Center for Justice and Peacebuilding
Encyclopedia
Center for Justice and Peacebuilding (CJP) is an accredited graduate-level program founded in 1994; it also offers non-credit training. It specializes in conflict transformation, restorative justice
, trauma healing, equitable development, and addressing organizational conflict. CJP is housed at Eastern Mennonite University
(EMU) in Harrisonburg, Virginia
, which describes itself as “a leader among faith-based universities” in emphasizing “peacebuilding, creation care, experiential learning, and cross-cultural engagement.” One of the three 2011 Nobel Peace Laureates, Leymah Gbowee
of Liberia, earned a master’s degree in conflict transformation from CJP in 2007.
(MCC) to aid fellow Mennonites and other hungry, suffering people in Russia and Ukraine.
By the 1930s and 1940s, MCC had developed into being the primary relief, service, and development agency of the Anabaptists in North America, who were typically affiliated with Mennonite and Brethren in Christ churches.
In the mid and late 1940s – during World War II – MCC began to be active in peace and justice matters in the United States, particularly in advocating for alternatives to military service and for humane treatment of the mentally ill. (As an alternative to serving as soldiers, many Mennonite conscientious objectors had been assigned to work in mental hospitals).
During the 1960s and 1970s, “Mennonites became well known as the people who arrived to give assistance after natural disasters,” usually operating under MCC’s Mennonite Disaster Service, founded in 1950.
Joseph S. Miller, a Mennonite theologian and historian, explained the impetus of “increasingly educated Mennonites” to become active peacemakers in the opening chapter to From the Ground Up – Mennonite Contributions to International Peacebuilding:
In 1977, MCC founded its Office on Crime and Justice, with restorative justice
pioneer Howard Zehr
as its first director. This office had the goal of moving the justice system away from retributive punishments toward processes that would help heal those harmed and restore communities. Zehr began the first victim/offender conferencing program in the United States during this period. Two years later, MCC founded Mennonite Conciliation Service to encourage Mennonites and others to pursue peaceful resolution of conflicts. (These two offices later were integrated into MCC’s Office of Justice and Peacebuilding.)
Ron Kraybill was the first director of this conciliation service – which initially was focused on North America – and the founding editor of Conciliation Quarterly, published from 1982 until 2005. John Paul Lederach, who had mediated between warring parties in Nicaragua from September 1987 to April 1988, took Kraybill’s place at MCC in 1989 when Kraybill went to a South African university to pursue a doctorate and to work at the Centre for Conflict Resolution in Cape Town.
The MCC tenure of Kraybill and Lederach overlapped a bit, allowing them opportunity to develop a shared vision for a new kind of peace studies program in the world of higher education. A dozen years later, Kraybill recalled what they dreamed of:
Launched in 1988 by the two largest North American Mennonite denominations and the Church of the Brethren, Christian Peacemaker Teams has consisted to the present (2011) of volunteers trained in nonviolent action, who are then sent to conflict zones. For its first 16 years, the organization was led by renowned peace activist Gene Stoltzfus, a graduate of Mennonite-founded Goshen College in Indiana. Merwyn De Mello, a 2005 graduate of CJP with ethnic roots in India and Africa, was named co-director of Christian Peacemaker Teams beginning January 2012.
In 2005, Tom Fox, a Quaker from Virginia who had taken a “strategic nonviolence” class at CJP in 2004, was the first to die in the service of Christian Peacemaker Teams. He had been serving in Iraq – often working tandem with Muslim Peacemaker Teams – when taken hostage and eventually killed. A year later, Alharith Abdulhameed Hassan, an Iraqi-Muslim psychiatrist who had attended the Summer Peacebuilding Institute in the summer of 2004 (sponsored by MCC) and who was out-spoken in his advocacy of peace processes, was waylaid and killed by armed men while traveling to work in Baghdad.
to teach sociology and international conciliation. He continued to head MCC’s conciliation work, including training MCC workers prior to their international assignments. This arrangement meant that Lederach had to travel often between EMU in Harrisonburg, Virginia, and MCC in Akron, Pennsylvania, an eight-hour round trip. He also continued to do international mediation. He was consulting in a number of conflicts, such as in the Basque region of Spain, Colombia, the Philippines, and Northern Ireland. After an exhausting trip, Lederach told himself, “There has to be a better way.” He began talking to Mennonite opinion-leaders about systematically educating people to do the kind of work he was doing.
