them, um, but they also utilize it in a way that is, I don’t want to use the word authentic because I think there are, like, I think that I was attempting to have integrity and be authentic all the way through.

patience kamau:
Mm-hm…

Janelle Myers-Benner:
It just feels more expansive and open and inviting and less threatening, um, and not use to be, I guess I want to just say invitational. Um, so yeah, some of that I’m still unpacking, but…

patience kamau:
Yeah, it sounds like when you heard that student sing the hymn or worship song, as you called it, um, helped you reframe…

Janelle Myers-Benner:
Mm-hm…

patience kamau:
…like one way of what you had associated that song with…

Janelle Myers-Benner:
…yeah…

patience kamau:
…to this other new experience that was welcome and different, and so the cognitive dissonance being, “oh, I like this.”

Janelle Myers-Benner:
It was a radical reframing!

patience kamau:
Yes, yes, there you go! You didn’t have to let go of the song and now it had this other new meaning. [Laughter]

Janelle Myers-Benner:
Yeah. [Laughter]

patience kamau:
That’s amazing. That’s great.

[Transition music plays]

patience kamau:
So what are the academic program changes? What have they been, through your 20, 21…20 years?

Janelle Myers-Benner:
20 this fall. So programmatic changes, I guess the biggies, the big ones. So when I started, we would have been the conflict transformation program. So kind of morphed from “Conflict Transformation Program” to “Center for Justice and Peacebuilding.” So when it was the “Conflict Transformation Program” within it was very clunky and I’m sure everybody that was there realized that. But we were the “Conflict Transformation Program” that then had graduate program in “conflict transformation,” so it was a little little redundant there.

So, um, so then we had at that time the master’s in conflict transformation and the grad certificate and so since then we’ve added on the master’s degree in restorative justice, the grad certificate in restorative justice. Um, there’ve been a lot of other, there’ve been programs that have common stayed and then there’ve been programs that have kind of birthed and had their time and left for a while since…

patience kamau:
The “Practice Institute” being one of those?

Janelle Myers-Benner:
Practice Institute, yep. Um, and also we, for a while were, were doing, uh, doing courses and a program in Lancaster at the 91����Ƶ Lancaster site, and that was kind of a, a shorter stint that we did over a couple of years.

patience kamau:
Oh, interesting. What were those courses there?

Janelle Myers-Benner:
We did a “managing congregational conflict,” there was a “leadership” course, I believe there was, might’ve been a “mediation/facilitation,” I think we did “intro to conflict transformation.” There were people that were getting our grad certificate, which meant we had to do kind of the practice and analysis courses and then had other electives. So that, and I think, I know Dave taught with that. I think maybe Ron, maybe Nancy, I’m not sure who all went to Lancaster, but…

patience kamau:
Ron Kraybill?

Janelle Myers-Benner:
Kraybill, mm-hm…

patience kamau:
…and Nancy Good?

Janelle Myers-Benner:
Mm-hm and Dave Brubaker, David Brubaker. So that one was kind of a short-lived program, I think partly because the drag up 81 North is grueling for anyone to do week after week. [Laughter]

patience kamau:
And it’s just getting worse.

Janelle Myers-Benner:
It’s not getting better!

patience kamau:
Some day they will expand it…

Janelle Myers-Benner:
Oh, maybe that’ll make it better or else they’ll turn it into train tracks –that might be the best solution.

patience kamau:
But we digress. [Laughter continues]

Janelle Myers-Benner:
Yes, we do digress! Um, so yeah, that one came and went. Um, the Women’s Peacebuilding Leadership came with the graduate certificate in peacebuilding leadership –that was birthed during the time that I’ve been here. Trauma, the STAR program out of September 11th. Um, we’ve also had a lot of other like collaborations and programs that have, have happened. So there’s a lot, when I first started, other than potentially someone taking a course at the seminary, there was really not traffic much between our students going to other programs and taking other programs across campus. So to me that’s been a big expansion, whether it be students taking something in the education department, occasionally counseling, still the seminary, sometimes especially the leadership, the organizational leadership and the MBA program. So that feels like a really expanding thing that has happened. Um…

patience kamau:
And that’s with mostly other graduate programs within 91����Ƶ?

Janelle Myers-Benner:
Mostly other graduate programs within 91����Ƶ.

patience kamau:
Is the nursing program one of those also?

Janelle Myers-Benner:
So I don’t think we have had anybody take nursing courses. We’ve had, we’ve, Gloria Rhodes teaches a class with the nursing program, but I don’t think any of our students have taken courses. And the started too during this time. So and honestly when I think so that’s academic kind of programmatic changes, but, the changes I think about most is just the people changes. Like, and that’s the part that I think about a lot more I guess just because it feels like, I don’t know how to describe it, but it’s almost like you’re on a boat and like people keep coming out in little boats and getting on and then other people get off and leave and like, it’s just like constantly changing…

patience kamau:
…that’s a great picture, I just pictured it…

Janelle Myers-Benner:
…and to like stay on the boat and like you’re just constantly welcoming new people and saying, and each person that comes brings different skills and each person that leaves takes different gifts, and so for me, that’s been probably the more –almost, and I’m gonna use the word jarring because I don’t think jarring has to be negative all the time, but it’s just maybe, or a shock to the system like that there’s, and those shocks can also bring a lot of renewed energy and vitality, and some of these programs are birthed from new people that joined us.

But I, I have to admit, I’m not somebody that like thrives and loves big changes. So it’s definitely been one of my growth edges is I made a note while I was thinking about CJP that I feel like the only thing that seems constant at CJP is that there will always be change.

patience kamau:
Oh, that actually a …thing…that “the only thing that is constant is change.”

Janelle Myers-Benner:
Yeah, and it’s very true and has been my lived experience here. Um, but I also think it’s, it’s one of the unique and wonderful things about CJP is that we are constantly changing. But I will add or, and I will add that that can be one of the challenges for the “nuts and bolts” people in the system, is that constant change can make one feel as if they’re losing their bearings.

patience kamau:
So why did you switch from using “but” to “and” right there?

Janelle Myers-Benner:
Um, I’m not sure. I dunno, I’m trying not to use “but” as much.

patience kamau:
Ah, why is that?

Janelle Myers-Benner:
I think, I think more because I, “but” seems to be like almost negating what came before, like this is true, but this kind of overrides it almost rather than these are, I’m, I’m holding both. Maybe it’s Tammy Krause‘s TenTalk –embracing the “” — I’m trying to embrace the “and” rather than the “but.”

patience kamau:
Yes, yes. Oh yes. That was a pretty impressive TenTalk she did, wasn’t it?

Janelle Myers-Benner:
It was amazing!

patience kamau:
Uhm, do you miss the people who’ve left? Do you have constant thoughts of, “oh, I miss this person and how they were able to do this and that…”and are you able to speak to one or two?

Janelle Myers-Benner:
Oh yeah, sure. So for me, I feel like I wouldn’t still be at CJP if it wasn’t for Ruth Zimmerman and she was probably one of my early mentors, and I think also someone that saw potential in me that I hadn’t like seen or accessed, and, and I also feel like I was pretty happy being the office coordinator. I really liked organizing cupboards. I like, I [laughs] at that point in my life, it worked fine for me.

I felt like I was part of this amazing organization and I was having some little small part and I felt like I was really thriving in that and whether it was out of necessity as her plate grew or, or a combination of that and seeing that she thought that there was more that I could be doing, I feel like she kept encouraging me and like giving me new things to try and to do and, and expanding um, my role at CJP then CTP and yeah, I just, I can remember feeling very supported and personally cared about, which is a theme that I continue to feel, but I think she played that role in a really like critical juncture of my time and made it a place that I wanted to stay.

patience kamau:
Cause she was affirming of your gifts.

Janelle Myers-Benner:
Yeah, it was pretty hard for me when she was leaving, I will admit. And also, she left right when I was expecting our daughter Nora, who died in 2008 and so she, she left at a time when there was a lot of other tumult in my life, and so I remember that being a poignant departure for me.

patience kamau:
Nora, 2008, so she would’ve been 11 this year?

Janelle Myers-Benner:
Mm-hm, her 12th birthday is Wednesday of this week.

patience kamau:
Oh wow.

Janelle Myers-Benner:
Yeah.

patience kamau:
Mm, so how are you doing with that? Like what’s been your journey through that? So she was born, you were here?

Janelle Myers-Benner:
Yeah.

patience kamau:
How was that?

Janelle Myers-Benner:
I cannot reflect on my 20 years at CJP without Nora coming prominently to mind and October always feels very different in my body than other months of the year, and I think there’s something about the like I just keep looking out the window. I’m not ignoring you in front of me patience…

patience kamau:
Yeah, that’s ok…

Janelle Myers-Benner:
…but the color of the leaves and the changing of leaves and the way fall is a reminder of letting go and, and death, that brings new life later, but yeah, as I was thinking about talking with you about my time at CJP and, and especially the community aspects of it immediately kind of that, that like snapshot that, year to year and a half, um, was like the very first thing that came to my mind. So a couple of memories or a couple of things that come to mind…so maybe I’ll just say really briefly for people that don’t know our family’s story.

patience kamau:
Yes, thank you, thank you…

Janelle Myers-Benner:
For some of you, you’ll remember Nora because you were part of that year. Um, but for those that don’t, our second daughter, Nora was born in 2007 and had a really rare genetic condition, um, for the genetic people out there, Petty-Laxova-Wiedemann syndrome, which is a handful of cases in the world. And she lived until she was seven months old and…

patience kamau:
What is the syndrome?

Janelle Myers-Benner:
So the syndrome is…what I’m going to say this syndrome is, is basically a conglomeration of symptoms that a group of researchers –Petty, Laxova and Wiedermann– uh, put together into a package that they defined as a syndrome, um, and I might be skeptical about calling it such a thing, but when, when the, the geneticist found an article about, they call it “Petty syndrome” for short, and sent us the article when Nora was about four months old, it was as if they had come and looked at her and written an article about her. Like it was so clear that that all of the, …so a lot of it is some physical abnormalities or anomalies I should say, like smaller digits on her fingers and toes or partial webbing on her fingers, um, she had a really large umbilical hernia. She had, you know how babies have little small soft spots on their head where their skull bones haven’t fully formed?

patience kamau:
Yeah the…what’s it called? Augh, it is escaping me, anyway, uh-huh…

Janelle Myers-Benner:
Yeah, so hers started right at, between her eyes and went all the way around the back of her head. So basically the entire top of her head was a soft spot, like there were no bones at all so, fragile! Fragile to have her four year old, very eager sister hold her at the time. Um, but the biggest, biggest part of her syndrome was the inability to amass subcutaneous fat. So basically she didn’t have fat on her body.

So a lot of people when they looked at her thought that like she almost had a little bit of the look of some of the syndromes like progeria or others that make babies almost look older. Like her skin was kind of wrinkly and almost translucent, you could see her veins. And so she was born at UVA at at 37 weeks gestation, so full term, and she was only three and a half pounds, and despite working to feed her around the clock every hour, she never got above six and a half pounds. It was just like she couldn’t, yeah, it’s a very long story, but in the end we discovered she also had pulmonary hypertension and kids who have pulmonary hypertension need double the calories to grow because their heart and lungs are working so hard.

And that was the point in her life that we realized that her genetic potential and was going to be really much shorter than most people’s, and because without being able to amass fat and needing double the calories to grow, it was just like her systems tuckered out. Um, that’s what I would say –she tuckered out. She gave it her best. Um, and where CJP intersects with this is actually all the way through. Um, so I didn’t really have a break with Nora at all. Um…

patience kamau:
What do you mean?

Janelle Myers-Benner:
So I basically worked the whole way through her life and so…

patience kamau:
No maternity leave?

Janelle Myers-Benner:
So as it worked out I was on bed rest, um, I was on bed rest for about six weeks before she was born, so I got set up to work from home during that time, and then she was born at the end of October, which is a decent time of the year that there’s not quite as much critical things happening. So a lot of things just kind of got bumped off till I got back, and then I managed what I could from the hospital and stuff with her.

So I did, I took some time off in there, but I didn’t have like a, there wasn’t a like “replacement,” it was more like, w”hat can we bump off and not do?” Um, and then I just filled in on the most important stuff just to keep systems going. So the bad part of that was feeling torn a lot of the time, but I will also say that so much of my experience with Nora created a sense of being completely out of control, like I didn’t know…I was in, I was in a world in the hospital, so she was in the hospital for the first month of her life and for about two weeks at the end of her life. She was born and died both at UVA hospital in Charlottesville.

So there were times that I can remember being in the NICU, the neonatal intensive care unit, and just feeling like all of the alarms and the beepers and the buzzers, like I couldn’t help. Like I didn’t have the expertise, I didn’t know what the buzzers meant. I didn’t, you know, I could help by holding her. I could help by being present, but there was a lot that I couldn’t do. And so sometimes I’ll be honest, it felt really good to go out to the lobby to log in and be like, “I know how to do that!” [Laughter] I can help someone. I can respond to this email and give somebody a piece of information that will make their day easier. Like there was definitely moments where I needed that.

There were also moments where I just felt like I wanted to give up because I can’t, I’m not doing anything well because I’m so spread thin, which that’s somewhat of a continual theme. [laughter] But um, uh, but yeah, it was very acute at that time and it was interesting in the years since Nora, like there’ll be times that I’m working on a project and I’ll see like a long old email thread and I’ll notice the date was like, you know, June 1st, 2008 and I was like, Nora died on June 4th like I was writing an email about that June 1st — what was I doing? And I think it was again, just like there are ways that I think we just seek some little pockets of normalcy.

patience kamau:
Yeah, and so this was your way of…

Janelle Myers-Benner:
I mean I, I knew how to do it right. Like I had been there. It wasn’t, I wasn’t doing it really new stuff, I was just like keeping systems going that I knew how to keep going. Um, and so that’s the like work side of it. But the other side of it is that, so Nora never went anywhere other than our home and doctor’s appointments other than 91����Ƶ. She never visited grandparents. We never took a trip with her cause she couldn’t really travel well. We had do a little car bed cause she was so tiny and she didn’t like it, and she was, yeah, it was just not a good situation. We didn’t take her to a lot of public places because of fear of getting sick and she just didn’t have a lot of reserves.

So she really wasn’t a sickly child, but she was so tiny and fragile that we wanted to keep her, keep her from getting sick. So we just didn’t…and her care was intense enough that just, we just didn’t go out. When she stopped growing at about four or five months, um, we negotiated with CJP for me to be able to bring her to work with me. Um, because she also was smart and she learned like all of our girls have learned, all four of them have been very smart about the difference between a bottle and the real source directly from mom. Each of them have gone on bottle strikes, which the others grew so fast and furious that they had plenty of reserves to make it through the strike or like for us to work with it or be like, it’s okay if they go an extra hour, with Nora she had no reserve…

patience kamau:
…she had to feed.

Janelle Myers-Benner:
Yeah if she was hungry, we needed to feed her and if she would take it, we wanted to give it to her. So when she did her bottle strike, it was like Nora.

patience kamau:
So she would not feed from the bottle at all, she only was breastfeeding?

Janelle Myers-Benner:
She wouldn’t take the bottle. And so and so we decided that I would bring her to work with me. So that was the first time I moved to the faculty wing cause it didn’t seem quite, I was over on the side of the office, the welcoming side…

patience kamau:
Yes, on the North end…

Janelle Myers-Benner:
On the North end.

Janelle Myers-Benner:
Um, and so we moved to where there was a little more privacy cause I was nursing her often and just so that I wasn’t necessarily the one that needed to be jumping up to welcome people. So I brought her to work with me for a number of weeks. Her main social outing in her life was, she did make it to one CJP graduation. So there’s one picture that somebody took. I didn’t have a camera there, but there’s one picture of me standing on the lawn and she’s in the front pack and I like treasurer. I think Bill Goldberg might’ve taken it. I’m not sure who took it or somebody. Um, but yeah, that was her one, one outing. And when she died in June, we had her Memorial service in Martin Chapel, which is where we have the graduation.

But three, three stories that came to mind immediately, and it was more around you kind of saying we might talk about CJP as a community. And three, three things came to immediately to mind for me. The first was that people did share meals with us along the way, and I, I still remember so the first two stories are about now CJP alumna, but I so remember Linda Swanson wanting to bring me some food while we were, while we were kind of home bound and I promise she almost filled the CJP freezer with big trays, I mean I think she fed our family for a couple of weeks, but when I went to get it, you know, thinking you’re going to get a little casserole or something, and there were like, I think probably five of those big tinfoil like pans of food for our family of three.

Um, so that just was like this abundance of generosity and just an outpouring of, of love. And then the other thing is, the other thing happening, speaking of programmatic transitions is at that year was the year that the university moved from the old database to the new database that we all currently use now, which for a university is a massive transition. So what CJP was doing at the time, which nobody really cares about or wants to know, and those that remember it probably are feeling somewhat traumatized by me even mentioning it, was that we had our own database and 91����Ƶ had a database and we merged them, at that time.

patience kamau:
What? CJP ran its own database?

Janelle Myers-Benner:
We had our own database, an access, database and then 91����Ƶ had a database that was the official database and we merged them, which was incredibly complex and very, very messy and very, very tedious. And so basically for a number of us, we spent days hours and days and weeks in a little room in the seminary building, working on the conversion process, mapping it, figuring out what fields, figuring out how the new database was going to help us run the programs that we were running on our external, not 91����Ƶ supported database.

And so I needed to be able to focus and that’s when I was bringing Nora to work with me, which was really challenging on some days. And Ann McBroom was a student at that time and offered to just come in and take her and walk around the campus or be right outside the door to bring her whenever I needed to feed her. And it was what I needed for those days that, you know, she did it a couple of times.

Um, and lastly, so Nora died in June and her first birthday would have been October 30th of 2008 and CJP staff and faculty and students planned like a little one year. It wasn’t a birthday party, but it was more like a little Memorial Service just for CJP in Martin Chapel and at that service, students played music. I think a couple of people shared — don’t remember a lot of the words that were said, the main thing I remember from that service was that they had, they presented us with a stain glass piece that CJP had commissioned Mert Brubaker to make for our family, which we had talked with her about, and it, it’s the most beautiful piece. It’s the one thing I would grab if my house was on fire, it would be that piece of stained glass, which the fire thing.

So basically we had designed with Mert — so Nora lived for three seasons. She never was alive in the summer, but she lived in the spring. She was born in the fall, she lived through the winter and she died in the spring. And so we talked with her about doing a 3-panel stained-glass piece with each panel of those three symbolizing each of the seasons that she was with us. So the fall one is a beautiful like 3D of different colored leaves, the winter one is a fire –we heat our home with wood stove and the spring one is three yellow flowers because at the time that Nora was with us, Kali who was our daughter who was four at the time, one day just told us that when we see the first three yellow flowers, we’ll know that that’s when we can take our baby outside.

And so now every spring when we see three yellow flowers, it’s always a reminder — three daffodils or three Crocuses. But this is three daffodils on the stained-glass piece. So the stained-glass piece was up at this service and Mert was giving her artist’s statement, kind of just sharing what the process was like for her of creating this piece. And we were using candles in Martin Chapel and there was like a burlap cloth around this stained-glass piece, and while Mert is sharing…

patience kamau:
[Laughter]
…did it catch on fire?

Janelle Myers-Benner:
It caught on fire and there was literally flames coming up behind the, like you had this moment where you were looking and you’re like…

patience kamau:
…”wait a minute”…

Janelle Myers-Benner:
“The flames on the stained-glass are actually flick…wait… that is actually fire!” [Laughter]
So it kind of ruined the moment in terms of like…then people were like…

patience kamau:
[Laughter continues]
…or made it memorable!

Janelle Myers-Benner:
It made it so memorable. I’ll never forget, I’ll never forget that moment.

patience kamau:
Wait, wait, so how did that fire get put out?

Janelle Myers-Benner:
People just like went up and like stomped, you know, like padded it out, you know? But it was a very, yeah…

patience kamau:
Were the rules about candles on campus instituted after that?

Janelle Myers-Benner:
I’m sure there were…that might be when those rules got more stringent, I don’t know. It didn’t set off any alarms. We got it out very quickly, but it was very memorable, the whole thing was memorable. I mean, I remember, I don’t want to throw out too many names because I’m going to forget somebody, but I do remember Kristen Wall played violin I think at that and yeah.

And just it felt, it felt like, even though there were times during her life and death and the grieving after that, I, I wished that I could have given more space to that in my life and I still feel that on some dimension, and I also feel like I can’t quite imagine a work environment that would have been better at that time, I always felt like she was very welcomed at the office when I came in. Um, I definitely had faculty popping in, like when they could see that I was like trying to nurse her and type and talk on the phone at the same time that like, I can remember Dave coming across and just like offering to hold her or like, “what can I do to help you?” [Laughs]

Um, so I think circling back to like, you asking me at the beginning when I paused for a long time about like, are you stuck? You know, I think that partly the growing up here, partly the like so many memories of Nora are here that there will be a new, a new dimension of grieving when life takes me to another place, um, because I do often think about, you know, putting Nora and her little seat and being like, “are you ready to go to work?” And like driving to the office and coming in and getting her little bed set up in my office and even the seminary room, like it’s the call-a-phon room. I think the phone-a-thon room I think is where we spent all of those hours. But you know, it’s like, it accesses both painful memories and also precious ones. And, and even the painful ones I welcome because they also are my memories of her so…

patience kamau:
…and they’ve shaped you…

Janelle Myers-Benner:
…and they have shaped me! And in the years since many CJP people have like participated in the blood drives that we’ve had in her memory…

patience kamau:
Mm, yeah –you have those annually don’t you?

Janelle Myers-Benner:
Twice, we do it once in June at her, at her –the anniversary of her death, and we’ll have one on Wednesday on the…on her birthday.

patience kamau:
Yeah, what happens with those, um, say a little more about the blood drives, what happens with…why did you choose that?

Janelle Myers-Benner:
So the reason, yeah. Oh, it’s amazing that we chose that as one of our rituals of remembering. Um, we’ve, we’ve done a variety of things, this is the one public thing that we do um, twice a year. Soon after Nora died, Jason and I decided to give blood together –that was much more monumental for me than Jason, cause I have always felt like I have just a small phobia of needles. Like, I mean just right now talking about them, my legs started to go a little week on me. I mean, it’s always been like that. Um, growing up like my dad was a doctor and so like huge amounts of bribery to like get me to go get a shot. And like I just, yeah, very, very nervous around needles…

patience kamau:
…no needles…

Janelle Myers-Benner:
I don’t like needles! I still don’t like needles. Um, but I felt like Nora’s life and her death taught me that I could do things that I thought I couldn’t do. And, and I felt like Nora did really hard things that I would never wish for a baby to have to do with such, I won’t even, I don’t know. Courage seems active. I think she was a very courageous person, but she also like this acceptance like, and so Nora never received blood. So I know a lot of people end up giving blood a lot because if like they had a child or a loved one who received blood, it was like a way to give back or whatever. It wasn’t that so much.

For me it was actually initially a very personal ritual like it was, it was, it wasn’t all that altruistic. I mean I like doing things that serve multiple functions, so it was like good for me and good for somebody else as bonus. But it was also like, it was also very much for me kind of continually remembering her, but remembering her through a ritual of doing something that was a challenge for me and it did get easier over time. And honestly it was, we were at the old RMH Rockingham Memorial Hospital giving blood one day and a whole group of Old Order Mennonites came in like at the same time and I was like, “h, what are they doing?” Like they’re all coming in together.

And then I learned that like people do drives where they like just reserve the whole donation center for a period of time and they market it and you know, get people to come. And I was like, “we like to do things like that!” Like wouldn’t it be more fun to make this a party where you don’t have to think about the needles the whole time and so we just decided to try one to see like would people be interested in joining us? And it was so fun like, and it was also really meaningful that people that did know her or knew us during that time came to join us to remember her. But then like connections and friends and people that we’ve learned since Nora, that didn’t even know us at that time, it was like a way for them to get to know her a little bit. Like we would bring the book that we wrote about her, we’d bring like her memory box and other things and bring a lot of homemade snacks. Let people make things if they can’t donate blood, cause I also am in a community where lots of people can’t give because of travel restrictions and stuff.

So allowing other ways of participating. And so we started just doing it every like once a year, then you know, twice a year. Yeah. It continues to be really meaningful. Um, and this, this falls is, well, it’s kind of the second one like this, but it’s the first that we’re actually joining with another family that also lost a daughter, Nora this spring who shared some time at UVA with our Nora, like, so…

patience kamau:
So she died older?

Janelle Myers-Benner:
She died when she was, yeah, she was older. Just this spring. Yeah. So she was born right around the time that Nora died and then just died of an illness this spring. And so this particular blood drive on Wednesday will be for two Noras.

patience kamau:
Two Noras!
Who was Nora? Describe her as a person who, who was she as a person in those, was she eight months old?

Janelle Myers-Benner:
Seven months, just over seven months.

patience kamau:
Seven months. Who was she, how did you get to know her? Who did you see her to be?

Janelle Myers-Benner:
So I would say for myself, there was a long period of, it took me a while to bond with her as like a little individual person because of, I have a lot of feelings about the way hospitals manage, uh, the NICU. That was a very negative experience in our lives and the PICU, the pediatric intensive care unit at the end of her life was a very positive experience. And if anybody ever wants to talk about pediatric palliative care and how it connects with CJP, I’m, I’m ready. I love it.

patience kamau:
You should tell us about it. So after you finish describing her, do, tell us about that.

Janelle Myers-Benner:
Oh, that’s going to be way longer than this podcast. Um, I’m really excited about that. But um, so about Nora, I will say she lit up when Kali was around. That was like…

patience kamau:
She recognized her sister…

Janelle Myers-Benner:
Oh. Oh. She recognized her sister –she would, Kali would come in the room or Nora would hear her voice and she would just like light up. I mean the best pictures we have are of Kali holding Nora on her lap and Nora tilting her head up to like just look at Kali’s face with this like big smile. So yeah, I mean watching, watching her with Kali was probably like the bright spots of those of those months. Um, I do feel like a lot of Nora’s life, she had to put a lot of energy just into like her daily functions such that, she was a very determined little person.

So again, teeny little person and she was really tracking with a lot of like the “milestones” –and I did a little quotation mark there because I don’t really believe in like kids having to do things at certain ages, but in terms of what her, her body didn’t inhibit her from, you know, holding her head up right on time and right before kind of the last like decline for her health wise, she rolled over like she was very determined to take her little body over and she rolled over even. It was actually one of those moments where our neighbor was visiting and we hardly ever had visitors, and got to see that moment. Her dad missed it, but so, I would say determined I also feel like one of the things that that makes saying goodbye to an infant different is that we never processed Nora’s illness with her or we never like were able to talk with her about the fact that she was dying or that she wasn’t gonna live a long life.

But it also meant that I don’t think that that was really part of her experience either. I feel like she just took each day of life as it came and she lived her best in that day that she could. It was one of the things that, well, Jason wrote a poem about it, but just to observe a little person doing that, I don’t know. I feel like it taught me so much. I feel like her death was like the most excruciating moment of my life and also I’ve said like the most beautiful moments of my life are the births of my four daughters and the death of one of them. Like I will say it was beautiful. Um excruciatingly beautiful in the sense that I don’t feel like she struggled at all.

I also feel like, so when Nora died, I, I thought a lot about CJP and I thought a lot about graduates and this is where I’m going to get emotional. Um, but, and this is where pediatric palliative care comes in, is that I feel like so many of the people that I have grown to love and appreciate and admire at CJP have had to deal with communities and loved ones and family members who have died not surrounded by love and not, and have been left like communities and families and individuals have been left with so many unanswered questions, and to me that’s like grief and trauma all intermingled. And I feel like for Jason and I, the biggest gift we received at the end of Nora’s life was that being able to be immersed in the palliative care team meant that I feel like we had no unanswered questions at the end of her life. We knew that based on our own intuition and based on all of the experts that joined us in a team meeting, it was like a circle process at a hospital, like they all went around and said, “we don’t have any more ideas,” “we don’t have any more ideas,” “we don’t think there’s anything else…you could do this, and we think she would die while we did this procedure.” “You could try this invasive diagnostic test and she would suffer a lot and we don’t think it would do any good.”

So we were able to hear everyone and together come to a decision of like, the best we can do for her is to provide comfort care. That’s her best chance of recovering from this dip and it’s the best chance of her dying surrounded by us rather than needles and prodding and under a procedure. And so I feel like the gift that Jason and I have received is that I feel like our process of grieving with Nora has not had a lot of trauma in it. It hasn’t had unanswered questions. It hasn’t had, like “did she know she was loved?” “Did she feel cared about?” “Was she suffering?” Like did, “did she seem scared?” Did she seem…,and that has been a big source of comfort for us over the last 11 years.

Um, and I feel immensely grateful cause I, I think that if we were also trying to like deal with many questions of like, “did we make the right decisions?” …and instead we got to just completely rearrange her hospital room and all of the doctors and nurses were like, “we’re leaving you alone and you tell us if you need us.” And we were able to just watch her and follow her cues in terms of what she needed, and she just was brave but also just accepting and yeah, it was, I don’t know…

patience kamau:
Mm, sounds like a team that was taking care of you as you took care of her.

Janelle Myers-Benner:
Yeah, it was a very well functioning team.

patience kamau:
That’s interesting because the feels unique in the, in the, in healthcare…

Janelle Myers-Benner:
…I think it is unique, mm-hm…

patience kamau:
…um, like they had been educated in CJP or other places. Uh…

patience kamau:
…that’s what I said, CJP in the medical setting was what palliative…we, so Nora died in June and that fall, right around her first birthday, Jason and I were invited back to UVA to be part of a, they called us, it’s the only time I was actually a faculty person, they called us like “parent faculty” in a pediatric palliative care conference where they brought, brought together parents who’d lost loved ones, children, parents who’d lost children, um, social workers, nurses, doctors, anybody that’s part of like caring for critically ill children all came together at this conference and we would have some plenary but then we would work in small groups where they split us all up so that each team had like a social worker, a nurse, a doctor, a parent and were addressing different, different issues, talking about stories. And we had this one panel discussion where I just was sitting there taking notes and listening and I was like, this is completely a CJP panel in a healthcare setting, and like it was talking about like “cultural competency” and like listening to the values of the people that you’re working with.

And determining what they need. Like by asking them like a novel concept, like “let’s ask these people what they need rather than assuming we know what they need.” And, but it’s a huge leap for experts. It’s a huge leap for people. But I also think it’s the lessons that we have to learn at CJP. Like we might be experts, we might have PhDs, we might be educated, but that doesn’t mean we know the community. And just like with a family, like I felt like at the end of Nora’s life we were treated as the experts on Nora’s care, even though we didn’t have the MDs and we didn’t have the nurses, you know, professional experience. But they, they treated us like, you know, Nora better than us, so tell us what you’re noticing and then we’re gonna work with you…

patience kamau:
…to fill in the gaps…

Janelle Myers-Benner:
So different than the NICU. In the NICU the nurses called her “my baby,” like the nurse said “my baby,” some of them, others were great, but like there was just this sense of when they rounded on the patients you had to leave, so any time the nurses and doctors were talking about Nora, we were removed from the room while they decided the next plan of treatment. I mean it’s…

patience kamau:
Oh, you were irrelevant?!

Janelle Myers-Benner:
We were irrelevant. We were irrelevant to her care. And I think that’s also a really bad model of peacebuilding.

patience kamau:
Oh isn’t that’s true! Because that makes me think about the criminal criminal justice system, which makes the “victims” irrelevant to the process.

Janelle Myers-Benner:
Yeah, other people are having this side process…

patience kamau:
…that really affects you, yet you are not involved…

Janelle Myers-Benner:
…and I can’t, you know, we would come back in and we would get like the nurse on call would let us know, you know, the low-down of what happened, but like it was…it felt so strange to me. Maybe partly because I had been at CJP for awhile, I just felt like “who am I in this?” Like “what piece do I play?”

And it was also fresh, like I had just birthed this child and I’m not with her 24-7 like I’ve been with all, you know, with Kali before and what felt natural. And I think that, yeah, that made the whole kind of bonding as a family of four and figuring things out difficult when you just felt like a visitor into a space with this child that you were going to take home at some point, but you weren’t really being empowered to, yeah…

patience kamau:
To be part of that…

Janelle Myers-Benner:
…to be part of it.

patience kamau:
It feels like it should be field –maybe it is a field that I’m not aware of, but like a restorative…

Janelle Myers-Benner:
Oh yeah…

patience kamau:
I mean really, they should not kick you out. It feels odd anyway.

Janelle Myers-Benner:
Well, and in many ways I feel like the palliative care, so a really exciting thing that CJP slash palliative care related for us is we’ve stayed really closely in touch with the director of palliative care at UVA and she’s still there. And this spring, Jason and I had the wonderful opportunity of doing the STAR Level I training together for the first time and the director of palliative care that we worked with who’s now a friend, came and did STAR with us. So that was just a really unique experience…

patience kamau:
…you went through STAR together?

Janelle Myers-Benner:
Jason and I and Noreen Crain, who was Nora’s doctor at the end of her life, came and did STAR in February this year.

patience kamau:
Oh wow.

Janelle Myers-Benner:
So it was just like a bringing that together and um, felt really unique and also was another time of like processing and thinking about that time and yeah, highlighting, we shared some of Jason’s poetry in the STAR week just because again, it felt so connected to, and I mean for, for Noreen, it’s not just like the trauma of the people that you’re working with, but also the trauma that people experience being in caregiving roles and like working with critically ill children day after day…

patience kamau:
…is a secondary…

Janelle Myers-Benner:
…it’s…

patience kamau:
…trauma.

Janelle Myers-Benner:
Yeah. So…

patience kamau:
Wow-wow that you did STAR together that’s…was that the first time you had done STAR since she had passed away?

Janelle Myers-Benner:
Yeah, I had never done it.

patience kamau:
That just happen to just be the right time or I was it…

Janelle Myers-Benner:
Yeah, no, it was, um, so our youngest daughter just turned four and this spring, just before STAR stopped nursing, so I was for the first time, not nursing a child and all of our kids were old enough to love, relish the idea of a week, mostly with grandparents. So it felt like a really unique opportunity for us to take part in a training.

patience kamau:
How have the younger siblings, how do they know Nora?

Janelle Myers-Benner:
Mm, yeah. Oh it’s so touching that like Nora has been one of both of their first words and like, you know when babies are little, like one of our favorite things with, with babies, Jason especially really loved the stage when like they’re getting –where they’re just starting to say words and they like point everything and they want to know what things are, it’s like they’re just like absorbing vocabulary and like, you know, whether it’s a trashcan or a picture or whatever, but they, both of them would point to the pictures of her and say, “Nora, baby Nora” and, and you know, I think it’s honestly really helped our whole family, but our kids too, to talk really openly about death and dying. We also live on a farm.

So there’s, we are experiencing a lot of life and a lot of death and all of them participate in the blood drives. Um, take part. And um, Kali always said that orange was Nora’s favorite color. Now we never got to ask Nora if orange in fact was her favorite color, but it seems like a great color. She was born in the fall, so we have, we have claimed orange as Nora’s favorite color, so occasionally on a very special anniversary we’ve had like an orange themed, blood drive or we’ll do different things with orange and of course kids love that kind of thing anyway, but I think the blood drives have been away. We also created a garden for her at our home that the kids play in and they know that that’s Nora’s garden. We have pictures up all over the house. We have a book that my mom created for her.

And then we also have a blog that we did a lot of our kind of grief writing and processing that we’ve made into a book that they’ll look through pictures. Sometimes they talk really openly like you know, you had four babies and one of them died or you know, like it’s, and sometimes for me it strikes me cause it’s so just raw and honest and just there. But it’s so refreshing too like, there’s just no filter. I mean, no filters in a good way. It’s, and I think it also has like they’ll say, well, Terah who’s just turned four, you know, she’ll name it as sad or, but I don’t think for them it strikes them as a very deeply emotional thing cause they didn’t have a personal attachment to her. And Kali doesn’t remember a whole lot.

patience kamau:
Didn’t Kali refer to her as “drimpy” or something similar, when she was in utero?

Janelle Myers-Benner:
Yeah, in utero, which we thought was somehow strangely appropriate for Nora when she came out [laughs] “drimpy” is just like the most perfect, perfect little nickname for her. But yes, that was all Kali’s invention [laughter].

patience kamau:
Is she’s still referred to as that?

Janelle Myers-Benner:
We haven’t called her that much. No, we haven’t. I mean we all remember it and we chuckle about it, but yeah, I think we just like “Nora” too much.

patience kamau:
Yeah, of course. Do the younger two think of themselves as having two older siblings? Well Terah is a little young for that, maybe, I don’t know.

Janelle Myers-Benner:
You know, I, I have never outright asked Alida or Terah if they think about it that way, I would guess they probably don’t really think about it that way. I mean I think,…

patience kamau:
…and maybe these are things that are self-evident as they get older.

Janelle Myers-Benner:
Yeah. And it’ll be interesting how they process it as they get older. I think Nora is more like a part of our family scrapbook and a part of our story and a part of, you know, things that come up as we process life. But I, I haven’t sensed that either Alida or Terah have ever really experienced a sense of like, I miss like I have a sibling that I miss. You know, maybe it’s that Kali is just such an incredible big sister that they feel that their big sister tank is full with her. I don’t know.

patience kamau:
Yeah, it’s interesting I asked that because when…um not too long ago when both president Bush and Barbara Bush died and they were, the conversation was all over the media about their child Robin, I think was that her name? I had never heard of this person before, and of course when they were talking about this and how they were both buried right next to her and all that stuff, and I found out this child had been in their, I mean she died when she was two, maybe three, maybe four.

Janelle Myers-Benner:
Wow.

patience kamau:
But just the prominence with which she was spoken about was very…she was impactful. She was the younger sister, I believe of the president, the younger president Bush, but it was just interesting to me to just think of siblings who then come after a child and how that actually shapes them. So anyway, that’s fascinating.

Janelle Myers-Benner:
Mm-hm, mm-hm…

[Transition music]

patience kamau:
So back to CJP…

Janelle Myers-Benner:
…back to CJP.

patience kamau:
In your mind, just dreaming about CJP and it seems like it has, you’ve had, this has had this very major impact on you. What would you hope CJP will be in 25 years from now, CJP at 50? What is your hope or your dream for this place?

Janelle Myers-Benner:
So I got to listen to the most recent , the RJ webinar…

patience kamau:
…ah, the one with sonya shah and Kazu Haga? The title was “?”

Janelle Myers-Benner:
Yes, and one of the things that I, so I was excited to, I was excited to listen to that and it felt timely and honestly, CJP at 50, I hope we’re doing even better at “walking our talk” both at CJP and more broadly at 91����Ƶ. And one of the things that really struck me in the presentation is that they mentioned the feeling that at this point in history, nothing that they’re saying is really new. And that is something that I’ve been thinking a lot about at CJP personally. Um, in my own like learning and growing is, and he was saying it’s kind of just a repackaging of something that others before him have had already discovered or learned about.

So I think that’s been a theme for me in recent months and is really connected with my own growing awareness and steep learning curve of the importance of kind of learning where the roots of what we know and what we practice come from. And also realizing that the history that I learned in school, the attributions that have been given to things that we know are not all as they should be, that we haven’t credited necessarily the right communities and the right people for the knowledge that we now benefit and the practices that we benefit from. And this is a thread for me across, and I would say I’m, I’m focusing a lot of my energy around this specifically in the areas of farming and homesteading and gardening and growing that when you’re out there looking for resources on organic gardening or permaculture or other things about food systems, you see a lot of white faces on the books and in the magazines.

And yet many, many, many of the practices that we use now in agriculture that people have earned lots of money from writing books about, came over on slave ships with people from West Africa and like, and we don’t, we don’t give the credit to the communities that actually developed and maintained these practices and taught other people, sometimes not with a desire to teach people, you know. Um, and so that has been a deep personal learning for Jason and I in our own work on our homestead. And we have a lot of work to do on that. Um, but I feel like it’s something that I, I sense a deep desire at CJP to do more of and whether that be expanding our resource people in classes, expanding the readings.

But I think for me, I really hope that CJP at 50 years will be an organization that not only amplifies but centers the leadership of indigenous people and people of color. I feel like one of the things that struck me this January, Jason and I were at a conference, it was an agricultural conference, but just thinking about kind of who, who do we need to lead us in this kind of next, whatever’s coming. I feel like many of us probably can agree that there are a lot of challenges ahead of us, um, as a, as a human species and, and whether you name those as like political challenges or climate change or, or whatever the challenges that might feel most center in your mind, it seems like we need leaders who are creative, who can dream, who can hope, who can envision something different than what we currently have, who’ve shown the ability to like rise above immense challenges. Like all of these things.

And at this conference I was thinking a lot about it and just feeling like so many of the groups and communities that have experienced oppression and other things have shown a lot of those characteristics of like immense resilience and especially the ability to hope and dream about a different future. And at this conference, Leah Penniman is from Soul Fire Farm in upstate New York, and she often tells the story of her grandmother’s grandmothers who when they realized that their communities were being kidnapped and taken to an unknown place and an unknown future, they braided seeds into their children’s hair. And for Leah, that was like a story of like my ancestors believed in a future with soil and then a future that these seeds might be, you know, worth something that they might actually grow food that they believed in her basically, in a future that would need. And I feel like that’s the kind of leadership we need and I hope CJP can find a way to…

patience kamau:
…cultivate that.

Janelle Myers-Benner:
Cultivate it, make spaces for it, open up. Um, I really, yeah, that’s one of my big hopes!

patience kamau:
Mm, may it come to be!

[Transition music plays]

patience kamau:
Can you think of anything that’s been most uh, most challenging to you professionally and whatever it is, how could you have done that differently?

Janelle Myers-Benner:
Huh. So a couple of different things come to mind and they might be a slightly different angle, but when I was thinking about challenges professionally, they’re kind of, it’s a little bit more of a personal challenge probably than…well, maybe it’s kind of both. I mean, one of the biggest challenges for me over the years has been times where I feel like either the larger university in which we’re nested at 91����Ƶ is not living up to values that I feel like are core to me, but I also feel like are stated as core to the university.

And I would say at times CJP also, um, I really struggle to be at a place, be…devoting so much of my time and energy to a place where I feel like I don’t know if I can maintain my integrity and to feel like I can be really authentic, and so over the years that’s been, that’s been just a challenge for me to work with. Like, do I stay and try to work at change from within? Do I, do I stay and like engage and participate or for my own integrity or is it better to not be nested in that organization for myself? And another challenge that came to mind that I think, um, for me is very, has been really hard for me over the years is the sourcing for all the stuff we use at CJP. So whether it’s office supplies or whether it’s furniture or whether it’s food or other things, I feel like we talk so much about environmental responsibility, we talk about sustainability, we talk about sourcing things locally or from like not degrading. We talk about building community.

Um, and it’s been really, really hard for me to feel like 91����Ƶ, and I will say CJP is not at all on the cutting edge of thinking about more alternative and radical sourcing of the things that we need or even questioning the things we need. Like what do we need and what are the, what are the costs of that like? So if we need computers, um, are there ways to need less of them? Are there ways to like expand their life or there, you know, I feel like, um, and with food, uh, it is more challenging and it is more costly, but we should be paying more for food.

And, um, so some of those things have been actually quite hard for me over the years and I have attempted in my own little sphere at times to alter, I would say probably mostly in the area of food sourcing for events that I get to be part of the planning of, but I would love for it to be a whole like university effort and a whole CJP effort. I also think that professionally, so I feel like my position is unique in the sense that like I work very closely with faculty at CJP and with students and but I in many ways feel like my career or like what I see as what I’m really wanting to do professionally is actually a little more lodged at our homestead, at Tangley Woods Homestead in Keezletown, where we’ve been for 14 years now, so 14 out of the 20 so I feel very deeply invested in my work at CJP and I feel really grateful for professional opportunities that are, are like linking things that I want to be growing at in both spheres of my life.

For example, I’m excited that both Jason and I get to take part in the upcoming Racial Equity Institute that’s happening in November here in Harrisonburg and it feels like that is something I very much need and want for the work that I’m doing at CJP and it’s something I very much need and want for the work that we’re doing at our homestead too. I would say the biggest challenge for me at my time at CJP that I do not know how to approach differently and I’m not sure what change to make in it is that I feel like, except for maybe the first couple years, I feel like my job has been so full that I don’t feel like I’ve been very reflective a lot of times and I don’t feel like I’ve had a lot of creative space to think of new ways of doing things that, you know, I feel like I wish there could be more kind of built in long-term planning rather than just constantly looking at what is the next most urgent thing that I must do.

patience kamau:
Mm, being less reactive and being more…

Janelle Myers-Benner:
…proactive…

patience kamau:
…and responsive I suppose.

Janelle Myers-Benner:
Yeah, and proactive. So that’s a continued challenge.

[Transition music plays]

patience kamau:
Um, in your work with, uh, you talked about your work a lot with the faculty, who –a lot of them would self-describe as peacebuilders– in your work with them or even in your own experiences, what have been the main, what have been the biggest changes in the peacebuilding field in the last 20 years?

Janelle Myers-Benner:
I feel like other people will have to talk..I will say that I’ll say a shift that I’ve noticed or that I’ve, I’ve experienced in the 20 years that I’ve been is that, and I want to be very careful that I’m like, this is a broad strokes thing. This is not by any means like true across the board, but I feel like in my earliest years at CJP, I felt like I worked at a place that was mostly doing international peacebuilding, like people that, and even U.S. people that were coming to CJP, many of them planned to work internationally. So, and again, I wasn’t in classes a lot, but it, it just felt like the, the kind of cultural context was like, we’re a multicultural environment. Many people are going to be working in all different contexts.

And I also felt like there was, there was, um, how do I say this? There was a reverence. There was like an awe of CJP and of what we were teaching, and um, now it could be that I was just in a different seat on the bus at that time. Like it might be that I wasn’t hearing the, the channel, I wasn’t as part of the conversations about the challenges, but okay, from my, from my seat on the bus, we were largely international. There were voices that were saying, “Hey, what’s happening here?” Like there were definitely voices saying we need to pay attention to what’s at home too,…

patience kamau:
To the United States?

Janelle Myers-Benner:
To the United States context, but it felt like, like there was a constant trying to rein, rein us back to look at the context. It wasn’t like a natural, like this is our main focus. And so I would say, you know, there was a period of time that was like that. And then I actually think a lot of, I feel like we started getting calls from our –not physical calls– but like our, our students and our alumni started saying like, “great that you want to do this work, but what’s happening in Washington D.C. is directly impacting what’s happening on the ground in all of our contexts. What are you all doing to address what’s happening in the U.S.?” Like go home and do the work. [Laughter]

And so like we started getting those like challenges which are valid and helpful and good critiques. And so I feel like there was, there was both a shift and a desire to pay attention to the U.S. context. But then I also feel like our student body has slowly shifted a little bit too and that we don’t have as many international students. Some for like maybe natural reasons and some for challenging reasons. Um, whether it’s visas or funding, um, or you know, we don’t have as many…we didn’t, we had a Fulbright scholar grant that was a big programmatic thing for a number of years where we were actually getting cohorts of Fulbright’s Fulbright scholars each year.