Hizkias Assefa participated via email in discussing the need for, and shape of, a new graduate program at EMC. Assefa was a native of Ethiopia living in Kenya who held a master’s degree in law from Northwestern University and a master’s degree in economics and a doctoral degree in public and international affairs from the University of Pittsburgh. Already well-known for his protracted mediation work among warring parties in West Africa, Rwanda, Sudan and Ethiopia, Assefa agreed with Kraybill and Lederach that a new program was needed to bridge the gap between the academic study of conflict found at many universities and the lessons acquired by hands-on practitioners of peacebuilding such as Kraybill, Lederach and himself.
CJP began in the fall of the 1994-95 academic year with two masters-level students: Jonathan Bartsch, an American who had studied and worked in the Middle East for almost three years and who spoke Arabic, and Jim Hershberger, an American who had spent eight years with Mennonite Central Committee in war-torn Nicaragua and was fluent in Spanish. They started their studies a year before accreditation of the program was granted. They were joined in the spring semester of 1995 by Moe Kyaw Tun, who had been involved with the resistance movement in Myanmar (Burma) before fleeing to Thailand.
With their multi-lingualism and extensive experience in conflict zones, these first three students exemplified the kind of field-oriented individuals for whom CJP was established and who continue to be attracted to the program.
Both Sally Engle Merry, who is a Quaker, and Marc Gopin, who is Jewish, say that the Mennonites’ “brand” of Christianity appears to play a crucial role in enabling them and those they train to persist at working at deep, intractable conflicts over many years.
). The Kroc Institute was founded in 1986, eight years before CJP enrolled its first two students. Appleby may have been referring to the historical spectrum of Mennonite efforts, from the post-World War II work of Mennonite Central Committee through the founding of EMU’s “Conflict Transformation Program,” now known as its Center for Justice and Peacebuilding (CJP).
Since its inception, CJP has been aimed at persons with cross-cultural or extensive domestic experience who were already working in conflict resolution, humanitarian assistance, development, or social justice. As urged by founding director John Paul Lederach
, CJP has sought to avoid imposing North American models on conflict resolution on the rest of the world; instead it advocates strategies suggested by “cues and patterns elicited by the culture in question,” preferably by people intimately connected to that culture.
As part of their graduation requirements, students are expected to test their new understandings through doing “reflective practice” (also called an “internship” or “practicum”).
Campbell valued the low-key, respectful working style of the Lederachs and other Mennonites he met, according to one published report. They did not need or seek immediate results; they sought to be faithful to the biblical call to do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with God. "A lot of North Americans and South Africans came and gave us simplistic, quick answers – or they just threw up their hands – but the Mennonites didn’t do this," said Campbell. "They accompanied us through the uncertainty and hopelessness of those years. Their main priority was developing and maintaining relationships across all lines."
Campbell completed his master’s degree in 2002 after attending a succession of Summer Peacebuilding Institutes. In 2006, he and his wife went to Nepal to work for United Mission to Nepal, to offer “the kind of quiet support to Nepalese peacebuilders that Mennonites offered to them and their colleagues in Northern Ireland during ‘The Troubles.’”
In 2009, CJP began requiring a final comprehensive exam for master’s degree candidates. The exam was intended to assess these “core competencies”: presentation skills; case analysis; self-management; self-care; teambuilding/role-playing; interpersonal relational skills; understanding peacebuilding theories, including conflict transformation, restorative justice and trauma healing; research and interview skills; reflective practice; cultural competency; ethical issues; social change theories; and other specific practice skills and concepts, such as principled negotiation.
Nobel Peace Laureate Leymah Gbowee
started formal training in peacebuilding by attending a session of SPI, as did three of her close colleagues in West Africa: Liberian Sam Gbaydee Doe, who attended in the late 1990s while earning his master’s degree (’98); Nigerian Thelma Ekiyor, who attended in 2002; and Liberian Lutheran pastor Reverend “BB” Colley, who attended in 2000 and 2001.
A Switzerland-based committee that nominated 1,000 women as a group for the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize — the committee published a hardbound book containing the photos and brief bios of all 1,000 women — included eight women from six countries who had received training at EMU, usually through SPI.