So now I feel like I’ll say the last five years or something, broad strokes, again, I feel like we have many more students that really want to work in the U.S. context and want to look really closely at current issues, but also where those come from and look more at the history of the context here in the United States. And I feel like some of us are sprinting to catch up with our students sometimes. Like I feel like our students come and are really pushing and challenging us, again in good ways, and again I feel like we are wanting to be a responsive organization, but I think a number of us and I’ll even own for myself like are realizing how much we have to learn and are realizing we have work to do. Once again, I mean since the very beginning faculty have talked about like students as colleagues and that we learn as much from students as they learn from us, but I really feel it now. I really, really feel it now.

patience kamau:
Do you, do you think you feel it more because, because you yourself are different, you’re older, you’re more mature, you’re more aware or is it actually truly that it is a change? Not, not with the…

Janelle Myers-Benner:
…not with the student body?

patience kamau:
Yeah, not the International versus local, but the struggling to catch up with where the students are.

Janelle Myers-Benner:
It’s probably a combination of both maybe. I do think that I’m getting to interact more closely with students, which I really treasure. You probably see me walk past your window with a student every now and then…

patience kamau:
I do, I do…

Janelle Myers-Benner:
…and I, yeah, whenever I can do a meeting on the run, I do a meeting, walking. Um, it’s my, my resilience package for making it through long days. Um, but yeah, I feel, I feel like it’s such a two way street in learning, and again, back to the like team approach –I love it when we can all bring our strengths to the table and learn different things. Like I think I have things to contribute, but I would say right now I feel like I’m definitely on the receiving end of lots of important lessons…

patience kamau:
…leanrings yeah…

Janelle Myers-Benner:
…lots of important learnings.

patience kamau:
Oh, that’s great. That’s great.

[Transition music plays]

patience kamau:
So outside of work, however you define work, because it sounds like even when you are at home you are doing work on your farm, like what do you do for fun?

Janelle Myers-Benner:
Oh, hmm. Well fun and work go hand in hand for us. Um, actually my great aunt Eleanor, who’s 94 now just stayed with us for about 10 days, and she talked about when she was growing up, “we didn’t really do things for fun,” but she said she really enjoyed when they would all sit around shelling black walnuts, so I was like, “yeah, that’s, that’s, that’s our family too.” So well, I’ll, I’ll web it, I’ll weave it in with CJP.

So yesterday I hosted a little cheese workshop for CJP students, so there were about seven, seven joined me in the kitchen and we made butter and yogurt and mozzarella cheese and ricotta cheese and cheddar cheese and farmer’s cheese — think that was the six things we did. But they got to experience what the Myers-Benner family does for fun, which I had put, I had skimmed cream into a bunch of different jars and we had a butter shaking contest. So we put music on, we dance around the living room and we see who gets butter first shaking their jar of cream.

patience kamau:
On themselves?

Janelle Myers-Benner:
No, you’re just, you’re just shaking the jar and it will turn into butter.

patience kamau:
Oh, oh-oh, sorry, my ignorance just flared right up!

Janelle Myers-Benner:
That’s fine, you can come to the next workshop. [Laughter] So yes, we, we had a little butter shaking competition, but our family has a lot of fun in the different seasons of the year and much, much of it is very woven together with the way we sustain ourselves with food.

So one of our favorite things in the winter is that we save all of our own seeds, and to save seeds, if you’re breeding, you need to test things. You need to know if it’s worth saving the seed from something. So we have popcorn testing nights where we shell off corn from individual ears and we test them and we do blind taste tests to see if we can tell which is the best popcorn to save for next year’s planting or squashes. We’ll roast a squash and then we have to test and we all like know the thumb, like thumbs up, thumbs down, thumb in the middle.

Um, so those kinds of things and, and harvest days are like big celebration times in our family. Like our kids. If we would harvest sweet potatoes or white potatoes or plant garlic without them, we would probably never hear the end of it. Like, “what do you mean? I don’t get to do that till next year?” So we, yeah, and like the first persimmons that fall from the tree, like that first baking of chocolate persimmon muffins, it’s definitely like a celebration. Our family does enjoy playing games. We don’t do it a lot in the spring, summer or fall, but we are starting to near the time of year where that can happen a little bit more…

patience kamau:
…the winter?

Janelle Myers-Benner:
…because the evenings are longer and you just can’t garden very well with headlamps -though we have tried! But when the ground is hard and it’s dark, it’s harder.

patience kamau:
Ah, yeah, I think the winter just means rest for a lot of things, at least with growth.

Janelle Myers-Benner:
Yes. Yeah. The planting. Yes. Yeah.

patience kamau:
Oh, great.
Um, that’s all I have. Would you, do you have anything else you would like to add?

Janelle Myers-Benner:
I’ve said a lot. Um, I don’t know that I do –maybe a thank you. Yeah, it was good to have the opportunity to reflect back. I think sometimes when over the course of 20 years there are like mountain top experiences and there are low points and challenges and depending on where you find yourself, it’s sometimes hard to see the whole journey, like to see the whole expanse of it. So I think it was a helpful thing for me to think about the good and the bad and the beautiful and the challenging. Um, so I am grateful for the opportunity.

patience kamau:
You’re very welcome; thank you for doing it.

Janelle Myers-Benner:
Thanks patience.

patience kamau:
All right, bye bye.

Following their daughter Nora’s death, both Janelle and her husband, Jason, did a lot of processing through writing. They had the opportunity to contribute to a website on grief authored by CJP alumna Janelle Shantz Hertzler as well as a nursing journal article on how families make meaning after loss. They are currently working on a co-authored article with Nora’s pediatric palliative care doctor, sharing the impact of palliative care from a parent’s perspective and a doctor’s perspective.

[Outro music begins to play, and fades into background]

patience kamau:
All the music you hear on this podcast has been composed by: the one and only Luke Mullet. Our audio mixing engineer extraordinaire is: Stephen Angello. Audio editing support was generously provided by: Michaela Mast. And I am the podcast executive producer, audio recording engineer, editor and host: patience kamau. As you are able, please remember to subscribe, rate and review this podcast so that other peacebuilders may find it. We’ll be back with a new episode in two weeks! Thank you so much for listening and join us again next time!

[Outro music swells and ends]

In this episode, Dr. Carl Stauffer, professor of Restorative and Transitional Justice here at CJP, and an engaging storyteller, reflects on his childhood in Vietnam and the way that war shaped his outlook on life; his early adulthood with a young family in South Africa during a time when the nation was experiencing rapid transition away from decades of apartheid rule. He talks passionately about how central his Anabaptist faith has been pivotal in his work and how it continues to shape the way he shows up and teaches in the classroom.

Stauffer’s parents were doing church and development work in Vietnam when the war broke out. They decided to stay, and Stauffer was born there in 1964.

“That has affected my life and work significantly,” Stauffer said. He remembers one night that the fighting came within a half mile of their home in Saigon, “climbing under the bed with my mother and singing and praying, and the house shaking.”

Following in his parents’ footsteps, he and his wife, Carolyn Stauffer, joined the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) in South Africa in the “historic” moment of 1994 – only months before Nelson Mandela was elected. It was from South Africa that Stauffer completed his master’s degree at CJP, known then as the Conflict Transformation Program. After 16 years in South Africa, Carl joined the CJP faculty (Carolyn is also a faculty member at 91����Ƶ and has worked with CJP programs).

In recounting his experiences through the episode, Stauffer weaves a story of the development of transitional justice, which he defines as an umbrella term that came about in the 1990s that describes structures and processes that are built to contain violence while a country moves from war to peace. In 2007, Stauffer’s commitment to transitional justice blossomed in a refugee camp in Sierra Leone, where he supported a “justice movement from the grassroots” that implemented indigenous ways of addressing conflict on a macro level.

Today, Stauffer says, we have a “steep learning curve” to apply these concepts and practices to our own society in the U.S. “Issues of healing, forgiveness, and reconciliation remain really divisive concepts right now in the polarization of our current political setting,” Stauffer said. But throughout all of the difficult work he’s done, and the violence he’s seen in the world, Stauffer retains hope. “My interpretation, which is Anabaptist, is that Christ’s teaching and Christ’s way of living was not something just for us to imagine, but for us to do,” he explained.

Guest

Carl Stauffer

Dr. Carl Stauffer teaches Restorative and Transitional Justice here at the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding; he is also Co-Director of the Zehr Institute for Restorative Justice, a program of CJP. Stauffer has functioned as founder, director, academic coordinator and instructor for peace and justice institutes in four continents. As a seasoned conflict transformation and peacebuilding practitioner, he has done consulting and training with organizations such as UNDP, USAID, World Vision, ICRC, Asia Foundation, CRS, Tear Fund, SIDA, Oxfam, the Ministry of Safety & Security in South Africa, and many others. He earned his PhD in Conflict Resolution & Peace Studies from the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal.

Transcript

Carl Stauffer:
So in a formal, in a formal sense, transitional justice, known out in the sort of global political economy, is an umbrella term that came about in the early 1990s to describe a whole series of structures, activities, organization, organizational, maybe institutions, that are built in order to contain the violence as a country moves from war to peace or from violence of some kind. A country or community move from violence to, to trying to um, live in peace.

[Theme music begins, fades into background]

patience kamau:
Hey, Hey. Hey. Happy Wednesday to you! Welcome back to peacebuilder, a conflict transformation podcast by the Center for Justice and peacebuilding. I’m your host patience kamau and our guest today:

Carl Stauffer:
Carl Stauffer, associate professor of justice and peacebuilding at the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding here at Eastern Mennonite university (91����Ƶ).

patience kamau:
Dr. Carl Stauffer teaches restorative and transitional justice here at the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding. He is also co-director of the Zehr Institute for Restorative Justice, a program of CJP. Stauffer has functioned as founder, director, academic coordinator and instructor for peace and justice institutes in four continents. As a seasoned conflict transformation and peacebuilding practitioner, he has done consulting and training with organizations such as UNDP, USAID, World Vision, ICRC, Asia Foundation, CRS, Tear Fund, SIDA, Oxfam, the ministry of safety and security in South Africa and many others.

However, before we start, I’d like to let all of you CJP alumni, friends and peacebuilders in general, know that our registration for our ultimate celebration weekend is now open. Join us on June 5, 6 and 7. I’m telling you, you will not want to miss this extraordinary gathering! For details about events and activities. Checkout emu.edu/cjp/anniversary.

[Theme music playing in background swells and ends…]

patience kamau:
Hi Carl.

Carl Stauffer:
Hi.

patience kamau:
How are you?

Carl Stauffer:
Just fine.

patience kamau:
All right, thank you for doing this! Your journey here –how did you end up here at CJP?

Carl Stauffer:
Well, I, I guess you’d have to say I started at my undergraduate cause I did my undergraduate degree here in social work and theology, biblical studies, and so I knew about 91����Ƶ. This is my father’s home, Harrisonburg, my grandfather’s home. So it’s a place we would always come to visit whenever we were coming from overseas as a family. So I always knew about Eastern Mennonite university. My connection to CTP at the time was I had gotten interested in mediation after my social work degree and went ahead and was trained by the Virginia Community Mediation Center. Barry Hart, Dr. Barry Hart and Dr. Larry Hoover, um, few others were my first trainers in mediation and it was through the mediation link that I started to hear more news around sort of the conflict resolution or conflict transformation field at that point. I think we were calling it the peace, peace field, but the sort of beginnings of John Paul Lederach’s work and the conceptions and vision for this here, uh, for this graduate program here at 91����Ƶ.

So after the mediation training, I was following sort of Ron Kraybill, Dr. Ron Kraybill and doctor…maybe he wasn’t doctor at that point, but John Paul Lederach’s work, ended up doing a short training with them the year after I got trained in mediation. I think this was around 1989. Um, and from there I went into the field in ’91. I was pastoring at the time and was looking for a part time job in Richmond, Virginia. And a new NGO –nonprofit– was starting in Richmond called the Capitol Area Victim-Offender Reconciliation Program. They were looking for a director, a part time director, so it was a perfect fit. And I entered the field at that point, essentially doing “victim-offender conferencing” as we call it now, back then they called it “victim offender reconciliation program,” bringing the offender and the victim from the criminal justice system together, um, to meet and try to reconcile or come up with an agreement about how to compensate for whatever harm had been done.

So that was my entry into the field. So I always knew about CTP. Then at that point, and Howard Zehr’s book, I had started to read restorative justice because of this particular job in 1991, and I was in that job for three years before my wife and I took the position with MCC, (Mennonite Central Committee) to head to South Africa, Johannesburg, South Africa. So went off to South Africa and of course became very consumed in the work there. And spent the first, um, the first 3-year term, you know, very much involved with the peacebuilding work, conflict resolution work, training, uh, in, in South Africa and had the opportunity at that point to work with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which was far beyond any expectation I had had or dreamed. And it became clear that in working with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, I was working at a macro level issue that had similarities to the restorative justice field.

And once I had that experience with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which was very formative, I realized I needed to do some reflection on what I was doing on the ground, what it meant and, and, and why I was doing it and how I could do it better. So it was then when I started to investigate a master’s degree. So I was on the field working, had already been on the field working since ’85 and came here in the summer of 1998 — Conflict Transformation Program at that point. But at that juncture in my life, I was quite sure this is what I wanted to study and continued to make my professional career. So I took all of the Summer Peacebuilding Institute courses and there was five sessions at that time. I took all of them for credit. That was 15 credit hours of seat-time!

patience kamau:
Wow, busy summer!

Carl Stauffer:
It was, and I shouldn’t broadcast this, probably shouldn’t even be on this recording because we don’t like any students to think this is a good idea. But at that time they were flexible enough, the program was small enough and flexible enough that they allowed me to do this. And then, um, I took two years off cause I was working, and so I finished my, my coursework for three of the courses and then ask for extensions for the other two, finished those. And so I finished 15 credit hours in about two years, came back again in 2000, did another 15 credit hours and it took two more years to finish those. And then I took a few other, I did my practicum in the, in South Africa and took a research methods class in South Africa, and did one independent study with Howard Zehr and that closed up my, my degree.

So I was able to do it from a distance, which was really, really important. I was looking for a place to reflect while I was practicing and CJP/CTP at that time gave me exactly that. It was, it was perfect in the sense that it was international, especially the Summer Peacebuilding Institute, so I was hearing from practitioners all over the world. The faculty were practitioners who had, had been practicing in the field and they allowed me this flexibility to do it from a distance. So most of what I wrote and, and thought about and read about was connected to the work I was actually doing in South Africa. Many of the assignments, which we still do to this day related directly to my hands on practical work in South Africa. So it was a, it was a perfect learning culture for me.

patience kamau:
Yeah. So two questions to go back a little bit. You said, um, you grew up, no, no, no –you would visit here, from where you…from traveling internationally…

Carl Stauffer:
Sure…

patience kamau:
Where were you traveling from?

Carl Stauffer:
So my parents went overseas with the Mennonite church to Vietnam in 1957 and they left from here, um, and they were working in church work, but also development work, and ended up being in a war zone as we all full well know. In 1957 there was not, um, the war at that point but by 1959, the U.S. began to send in their initial military advisers, and before my parents knew it, they were in a war zone. So, they decided to stay, and that of course changed their work drastically. They were working much more with refugees and development work, but in, in various forms of English learning classes and, and, and working with the people through the church.

So all three of us kids –I have two siblings– were born, uh, in Vietnam during the war. I was born in 1964. We would come back every four years to visit family and so on. They sort of call “home leave,” and so because of this being my father’s home, paternal home and then my mother from the, from Pennsylvania, we would travel between those two places each time we would come home. So we were back at home here in Harrisonburg in 1970, 1976, and then I was back here for my last two years of high school and college.

patience kamau:
How do you think that shaped you?

Carl Stauffer:
Well not only did it shape me in incredible ways as far as growing up in another culture, “third culture kids” is what they call us, I don’t know if that just confuses us with another label, but um, essentially how I describe “third culture kids” is, you have a culture you’re born into, you have your parents’ culture, and then you make up your own culture. In essence, and that’s the third culture cause it’s a mix of both of those. You’re not completely at home in either of those, those places.

So that, that’s one part aside and that has affected my life and work significantly, including going overseas with my wife in 1994 and staying for 16 years in South Africa. But I think the other way it directly impacted the work I’m doing is I was raised in the war and while we were in Saigon, which is now Hồ Chí Minh City, we were not directly affected by the war except for in 1968 –I would have been four or five years old– the, the North Vietnamese actually, um, penetrated the city, came into the city during the “Tet offensive.” I mean the Tet, which is a celebration of the new year, which is a huge celebration in the, in the Vietnamese culture and there’s all night, you know, celebrations of food and lanterns and fireworks and you know, the lunar new year. It’s just a very big festive time.

So that was a very strategic move on the part of the North Vietnamese to invaded at that point. My parents for various reasons, did not evacuate, which was a choice they made on principle. And the fighting came within about a half mile of our home. So I have memory as a child of climbing under the bed with my mother and praying and singing and the house shaking and hearing the mortar shelling, and the bullets…

patience kamau:
Oh my God!

Carl Stauffer:
We had um, what we found out later is the North Vietnamese were actually just… had, soldiers had taken over a petrol station about half a mile from us, and there was a, and that’s what caused a U.S. helicopter above us with machine gun fire run by the South Vietnamese just firing down. There was gunfire between that petrol station and this, and this helicopter above us. So I remember, you know, you have these, these bits and pieces of memory from trauma of war and empty bullet shells falling on, on the tin roof of our house cause we had that aluminum, you know, corrugated aluminum roof…

patience kamau:
…yeah, you could hear them clinking…

Carl Stauffer:
And just hearing that clinking and uh, I can remember my father sitting at the radio, you know, we have…trying to figure out, cause there was curfew across the city. Where was the fighting? How close was it? We had no idea how close it was at that point. A neighbor girl, 13 year old girl broke curfew and risked many things to come over and tell us how close the fighting was, and…

patience kamau:
Vietnamese girl?

Carl Stauffer:
Yes. Yeah, um, and then told us of a way to get out from behind our house through an alleyway that was basically an informal settlement, which we knew about but never used because we came in through the, the main, the main road. And so we all piled on a scooter, Lambretta, five of us and made our way out to another part of the city where the fighting was less intense.

patience kamau:
For the night or for…a while?

Carl Stauffer:
No, it was about three weeks until they, until the North Vietnamese were completely driven back and we were able to go back to that same house then. So my parents never, never showed us like, fear or terror even though I imagine –I try to get it from them now– “What were they thinking?”

patience kamau:
What do they say?

Carl Stauffer:
It’s very interesting. Well, my mother’s passed on, so I haven’t talked to her since for a long time about this, but my father is very, is a very practical sort of fellow and just very even-keel, and so he’s not a very dramatic person to begin with, so he tells it in a very matter-of-fact way. It was…maybe it had to do with that generation of overseas workers –this was for life! You know, this was a career. This is, you know, that’s partly why they chose not to evacuate. They had been there for 10 years. “Why would you evacuate?” Use that privilege when you’re working with the people on the ground and they don’t have the chance…

patience kamau:
…to escape…

Carl Stauffer:
…to escape. So you do that in solidarity, it was almost like, that was just understood.

patience kamau:
How did this come back for you in your time in South Africa?

Carl Stauffer:
Well, …

patience kamau:
…you said you went there in ’94?

Carl Stauffer:
1994.

patience kamau:
So that was five years after Mandela had been released?

Carl Stauffer:
Yes. Four years after he’d been released. He was released in 1990 actually March of 1990…uh, I think…

patience kamau:
…around that time…

Carl Stauffer:
…some things are getting blurry now, but it was, we came in January of 1994 so it was four months before the all inclusive democratic elections where Mandela was elected as president. So it was a very tense, historic moment to arrive on the shores of South Africa. And especially with the work I was doing in peacebuilding on this sort of political violence edges of, of the struggle for power really, that was, uh, that was that transitional period of a struggle for power.

And, um, yeah, it came back to me in forms of trauma, which we study here, and again trauma was so instrumental in my original masters program. I remember it becoming very real when, when I was, when I first arrived and my colleagues, took me out into a township where there had been direct violence. In fact, there still was tensions and there was a “no go zone,” which was a road in between these two communities that were fighting in a very simplistic form. One side represented the ANC, and they had their own armed youth wing, …

patience kamau:
The African National Congress?

Carl Stauffer:
The African national Congress. So, you had the African National Congress have their, their armed wing and you had the largest African opposition party to the ANC at that point, which was a more cultural party, a little bit more traditional, it was called the Inkatha Freedom Party, uh, headed by chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi. So these two, and they had their armed youth wing and these two groups were fighting and it was, it was a wrestle, it was a, it was a scramble for power knowing that there were these elections coming up.

So my point is, I was touring a “no go zone” area with my colleagues and they had one of these young men taking us through burnt out buildings, buildings full of bullet holes and telling us what was going on. And there was still an armored personnel carrier moving up and down the main road. Khumalo, you know, just go back up and down as sort of a, a way to keep the peace. And I remember looking down at one point and seeing like three empty bullet shells, um, bullet casings, and I’d not seen bullet casings since Vietnam, and so this was, I was 29 years old. I had left Vietnam when I was 10, reached down to pick those up thinking “this’ll be a great memento,” and just by picking them up, I had a trauma response in my body. It was like my, I suddenly started to feel like I was in the war, I was back in war and my gut was, “I’ve got to get out of here, I’ve got to run. This is not safe. This is a, this is a dangerous place to be.”

And you know, I’m imagining all of the processes that I described before of the 1968 Tet offensive where we were in the…hearing, the bullet shells on the roof and all of that was there in its own subconscious way, and, um, I knew enough about trauma at that point to just talk myself through it and explain to my colleagues what I was going through, and, and they obviously were versed enough to just, uh, talk me through it. So there wasn’t any need to panic and I certainly didn’t have, um, serious trauma response, but I suddenly realized what this means to have a vicarious trauma revisit you, a secondary trauma come back to you…

patience kamau:
…come back to you! Mm, wow!

patience kamau:
Your grandfather, you mentioned him –he was one of the former presidents of 91����Ƶ?

Carl Stauffer:
He was John L Stauffer. Um, he was the third president, I believe. Um, he came here in 1922, became president in 1935 and was president until 1948 I believe. And um, I never knew him, he died from heart attack or stroke symptoms um, suddenly at age 69, almost 70, and that would’ve been in 1960, four years before I was born.

patience kamau:
Barely missed him…

Carl Stauffer:
Yeah. Yeah. Well or 1959, ’60, in those two years.

[Transition music plays]

patience kamau:
In your opinion, what is something unique to celebrate about CJP at this milestone, 25 years?

Carl Stauffer:
I think we have to celebrate the fact that we’re here and we’ve adapted so well to many changing circumstances. The field has changed considerably. The student demography that we’re working with, the curriculum, how we prepare students, how I was prepared versus how we’re preparing students now. There’s been many changes and I think we have not always been at our best, but we have certainly been adaptive and I think CJP needs to celebrate that “adaptivity.”

And I, and I think it’s an, I mean there’s other peacebuilding graduate programs that are still around that are older than, than CJP, I’m fully aware of that, so, so what makes this unique? I think why that adaptability has been so important for CJP is we’re small, you know, we’re here at this small institution, so financially we’ve not been, you know, we’ve never been set. We don’t sit on a big endowment like some of these others who would be in large state universities or have large endowments and so they’re set, they could survive for a long period of time just financially. We never had that assurance. We survive on the quality of what we’re offering to students who by word of mouth continue to send more students to us.

Now, I’m not saying we don’t do the PR and marketing, but really it’s, it’s about the quality of the alumni that we have all over the, all over the world in these 25 years doing incredible work that allows us to stay alive, I think, and have adapted as well as we have.

patience kamau:
So as you reflect on your experience here within CJP, and you can, as a former student, you can answer it both as a former student, as an alum, and also as a current professor here. Um, what are the, some of the specific positive outcomes of CJ…of your time at CJP?

Carl Stauffer:
Well, I would say, first of all, what I already mentioned, I was really looking for that kind of master’s program that allowed me to reflect on my practice and put into practice what I was learning immediately. And CJP allowed that flexibility and not every program does, you know um, to do it from the field, to do it from a distance and to really just work all that together in an integrated way, very important for me, um, as a practitioner in the field.

So that was, that was absolutely critical for me at that time in my formation. And, and what that did then was allow me to, I think it skilled me, tooled me in a way that gave me enough confidence to stay as long as I did in the field, um, in South Africa, when I talk about “the field” in South Africa, but I ended up then traveling… worked the first six years, um, secundent to an NGO in South Africa that was working primarily with the transitional processes in South Africa. And that was rich, very rich. And very layered on its own, the access to the new government and the new ministries of the government and, and the, the incredible innovation that South Africa continues to produce in the in the areas of community development, peace and entrepreneurship and just a very resilient, amazing, colorful people.

And, and, and I was, I was equipped enough to be able to stay and build a root, build, a root, our roots as a family and we found very close support and community and friends, churches, which is why we chose to stay and raise our kids. They did all 12, K -12 in South Africa. To get our doctorates, both Carolyn and I got our doctorates in South Africa and it was South Africa that was the base that I moved out from for the last 10 years of our time there and traveled into about 20 different African countries, eight of those being the, the Southern African region where I was a regional adviser for the Mennonite Central committee.

And so yeah, I don’t think I would’ve had the courage or the tools or the, the, the confidence to continue in this work to go towards the conflicts, go towards the war zones, go into the conflict contexts with a confidence, not so much that I could do anything to change matters, but that I had some skills and some processes and some networks and local allies that through MCC, that could potentially make a difference.

patience kamau:
Was part of the tools –you’ve mentioned a couple of tools that you had and, going toward situations that most people would retreat from –was that part of resiliency that, is that a tool that you would say you developed through your studies or how do you think of resiliency?

Carl Stauffer:
Yeah, I would say, I mean we need to, I need to answer that in a number of ways that I need to look at myself in context. Naturally, I’m not a conflict…I’m naturally a “conflict avoider.” As a, as a child, I would have been the “social harmonizer.” Um, conflict always made me uncomfortable I was trying to always mediate the family, I wanted everyone to be happy, you know? So that wasn’t my natural tendency. So I had to build that skill set to be confident, to, to really feel like this is, this is something I can do. It’s a purpose I have; now of course, growing up in conflict zones and, and prepared me for that too, prepared me with a sense of urgency about the matter, but also a sense of paradox and the tension, you know, that that war and conflict and violence brings.

And so I think building a know-how: the analysis, the ,you know, the theory if you will, but it was always practical theory — theorizing the analysis of conflict and learning how to do that deeply. The um, and then the practice and gaining so much from the practice of others and the, and their stories that they told in the case studies that we wrestled with. That, um, I think resilience is a good word –it was a feeling that I’m confident in the process. I’m confident in the process, not necessarily always in myself, but confident in the process and confident in the local community and the actors and folks who are already there working for peace, and I saw that everywhere I went.

My job then was to find those folks, align myself with, you know, my job was to, I prayed every time I went in to these zones and said, you know, “Lord, where is the Holy Spirit in this?” And “help me see the Holy Spirit,” “help me find the Holy Spirit’s work or activity and align myself to it.” And there was always, there was always hopeful, energetic, incredible peacebuilders at the local level doing amazing work, that allowed me to feel like this is something worthwhile. I’m not wasting my time.

patience kamau:
Yeah. Yeah. Do you keep in touch? With some of these people?

Carl Stauffer:
I absolutely do. Yeah, I do. Lots of South African connections but also in other parts of the continent. Good friend, good friends in Sierra Leone, I have opportunities to work with on multiple occasions. Tanzania, Ethiopia, um, Kenya, Rwanda, Burundi…

patience kamau:
It sounds like you were finding the “critical yeast” that John Paul Lederach talks about?

Carl Stauffer:
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And the, and the, the peace, the “peace constituencies,” the ones who, or in other regions we talk about “the ones who could see the conflict with two eyes” and able to hold that, that process.

[Transition music plays]

patience kamau:
You mentioned transition quite a bit and I know that you teach “transitional justice.” Can you say a bit more about “transitional justice,” what it is and what you teach about it?

Carl Stauffer:
So in a formal, in a formal sense, “transitional justice,” known out in the sort of global political economy is an umbrella term that came about in the early 1990s to describe a whole series of structures, activities, organization, organizational, maybe institutions that are built in order to contain the violence as a country moves from war to peace or from violence of some kind –a country or community– moves from violence to, to trying to um, live in peace and stop the killing or the bloodshed.

So that’s everything from “trials” and “special tribunals” to “truth and reconciliation commissions” to “DDR,” which is the “Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration” processes of former child soldiers or, or soldiers in general, ex-combatants, as well as –we now include in that– abductees, which could be women who are also combatants as well as sometimes I’m ducted for hard work and as sex slaves essentially, for armed groups or just kidnapped for ransom, and that sort of thing. Um, and then there’s the community and how do you think about reintegration back into the community? How do we prepare communities who’ve been traumatized, to transition out of that, especially if they’re being asked to, to welcome back into their midst, the very persons who’ve caused them tremendous harm and trauma, which often happens.

So we’re looking at reparations at that point, the repair, what are the recommendations for, you could also use the word “restitution,” but “reparations” is a broader term referring to both financial reparations, but also in every, in every sphere, status and position and power, and so reparations around “social reparations” with “symbolic reparations,” are really important. “Memorialization” –it’s another field that’s growing rapidly and that is “how do you help whole communities, whole collectives remember the violence without returning to it, what I call ‘remembering without revenge.'” So these are all aspects of transitional justice.

Now, I approach transitional justice from my experience with the truth and reconciliation commission in South Africa and then later on in Sierra Leone and other places where there was transitional justice in the countries that I named. I take a critical view from a restorative lens to look at that transitional justice, which claims both retributive and restorative justice in its mechanisms, and I would say we need to ask harder questions.

We need to, first of all, we need to enliven the debate and deepen the critique of the current transitional field, transitional justice field from a restorative justice lens that says really what the transitional justice field is built on, is the same Western criminal justice system principles and concepts that we have in most of the West, which is punitive, it’s punishment based. It’s, it’s about “if we punish people harshly, they won’t do it again. It’ll give justice to the victims, it’ll deter other people from doing it.” It’s all of those basic principles that we’ve all been, um, immersed in from childhood if we’ve grown up in a Western, um, culture. And science, research, all data indicates –there’s reams and reams of research that indicate– that those pillars of deterrence and punishment and incapacitation are not necessarily effective. I mean, otherwise we wouldn’t have the problems we have of growing incarcerate…Incarceral rates, et cetera.

And so we need to critique whether that’s really how justice is developed. But because the system, our Western criminal justice system is as strong as it is, is as profitable as it is, it has spread globally. It’s a colonizing force at that point, globally! And therefore the assumption was, that was also the best way to deliver justice in postwar situations, and so starting with the Nuremberg trials after world war two, that was the idea. And we have to ask a lot of questions about that because what we know is 70% of all the casualties in a war are civilians: un-armed, uniformed, women and children and men, civilians– and they are saying to us, “these things don’t mean anything. Uh, trying, you know, a small handful of perpetrators at the top of the, of the pyramid doesn’t help us.”

patience kamau:
Mm, they have no practical impact.

Carl Stauffer:
Right. And not only that, most of these Wars are deeply layered and complex; and you have neighbors who had, who were forced to kill neighbors, clans killing clans, villages attacking villages, and it’s like, how do we bring this work of healing and justice down into the community, embedded in the community and have the grassroots folks, the ones who are most effected, feel the impact. And so we’re asking a lot of questions around that um, and, and looking at alternative models and saying, “what about indigenous processes? Can we scale up indigenous processes that are culturally immersed in a worldview that makes sense to the people who are coming out of war?”

And that could provide them an avenue that’s understandable in their cosmology as to what justice means and how it’s related to their life and the way they see the world, and we need to be able to call that justice. And what we’re discovering is that, that is being effectively done in many parts and it’s much less expensive and we believe much more sustainable in the long run. And it’s much more empowering in the sense that it’s, it’s, it’s “held,” the ownership of it is held by the people in context, locally.

patience kamau:
They are invested in keeping it going…

Carl Stauffer:
Exactly! Whereas most of our transitional justice in the formal sense are blueprints coming from outside — the Hague or you know, the UN or whatever, and um, we need to query that and we need to ask “what does justice really mean?”

patience kamau:
How well are we doing in querying that?

Carl Stauffer:
On one side you would say not so well because the international criminal court and the whole process of “trial and punishment” is still very prominent. On the other hand, if you look at the arc of things from sort of world war II when we would say “peacebuilding” and the whole sensitivities around, you know, “how we handle history” and “how do we remember” and “how we heal,” started, those questions started to be asked — something like truth and reconciliation commissions — and there’s been 50 plus now across the globe, have a much more restorative element to them. And so just the fact that truth commissions have become very important, very popular, very… “popular” is not the right word, but very instrumental in what people imagine as a useful way to even begin to think about transitioning from war to peace, is a big step forward, if you look at history before that.

patience kamau:
Yeah, so with a longer lens, we are doing better, but with…

Carl Stauffer:
…I think so… [quizzical laughter]

patience kamau:
[quizzical laughter continues]…with far more…to go…

Carl Stauffer:
Even the fact that we, that we think now it’s really important for countries to tell the truth, to have truth telling processes and we think it’s really important for them to figure out, how to remember, I mean up world war II, conflicts between nations and internally in nations were handled by force, by military and and by politics. And the political economy said, “we just change the political party, or we change the political regime and we start over with a new slate and they build their own program”…

patience kamau:
…but the underlying structures remain…

Carl Stauffer:
Exactly! Not only the underlying structures, but the underlying collective trauma and transmission of trauma over generations. So we’re for the first time, in the last 50 years or more, starting to realize that we have to figure out what to do with that memory or it’ll come back and bite us.

patience kamau:
How do you think the United States is –what are the prospects of the United States?

Carl Stauffer:
Well, I think what’s happening here is very, um, paradoxical currently because in many ways our current government has taken us backwards in so many ways. Um, in regards to racism and capitalism and big business and, and strong armed politics and strong man politics, big man politics and in so many ways, um, on immigration, on incarceration, so many different ways, I don’t need to name all those. At the same time, what that has done, I think is it has awakened United States, the citizens of the United States to say, “hey, we really want to hold on to this democracy, what parts of it we still have, and we’re willing to mobilize and fight for that.” And so there’s a new mobilization, a new organization, organizing that’s happening, which I think is, is useful.

And so what you have is, it’s polarizing right now because you have the current government that that’s pumping a patriotic history to us, the old patriotic history that’s white dominated and colonial and we’ve all known, at the same time we have a whole activist communities and and organizing communities across the country rising up and, and asking the hard questions. So all of a sudden, truth telling is becoming important. Dealing with our history, as they’re called “our original wounds” of the genocide of the native American people and the enslavement of African peoples. We’re having more vibrant conversation about those things, than we were when I arrived in 2010.

patience kamau:
Do you think we’re having more of those conversations than any other time in history or is this an ebb and flow?

Carl Stauffer:
No, I think it’s an ebb and flow. I mean I’m, I’m a little too young to talk like I know what was, what was happening in the 60s other than that’s when I was born and so obviously I’ve read back in and tried to understand that, but I think there are, there would be those who are older than me who would say this has, this has come and gone with certain precipitating factors at every, at every point. And I don’t want to say “come and gone” in a way that means it’s just, it’s just cyclical, and in a, in a, it’s in, um, …

patience kamau:
It’s not in a minimizing sense.

Carl Stauffer:
Yeah. Not in a minimizing sense. I’m saying it’s, it has happened in, in, we can’t say: “this is the only time that this conversation has been happening” and there’s been a call for it, but what I’m seeing is a new call, a new level of the call for the country, each of the, the movements that have pushed, for instance, the civil rights movement, where now the conversation has moved beyond civil rights and has begun to say, we, we, we have another conversation to have. It’s not just, it’s about memorialization. It’s about the systems, the legacies, and the aftermaths of, of the enslavement…

patience kamau:
…and reparations have become quite a part of the conversation.

Carl Stauffer:
Reparations! Which when I arrived in 2010, people would laugh at, people used to say, “oh, well we need a truth commission here,” and most of us, most people would say, “well, that’ll never happen,” you know, when I arrived from South Africa in 2010. So I’m in that way, there’s this interesting vibrancy coming out of, you could maybe say the desperation or extreme frustration of the violence of the current regime.

[Somber Transition music plays]

patience kamau:
Earlier, way earlier, when we began, you mentioned the good and the positives that CJP is doing. What do you think we could be doing better?

Carl Stauffer:
Well, we’re just on a very steep learning curve right now in relation to what I just spoke about and that is turning our attention to the United States. I think we’ve always had students who were deeply committed to peacebuilding and justice issues in the United States, but we also rode on large percentage of our students coming from overseas and over international global work and, um, first of all, that’s an artificial boundary even there: “domestic and international” or “domestic and global” or whatever you wanna call it. I guess probably the best way to talk about it is “North American and global.” And so I think that’s a better terminology, but my point is we’re bringing all of that into the classroom in a, in a way that I think is more integrated well, or we need to, and we’re not, we’re not there by any means, um, in a more integrated way. But are…

patience kamau:
But you feel we’re doing that? We are trying to do that?

Carl Stauffer:
I think we are. I think we are. Uhm, it’s, it’s a bit, it’s a bit bumpy. It’s a bit jagged. Um, but we’re, I think we’re at the point in the last few years where our students, we have more students from the North American context than we do from, from overseas, and, and that’s a shift from when I was here as a student.

patience kamau:
What do you think is driving that shift beyond the, the artificial construct that you said, that is made very real by immigration policies, all that sort of stuff, but do you think there’s another driving factor to that shift?

Carl Stauffer:
Well, I think it is the political climate of this country too. I think there is a rising interest in justice and just peace, peace and justice brought together and there’s an artificial separation that’s been there between the peacebuilding professional field and the “justice studies” or “justice field” and it’s time to have that conversation in a more significant holistic and integrated way. It does raise hard questions that we need to ask between activist communities and those who would not claim to be activist communities but who are working at other issues.

Um, we need to see that we’re all in the same boat if you will. We’re moving towards the same direction of trying to accomplish justice and peace in no particular order, because I’m tired of that…”which one comes first?” I think they come together, they have to, we’re wrestling with them all the time, you know, in the class talking about “what does it mean to live with difference” cause we know we desperately need to live with difference.

But we’re also talking about what does it mean to, to call out injustice and then to heal, what does that look like? And when we say “heal,” who are we picturing as healing –is it just one side of the, of the conflict or another side or all sides? Are they healing separately or the healing together? Some people aren’t even ready to talk about the healing and you know, and so issues of healing, forgiveness and reconciliation remain really, really, um, divisive concepts right now in the polarization of our current political setting. And yet that’s exactly where I believe, we as CJP need to wade into that and to, to defy the polarization around those issues and begin to deepen those issues and look at them from a critical lens, from a critical theory lens, from a decolonization lens, from an anti-oppression lens.

patience kamau:
As we wade into that, I’m always fascinated by…so we often use the phrase “calling out things.” How about, what can we “call up” in people in us, in communities so that we can wade into these spaces? What do you think? The values we can “call up.”

Carl Stauffer:
That’s a, that’s a lovely way of thinking. I think there’s “calling in” too, if you want to take that metaphor further cause we talk about, I mean, of course one of the basis which has always been with CJP and I think is still there, is our form, our commitment to formation, “the peacebuilder’s formation,” meaning we don’t let our graduate students come out of here without reflecting on their own self and their place in context.

There’s nothing probably, well, okay, I’m a little, oh, that might be a little extreme to say…”there’s nothing more dangerous than a peacebuilder who doesn’t know who they are, and what they’re about and how…why they’re taking action,” that can be extremely dangerous and extremely damaging. And so there’s the “calling in,” what do you call in for yourself as far as when you need to…and then “calling up,” how do we “call up” the best selves in this process? Very, very difficult in this polarization and that’s where there are many different avenues of conversation, dialogue, debate, and wrestling around “what does it mean for us to share the same spaces with very differing views of the world, of reality?” What’s, what’s bringing us to that place where we can figure out how to live together, without killing each other.

patience kamau:
May we we find out soon [nervous chuckle], but it’s a process, we keep trying.

Carl Stauffer:
That’s right. I think we have worked and we have much to do…we are working. This is aspirational. We are working and I think it’s been intentional in a number of ways, but there’s much place to go with trying to allow our cohorts that come in, the opportunity to experience some of that in their community here, and I think the feedback we’re getting from –not all students, but some students– is that that is happening here. It’s for many, especially those who are coming from direct violence and overt war zones, there’s a, there’s a sense that they’ve never experienced living together across differences with a healthy, …

patience kamau:
Mm, in a healthy manner…

Carl Stauffer:
…a vibrant relationship and friendship and conversation and dialogue. I think it’s a little harder to feel that when we have to, when we’re in the, in the midst –and we are– of naming our own oppression as a, as an institution, 91����Ƶ/CJP, our own oppression, our own power abuse, our own, you know, harm, and, and our inability to at times fully embrace inclusion. And so those are the tensions that are going to be there in the classroom and outside.

patience kamau:
Yeah.
So to build on a word you just used that something that’s aspirational, um, what do you hope for CJP in the next 25 years? Um, how do you see, what would you like CJP to be at 50? What’s your dream for it?

Carl Stauffer:
Wow. Well I hope we’re alive. [both laugh]. That’s the first thing. 25 years is a, is a big span with the kinds of changes, the rapid changes we’re seeing, you know, but I think I would like to believe that conflict is not going anywhere. As long as we human beings are on this planet, there will be place for people to come, set time aside to study, breathe, eat, drink and act…figure out what it means to try to help people deal with their conflicts in a constructive way. And so I’d like to believe that we will be here in 25 years. I, it’s hard for me to imagine what will be the issues that we’ll be dealing with at that point and who are, who will the students be and what will higher education look like in 25 years?

But at the base, is this thing that we as humans are relational where we’re hearing from neuroscience that we’re wired for community, we’re wired to connect with other human beings. That this idea that we can live in, in total isolation as an individual is, is a, is a a construct too, it’s a social, political, economic construct. I think one of the worst parts of sort of taking, um, the individualistic, free market, capitalist, sort of ideologies to their final, their final place leaves…that’s where we have people living in a country like ours who are completely alone or feel completely alone. This is tragic! And so I think, you know, we know from neuroscience, we know from many other things in what we’ll learn, you know, between now and in 25 years will be incredible. I’m imagining that we’ll learn, I’m hoping that in 25 years we’ll be a place where we’re training people to really know and do organization and mobilization of masses of people to make social change. I believe, um, we will be teaching and training folks what it means to build “collaboratories” and cooperate, together across institutions and across networks and across individuals.

I think we’ll be building, um, a place that will, understand global conflicts, and have an integrated view of global conflicts and; we’ll continue to raise or send out or graduate students with a deep reflection of deep ability to analyze and diagnose and a deep ability to ask the really hard but pertinent questions for society at that time. I think that’s our mandate, ultimately. On top of that, we’re training, I think, I hope we’re holding to the resilience, the trauma and the resilience and the, and the human resilience and the human factor of how well we as humans can learn to live together and heal together and become resilient together. And I think we, we have to infuse that hope, and so I would hope that we also do not lose our determination to have this conversation about peacebuilding and justice within a spiritual conversation, a spiritual framework, a faith based, if you will, whatever that looks like.

patience kamau:
How does it look like for you?

Carl Stauffer:
For me, it’s very personal. I believe in a God that’s relational, therefore the universe is relational to me. I believe in a God that’s moral and I’m using that word in an, you know, “moral, ethical, right, righteous, justice,” and therefore I believe the universe…if we believe God as a creator, then the universe is also moral and right, if you will. Martin Luther King: “the arc of the universe…bends towards justice.”

I also believe that, um, in a God that’s creative and, and therefore we are in the image of that God who’s personal, who’s intimate, who’s relational, who’s a creative God, and therefore those are deeply important, um, animators for the work that I do. And I believe in a God that seeks us out and wants reconciliation and justice from the scriptures as I read them. Those are, those are threads that are prominent.

And I know there’s many discussions theologically about what that, what that means and what are the portrayals of “the God of violence,” the way your God in the Old Testament, and I don’t think we’re going to have that discussion here. My point is this, redemption is central. I believe God is a God of redemption. And therefore if that central, then justice, healing, peace, reconciliation, truth, mercy, all of these things can, they’re not only aspirational, but we can feel them. We can experience them here on earth, how they’re interpreted and how they’re ultimately going to show themselves for certain communities will look different.

So yeah, I mean I think I’m ultimately thinking that…so for me there, it’s hard to separate my faith. The work that I’m doing in the classroom is my faith in action, I hope and believe. Um, I take the life and teaching of the historical Jesus, as well as the savior Jesus, the spiritual Lord Jesus very seriously from, from as I understand my faith and my scripture, and so, and my interpretation –which is Anabaptist– on that is that Christ’s teaching and Christ’s way of living was not something just for us to imagine but for us to do, and that’s radical.

patience kamau:
A lived faith!

Carl Stauffer:
It’s a lived faith! It’s um, practicing truth. It’s practicing all these words, these grand words we’re talking about and um, that’s where it gets messy. There’s nothing, there’s nothing neat about that. I tell folks, I tell my students, I don’t think I would have stayed in this career if you, if you want to look at it just as a career/professional –certainly doesn’t make me money [laughs], certain doesn’t give me big recognition. So I could’ve done something else, I can imagine lots of other things I could’ve done if I had other goals, but this, my faith in Christ and my faith in a God that, as I said, is relational, intelligible, good, gives me purpose. And for me, I need some purpose.

This, this work, we see enough, if you will, quote, unquote “evil.” I don’t use that word regularly, but we see enough evil. There’s enough stuff that we see humans doing to other humans that I don’t know how else to define it. So I have to find other ways in which I get refueled and where my hope comes from, where my hope springs from, and for me that’s…it’s really important for me to believe there’s more than what I see. There’s more happening here. There’s a story behind the story. There’s, there’s –things are not what they just seem, cause if I could only rely on what I see, “the seen,” and I didn’t believe in the unseen, I’d be pretty depressed.

patience kamau:
Yeah, it’d be a small world.