Farida Aziz, an Afghan peace activist who has focused on the rights of women, took three courses in SPI in 1999 and returned in 2003 for a fourth course. Before, between, and after these SPI sessions, Aziz returned to Afghanistan (or to Pakistan near the border with Afghanistan) to do relief work aimed at easing the plight of Afghan women and children. After the Taliban threatened her and her family, including two young children, with death, she was granted asylum in the United States, with the help of then-Senator Hillary Clinton. She has testified to the U.S. Senate on women’s roles in rebuilding Afghanistan and was beside President George W. Bush
when he signed the Afghan Women and Children Relief Act in 2001.
Five CJP-published booklets, issued in 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011, contain portrait-photos and reflections of some of the participants in that year’s SPI. Predictably, many students comment on having learned much from their courses and fellow students. However, the SPI participants also refer to having fun. Babu Ayindo, a 1998 master’s degree graduate from Kenya who returned to teach in SPI 2011, said: “Through song, dance, poetry, and music, people are finding another language to transcend the conflicts that they are experiencing.”
to give a series of “seminars in trauma awareness and recovery” to hundreds of people from New York City following the 9/11 attacks.
These seminars have gone far beyond their original NYC clientele. More than 7,000 people have taken STAR over the last decade, though not always in the same format. STAR has been adapted to particular audiences. There is, for instance, a STAR for “adults who want practical skills to work with youth in addressing trauma, resolving conflict and preventing violence. It has been piloted in Palestine, Kenya, New Orleans and Northern Ireland. It is part of the curriculum in 57 high schools in Nairobi, Kenya” Other variations are used for war veterans and for dealing with the continuing effects of historical harms, such as slavery.
of Liberia
, named Nobel Peace Prize
Laureate in October 2011. Two CJP master’s alumni – Sam Gbaydee Doe, a Liberian who graduated in 1998 and finished a PhD at a British university in 2010, and Emmanuel Bombande, a Ghanaian who graduated in 2002 – founded what has become (as of 2011) the largest peacebuilding organization in Africa, the West African Network for Peacebuilding, known as WANEP. This organization provided the seed money and support for Women in Peacebuilding Network, the women’s organization that Gbowee co-founded and led during its successful struggle to end the second civil war in Liberia in 2003.
From January 2001 through April 2008, CJP was home to the Fulbright Foreign Student Conflict Resolution Program. Each year a cohort of eight to ten students – the cohort alternated annually between students drawn from Middle Eastern countries and those from southwest Asia – joined the master’s program in conflict transformation. Each cohort included students from groups in conflict with each other – i.e., from Israel and Palestine or from India and Pakistan. They totaled 52 students over seven years. In the fall of 2004, the Fulbright group represented 11 countries, including a handful that weren’t part of a cohort: Morocco, Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Indonesia, Rwanda, Kenya, Uganda, Pakistan and Syria.
CJP’s graduates can be found working in government, such as an embassy posting for their country or in a US agency such as USAID; in para-governmental organizations, such as the Peace Corps
and United Nations
; in refugee assistance programs, plus the media, educational institutions, and numerous non-governmental agencies, such as World Vision
, Himalayan Human Rights Monitors, Seeds of Peace, Search for Common Ground, Open Society Foundation, and Catholic Relief Services
. In North America, a preponderance of the graduates are associated with mediation and dispute-resolution centers and restorative justice initiatives, including those in the criminal justice sector and in schools and colleges. A 2010 survey of the first 36 graduates of the program found that 22 percent pursued doctoral degrees in the field within 10 years of graduation.
People who were affiliated with CJP (or SPI), as students or teachers, in earlier years have gone on to found peacebuilding organizations or programs in a dozen countries.