Carl Stauffer:
I’d be pretty discouraged.

patience kamau:
Yeah. Yeah.

[Reflective transition music plays]

patience kamau:
How have you experienced, how would you say you’ve experienced community here at CJP?

Carl Stauffer:
So as a student, I was here in those two Summer Peacebuilding Institutes, very intensive, you know, you’re in class all day, full time for six weeks. Um, but I was, I was thrilled with the international, the global network that was here at that time, and, and I made connections in that global network that I carried with me for –and still do– you know, for years, I have people I’m still in touch with and have crossed paths with from way back then in my international network as well as when I started working in Africa. The connections there with alumni, other alumni were, were really important.

So I think that was the main, I really experienced a sense of global community those summers, those summers were, were transformative in that regard for me. And then as a, it’s different, as an instructor, as a professor here obviously, but I appreciate the, the efforts at which we make to build community. I value the fact that we have an open door policy and we give, we try to give of our time, not just in the classroom but outside of the classroom, and not in 20 minute segments, um, for a few hours a week, and that’s the only interaction we have with our students. So I find the ability to, to interact with our students in their life process over these window of two years, when they are with us, or a year and a half, to practice alongside of them, to be in and learning together is, is also very, very meaningful. Part of…it’s a kind of building of community in a workplace, which feels to me, different than than many places I hear described to me in the academia particularly.

patience kamau:
Certainly your profession has gone in very many different directions. What’s the most difficult thing you’ve ever faced professionally and in your reflections, how could you have done it better or differently?

Carl Stauffer:
Hmm, wow, well not because there isn’t one. I’m trying to figure out… [laughter] which part to talk about. That’s another thing I love to talk about to the students cause I’m like, there’s lots of failures and we learn from our failures and I use that word lightly. There’s lots of things that, you know, this just doesn’t work. There are challenges. Some of our ideas don’t work. Some of our attempts to bring…when you’re working with people, number one, and then when you’re working with people in conflict, the predictability is…continues to go down with each of those layers.

And so we can’t, um, approach this with some sort of way of thinking. We can have some empirical evidence of what outcome — hat we’ll apply something and this will be the outcome, and obviously we all know that, but I think that’s another thing I really appreciate about where CJP is now and that is the introduction of seeing, um, conflict and peacebuilding as an “emergent adaptive system” an “adaptive emergent system,” whichever way you want to talk about it, that we’re borrowing from the natural sciences now and not the mechanical sciences and we’re seeing that this is probably much more in nature that will teach us, from the ecosystems and the bio-regional systems and the water, you know, whatever the, the estuaries and the forest, the, the, the deep forests and so on. Nature has so much more to teach us about…

patience kamau:
Because of the interdependence of everything.

Carl Stauffer:
Absolutely. And also showing us how life and cycles work, and, and it’s not an…even natural science isn’t all…it’s messy too, I mean, there’s predators and there’s prey and there’s decay, there’s death, in life. And so we have to wrestle with all of those things too, but I think we have much more affinity to the natural world, obviously, because we’re interdependent, as you said, and therefore we need to learn.

patience kamau:
Do I, am I hearing you rephrasing…re-framing, failure as something more complex?

Carl Stauffer:
Absolutely. Yeah. It’s, it’s more complex. It’s challenge is evolving, it’s “evolving challenges,” it’s “evolving barriers,” it’s “evolving, um, misplaced analysis.” It’s, many things it could be, you know, in, in, in, in, in our work, I’m not insinuating that we don’t need to measure, trying to measure and understand, monitor and evaluate what we’re doing, that’s a whole part of our field. So back to my biggest challenges, I think, you know, I often tell the story of, um back to transitional justice.

I tell this story of being in the refugee camp in Forecariah which is was the town just across the border from Sierra Leone in Guinea-Conakry, West Africa. It’s a large Sierra Leonean refugee camp there, and this was 2001 after the civil war, the ceasefire was in place and I spent two weeks in the refugee camp there. We were working on a literacy program, but the content of the literacy was conflict, it was a very fascinating program. It’s was a fun program, so literacy experts, but using the content of conflict and so I was bringing the content work in and they were bringing the literacy stuff and we were working together in the process of that two weeks.

I can’t remember how far in the international community, and I always put that in quotes if people could see me now doing that, it’s quotes cause I don’t know who that is, but whoever that is, um granted blanket amnesty to all the militia and rebel movements in the war in Sierra Leone for the sake of peace. But watching the refugees respond to that blanket amnesty was extremely emotional, but also very telling, and that was this major fissure and division, and I saw the two communities –one was deeply emotional and vengeful saying it’s impossible “we can’t just live with these people, we can’t live as if nothing happened. I’ll never forget what they’ve done to my family and my community.” It was…all war is traumatizing, this war was deeply traumatizing.

It was a 12 year war and there was a lot of what we would now term, and again, I use this very loosely, um, seemingly “arbitrary violence.” There’s no arbitrary violence,I think there’s always motivation, we just don’t know what it looks like because it’s too terrifying at times. So, you know, amputation of arms and legs, blinding of people, the, the, um, the rape and the pillaging of villages. So I was hearing a lot of trauma stories, so that was already sitting there, and then this blanket amnesty came and it seemed like justice had been completely aborted. And I think blanket amnesty for the most part is an abortion of reconciliation, an abortion of justice because it doesn’t allow for truth telling to happen. It doesn’t even require that or remorse or any sort of human interaction happen in order to heal.

And so rightly, I saw them divide into, I’ll kill them if they come in, if they step foot in my village, if I see the persons who’ve done this, I’ll kill them…to, which was revenge, to an apathy –when there was sort of a closing down and this was the majority of the refugees of course, who said we couldn’t, we had no choice. This was the only way we could have peace. We had to agree to this. We don’t like it, but we have to figure out how to live with it. You know they’re going to come back into our villages and we’ll, I don’t know, we’ll figure out, but it was literally crossing arms, shaking heads, shrugging shoulders, apathy, and you can’t rebuild after war and a terrifying war like this, on either revenge cause that’ll keep the cycle of violence going, I think that’s obvious for all of us, but even apathy, history has told us within a decade or two, the children or the grandchildren will pick up arms and say, our parents and our grandparents didn’t do enough. We’re going to have to fight to, to heal or to get justice at that point, they don’t use the word, the language of healing.

So at that point, watching that parting and feeling all the pain and anguish and angst around this, was one of those moments where I was like, “why am I doing this work?” I really was ready to throw in the towel, as we say, whatever that means. I was ready to just finish, you know, leave this work altogether. I was like, not only did I want to leave the work, but I was like, “what am I doing here, and why am I here?” And I had studied restorative justice, but I had not imagined restorative justice as a framework for a macro level transitional justice process like what was going on, what was needed in Sierra Leone. And so I went back to my accommodation that night, angry, frustrated and calling out to God and just bitter, really bitter saying, “why am I doing this? There is no justice here. What is justice in this situation?”

And there’s that point where there was a, there was a breakthrough and I don’t remember exactly when it happened and how it happened, probably in some state of half sleep or not, that I suddenly had this sense of there’s nothing to lose. Let’s look at what could restorative justice look like? Is it, could it look…, I didn’t have any answers. Could it look like…could it present something that would ignite some imagination around a possible third way? And so I went back to the leadership and we talked about it and then we went back to the facilitators that we were training in the refugee camp and began to talk about this. The long and short of it is out of an elicitive process and working through, um, they themselves began to say, “hey, we have some power that we didn’t think about. We had been spending a lot of time thinking we don’t have the political power or the legal power, you know, this trend, this, this blanket amnesty was forced upon us.”

patience kamau:
Mm, it felt like it had stripped them of their agency?

Carl Stauffer:
Yeah. And then they turned around and said, but we do have agency. We are the ones that move back and resettle in our villages. We are the ones that lead, traditionally –we lead in the spiritual and the social and in the sort of cultural realm, and no one’s gonna take that away from us. And so then they began to imagine what would it be like to see these perpetrators or those who had caused the harm coming back and them saying, wait, wait, wait, wait –“don’t pretend like nothing happened. You got legal and political amnesty, but you didn’t get cultural, social and spiritual amnesty, and we’re going to work this out.

patience kamau:
Look me in the eye!

Carl Stauffer:
Yeah. This…”what you did was inhumane, you might have some humanity and we want to call that forth, but what you did was inhumane.” And we need, we’ll need to work with you using all of our cultural, spiritual, and social resources, and they had many, to determine whether your you’ve changed and whether you can be welcomed back into this human community. Um, you have to show us your humanity again. And that was the beginning of a conversation, a long conversation –I don’t need to get into all of that, but by 2008, 2007, an indigenous process was …there was a consultation across the country for Fambul Tok, “family talk” an indigenous process and it was a strong, um, call for it to be utilized.

patience kamau:
Mm, just define what “Fambul Tok” is…

Carl Stauffer:
Fambul Tok is Creole for “family talk” and it was a traditional process of handling conflict at a village level and they have, um, scaled this up and they’ve been moving with this process, um, across the country as, a healing justice process. There’s a lot of controversy all around that –that’s where my research is, I’m convinced that this is, is, is a much more sustainable process. Sierra Leone already had a special court that cost $300 million and tried nine people. They already had a truth and reconciliation commission that was under-subsidized and wasn’t able to really establish the truth except for in a written form, which is not getting to the ground.

So this indigenous process is really, in my opinion, an exceptionally important case study for us to understand, a justice movement from the grassroots, from the ground up saying, we’re not going to wait for any politicians or wait for any UN and we’re not going to wait for the ICC, we’re not waiting for anyone else’s money and we’re going to go forward with a justice healing process, and that’s exactly what they’ve been doing. 80 to 90,000 people, many more now, that was in 2013 had been touched by the process. Um, it’s cost about a million…in 2013 they had spent about a million dollars. So just the cost alone, the amount of people being impacted, there’s a tremendous opportunity to shift the conversation around global justice. When we look at this and say, what would it be like to think about these transitions using our local social, spiritual and cultural resources?

patience kamau:
Mm-hm, mm-hm, there’s a lot of wisdom already existing there.

Carl Stauffer:
Yeah.

[Hopeful transition music plays]

patience kamau:
We’re almost done. Um, what would you say are the most significant changes in the peacebuilding field? And maybe you’ve already touched on some of those, but what would you say they’ve been?

Carl Stauffer:
Well, I think, yeah, there’s been some major shifts, mindset shifts, worldview shifts in this field, which I think are positive. I’m not saying that all people who claim to be doing peacebuilding subscribe to these or believe in them, but this would be from my perspective, so this is perspectival; but when I first entered the peacebuilding field, it was very individualistic, it was technical, it was a skill set, it was a formula, it was, “if you use this particular set of five stages of mediation, you can apply it to most conflicts, you can solve your interpersonal conflicts and therefore there won’t be bigger conflicts. You’ll be preventing larger conflicts.”

Of course, even as I described, that everyone can understand that, that has no analysis or understanding of structure or power or historical transmission of trauma, et cetera, et cetera. And so I think the big shift has been to broaden that, that sort of modernist positivist sort of individualistic technical conflict management system into a very amorphous process of realizing that too, we need that individual transformation to happen, but it never happens in isolation and it has to be in relationship and not only in relationship, it has to be in structural networks and, cultural…there’s always cultural dynamics. And so unless we start to understand our work from a systems perspective, which I’ve already talked about, I think we’ve, we’ve lost the, we’ve already lost the battle some at that point. If we can’t start seeing a systems and then that’s obviously changed the kind of practice we do.

And so we’re graduating students now with, um, I think much more understanding around collective work and how to move groups and structures and organizations and collectives of people versus, um, singular, very maybe a good practice. I talk about it in restorative justice as the difference between a social service, which could be one of many options, like on a menu for a social worker to say, okay, in this case I’ll use this or this case, I’ll use that, to social movement –very different, can’t control a social movement. You can guide, and we’ve tried to do that in the restorative justice field, that’s one of the things I’m very proud of in CJP’s work and in particularly the Zehr Institute where we spent three years in a consultation and conferencing and now an anthology is coming out in January of 2020 that’s looking at restorative justice as a social movement.

To apply social movement theory to the field is new and it, it causes some people a lot of angst and worry and threatening because they can’t, it’s not controllable, it’s, it’s not predictable and, and we have to let go of that. But I think that’s precisely the point. We have to let go of that, that’s a power issue. And when I say we, I mean everyone who claims to be a professional peacebuilder, you know, until it’s affecting how we set up our nonprofits and our NGOs and our structures and our community work. The other major shift is, is towards this “just-peace,” and I use that just, hyphenated, peace idea that that these are not separate endeavors. These are not separate parallel practice tracks. These are deeply intertwined and um, and we need to begin to see the integrated whole, yeah. So the justice, the, the inter-generational, the call for intergeneration bringing the youth as well as the, as the elders together and giving voice in that way. I think the idea of context and in establishing local, the locus of power being at the local…

patience kamau:
…local level…

Carl Stauffer:
…level ,is absolutely essential in, in some of the shifts that are happening in the peacebuilding field and um, whatever word we use, we can talk about the language, um, I think we still hang on to “conflict transformation” here because we believe that it is more of a transforming of a conflict. It’s a, it’s a redirecting of the conflict energy, not a stopping it, solving it, pushing it down…

patience kamau:
Oh, you are speaking about “transformation” versus…

Carl Stauffer:
…like “conflict resolution” or “management.” I mean we all need to manage it, but so I think there’s, there’s, there’s ethics and certain values that are attached to the language we use too, and CJP has carried its own language in some ways too. But um, yeah, overall I think this brings…we have been at a, at a bit of a ahead of the curve, a little bit ahead of the wave because, we have tried –not always well– to bring justice and peacebuilding together. I think we’re doing it better than we ever have now, compared to when I was a student, but we have a long ways to go.

patience kamau:
Mm-hm, We’ll have perfected it at 50. [tongue in cheek]

Carl Stauffer:
There you go!

patience kamau:
[Laughter]
So what are you working on right now? You just returned from sabbatical?

Carl Stauffer:
I did. I did…

patience kamau:
…not to tie it up, I mean, not guide your answer, but yeah…

Carl Stauffer:
No, that’s fine. Um, I’m still working on Fambul Tok research with a goal to hopefully contribute a very small piece to the sort of transitional justice conversation that says, “hey, wait, if we’re, if we all have the same goal for justice and that is to stop the harm or the crime or whatever you want to call it, the wrongdoing [chuckles] stop people from hurting each other, then we need to have a conversation about how that happens.” And, and even if Sierra Lenone never talks about justice, never uses the word justice or restorative justice doesn’t mean that they’re not…

patience kamau:
…practicing it…

Carl Stauffer:
…practicing a justice process and therefore let’s have a conversation about their values for justice and our values and where did they come together and how do we honor multiple processes of justice? Um, and the second thing I’m working on co-authoring is a little book, part of our little book series on transitional justice from the critique that I talked a bit about here already and trying to, um, but we want to, we want to bring that home too. We’re not going to just talk about transitional justice “over there,” so we’re going to look at historical harms here in this country. Um, my co-author, Dr. Thalia González has worked with the Maine Wabanaki TRC, which was a TRC for the residential schools with Native American communities, um, and the violation that, that, that occurred over hundreds of years.

patience kamau:
She did a on that didn’t she?

Carl Stauffer:
That’s right. That’s right. And um, we’ll be co-teaching in SPI in 2020 also the restorative justice course.

patience kamau:
That’s excellent!

Carl Stauffer:
So, um, but we want to bring it home and talk about things like even mass incarceration. I haven’t mentioned that, here in this country where, most people know, we have the highest rate in all the world, and um, so reintegration of ex-fighters and reintegration of prisoners, there’s more in common there than we, than we talk about, cause both of them are coming out of violent systems, different violent systems, but they’re both coming out of violent systems. They’re both coming back into communities who are more or less traumatized or prepared for them to come back.

Both of them suffer under legislated, uh, hindrances and barriers, and, and both of them suffer under the shame of the work that they have, the violence they’ve committed to different levels of consciousness about it. But so what could it, what would it mean to think about what we’re learning overseas when we talk about integrating ex-combatants and what we need to do for integration here in this country? That’s just an example.

patience kamau:
Yeah, yeah. Thank you.
Uh, the final question, what do you do outside of CJP/91����Ƶ that brings you life?

Carl Stauffer:
Oh wow! Church is a big center for me, my wife and our elders in the church, and so we do a lot of, um, teaching and just work in, in the church that is meaningful to us. I’m currently running a men’s recovery group right now…that’s extra energy and it sounds like maybe the same kind of work I’m doing here, but it’s a different kind of energy cause it’s another community. It’s a, it’s a community of many, many different people who are coming together without any sort of sense of, um, trying to get a degree or anything, but coming together from all walks of life to try to figure out how do we live in community differently, and that’s really important.

I really love, um, riding my motorcycle. I love being by the beach. Um, my, as my wife and I get older, we seem to be drawn to the water. The ocean um, not to say we don’t like beauty of environment in many different settings –we love to hike and walk and exercise. Um, we have close-knit family that is very important to us. We spend a lot of time with them. We’re both taking care of elderly parents –that’s another phase in the season of life. It’s a beautiful phase. You have to remind yourself that, um, to make the most out of those moments together as each generation passes on. I love to sing. I love to dance. Um, need to sing, need to dance.

patience kamau:
Need to sing, need to dance!

Carl Stauffer:
[Laughs] Yeah, a good dose of that uh, along with some humor, um, is very critical. Uh, there’s nothing like, um, playing back some of old, old Trevor Noah, uh, comedy routines about South Africa…[hearty laughter].

patience kamau:
… of course, to bring back memories.

Carl Stauffer:
Um, so those are the things that give me life.

patience kamau:
They clearly do because you have this big smile on your face. I mean, you did before, but now…
Do you have anything else you’d like to add before we finish and, will you sing us out?

Carl Stauffer:
Oh wow. I wasn’t expecting that part of this. This is an interview. Um, well I guess I’d add to that list too, Carolyn. I continued to walk into, um, spiritual disciplines. I don’t know how to use another word, but our spiritual practices and those are very meaningful for us, whether it’s fasting, we’ve, we’ve learned to really appreciate fasting and prayer, m, in new ways. Uh, we started to enact some new, um, routines in, in our sabbatical, which we’re hoping to keep even in the midst of the hustle and bustle of being back in to our full time work.

patience kamau:
Yeah. Thank you.

Carl Stauffer:
Hmm…

patience kamau:
Do you have a song, go for it.

Carl Stauffer:
Wow. That’s, um, that’s putting me in another space. Sure. I have a number of songs. Um, the one that you’ve heard that I sing quite a bit because it was a prayer during the struggle in South Africa that I found very meaningful is Thula Sizwe and it’s, it’s uh, it’s a very active song. I’ll sing it slowly cause I’m not with a group. Um, I’m debating between that one and another lovely prayer, another language in Southern Africa (Sotho and Zulu). um, that says something to the effect of basically, “Jesus, you are Lord of the crowd, “which is an interesting concept. That’s the literal translation, and so it goes like this:

Uyahala uyahalalela, Jesu wa Makgotla
Uyahalalela. Uyahalalela, Jesu wa Makgotla

[Translation] “Light, he is light, Jesus, Lord of the crowds.”

patience kamau:
Mm, Amen!

Carl Stauffer:
Amen.

patience kamau:
Amen. Thank you so much Carl.

Carl Stauffer:
Thank you patience.

patience kamau:
Dr. Stauffer is the author of “Truth and Reconciliation Commissions: the case of South Africa,” you can find it in the encyclopedia of public administration. He is also co-author of “Listening to the Movement: Essays on New Growth and New Challenges in Restorative Justice.“

[Outro music begins, and fades to background]

patience kamau:
All the music you hear on this podcast has been composed by: the one and only Luke Mullet. Our audio mixing engineer extraordinaire is: Stephen Angello. Audio editing support was generously provided by: Michaela Mast, and I am the podcast executive producer, audio recording engineer, editor and host: patience kamau. As you are able, please remember to subscribe, rate and review this podcast so that other peacebuilders may find it. We’ll be back with a new episode in two weeks! Thank you so much for listening and join us again next time!

[Outro music swells and ends]

In this episode, Dr. Gloria Rhodes, professor of peacebuilding and conflict studies here at the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding (CJP) at 91����Ƶ (91����Ƶ), talks about the field of conflict resolution and transformation. 

Rhodes begins the episode by looking back on her own introduction to conflict-related work, as a fresh 91����Ƶ alumna teaching in Russia. She tells of how one day, an argument between students came to blows during Bible class. “They didn’t have a sense of interpersonal peacemaking, and I had grown up with that as a Mennonite … they really trusted authority to always be the problem-solvers, the decision-makers,” Rhodes explains. She felt driven to know more – so she returned to the United States to earn her masters and doctorate degrees in conflict analysis and resolution from George Mason University.

 Rhodes says that she, and CJP at large, have learned about self-assessment and acknowledging privilege. “As a white North American female with a PhD and middle income,” Rhodes said, “probably I’m not the right person to enter many situations as the expert, or as the person who might help to bring about change. So I think we all need to be able to ask those questions of ourselves. And I’d say that’s a change that has happened in our curriculum.”

Rhodes sees this as part of a larger movement at CJP to examine not only the technical processes of peacebuilding work, but the bigger picture of how practitioners and educators live out their values. She hopes this examination will continue in the years to come. As a place of higher education, “we have legacies and privileges that go with that, that I think we are in the process of asking hard questions about that, but I think we still have learning to do,” Rhodes says.

Guest(s)

Gloria Rhodes

Dr. Gloria Rhodes is associate professor of peacebuilding and conflict studies here at 91����Ƶ’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding. She teaches graduate and undergraduate courses that integrate conflict and peacebuilding theory and practice such as personal and professional formation, practice skills, process design and conflict analysis. Rhodes has served as department chair for the Applied Social Sciences and coordinator of the undergraduate program in Peacebuilding and Development, and as Co-Director of the Summer Peacebuilding Institute. She has led study programs in Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, Russia, South Korea and the Navajo Nation. Her areas of expertise include peacebuilding curriculum development and pedagogy, conflict assessment and situation analysis, practice-related research, group facilitation, mediation and process design, enneagram training, and cross cultural education. She holds a PhD in conflict analysis and resolution from George Mason University.

Transcript

 Gloria Rhodes
Um, also I just wanted to know what’s in practice around uh, conflict analysis since I teach that, since that is something I think of, as something of a specialty of mine. I wanted to know am I, am I up to date?

                                                [Theme music plays, and then fades…]

patience kamau               
Hello there and happy Wednesday to you! Welcome back to Peacebuilder – a conflict transformation podcast by the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding. My name is patience kamau, and our guest this episode:

Gloria Rhodes  
I’m Gloria Rhodes and I am an associate professor of peacebuilding and conflict studies.

patience kamau������������������������������
Dr. Gloria Rhodes is associate professor of peacebuilding, conflict studies here at Eastern Mennonite university’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding. She teaches graduate and undergraduate courses that integrate conflict and peacebuilding theory and practice such as personal and professional formation, practice skills, process design and conflict analysis.

Rhodes has served as department chair for the applied social sciences and as coordinator of the undergraduate program in peacebuilding and development and as co-director of the Summer Peacebuilding Institute. She has led study programs in Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, Russia, South Korea and the Navajo nation. Her areas of expertise include peacebuilding curriculum development and pedagogy, conflict assessment and situation analysis, practice-related research, group facilitation, mediation and process design, enneagram training, and cross-cultural education. She holds a PhD in conflict analysis and resolution from George Mason university.

                                                [Theme music swells and then ends…]

Gloria  
Good morning!

patience             
Good morning!

Gloria  
Thanks for your invitation to be part of this.

patience             
Thank you for participating and for joining.

Gloria  
Yeah, thanks.

patience             
Mm-hmm! So you worked in radio…

Gloria
I worked in radio when my, um, my, uh, when I was here at 91����Ƶ as an undergrad, I was in the Washington scholars –– it was then called the Washington Study Service Year and it’s now the Washington Community Scholars Program. And my internship was at NPR (National Public Radio) for a year, and so that got me very interested in radio. Um, and so I wasn’t on the air, of course, then, um, except for … I have to tell you this story. Except for, uh, every year they do one story on April fool’s day, on April 1st, that’s not a real story, and so on that story I got to be on the air and we –my housemates and I in the Washington house– um, we did a story, they did a story on a secular humanism as if it were a religion.

And we, they asked us to sing a hymn, so we sang a secular humanist, hymn so to speak, [Laughter], and that was on the air. That was aired on April 1st that year. But, um, when I came back from that experience, then I started looking into, um, what it would be like to be on the air so I worked at the radio station here, WEMC, and then I worked at WMRA, the local, uh, NPR affiliate station. So I was on the air there for probably two or three years.

patience             
Was it still at JMU?

Gloria  
Mm-hm, mm-hm.

patience             
Yeah, yeah. So does it say anything about you particularly that you were, that you would get on air on April fool’s day?

Gloria  
[Laughter] Um, I was totally up for it. There weren’t, there weren’t other opportunities really to be on the air as an intern at NPR. But, um, they, that is the one time that they really have fun doing…and they want to try to catch the, uh, their listeners as if it were a real thing; and so that was really fun. Yeah. Um, the hymn that, that we, they ask us to like just sing a hymn, and so one of our housemates, uh, Craig Snider, uh, took, uh, “God is great and God is good, and we thank him for our food…,” and changed it to, “we are great, and we are good, and we’ve worked hard for our food, by our hands our mouths are fed, and we live until we’re dead, and we live until we’re dead.” And so we sang that as a hymn; it was hilarious! And now I have trouble every time…

patience             
…singing that hymn?

Gloria  
Every time! Even now –– it’s been like 30 years later.

patience             
Yeah. Yeah. Sounds like you had fun. That’s great!

Gloria  
So that’s…when I put on headphones like this, that’s what I think about, my time at WMRA especially, and my [goes low] radio voice and uh…

patience             
[also low] …sultry voice…

Gloria  
Sultry, yeah, announcing, you know, Shostakovitch and Rachmaninoff, and all of that.

patience             
That’s great. That’s great. Feel free to use that…

Gloria  
Oh yes, that sultry voice…

patience             
…throughout the entire hour.

Gloria  
Okay, I’ll try to do that…

patience             
Alright, so um, so what’s your –– what was your journey to 91����Ƶ? CTP? CJP?

Gloria����
Mm, yeah. good question! I, uh, I came to 91����Ƶ as a student, undergraduate student and after I finished my degree, I went right into a job here and that’s because I needed to pay back loans, and so I was here, uh, in a position for four years, not related to CJP. It was before CJP existed or CTP, uh, the first iteration, and, um, out of that I was very interested in, I had majored in English and in literature and communication and I had been, uh, also journalism minor, thus my work at NPR and, uh, also a business administration minor, and so then worked here and out of that, I started developing a real strong interest in cross-cultural programming, special education… and so, um, I left my position here to go to, to go to Russia in the ’90s, the early nineties, after the wall fell.

And, um, that…the, the reason that I’m telling that story is that, that’s really what turned my attention toward conflict studies or conflict resolution, conflict transformation, was that experience in Russia where I was teaching students who…for whom, they didn’t have a sense of, um, interpersonal peacemaking, and, and I had grown up with that as a Mennonite. And so my engagement with them, really was eye opening for me in the sense that they really trusted authority to always be the problem solvers or the decision-makers. And especially if there was ever a problem or a conflict, it was always up to authority to make the decisions, and so at one point I had a fight in my classroom. It was actually, it was actually a Bible study that a physical fight was happening, and I felt myself unable to respond.

I didn’t know what to do about that…like I didn’t know how to intervene in that, and fortunately my other students just sort of pulled them apart and you know, everything was, they all went back to business as usual. But for me, that was, um, really, it was the beginning of, a to transformative time for me because I realized that here I am…and in that particular day I was talking about Mennonite peacemaking, like about the Mennonite, um, sort of the peace church tradition, the commitment to nonviolence and when that’s they, they were having a conversation among themselves. It was, they were from various religious traditions and having…and then getting into a physical fight, and I just, the…even just the irony of that struck me so much.

And so I realized “I don’t have the skills that I need to handle when conflict actually happens. I can talk about peace, but I don’t know how to actually handle conflict.” And so when I came back from that experience in Russia, I had only applied to graduate school at UVA for, uh, English literature, language and literature, and I decided to, um, to withdraw that application, and I applied instead to George Mason university, at that time it was the Institute for conflict analysis and resolution. I’d heard about it and I, uh, and I knew of John Paul Lederach, who was teaching here at 91����Ƶ at the time. And I thought, okay, this, I need to know more about conflict and I’m, um, I’m, I’m nerdy that way –I have to know about something in order to be able to do it and so I wanted to study more.

patience             
So you went to I-CAR?

Gloria  
Mm-hm, I went to I-CAR at George Mason, mm-hm.

patience             
And so then how did you end up at…

Gloria  
Again, a good question. So I had been here at 91����Ƶ at, I’d been on staff, um, and I had been working in the education, uh, and the business departments as office coordinator, and, uh, after my, after two years of my coursework at I-CAR, it was a master’s degree in conflict analysis and resolution, I was actually recruited to come back by Vernon Jantzi and so I owe being here to to Vernon, and he actually, uh, then was a great mentor. I, um, I came back at the time when we were CJP, at that time, CTP, was beginning to get a couple of grants, um, some of the early grants that, and one of the grants that we achieved was, uh, for, uh, starting up the Summer Peacebuilding Institute. So I was hired to help coordinate that program.

patience             
So how many years have you been here?

Gloria  
Um, I’ve been at 91����Ƶ for 27 years. Um, I was, uh, it’s hard to even count the number of years I’ve been at CJP. I, uh, my first class, the first class I taught, uh, for undergraduate was in 1988. The first class I taught for graduate and undergraduate together was in 1994. So, and then I came back on, I came on faculty as an instructor at the very lowest level, uh, in 2001. Actually, that’s not true –I led a cross-cultural, an undergraduate cross-cultural to Ireland and Northern Ireland in 1998. So before that.

patience             
Okay. Okay.

Gloria  
Yeah. So then, so for CJP and, and, uh, CTP, I really came back into the undergraduate, uh, after my master’s degree in conflict analysis and resolution, I came back and I was working primarily in the undergraduate program teaching half-time. Um, and I was teaching things like mediation and, um, what else? I forget…there was a class called “Exploring Conflict and Peace,” that’s now that…at that time it was called “Exploring the Peacebuilding Arts.” I taught that for a while, and some others.

patience             
What are you teaching currently?

Gloria  
What am I currently teaching? This year I’m teaching, um, only graduate courses, and so I teach the Foundations for Justice and Peacebuilding I; it’s the first half of the year-long course. And I also teach a course, uh, for the nursing master’s degree program, it’s called, uh, “Skills for Conflict Transformation,” and I also, um, I support practicum students, um, as a supervisor and I teach summer courses in the Summer Peacebuilding Institute also, uh, now “Conflict Analysis” and “Formation for Peacebuilding practice.” That’s what I’m teaching now.

patience             
What’s that –– “Formation for Peacebuilding Practice?” What’s, what’s that about? Analysis is self-explanatory, I think, but…

Gloria����
Analysis is really just “how do we understand conflict?” Um, peacebuilding practice, uh, formation is the idea that we are, if we’re talking about practice and peacebuilding, that we are actually the instruments of our work as, as the people that we, that we bring as who we show up as, right? Our positionality ––that we are the instrument of the work and so we have to know a lot about ourselves, we have to be aware, we have to learn to manage ourselves and our stuff, and so that’s a piece of it. I talk about conflict assessment, I mean self-assessment!

So I talk about self-awareness, self-management, self-assessment –– “so what are the skills I need?” “Am I the right person for this job?” “Am I the right person in my identity for what the work is?” That kind of thing. And then self-care and some people call that self-compassion; but “how do I, how do I sustain myself in a job that’s, it’s really actually pretty hard?” Um, and so that’s, you know, thinking about our work in peacebuilding. And then the other half of that course in addition to formation, personal formation is also “what do we do, what is it? What is it that we’re doing?” “What are the processes that we have available to us?” “What roles can we play?” That kind of thing.

patience             
Mm, the asking “If I’m the right person to actually do this?” –– that’s a very, it’s a very, uh, self-reflective question. It takes away the ego quite a bit. How successful is that? In the field especially?

Gloria����
Well, especially! I totally understand the question. I think, I think the essential part of it is to, to have people become aware that who we are matters and that our identities matter in our work and that, uh, you know, as a white North American female, um, with a PhD and, you know, middle income; that probably I’m not the right person to enter many situations as the expert or as the, as the person who might help to bring about change.

So I think we all need to be able to ask those questions of ourselves. And I’d, I’d say that’s a change that has happened in our curriculum, I think we didn’t start out –– however many years ago that I started teaching. I didn’t start out asking myself or others that question, but I think we’ve really, um, especially in our current, uh, iteration of our curriculum, we’re really intentionally asking that question of ourselves…

patience             
Mm, it sounds like an interrogation of power?

Gloria  
That’s part of it…

patience             
It’s an aspect of it?

Gloria  
That’s uh, absolutely. So not only identity but what, what, what, um, “what parts of my identity are empowered and what parts are disempowered?” And that that gets into much bigger conversation. And then also “what are the structures that I inhabit and that I have access to?” It’s really about power and influence.

patience             
Mm-hm, mm-hm. Um, you just talked about the curriculum and how incorporating that has been a change, um, what other academic and program changes have happened in your time here?

Gloria����
Here? Um, I think one of the, um, one of the things that I think this is also just in the field of conflict, uh, we call it conflict transformation here, conflict resolution, um, and peacebuilding. I think one of the big changes has been really a move from technical skills around specific processes like mediation or even facilitation, um, into a much, for us here at 91����Ƶ, certainly, into a much broader sense of “what are we about?” And we’re not just about teaching how to do mediation or how to bring, uh, how to help people reconcile. We talked a lot about reconciliation as a process, but, um, but now more, much more about “how do we help social change to happen in ways that are constructive, not destructive?”

And so we’re looking at, you know, what, um, what’s, “what are the problems?” “What are the issues?” “What are the situations of injustice?” “What are the situations of tension in the world and our communities?” Particularly, not in the big wide world, but also like here where we are, like where I am –that’s where peacebuilding starts. And so then, thinking about how, “how can I contribute to the changes that I want to see in my communities or wherever I have access?” So that’s one of the, that’s one of the differences I think that’s, that’s, that’s changing in the world.

I was just at a conference where the theme was really looking at justice and peace and, um, and how those two connect and also the tensions between those two; and I’d say that’s a big change! Um, not for us, philosophically and theologically those commitments have always been there for us at 91����Ƶ, but I think figuring out what our, what our curriculum is and how we teach about peace and justice has been ever evolving, especially as we were uh, as we’re looking at the fields that we’re part of and thinking about teaching for conflict transformation: “how do you, how do you help conflict to be transformed constructively, and how do you help more justice to be present somewhere?” And so I think that, I think we’ve changed quite a lot.

                                                [Transition music plays]

patience             
You’ve a little bit used the “conflict transformation” and “conflict resolution” interchangeably. What, why do you think uh, CJP uses “conflict transformation” specifically?

Gloria����
Mm [laughter] um, I laugh because when I came here, uh, in the mid-nineties, I had just finished my, or I was, I was finishing up my master’s degree in conflict analysis and resolution, and I was hired, uh, in addition to my, uh, job working as the Summer Peacebuilding Institute coordinator, I was also called communications coordinator or something like that, coordinate communications associate or something –– and my job was to write things like the first iteration of our catalog and to write our outward facing, um, pamphlets. That was before we had internet, right?

And so I was, uh, creating pamphlets and you know, just writing about what conflict transformation was and how it, how to place ourselves in terms of conflict transformation in the field. So, um, I think why we called it that in the beginning was the sense –– and I still hold this– um, I think, I mean John Paul Lederach is not the only one who talked about this, but it was because of John Paul being here, his influence and his writing and his thinking around conflict transformation as a process that happens in relationships, that conflict changes the nature of our relationships, many times for the worse in destructive ways, and so he was concerned about “how do we understand that?”

And then “what do we do about it?” So descriptive and prescriptive –– “how can we engage in ways that are less destructive, less harmful to people?” And so that has, that has always been part of my understanding of “conflict transformation.” Now I was so interested in this topic, that I decided to, when I went back to graduate school for my doctorate, which was soon after that, um, I focused on that question in my doc… in my dissertation, I looked at “is there a difference between ‘conflict resolution’ and ‘conflict transformation’ in practice?”

And so that, that study was also very formative for me in thinking about “what is this work?” “How do we talk about what we do and is that important?” Um, but also then acknowledging that actually people in “conflict resolution” and in “conflict transformation,” whatever you call what you do, people have different definitions, different philosophies of practice and thinking about why they call it something or something else. And so the, the, the outcomes of that dissertation, were really that, um, that people, you know, I was interested in looking at the language that people use because I was, had been an English major and all of that, and so people, some people who I interviewed, um, chose a term “conflict resolution” or “conflict transformation” to describe the whole field.

And they were very adamant about that being the term for different reasons, and so a lot of the “conflict transformation” people were talking about that as social change, broader social change, justice included; “conflict resolution” people were talking about um, sort of constructive outcomes, and so we, so “conflict transformation” doesn’t have its own, um, like constructive versus destructive that’s not alone, our definition, that is included in “conflict resolution” as well. So I was really interested in that, and then the, the most interesting outcome of that study was that people use those terms differently. Some people use them strategically, like they say, well, “conflict transformation” is, is the, that –– it’s the reconciliation; it’s the touchy-feely relationship stuff. And the “conflict resolution” is the problem-solving and the negotiating stuff, and so I had this whole category of “strategic people” and then I had a category of “pragmatic people,” people who use any term, whichever term. And so you accused me, no, not accused me, you said that I use those interchangeably, and I will claim that I’m pretty much a pragmatist –– it’s whatever helps people understand what I’m talking about better.

And then there’s a philosophical group that use the terms, actually were pretty uncomfortable using either term because of their philosophical stances, but I would put them also in the pragmatic category. But um, so that, so that also, um, goes to sort of identity in the field, and so identity meaning that “how we define what we do is really important in our professional work.” And so um, thinking about us at CTP/CJP, we still talk about “conflict transformation” because it’s important for us to be talking about the transformation that happens through conflict, both the, you know, the, the transformation that is happening and then how can we be, how can we be helpful, how can we be, how can we help move us to more toward, excuse me, “how can we move us toward more justice, more peace in our relationships?” And so that’s still been a meaningful term for me.

patience             
Mm-mm.

Gloria  
Sorry, that’s a really long answer.

patience             
No, I like it. I like it. It helps clarify things –– I mean you wrote a whole dissertation on it…

Gloria  
…I did, I did and it’s available, if anybody is interested!

patience             
Oh, where is it available?

Gloria  
Um, actually I think it’s most easily available through, um, George Mason university’s library. They have it. Um, but it can be found in dissertation abstracts in any database, Library of Congress, wherever.

patience             
Excellent! That’s great.
Um, what do you think is, uh, something that we can uniquely celebrate about the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding at this particular milestone?

Gloria����
Mm-mm, 25 years later? I think, um, that’s an excellent question. I think, um, there are a couple of things I would name. One is that, um, that we have a community of practice, a community of practitioners that have sort of been part of who we are as a school of thought, as a way of teaching, as a way of, of showing up in the world. And by sort of that community of people now, our alums, our, anybody who’s engaged with us through a training here through STAR (Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience) or through the Summer Peacebuilding Institute (SPI), that we have sort of a group of people who share values and share practices and thinking –– and so I think that is something to really celebrate at this point. I’m not sure that there’s such a strong sense of community in other programs. I don’t know a lot of other programs well; I know that George Mason University where I studied doesn’t have quite the same.

We do have a sense that, “oh, there are other alums doing work,” but I don’t feel a sense of community in that identity like I do here in this identity. So, that would be one of them. Say another one is, I think we’re unique in a couple of ways and one of them is this focus or intentional conversation about holding justice and peacebuilding in tension with each other. That our ways of, of doing justice, of calling for justice matter in our further peacebuilding processes. So how we treat people, how we engage, how we bring people along is important in our justice work. And I think that’s, um, that’s fairly unique in the world in terms of, um, academic programs that are studying this. So I, I feel like that’s, that’s something to celebrate. It’s something that, um, we’re still working on all the time. Something I still feel, I don’t have the, the, the best answer to yet. And I’m still, we’re still working that out as we go.

patience             
Mmm Hmm. I like how you pointed out that sense of community is something unique about, uh, about CJP. How have you personally experienced community within CJP?

Gloria����
Hmm, yeah –– it may not be unique, but it is something that I think is very, um, tangible here in ways that some places it’s not. It’s interesting. I don’t, for myself, I don’t see myself as part of solely the CJP community, and I think that’s because I’ve been at 91����Ƶ for a long time, um, that, and I was here in the early parts of my career right after I graduated and then I left to go to graduate school and then I was actually, um, hired back at 91����Ƶ, but in the undergraduate program, so I was not part of CJP officially.

And so I was sort of separate from CJP at the same time; I was still feeling connected and part of the community. And so I think, I think the thing that I gained most from, and the thing that I was excited about coming back to CJP or coming, I was always at 91����Ƶ, but coming into CJP was, um, the sense of shared values that this, um, is really, um, a good fit for me in terms of my values for not only peace and justice, non-violence, but also faith and that it takes faith expression seriously, it takes, um, um, a lot of the things I’m committed to seriously, and so I can’t, I actually can’t imagine a better place, a better place for me to be, um, than here and so, so that feels really good.

patience             
Good! We’re glad to have you as part of the community. :)
Um, as you reflect on your experience here, so what would you hope for CJP in 25 years from now? What’s your vision for CJP at 50?

Gloria  
Mm. Yeah. Uh, I think one of our, our, um, one of the benefits of being a small program, in a fairly small university is that we can be really, um, agile. We can respond to current events. And I would hope that at 50 that we are still vibrant and, and able to sort of quickly move to, um, generate new programs, new, um, grants or, uh, ways of practicing and that we’re, that we’re, that we’ve, that we’re…I hate to say this cause it means more work for me, that we look a lot different than we do now.

patience             
Mm, in what ways?

Gloria����
Well um, I think that, um, we have work to do on, um, inclusion and equity around identities, um, in the United States, but also what that means for all of our international students, people that we’re working with. So I think we have work to do there. We, that we are, um, just because of who we are, we are in an institution of higher ed., which has its privileges. We’re also mostly white, um, Christian background and, uh, institution and so, um, we have, you know, legacies and privileges that go with that, that I think we’re in the process of asking hard questions about that.

But I think we still have learning to do and we have, we have places to go. So I would, I would hope that in 25 more years that we would be much further along on that, on that journey, and that things look different, that our programming looks different, that our courses look different, that we’ve kept up with whatever the new, um, conflicts are going on in the world. And, um, and you know, you see that changing all the time that when I was in graduate school in the eighties, oh, sorry, nineties, um, you know, the big, the big conversation was about ethnic conflict because it was right after the Soviet Union had broken apart and it was, um, a lot of post-colonial conflicts happening all over the place, and a lot of that was framed as ethnic conflict. And I think we’re at a very different place now, uh, in the field and also at CJP and, and so, I would expect that to happen in 25 more years –– that we’ll be, we will just have a completely different understanding of identity and of power and how to, how to share and what we’re talking about, I hope.

patience             
Yeah. Yeah. What are the biggest changes –– you were alluding to changes that have happened in the field –– what would you say the biggest ones have been in your time in it, since you went to grad school?

Gloria����
Hm, yeah, it’s not a very long time. The field’s pretty young still, I’d say. Um, there are, one of the great things is that there are many, many more female voices than, than ever before, and certainly then at the beginning. Um, there are, and so in terms of gender-balance in the field, I’m definitely seeing that in higher ed in general, but I think there are beginning to be more voices, more widening, widening-up what we call this work that we, that we do to be more inclusive, both of ideas and of people. I see that starting, um, in the field, I think for sure than when I was studying, um, I think that we’re talking much more about, about religion, we’re talking much more about, uh, self-identity, we’re talking much more about the importance of culture and I think those were not always talked about a lot in the early days.

And I think that’s also why John Paul Lederach was important in those, those, you know, early nineties was he was a voice for saying we must include culture as part of our conversation. I think, I think now even we’re much further along than that, but that, that culture and identity are very integral to what we’re talking about.

patience             
Was it a radical idea at the time?

Gloria����
I don’t think it was radical. I think it was just an, um, it was, it’s messy and I think that it wasn’t part of the original, um, idea for conflict resolution, which was that we can know things about the world and, and the way that, um, state, Nation States work and the way that, um, we make, um, foreign policy happen, and so like the earliest, you know, some of the earliest founders of academic conflict resolution like Kenneth Boulding, what was he was, he was certain that, you know, we have these databases of armed conflicts in the world that we can know stuff.

Um, I think that that knowing was more in academia, we’d say more from a positivist approach or from an approach where, you know, things are certain in their, in their –– I’m drawing squares in the air –– and things are knowable, more like the natural sciences, but I think that we’ve, that we’ve also, we’re sort of, that was, we’re sort of postmodern also, uh, in the sense that we’ve really said, you know, “what people –– individual people –– think and do is important, and what people, where people come from and their cultures are important.” And you know, so I think a lot of that has happened over these 20 years. Um, maybe 30, of these 25 for sure.

patience             
Yeah. Yeah. You had mentioned something about the field having more women in it. Um, how do you, how do you think that’s enriched the field?

Gloria  
Mm, interesting! Yeah, I think I began to notice somewhere in the late nineties that more and more of the positions of, uh, administrative, um, like directors of things were more and more women. I think that has opened up, I think it’s opened up a pathway for women to imagine themselves moving toward a future where they could be, um, where there are roles for them in higher ed. and, um, in teaching, but also in, you know, directing organizations and having that be a pathway. Um, I’ve seen many more people, more women getting PhDs in this field and so it becoming sort of a, a legitimate way for engaging in the world in ways that match our values or what, you know, whatever you want to call that. But it’s, uh, I, I definitely have seen a shift from sort of mostly men at the beginning and including my professors and faculty, although there were a few notable females, but now really much more equity on that.

patience             
Are there other forms of diversity that are as notable?

Gloria  
I think it’s coming. Yeah, I think it’s coming. I think it depends on where you look and what areas. So, um, yeah, I was very pleased to see more diversity happening at places like the Association for Conflict Resolution Conference that I was at this year. Um, but I think there’s a, a ways I think there is sort of a, a barrier about, um, higher ed. and there’s a sort of a barrier around professional organizations, professional things, um, for people of color in general. But I think, I think it depends on where you look and when you look at international organizations, they’re quite diverse and so that’s also fun to be part of.

patience             
Of course.
Um, so have you encountered anything in your career, at least within the last 25 years that you are still wrestling or puzzling through? Does that make sense? You know…

Gloria  
…like, like conceptually you mean?

patience             
Yeah.