Alumni playing key roles in peacebuilding, restorative justice and trauma healing around the world include:
WOMEN — Nuria Abdullah Abd, MA '07, Women's leader in International Peacebuilding Alliance (UN-affiliated), based in Kenya. http://www.interpeace.org; Iris De Leon-Hartshorn, MA ’05, director for Transformative Peacemaking, a cabinet-level position with the Mennonite Church (USA); Sandra Dunsmore, Graduate Certificate '97 — Latin America Director for the Open Society; Leymah Gbowee
, MA' 07 , 2011 Nobel Peace Laureate; Carol Grosman, MA '08, director of Jerusalem Stories, a project of the Democracy Council (www.jerusalemstories.org); Claudia Henning, Graduate Certificate '02, recipient of 2006 award from International Association of Chiefs of Police for restorative justice work with juveniles; Tammy Krause, MA ’99, founding director of JustBridges, a U.S. group representing the needs of victims, working across barriers between prosecuting and defense lawyers, winner of Soros Justice Fellowship and Ashoka Fellowship; Jan Jenner, MA ’99, director of the Practice & Training Institute at EMU and author of two books on peacebuilding; Arieta Koila Olsson, MA '05, co-founder and director of the Pacific Center for Peacebuilding, based in Fiji; Krista Rigalo, MA '00, U.S. Peace Corps chief of programming and training for Africa; Nilofar Sakhi, MA '07, Afghanistan country director for the Open Society; Manjrika Sewak, MA’02, senior program officer at WISCOMP (Women in Security, Conflict Management and Peace) in New Delhi, a peace-building initiative of the Foundation for Universal Responsibility of the Dalai Lama; Anjana Shakya, MA '02, founder and chairperson of Himalayan Human Rights Monitors (www.himrights.org) and executive coordinator of Beyond Bejing Committee (www.beyondbeijing.org/); Jebiwot Sumbeiywo, MA ’04, chief of party, Peace II, PACT, Inc., in Africa; Ruth Zimmerman, MA ’02, World Vision country program manager for India, former co-director of CJP.
MEN — Babu Ayindo, MA '98, consultant on peacebuilding in Africa since late 1990s, employed by multiple foundations and agencies for work in 11 countries and teaching at eight peacebuilding institutes in six countries; Jonathan Bartsch, MA '97, CEO of CDR (Collaborative Decision Resources), the oldest mediation and facilitation organization in the United States; Emmanuel Bombande, MA '02, co-founder and executive director of West African Network for Peace (www.wanep.org/wanep/), awarded the Millennium Excellence Peace Award in Ghana in 2005; Joseph Campbell, MA '02, received Order of the British Empire from Queen Elizabeth in 1997 for his peace efforts in Northern Ireland; Ameet Sharma Dhakal, MA’02, editor-in-chief of Republica, an English language daily published in Kathmandu; Sam Gbaydee Doe, MA '98, PhD (U. of Bradford), co-founder and first executive director of West African Network for Peacebulding (www.wanep.org/wanep/), advisor to the United Nations on development and reconciliation; Ali Gohar, MA '02, co-founder and director of JustPeace International (http://www.justpeaceint.org), working extensively in Pakistan, merging restorative justice principles with traditional jirga processes; Husam Naji Jubran, MA ’04, trainer of thousands of non-violent activists concerned with the future of Palestinians and leader of non-violent actions to protest the situation in the West Bank and the treatment of Palestinians generally; John Katunga, MA '05, leading peacebuilding efforts for Catholic Relief Services in East Africa; Jae Young Lee, MA '03, founding director of the Northeast Asia Regional Peacebuilding Institute, networking and educating peace workers on the Korean peninsula, Japan, and China; Akum Longchari, MA '00, co-founder and director of The Morung Express newspaper in Nagaland (India) who is a main player in peace efforts between minority population in Nagaland and the central government of India; Dev Anand Ramiah, MA ’02, conflict and prevention specialist, United Nations Development Programme; Saeed Murad Rahi, MA '07, rule of law expert, USAID program in Afghanistan; Fred Yiga, MA ’0, UN chief technical advisor to the Minister of Internal Affairs and inspector general of police in South Sudan; Alfiado Zunguza, MA '99, founder and executive director of JustaPaz, the principal peace organization of the Portuguese-speaking world.
Restorative justice
Restorative justice is an approach to justice that focuses on the needs of victims, offenders, as well as the involved community, instead of satisfying abstract legal principles or punishing the offender...
, trauma healing, equitable development, and addressing organizational conflict. CJP is housed at Eastern Mennonite University
Eastern Mennonite University
Eastern Mennonite University is a private liberal arts university in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, affiliated with one of the historic peace churches, the Mennonite Church USA. Its main campus is on the edge of the small city of Harrisonburg, Virginia, about three miles from state-owned...
(EMU) in Harrisonburg, Virginia
Harrisonburg, Virginia
Harrisonburg is an independent city in the Shenandoah Valley region of Virginia in the United States. Its population as of 2010 is 48,914, and at the 2000 census, 40,468. Harrisonburg is the county seat of Rockingham County and the core city of the Harrisonburg, Virginia Metropolitan Statistical...