Gloria����
Yeah. I’ve also, I’ve also had a few big mistakes that I’ve made and so, you know, I still puzzling through those, but, um, I think, I think what I named the, this, this, how to hold peacebuilding as a field of practice, you know, that I, that I consider inclusive of “conflict transformation,” “conflict resolution,” everything else that’s related to people who are engaging conflict in some way. Um, I think it’s still, it’s still a very difficult conversation to have that together with this question about justice and justice seeking. Um, when I was a graduate student, I was influenced greatly by professor Wallace Warfield, who has passed on. He, um, worked quite a bit for racial justice in the United States, and he was very concerned that, um, that peacemaking or conflict resolution in the program that he was teaching in conflict resolution was trying to sort of pacify people or keep things at a status quo and was very concerned about the social justice concerns.

And so I think that still a place that I still have a lot of questions. Like how to, how do you bring people along who don’t agree, who don’t agree with that, who, who don’t see the injustices that, that I might see, how do, how do I work with people? Um, you know, a peacebuilding framework would say, you know, I need to walk with and, and, and bring along people who are not seeing equity as, uh, as an end goal, right? And, or an inclusivity or whatever. Um, and I feel like I do that, I try to hold that space, but I also feel committed to justice issues; and so how do you hold those two pieces, um, at the same time? And I think that’s really what we’re all working out together. But I will probably have that as a, as a challenge for my lifetime probably.

patience             
Yeah, it’s a good challenge to have.
You alluded to making mistakes, um, you are human, so what have you found most challenging in your professional life and could you have done it differently?

Gloria����
Mm-hm, mm-hm, well, uh, one of the things I would say that I’ve personally gained from being here at CJP, at 91����Ƶ in general, um, I’ve learned so much over my life, uh, over my career. And so, you know, I came in, um, with certain commitments and values and many of those are the same, but, but everything else has, has changed and I’ve grown and, you know, just, just the content that we’re, that we’re bringing in and the challenges that I experienced with my colleagues and my students. Um, I have changed very much and grown quite a lot in terms of my learning. And so I’d say that, um, that my biggest challenges have also been my biggest areas of growth. Right?

So learning, um, I, I’d say a challenge for me is always, um, well not always, but one of my challenges has been to find time for practice outside of the community of 91����Ƶ. And so much of my professional practice has been engaging with students and faculty and staff here around issues of conflict. Um, and if I had to do things differently, I might, I don’t know how this would have worked, but I would, I might have structured some time in to do more practice. I’m able to do that now. I’m doing some, more community practice. Um, but I think that, um, that work is what, how I learn by doing, I learn, by doing. So I’ve learned a lot in the classroom because people bring their differences right into the classroom and I get to practice in that way. But, um, there’s something that’s, um, there’s a different, there’s different things I learned from being in the field or being outside of the classroom.

And those are, I think some of those are the places where I’ve learned and where I, I sort of, I think I have humility in the classroom, but where I’ve developed a lot of humility is in actually sitting with people and helping talk through very difficult, challenging problems and questions and, um, and sometimes not getting there with people not getting there to where we were all satisfied with the outcomes. That’s, I’d say that, you know, I have a couple of key, um, key moments in my, in my, uh, in my work that I think back to and think, okay, I don’t want to let that happen again. Where, where a key voice wasn’t heard or where the outcome I thought caused harm to somebody. Right. That those kinds of things.

And so I, they don’t keep me awake anymore. That used to, um, but it’s, uh, you know, one of our, our, one of our, in addition to nonviolence and human dignity and human capability, I mean, one of our core, my core, um, guidelines is do no harm. And so it, it, it’s, it’s very difficult to acknowledge and say, yeah, I caused harm. How do I repair?

patience             
Yeah. “Do no harm,” like a physician.

Gloria  
Yeah.

patience             
What are you doing in the community –– you said you are doing more practice in the community?

Gloria  
Yeah. Um, one of the things that I’m excited about lately is, um, for a couple of years I’ve been on the executive board of Faith in Action, which is a local justice organization, and, um, the organization is, uh, works yearly to identify a social justice issue in the community. It’s a coalition of 24, uh, congregations and faith communities in the area. And, um, basically what I feel like my role, my practice is, is to be on the board as to help with analysis, but also to help with facilitation and process, helping us all to have good conversations and decision-making. So that’s one of the things.

patience             
Okay. All right.

Gloria  
Just one of those…

patience             
Just one of those? Another?

Gloria  
Yeah. well, I mean there’s other, there’s other pieces that I’m beginning to pick up, but, um, yeah, one of the things that I, … I will say this, one of the areas that I’m developing, because I teach a nursing class, um, I’ve developed a lot of interest in working with other professionals, uh, like, like nurses, doctors that people in healthcare who, who are professionals but who, um, are also interested in how can they improve their own conflict competency, and so that’s an area where I’m working to develop, um, um, projects and training and education together with some of the local healthcare agencies.

patience             
Ok that, I mean, you just went right into the next question, which is, uh, what are you working on right now or developing?

Gloria����
That’s one, I think, I think one of the things that I would probably do differently if everything were different, um, would be, I would do more of the scholarly practices. I think 91����Ƶ, CJP for sure is different than a lot of other, um, academic programs, higher education programs, because we really focus on practice.

And so my, my interest in being in practice and working is so that I can inform my work in the classroom, but also one of the expectations of faculty in higher ed. is to publish and to devote time to scholarship and writing and presenting, and I’ve done quite a lot of presenting, but I haven’t done a lot of publishing. So that’s my, that’s what I’m working on now is really working to publish. Um, some research I’ve been doing about analysis, uh, and some, uh, work that I’m doing on healthcare and conflict transformation and some maybe I’ll end up publishing something about conflict analysis.

patience             
What’s the research on analysis that you’ve been doing? What have you been encountering?

Gloria����
Yeah, one of the, I did this research this year, this, this year, 2019. Um, I talked to, um, sort of just ending that right now, but talk to 20 practitioners in the world, um, from four different continents, um, we looked at, um, Asia, Africa, South America and North America and a diversity of people, different kinds of practice –so five people each, um, and asking them, um, what are the deep social divides that you’re engaging in your context? What are the kinds of things that are dividing people? What kind of work is being done about that and what is your, how is your work addressing those?

And then as a underlying that is then how do you get the information that you need when there’s a deep social divide? When, uh, it’s difficult to trust whether you’re getting adequate information from all sides when, when we are, we do have positions and that we might be coming from a particular side or another, um, and our identities, how do we get the information that we need? How do we build allies, partners in the work, all of that stuff.

So it’s been fascinating to hear, you know, what people’s strategies are. I think we can, I think that we here in North America can learn from that, from our colleagues in other continents. But, um, um, also I just wanted to know what’s in practice around, uh, conflict analysis, since I teach that, since that is something I think of as something of a specialty of mine, I want it to know, am I, am I up to date and am I doing what I need to do and are there things I can learn from practitioners in the field?

And so part of my desire for publishing would be how do I help practitioners tell their stories? How do I help them to, um, how do we help sort of, um, bring practice more into the spotlight? This is, this work is all about practice, what we do, not just the theory behind it. So that’s something that I’m strongly interested in.

patience             
Mm, have you been talking to people within the United States? I mean, we’re in a very unique time.

Gloria  
Yes, we are.

patience             
How is that manifesting?

Gloria����
And that was one of the reasons that I, that I wanted to, to, um, do this study too. So I wanted to think about the, the social divides that we’re a part of, but also then, you know, how does that compare to elsewhere in the world? And I’ve talked, yeah, I talked to folks in Canada, in the U.S. and in Mexico, and um, yeah, I would say that, you know, it’s a bit humbling because I think the, when I talk about deep social divides with practitioners and I’m talking to people in other social contexts beyond North America, that the kinds of divides that are being named are ones that are causing great harm and lots of death and even genocide. And you know, places where the divides have, have become so divisive, so deep that um, it’s going to take generations to repair.

And so that, that also sort of spurs me to say, okay, we need to take action now as a field, as, as people who are interested in working toward peace, that we have the skills, we have, the knowledge that’s needed, and so that feels like a challenge to me and to all of us at CJP and in the field, peacebuilding at large and conflict resolution to, to stand up and, and, and have communication and conversations in our communities about these divides, and how do we, um, you know, how do we work together? We have to, because I mean, we could also be there, right? We are one of the most diverse countries in the world, we’re one of the most populous, and, um, we have to figure out how to talk together.

patience             
Right, right. Oh, may God, help us.

Gloria  
Indeed.

                                                [Transition music begins]

patience             
So we’d love for you to participate in celebrating this 25th year milestone; for details about events and activities in which you can participate, check out emu.edu/cjp/anniversary.

                                                [Transition music fades out]

patience             
Um, what do you do outside 91����Ƶ, outside CJP that is life-giving to you and that you enjoy?

Gloria  
Thank you for that question. Um, I’m a mom and, um, a lot of my life has been, um, and, and actually even my kids have kind of grown up at 91����Ƶ and in my, you know, in my life, uh, here, my work life here at 91����Ƶ and CJP um, so, um, you know, one of the things that I do is, that gives me a lot of joy and is, you know, I take care of my kids and I do a lot of gardening at home and, uh, depends, don’t look at my garden [Chuckles]. The, the, the, what my garden looks like is, is not the point; the point is what I can take from it and that we can eat. [Laughter]

patience             
Of course!

Gloria  
Um, so it’s not very pretty, but, um, I do, I do enjoy, um producing food and putting it away without chemicals and all of that stuff. Yeah. Uh, my kids are both teenagers now and so I’m, I’m beginning to think about what are the other things that I, that I enjoy doing a lot. I enjoy singing. So thinking about, uh, what I want to start doing more of. That would be one. Um, and art, um, I, I do some painting, I do some, um, drawing. So I want to do more of that.

patience             
Oh, that’s fantastic. What kind of painting do you do? Or drawing?

Gloria  
Watercolor is what I enjoy. And so, I’m just dabbling with the drawing, but, um, yeah, I, I need to spend more time doing those things.

patience             
Are you participating in “inktober”?

Gloria  
No, not right now. I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m participating by observing and thinking about, but, and that’s also what inspires me a bit. So I also, I write poetry too, and I, I haven’t done any, I haven’t done much publishing of that, and so that’s something that’s also inspiring. So I keep thinking, well, in some iteration of my life at some point I’ll be less busy than I am now. Um, so that, that will come.

patience             
Oh, you should just insert it, otherwise the time may never present itself…

Gloria  
Well, and I do when, when it happens, um, I have…people laugh at me. My whole desktop on my computer is littered with all these little files that are called “starts of a poem” or “starts of a hymn,” I’ve done some text writing for hymns, uh, or “starts of something…” Right? And so I have lots of those. So I, and I actually do, for people who don’t believe me, I actually do go back and pick those up and, and complete them. And so…

patience             
Oh you should start publishing, share them with us.

Gloria  
[Chuckles!]

patience             
So do you have anything else you would like to add and would you consider singing us out?

Gloria  
Oh my goodness!

patience             
You just said you like singing. :)
So while you think about what else you’d like to add…

Gloria  
Well, I’m not sure I want to sing in public.

patience             
This is not public, this is…no one else, just me. [Laughter]

Gloria  
Yeah, but somebody will hear it someday.

patience             
Yes. Yes…

Gloria  
Oh no, I’m not, I’m not, I’m not a solitary singer. I’m not a soloist. I’m a, I sing in choir.

patience             
All right. Okay. That sounds good.

Gloria  
Thank you, thank you.

patience             
Is there anything else you’d like to add?

Gloria  
Um, I don’t think so. I really appreciate the, I really appreciate the asking because I feel like, um, I’ve been here a long time and there have been sort of waves of, uh, faculty and staff and, and I feel like together with Barry maybe that, that there are like sort of, there’s the knowledge from the before, and there’s the knowledge from the after, and I feel like I have knowledge of the before, but we don’t talk about it very much so I appreciate being asked and um, being able to talk about it a little bit.

patience             
Ah, it’s been a great conversation.

Gloria  
Thank you.

patience kamau               
Thank you for doing it.

Gloria Rhodes  
You’re welcome.

patience kamau               
If you have thoughts and comments you’d like to share about this episode, send them to cjpat25@emu.edu. We would love to hear from you!

patience kamau               
[Outro music begins]
 
All the music you hear on this podcast has been composed by the one and only, Luke Mullet. Our audio-mixing engineer extraordinaire is Stephen Angello. Audio editing support was generously provided by Michaela Mast and I’m the podcast executive producer, audio-recording engineer, editor and host, patience kamau. As you are able, please remember to subscribe, rate and review this podcast so that other peacebuilders may find it. We’ll be back with a new episode in two weeks. Thanks so much for listening and join us again next time.

[Outro music swells and ends]

In this episode, Dr. Barry Hart, professor of trauma, identity and conflict studies here at CJP, reflects on his own beginnings in the field of conflict transformation and trauma work, definitions of trauma and trauma healing, how CJP has evolved since its inception, and where he sees it – and the entire field of justice and peacebuilding – growing from here.

Hart has “officially” taught at CJP for 23 years, but first came on board as a summer workshop instructor in 1994. After graduating from Eastern Mennonite Seminary in 1978, Hart lived and worked overseas, developing a trauma healing and reconciliation program for the Christian Health Association of Liberia during the Liberian Civil War.

“I was very keen on trying to weave together what I understood could be brought from the outside … the people themselves were very resilient, amazing in their own right, and had skills and traditions that could help in their own healing process,” Hart recalls in the podcast.

CJP co-founder John Paul Lederach invited Hart to come present on his work during a Frontiers workshop (the Frontiers of Peacebuilding events were the precursors to today’s Summer Peacebuilding Institute).

“Coming back was really just part of what I wanted to do, and who I felt I was,” Hart says. Hart has seen CJP through significant academic changes, like the inclusion of and transitional justice curricula and the creation of the Foundations I and II courses. 

As for the future of the Center, Hart envisions CJP addressing the climate crisis and its intersecting issues more effectively. “If we can go forward with a real sense of care for each other, care for the planet in a way that, actually, has not only care but practical actions, then I think we’ve gone a long way. So 50 years from now, we may be known as a Center for Justice, Peacebuilding, and the Environment,” says Hart.

Guest

Barry Hart

Dr. Barry Hart is a professor of Trauma, Identity and Conflict Studies here at the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding. Dr. Hart has conducted workshops on psychosocial trauma recovery and reconciliation in Northern Ireland, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Uganda, Burundi and among Rwandan refugees in Tanzania. He has lived and worked in the Balkans where he developed and led trauma and conflict transformation programs for schools, communities and religious leaders. He was engaged in a three-year peacebuilding institute and curriculum development project between 91����Ƶ and the University of Hargeisa in Somaliland from 2008-2011. He holds a Ph.D. in Conflict Analysis and Resolution from the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution (I–CAR), George Mason University.

Transcript

Barry Hart
Um, I was doing a lot of local work in terms of counseling and jails and prisons and starting a halfway house for ex-offenders and living there. But at the same time, the the work that I was doing internationally, I think one could say that started in the mid-eighties…

[Theme music plays]

patience kamau
Hello and happy Wednesday to you! Welcome to Peacebuilder: a conflict transformation podcast by The Center for Justice and Peacebuilding.  Our guest this episode:

Barry Hart
Barry Hart ––I’m a professor of trauma, identity and conflict studies here at CJP.

patience kamau
Dr. Barry Hart is a professor of trauma, identity and conflict studies here at the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding. Dr Hart has conducted workshops on psychosocial trauma, recovery and reconciliation in Northern Ireland, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Uganda, Burundi and among Rwandan refugees in Tanzania. He has lived and worked in the Balkans, where he developed and led trauma and conflict transformation programs for schools, communities and religious leaders. He was engaged in a three-year peacebuilding institute and curriculum development project between 91����Ƶ and the University of Hargeisa in Somaliland from 2008 to 2011. He holds a Ph.D. in Conflict Analysis and Resolution from the Institute of Conflict Analysis and Resolution (I–CAR) at George Mason University.

[Theme music ends]

patience kamau
Hi Barry! :) 

Barry Hart
Patience. It’s good to be here. I’m looking forward to it talking about CJP and 25 years! And I’ve been around a long time. I graduated from seminary here, at Eastern Mennonite, and, um, first came on board for the frontiers and peacebuilding program, which was, as you know, the beginning of our Summer Peacebuilding Institute (SPI). So that was in 1994 and had been coming back for SPI and eventually, actually, I was working in the Balkans, in the former Yugoslavia, and came back at the end of 1999 to be here full time.

patience kamau
How long were you there, in The Balkans?

Barry Hart
Just about five years.

patience kamau
Wow. Was that in the height of the war?

Barry Hart
It was during the war and after the war. It was quite a time. And prior to that, I had been in Liberia for several years.

patience kamau
Okay, Okay. What took you to the Balkans?

Barry Hart
Well, um, I finished my doctorate at, um I-CAR, which is George Mason University’s, now S-CAR, School of Conflict Resolution, and, um, a Canadian group was interested in sending me to the Balkans, and I wound up working with CARE Canada and then CARE International in the Balkans where, as I said, about five years. And my work there was related to trauma, trauma awareness and trying to merge conflict, transformation and trauma, which I had really started back in the early nineties in Liberia.

patience kamau
Okay, is it…that’s where you met uh,  Leymah Gbowee, in your time in Liberia? 

patience kamau
Yes, absolutely! Leymah was, and is, an incredible person. So, Liberia was a very special time for me, and I still have a lot of care for and for the people.

patience kamau
What was special about it?

Barry Hart
Well, I was doing my doctoral studies research, but as it turned out, Mennonite Board of Missions, at the time, and MCC was kind of a joint venture, asked me to go and work there for CHAL, which was the “Christian Health Association of Liberia,” uh in this area of…nexus between conflict, what we were calling resolution and trauma at the time. I knew a lot about the former, but not a lot about the latter. The trauma part. But the two years there I developed a program about trauma and reconciliation and drew on a lot of expertise, local expertise on the ground. So that was kind of the beginning of bringing together the field that I was interested in, was doing my doctorate in, but it really turned out that the trauma became an important part of my work.

patience kamau
What program did you develop there? You said you developed something?

Barry Hart
Yes. It was called trauma, healing and reconciliation. And it was part of CHAL, which was the largest health organization in Liberia prior to the war. So they had contacts throughout the country, and I was there in the midst of war that went on for 14 years. And it was really a good an amazing organization to work for. I actually had to leave during one of the more difficult times, and then I went back, and uh, probably worked at uhm, I think I did about 70 workshops around the country on trauma, healing and reconciliation. And that was really the basis of my dissertation. More on identity and ethnic identity and division. But I wove in the trauma part as well.

patience kamau
Can you remember anything that was surprising to you as you traveled and as you interacted with people as you taught about trauma there?

Barry Hart
Oh, what I liked the most,  was really paying attention to what the people were saying and asking a lot of questions about how people dealt with difficulties on the ground. The concept of trauma in one sense, was fairly new, but they knew the symptoms of trauma, and they knew how to deal with things from a traditional method. And I was very keen on trying to weave together what I understood could be brought from the outside, and that doesn’t mean Western models, but models that have been used in Mozambique and other places into that particular context. And it was interesting attempt, I think to uhm bring those different fields together and find that the people themselves were very resilient, amazing in their own right, and had skills and traditions that could help in their own healing process.

patience kamau
You said something about symptoms of trauma, what are those? What is trauma and what are its symptoms?

Barry Hart
Well, um, you know what is trauma? It’s a good thing. It’s clearly when people are wounded psychologically, emotionally, physically, those wounds really impact how people view the world in those moments, because their world has been shaken, everything has been taken away, things are without hope, issues like that, losses that are monumental. In Liberia, for example, there was such destruction that people in some cases, I talked to a lot of people that had to flee to what they called the bush, with only the clothes on their back. And maybe they could take one or two things, maybe the Bible or the Qoran or something that was precious to them, and that was it. And they’d be in the bush for three or four months, avoiding the rebels and the conflict in the war that was going on.

But you can imagine that experience, what that did to those who survived, coming back to villages that were destroyed, in fact not only destroyed by others, but their own people, often their own Children, because the Children were brought in as fighters by the rebel leaders for the purpose of using that innocence, if you like, in a very destructive way. So that day I was very obviously complex and really horrible to see how people suffer and cause others to suffer, in that regard. And we know that when we traumatized another person, we are in essence traumatizing ourselves. So on the ground you’ve got people that are being traumatized by rebels, but those same child soldiers, for example, who are doing that to them, are traumatizing themselves in the process. So we had to work with those ex-child soldiers to helped them become, as best we could, as best as they could, become children again.

patience kamau
Oh, to reintegrate them back into normal community.

Barry Hart
Indeed, it was that, and that experience was fascinating to me because I, I was actually working on my dissertation related to Northern Ireland, but was asked by a colleague, to do some work in Liberia and I, something just really struck me as important and meaningful. And I was moved by what was happening there and so I went back and stayed two years.

patience kamau
What was a dissertation on?

Barry Hart
It was on ethnic identity and war, and how identity is manipulated, can be manipulated in the differences between groups and how they view each other, each other’s identity, and as we know, identity is often gotten for ourselves from the other. That is, the other is the wrong one. The out group. They’re the ones that we dislike, but we don’t pay a lot of attention to who we are. We pay attention to who they are, and politicians or religious leaders or military leaders have said “they’re they’re bad people,” and so we see ourselves in an us-them relationship and the “us” (we) are better than them.

patience kamau
So the aspect of your uh, work in identity is in helping people look at themselves and I get to know themselves?

Barry Hart
Yeah, because identity is one of those intangible elements. It’s something that we have, we a lot people, depending on who they are…the groups of people that think about their identity very little, and then, of course, there are other people that are thinking about their identity all the time, based on structures around them and so forth. But, yeah, the goal is in in these kinds of war, post war situations is to help bring healing to both groups and then through that healing process, over time, some type of transformation in the relationship -do I call it full reconciliation? Well, again, this is where some of the traditional models come in where real reconciliation can take place. But it is difficult and a lot of that ethnic divide continues, and is maintained by people who want that ethnic divide, you know, that power.

patience kamau
Yeah, they have something to gain from it.  

patience kamau
How did you end up at 91����Ƶ or CTP or CJP?

Barry Hart
The seminary got me onto campus, and, uh, that’s a good question. I think because of Liberia, Um, John Paul Lederach asked me to come to the Frontiers and Peacebuilding conference in 1994, to present the work that I was doing in Liberia. And that was kind of the the beginning. I was already familiar with the campus obviously, I had lived here, I’d started Gemeinschaft halfway home, which is right across the hill here at 91����Ƶ, and so, um, coming back was really just part of what I wanted to do, and who I felt I was.

patience kamau
How has the program evolved in your time here? What are some of the academic and program changes in your time here? What have they been?

Barry Hart
Quite a few, the academic changes are significant, I think. You know, it’s interesting that the program was about peacebuilding, and we were, of course as people are very aware of restorative justice and so forth, but, you know, our title wasn’t, didn’t include the justice-peace before, it was just “conflict transformation program” (CTP). And so the idea was to talk about peacebuilding more broadly, and to emerge it well, with something that’s essential to peace and that is justice. And so the restorative justice and transitional justice types of things were brought into the mix.

So the title change was a big one, I think, and that reflected what we did academically. I think the other change, and again there are many, Foundations I and Foundations II. We really thought we needed to merge a number of courses into these foundation courses, so that students could take not just a variety of courses but could actually in one place, for six hours, Foundations I and then six hours for Foundations II…

patience kamau
…six credit hours…

Barry Hart
…six credit hours, be able to really get foundational information materials, understandings that they need, everything again from what it means to be reflective, to being able to analyze conflicts and then to develop theories of change for intervention purposes. That, to me, has been a significant change. And again, there are many other things that have happened, um, in the academic realm.  And I think, probably important for me, too, because I brought some of the trauma and identity issues to CJP when I was teaching and still working in other parts of the world. But coming for SPI and teaching identity and trauma courses and those intangibles, those intangibles of conflict are something that we started to weave more thoroughly into course, not just at SPI, but in through the academic year.

So that was really significant.  Program-wise, you know, we’ve moved all over the place from having co-directors to having an academic program director and obviously executive director, and um, really an important, evolving role that Janelle Myers-Benner has been in, from initially an administrative position to a really important role of academic program coordinator and CJP registrar, so many changes, have been important changes because we’re also trying to pay attention to the field –what’s actually happening out there in the world, and how do we adjust academically and programmatically to meet those changes?

patience kamau
That’s excellent! How many years would you say you’ve been here? You said a long time, but can you give it rough estimation?

Barry Hart
Officially 23 years. But then, as I said, I go back to 1994 and I was here ’95, ’96…

patience kamau
Yeah, of course! So you were here at the beginning, really?

Barry Hart
I was, not at the beginning of CTP,   well, I think it started maybe a year or two before that, I’m not actually sure, but in terms of the SPI and beginning with Frontiers in Peacebuilding and then coming back here at the end of ’99, I’ve been around a long time.

patience kamau
We’re grateful for your presence here. It’s provided some stability and continuity. So as you reflect on your experience, what are some of the positive outcomes of your time at CJP?

Barry Hart
A positive and necessary outcome, which is also an ongoing necessity, is working with the real issues as they evolve and emerge; the ones that are most critical in the world. Both internationally and more recently, locally and nationally, I think we are paying a lot more attention to that. So, I think the positive outcome would be evolving along the lines of paying attention to what is a real need. So that reflects being reflective. It reflects being intentional about growing a program that’s organic. Trying to meet needs and it allows our students to come into a program that seems vibrant to them.

patience kamau
What could CJP be doing better?

Barry Hart
What could CJP be doing better? [Laughter] You mean we are not perfect, right? [Laughter]

patience kamau
[sarcastically] Oh dear… [Laughter]

Barry Hart
Yeah, no…what we could be doing better really, is pain even closer attention to what’s going on around us. I think one of the things that really makes a difference in terms of who we are and how we view ourselves is paying attention to what’s going on around racial issues, around injustices, around patriarchy, all range of things that really impact how conflicts, begin and how they are sustained, but also in paying attention to them, how we can help transform them into something meaningful for people and get them out of that conflict cycle.

patience kamau
What’s a conflict cycle?

Barry Hart
I go back to the question of identity, when you have two groups and one feels superior to the other group, and of course the group that is experiencing that superiority from the other group is not feeling good about who they are, and they might want to kind of get back at the group that has oppressed them, or whatever they’ve done to dis-empower or disregard and violating them and their dignity, so they often attack. And then that attack may actually lead to another attack by the group that sees itself as superior initially. And so you have this cycle that is not just in the here and now, it goes across generations. And so this is where historical trauma comes into play as well, where political leaders can actually say to their people, “do you remember what happened?”

And of course, people remember what happened 50 years ago or 300 years ago, because it’s been in their histories. It’s been in there poetry. It’s been in the songs they sing. It was told around the kitchen table, about the other. And so “if we don’t want the other to attack us like they did 50 years ago, then we need to attack them.” So this cycle that goes round needs to be broken, and I think we in the peacebuilding field and other fields, of course, have an ability because we can analyze this cycle and we can see what happens. We can see the need of both sides. What needs to happen to bring them into some type of relationship. Again it may not be perfect, but it’s something that helps them realize that in this cycle, everybody suffers.

patience kamau
Are those what are referred to as “chosen traumas,” like when people who were in power begin to bring information from the past to remind people…

Barry Hart
…exactly, “chosen powers,”” chosen glories,” all of these things. Some people would say that this is where we often, through the chosen trauma or chosen glory, get our identities. Again. it’s usually in relationship to the other “we’re better than” or “they have caused us to suffer.” So we take on what other people have said about us, or what we say about ourselves, vis-a-vis another in a negative sense.

patience kamau
How do you think that intersects with the concept of “Ubuntu -I am because you are”?

Barry Hart
Exactly, it’s such a good concept -I’ve had it described me by people from South Africa where Bantu people, and of course throughout Africa in different forms, is that “I have my identity through you, and you have yours through me.” We need each other. There’s, without each other, we’re not whole. I think that’s the greatest thing Ubuntu can show us. And many philosophies from around the world say that in different shapes or reforms, but I have certainly been thankful that, uh, Ubuntu has been there to talk to people about that in the Balkans, or talk to people about that in Northern Ireland or wherever I’ve worked.

patience kamau
You’ve also done work with dignity. What is dignity?

Barry Hart
I’m really thankful to Donna Hicks, who has written a lot about dignity, and we were able to bring her here several times in the last seven or eight years. And so it’s been really good to share her definition of dignity; and and she talks about that feeling, it’s kind of an italicized word: “feeling of inherent value and worth.” That feeling of really having value, and “I’m worthy of a person.” Or “we, as a group, are worthy.” And the thing is that dignity, again is two ways. It’s like trauma. If I traumatized you, I traumatized myself. If I violate your dignity, I violate my own dignity. And it really helps us to understand the value and worth of the other, and of ourselves.

And in so doing, then we provide, I think, a space and a place for us to actually find some healing in our relationship and the other part of dignity is that there something greater than both of us! Greater than the two of us, or, our two groups or however we’ve used it. And that can be seen in spiritual terms. It could be nature, you know, it could be something greater that holds us in its own dignity,  and we find ourselves clearly connected then, to many things in this “cycle of dignity.” I’ve just come up with that term. [Laughter]

patience kamau
That’s great. How would you define it on the fly…[Laughter]

Barry Hart
[Laughter] Right! Well, I think I just did. The fact is that we need each other, and we need that which holds us and if we violate it, then we go back into that conflict cycle.

patience kamau
Of course. Of course. All right.

patience kamau
[Transition music begins]
If you have thoughts and comments you’d like to share about this episode, send them to” CJPat25@emu.edu.” That is the letters C-J-P-A-T, the numbers 2-5 @emu.edu. We would love to hear from you!
[Transition music ends]

patience kamau
What do you hope CJP embraces as we move forward into the next 25 years? What’s your vision of CJP at 50?

Barry Hart
I think it’s clear that we will need to address climate crisis more effectively. It doesn’t mean we haven’t touched on it; but we really need to address that. And this is obviously critical to peace and justice issues in terms of not only survival, but in preventing future conflicts. So 50 years from now, I guess it’s my hope that we really find, uh, a way of dealing with -as effectively as we can- obviously, it’s a multi-sectoral approach to to an issue such as the climate and our environment.

But as much as we can to be effective on this issue, and, um, that important parts of this is dealing with the related issues I mentioned before. I mean, they don’t seem related, but guess what, in patriarchy and other power issues, racial injustice and finding ways to encourage greater honoring of dignity between persons and the planet. So if we can go forward with a really sense of care for each other, care for the planet, uh, in a way that actually has not only care, but practical actions, then I think we’ve gone a long way. So 50 years from now, we may be known as a Center for Justice, Peacebuilding and the environment.

patience kamau
That would be great. That would be wonderful. Um, do you think the environment has dignity?

Barry Hart
Yeah, that’s –the things that hold us as human beings, we oftentimes see ourselves as very special without seeing what holds us, and what holds us is nature itself. What holds us is our relationship within the animals and the bees and others, other important elements of of our environment. And it’s it’s a unit, you know. It’s a system, it’s organic, it flows, it ebbs and flows. It’s complex, it’s all these things. And that’s exciting to me. And I think realizing that more and more, is critical for us to live in peace with justice in this context.

patience kamau
What do you think, why are we failing? Not a CJP, but just as a community of human beings on this earth?

Barry Hart
Well, one of the things is, the primitive brain, it wants to store energy. It doesn’t want to put out energy. And it takes a lot of energy to do the work that is good and just and those of us who do that, know that, and sometimes we burnout on this sort of thing. But how do we help all of us find ways to use our energy in a collective manner? So more and more of us are doing the work and being encouraged by recognizing that, that work is critical to everyone’s well-being. I think that’s one of the important elements of differences is not just celebrating differences, but using those differences in constructive creative ways for the benefit of all.

How we get there, it takes a lot of work. I know because of my own exercise routine –I sometimes just don’t want to do it. You know, but I just go out there. But I know when I do,  I feel good. I feel good physically, i feel good emotionally, so how then can we all exercise whatever that means, in this particular case, more and more, working together for the benefit of everyone.

patience kamau
Mm-hm, for all living-beings.

Barry Hart
Yeah! 

[Transition music plays]

patience kamau
In your time at CJP, what has changed you most? Uh, what has been life-giving?

Barry Hart
The most life giving element for me has been relationships. The relationship with really great colleagues at CJP, and across 91����Ƶ and with our students. I’m just always amazed to experience students who are taking in the information. And, of course, they bring great wisdom to the classroom, and I think that’s an exciting element of our work and our life together here. I think one of the things that happens at CJP is that we have a value system that really undergirds who we are and what we want to do, and that manifests in relationships. And there are a lot of academic situations and places and institutions where working relationships aren’t that good, or students don’t feel that they can connect with the teachers, professors and staff. But, um, though we’re not perfect at this, I think we do a fairly good job in building a relationship and therefore community.

patience kamau
What do you think our values are?

Barry Hart
Really, bottom line for me is care. Care for others, care for the work we do, really honoring what is important in relationships, and then finding means and ways to do these relationships  in ways that really expressed that care, really say who we are from our hearts rather than just, kind of, an intellectual endeavor. And I think that’s to me some of the most important things here.

patience kamau
How have you experienced community, for you personally?

Barry Hart
The fact that we have “open doors” at our offices, that we go from office to office, talk to each other –students can come by. I don’t think that happens enough these days. But it was something and still is important in CJP. And we do have potlucks, faculty have have retreats that are very important to not just talk about what we’re doing next academically, but to really get to know each other in a deep way, a lot of vulnerability and, um, and safety in that vulnerability. I think that’s critical to build these relationships.

patience kamau
Yeah, shared vulnerability helps create a sense of trust among one another, and build a stronger community. In your time at CJP, have you realized anything that has particularly puzzled you? You’re still wrestling through?

Barry Hart
Well, there’s a lot of puzzles in life. I’m not sure that I’m wrestling too much with, um issues, I think what is most puzzling, though, is why we…you know, we’re known around the world and wherever I travel, and I’ve heard this from colleagues and former students, –that everybody lifts us up as, you know, doing good work, and I think that’s the case. I’m just not sure why we haven’t gotten, in one sense, more visibility, which could and should lead to maybe some financial stability for scholarships and building a new building for C JP. 

You know, we’ve been talking about that for a long time, so that’s a bit puzzling to me, you know? Where is the  institutional support in that regard, why haven’t we uhm found the partners that can enhance that more? Why haven’t we been more imaginative in that regard? So I think that’s still a bit of a puzzling element for me. Uh, we have this interesting CJP building [laughter] that when students come, and they’ve heard about us, and they say, “oh, this is where you are?” [Laughter] And I love this, I love this place, actually, but I think it’s time to have something more.

patience kamau
Mm-hm, mm-hm, inshallah, maybe it be a prayer that’s heard. 

Barry Hart
Exactly.  

patience kamau
Uhm, what’s been most challenging professionally for you in your time here? And could you have done it differently?

Barry Hart
Most challenging –when I have not really paid close enough attention in class, to some of the needs of different people. I kind of see myself as a person who does that, but I’ve missed that point few times along the way and that it’s been frustrating. It’s been hurtful to classroom environment, in some cases, and obviously to the individual student, along with myself. So I think in that regard I’ve worked at that, and I think some good things have come out of that, Uhm, but I could have probably handled it differently, brought colleagues in sooner, to talk about it and really involve –depends on circumstances– but involve the class more in that situation.

So, you know, teaching here for nearly 25 years, I’ve had a lot of very good experiences, but there’s been one or two situations that could have been better, and that’s, it’s been frustrating to me. But even, well I shouldn’t say but, and I’m continuing to work at that.

patience kamau
Were these situations that you realized on the spot, or was it in reflection and looking back? How how did they unfold?

Barry Hart
Yeah, I realized on the spot, and we’re not talking about multiple situations here…

Barry Hart
Right…right, you said two… 

Barry Hart
…but, they’ve been real. I notice it, or interestingly enough, a colleague has pointed it out to me because the individual student is more comfortable speaking to someone about it than directly to me, and I understand that. But, um, that needs to be encouraged too. But you know, there’s, there is a power difference between students and teachers –we work at that not being the case, but the reality of it is, there is. And so sometimes, I miss that and students miss that, or really do get that, and, uh, it’s not working for them.

patience kamau
[Transition music begins]
So, we’d love for you to participate in celebrating this 25th year milestone. For details about events and activities in which you can participate, check out emu.edu/cjp/anniversary.  
[Transition music ends]

patience kamau
We began…you said that you’ve been in the peacebuilding field since the nineties? The early nineties?

Barry Hart
Well, even before that. Uh, no, I started in mediation in the early eighties. Did a number of things in the mid-eighties in Northern Ireland related to mediation and what we were calling “conflict resolution” at the time. So things evolved from there and I started to do…I was doing a lot of local work in terms of counseling and jails and prisons and starting a halfway house for ex-offenders and living there. But at the same time, the the work that I was doing internationally, I think one could say, that started in the mid-eighties.

patience kamau
What have been the most significant changes in the field?

Barry Hart
I think that’s really important! For me, I mentioned the intangibles before, and I think what I’ve seen –and it needs to continue and grow– is making sure that every situation, whether it’s domestic or international conflict or violent situation, that we’re paying attention to, not just the tangible issues. For example, in postwar circumstances, you wanna rebuild the infrastructure, you know, you wanna put roads and power lines and you want to rebuild the houses and the schools, all very important and all very meaningful in terms of people’s well-being and identity. At the same time, there are those issues of trauma and identity and dignity violations that need to be addressed as well. So what I’ve seen, and we’ve been doing that I think a long time here at CJP, the field itself has started to really take hold of these things as well. And so I’m I’m really pleased, but I’m really, I’m working on that even more and more, and I think that’s one of the most significant things that has taken place. I’m sure there are many others.

patience kamau
Can you tell us more about what you mean by “the intangibles”?

Barry Hart
An “intangible” would be again, those kind of interior elements of who we are or where the group is –their identity.

patience kamau
Okay. They’re not apparent just by looking at a person?

Barry Hart
Well, no. And they’re not even a parent sometimes, to the people themselves, so they don’t realize, for example, where their identity comes comes from. And as I said earlier, if it’s, it is actually coming from the fact that they’re not “the other,” that’s that’s only one element of understanding who you are, there’s many more. So if we can help people understand kind of the roots and the core identity issues that helped shape them and their worldview, then that can be helpful. The same is true with trauma. You know, people have these symptoms, you know ,they can’t sleep, they have headaches, you know, they can’t focus; well, this is where trauma awareness comes in! It has a lot of people that say, “oh, yeah, now I understand what this is.”

And again the dignity violations, and I’m focusing on these three things, there are more, are also true, recognizing that like Mandela, said Nelson Mandela, no one can take your dignity away. They can push it down, but it’s always there, and so we can help people who have had their dignity violated –pushed down if you like– to understand that, that’s still there, that’s who they are, and bringing that value and worth forward…����

patience kamau
…they can reclaim it!

Barry Hart
…reclaiming as you say, absolutely critical. And so those “intangibles,” along with those other very important “tangibles” of infrastructure or whatever, combining those is what is really necessary.

patience kamau
What “intangibles” define you? What…how do you see yourself over the years? How have you come to see yourself, has there been anything surprising that you’ve discovered about yourself?

Barry Hart
I think in the…more particularly, and this goes back to the wonderful students we have and how they challenge us, you know, I’ve been in this field a long time, and this also goes back to my Children. I have Children that are 18 and 20 years old. So I as an older parent, you know, I entered parenthood and I entered into this peacebuilding field with, with some some skills and some understanding and so forth, but I’ve had my buttons pushed in a lot of situations, So students have pushed my buttons, in a good sense –I’m not saying you know, and it’s just kind of say “oh I didn’t think about that, thank you, that’s that’s a good one,” or “wow, I actually did miss and I’m sorry that I did.”

So that constant involvement –relationship– with, whether it’s my children or in the classroom, (and I’m not making exact comparison here),  I’m just talking about how exciting it is to be in that learning process as an individual. And so I’ve learned about my own issues, my own dignity factors, my own understanding of who I am, and I’m still learning that it’s a journey. And the more I learn, the more complex it gets in terms of trying to understand it, and, you know, that’s also good. You know that. I know there’s complexity and I’m not going to fully understand it, but I want to continue to journey, in that complexity so I can find those wonderful elements more, I don’t know if I want to call him simple elements, but those elements that actually give some understanding to the complexity around me.

patience kamau
What are you working on right now? Within the peacebuilding profession?

Barry Hart
One of the exciting elements –number of years ago, I wrote an article that included the concept of psychosocial peacebuilding, again bringing the “tangibles” and “intangibles” together. And I’ve been working with a group of people mostly meeting in South Africa on…who are coming from the mental health field, psychosocial field and the peacebuilding field. And so we’re learning from each other, and we’ve actually gotten to the point where just the third workshop has been done, it was done in Tanzania, we had done one in Kenya and one in South Africa, where we brought people from these fields together and and gave them a context specific role-play to work at and find out how they worked on the same plane, how they differed, and what they could learn from each other.

And our whole purpose of this was to help those three fields, and of course, we need up many fields working at this larger peacebuilding idea, but have those fields –at least– working together in helping people in post-conflict situations, whatever paying attention to: yes, the mental health, yes, the psychosocial element –that nexus between mental health and societal realities– and then peacebuilding locally but also writ large, that is really, truly a multi-sectoral approach to change. And it’s just been exciting because  these three workshops are going to give us the information we need, the data that we need to develop workbooks and so forth, that will be geared towards these three fields. And so we’re encouraging a lot of…we’ve done a lot of field studies and so forth, but we’re encouraging these fields to work together, and we’re hoping that the work we’re doing will show that it’s important to work together and it’s possible to do so.

patience kamau
The workshops, have they all already happened? 

Barry Hart
Yes they have!

patience kamau
Okay, um, and you’re going to produce…

Barry Hart
…a workbook. We did a lot of interviews, I think it was 60 some groups across the spectrum of mental health and peacebuilding and psychosocial support, and so we can go back to those and say, this is what we found, it’s important and we want to encourage you to consider working together and where we can help that happen, we will.

patience kamau
How can people access that workbook? Is it ready? And might it be ready sometime in the future?

Barry Hart
We’re are planning, probably in the early part of the year, to have a final meeting to put together the data from the workshops, the learnings, and then start the process of writing that workbook. So my hope is that maybe mid-2020 we will have it.

patience kamau
Okay, all right, that’s great! What is psychosocial trauma?

Barry Hart
That’s that interface between the psychological issues, including well-being of people in their social environments. Because we just don’t kind of live that interior psychological life, that pain of trauma, for example, manifest in our family relationships, in our community relationships and so forth. And so we want to have a deeper understanding of how trauma awareness, again the identity issues and so forth, can play out better in a social context. So when we put psychosocial together with peacebuilding that looks at infrastructures as well as systems and so forth and justice issues and hopefully there’s a greater understanding and practice of doing peace with justice and having psychological well-being.

patience kamau
You said that one of the workshops you had a role play –are you able to explain how the role-play was? What was it?

Barry Hart
Well, I guess I did say role-play…

patience kamau
…is that not what you meant?

Barry Hart
Maybe I meant case-study.

patience kamau
Case-study! Okay. Okay.

Barry Hart
Sorry, glad you caught that. But the idea of the case-study –that it was actually written by people from the three fields about an actual case on the ground, and then they had their colleagues, through a work-week, go through that case together. So they did the analysis, they did the theories of change, they did the the intervention strategies, they did the monitoring and evaluation, and every group does it a little bit differently.

So we wanted to see what those differences were, but we wanted to also see where the similarities were and to get people from these groups to see the similarities and say, “ah, well, this is a good thing, I didn’t catch that element…I didn’t see how that element was important in doing my work.” And so that larger peacebuilding framework can be helpful to all people.

patience kamau
So that the ideas are cross-pollinating? 

Barry Hart
Yup!

patience kamau
So we’re almost done, uhm, but outside of CJP and outside of peacebuilding, what do you do that helps give meaning to your life?

Barry Hart
Well, I mentioned my children, and they certainly give meaning –they’re both in university now, so the house is empty.  

patience kamau
You have a cat!

Barry Hart
I have a cat…

patience kamau
What’s his or her name?

Barry Hart
Omblez! No, that’s my former cat. This is Rivkah. Yeah, it’s interesting I said Omblez. I had a cat when I lived with a Benedictine monk in France and uh, her name was Omblez, which was from a village right down the road from where I lived. 

patience kamau
Oh, she was impactful, you still remember her!

Barry Hart
Yes. Yes, it’s curious that she just came up, but Rivkah is a sweetheart. So yeah, outside of what I do, children are important, I’m really keen on good diet and exercise. I exercise on a regular basis and you know, that that mental health, physical health, dietary health, it’s really, really important. And other than that I’m doing, I’m part of the International Council of Initiatives of Change, and that council is kind of a governing body for the network of Initiatives of Change, which includes about 35 teams around the world. And we’re doing a program called trust-building programs. So, got, a significant grant, and we’re developing…right now we’re in the process of doing three pilot programs, and I’m the chair of the evaluation committee on those programs. So we’re hoping to carry that out over the next many years, these pilots are going to be evaluated, and we’re gonna learn how to, kind of, grow them as we go forward.

patience kamau
Okay. Is there anything else you’d like to add?

Barry Hart
No. I really am pleased with your questions and the interview. And I think, uh, 25 years CJP is amazing in and of itself, and I think it  reflects the values that we hold, the ability to be flexible and change and learn and grow, and that’s why I think it may indeed be possible. to see CJP 50 years from now.

patience kamau
May it be so!  

Barry Hart
May it be so!  

patience kamau
All right. Thank you very much Barry.

Barry Hart
You’re quite welcome Patience, thank you!

patience kamau
Have a good afternoon! 

patience kamau
Dr. Hart is the author of “Dignity in Negotiation: It’s transforming Power” and “Psychosocial Peacebuilding in Bosnia and Herzegovina: approaches to relational and social change.”  

patience kamau
[Outro music begins]
All the music you hear on this podcast has been composed by the one and only, Luke Mullet. Our audio mixing engineer extraordinaire is Stephen Angello. Audio editing support was generously provided by Michaela  Mast; and I am the podcast executive producer, audio recording engineer, editor and host Patience Kamau. As you are able, please remember to subscribe, rate and review this podcast so that other peacebuilders may find it. We’ll be back with a new episode in two weeks. Thanks so much for listening and join us again next time!
[Outro music ends]