, which describes itself as “a leader among faith-based universities” in emphasizing “peacebuilding, creation care, experiential learning, and cross-cultural engagement.” One of the three 2011 Nobel Peace Laureates, Leymah Gbowee
Leymah Gbowee
Leymah Roberta Gbowee is a Liberian peace activist responsible for leading a women's peace movement that brought an end to the Second Liberian Civil War in 2003. This led to the election of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf in Liberia, the first African nation with a female president...
of Liberia, earned a master’s degree in conflict transformation from CJP in 2007.
History
The Center for Justice and Peacebuilding (CJP) is anchored in two currents within the Mennonite stream of Christianity: (1) its renunciation of all forms of violence and (2) its tradition of helping people suffering from violent conflict or natural calamities, regardless of their religion or ethnicityRoots in Mennonite Central Committee
In 1920, as a first major step toward being of assistance outside their immediate communities, representatives of various Mennonite conferences formed Mennonite Central CommitteeMennonite Central Committee
The Mennonite Central Committee is a relief, service, and peace agency representing 15 Mennonite, Brethren in Christ and Amish bodies in North America. The U.S. headquarters are in Akron, Pennsylvania, the Canadian in Winnipeg, Manitoba.-History:...
(MCC) to aid fellow Mennonites and other hungry, suffering people in Russia and Ukraine.
By the 1930s and 1940s, MCC had developed into being the primary relief, service, and development agency of the Anabaptists in North America, who were typically affiliated with Mennonite and Brethren in Christ churches.
In the mid and late 1940s – during World War II – MCC began to be active in peace and justice matters in the United States, particularly in advocating for alternatives to military service and for humane treatment of the mentally ill. (As an alternative to serving as soldiers, many Mennonite conscientious objectors had been assigned to work in mental hospitals).
During the 1960s and 1970s, “Mennonites became well known as the people who arrived to give assistance after natural disasters,” usually operating under MCC’s Mennonite Disaster Service, founded in 1950.
Peace and justice
By the late 1970s and early 1980s, MCC and its supporters were discussing ways to be even more “energetic in showing mercy and love toward enemies as well as toward all mankind.” They felt called to do better at organizing and training workers in the peace and justice field, largely because “Mennonites take literally Christ’s command, in Matthew 5:39, to overcome evil with good and love the enemy.”Joseph S. Miller, a Mennonite theologian and historian, explained the impetus of “increasingly educated Mennonites” to become active peacemakers in the opening chapter to From the Ground Up – Mennonite Contributions to International Peacebuilding:
There was an increasing realization that cleaning up and rebuilding after a war, riot or tornado was important, but a Christian was also called to address systemic conditions that created injustice and violence. Mennonite relief workers were taught by their hosts that it was not enough for relief workers to distribute food and clothing to the starving and homeless. The starving and homeless articulated the need for more than material assistance. Mennonites were also asked to be peacemakers, to work at changing systems and institutions that caused suffering.
In 1977, MCC founded its Office on Crime and Justice, with restorative justice
Restorative justice
Restorative justice is an approach to justice that focuses on the needs of victims, offenders, as well as the involved community, instead of satisfying abstract legal principles or punishing the offender...
pioneer Howard Zehr
Howard Zehr
Howard Zehr is Professor of Restorative Justice at Eastern Mennonite University's Center for Justice and Peacebuilding in Harrisonburg, Virginia. Zehr previously served 19 years as director of Mennonite Central Committee’s Office on Crime and Justice...
as its first director. This office had the goal of moving the justice system away from retributive punishments toward processes that would help heal those harmed and restore communities. Zehr began the first victim/offender conferencing program in the United States during this period. Two years later, MCC founded Mennonite Conciliation Service to encourage Mennonites and others to pursue peaceful resolution of conflicts. (These two offices later were integrated into MCC’s Office of Justice and Peacebuilding.)
Ron Kraybill was the first director of this conciliation service – which initially was focused on North America – and the founding editor of Conciliation Quarterly, published from 1982 until 2005. John Paul Lederach, who had mediated between warring parties in Nicaragua from September 1987 to April 1988, took Kraybill’s place at MCC in 1989 when Kraybill went to a South African university to pursue a doctorate and to work at the Centre for Conflict Resolution in Cape Town.
The MCC tenure of Kraybill and Lederach overlapped a bit, allowing them opportunity to develop a shared vision for a new kind of peace studies program in the world of higher education. A dozen years later, Kraybill recalled what they dreamed of:
We wanted a good mix of academics via theory conceptualization, but with practice in the real world. I don’t think we were necessarily thinking of a master’s program, just some kind of situation where teaching and practice went together. Another strong desire was to work in a team with others for an institution where a faith-based perspective was valued. We were wary of desire for individual prestige and wanted to work in a setting where individuals were more committed to an institutional mission than to going to the highest ladder of individual success.
Non-violent “army”
Five years after the launching of MCC’s Conciliation Service, many of those involved in MCC work heard a speech by Ronald J. Sider, author of the bestselling Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger (published and republished in 1977, 1997, 2005). As the keynote speaker at the 11th Mennonite World Conference in 1984, Sider called Mennonites to create “a nonviolent army of international peacekeepers.” He elaborated:We must be prepared to die by the thousands. Those who believed in peace through the sword have not hesitated to die. Proudly, courageously, they gave their lives. Again and again, they sacrificed bright futures to the tragic illusion that one more righteous crusade would bring peace in their time, and they laid down their lives by the millions. Unless we . . . are ready to start to die by the thousands in dramatic vigorous new exploits for peace and justice, we should sadly confess that we never really meant what we said, and we dare never whisper another word about pacifism to our sisters and brothers in those desperate lands filled with injustice. Unless we are ready to die developing new nonviolent attempts to reduce conflict, we should confess that we never really meant that the cross was an alternative to the sword.
Launched in 1988 by the two largest North American Mennonite denominations and the Church of the Brethren, Christian Peacemaker Teams has consisted to the present (2011) of volunteers trained in nonviolent action, who are then sent to conflict zones. For its first 16 years, the organization was led by renowned peace activist Gene Stoltzfus, a graduate of Mennonite-founded Goshen College in Indiana. Merwyn De Mello, a 2005 graduate of CJP with ethnic roots in India and Africa, was named co-director of Christian Peacemaker Teams beginning January 2012.
In 2005, Tom Fox, a Quaker from Virginia who had taken a “strategic nonviolence” class at CJP in 2004, was the first to die in the service of Christian Peacemaker Teams. He had been serving in Iraq – often working tandem with Muslim Peacemaker Teams – when taken hostage and eventually killed. A year later, Alharith Abdulhameed Hassan, an Iraqi-Muslim psychiatrist who had attended the Summer Peacebuilding Institute in the summer of 2004 (sponsored by MCC) and who was out-spoken in his advocacy of peace processes, was waylaid and killed by armed men while traveling to work in Baghdad.
Pre-CJP deliberations
In 1990, Eastern Mennonite College (EMC) – it changed its name to “University” in 1994 after graduate programs were added – hired John Paul LederachJohn Paul Lederach
John Paul Lederach is Professor of International Peacebuilding at the University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana, and concurrently Distinguished Scholar at Eastern Mennonite University. He has written widely on conflict resolution and mediation. He holds a Ph.D. in sociology from the University...
to teach sociology and international conciliation. He continued to head MCC’s conciliation work, including training MCC workers prior to their international assignments. This arrangement meant that Lederach had to travel often between EMU in Harrisonburg, Virginia, and MCC in Akron, Pennsylvania, an eight-hour round trip. He also continued to do international mediation. He was consulting in a number of conflicts, such as in the Basque region of Spain, Colombia, the Philippines, and Northern Ireland. After an exhausting trip, Lederach told himself, “There has to be a better way.” He began talking to Mennonite opinion-leaders about systematically educating people to do the kind of work he was doing.
Hizkias Assefa participated via email in discussing the need for, and shape of, a new graduate program at EMC. Assefa was a native of Ethiopia living in Kenya who held a master’s degree in law from Northwestern University and a master’s degree in economics and a doctoral degree in public and international affairs from the University of Pittsburgh. Already well-known for his protracted mediation work among warring parties in West Africa, Rwanda, Sudan and Ethiopia, Assefa agreed with Kraybill and Lederach that a new program was needed to bridge the gap between the academic study of conflict found at many universities and the lessons acquired by hands-on practitioners of peacebuilding such as Kraybill, Lederach and himself.
First three students
A pair of retired educators, James and Marian Payne (both EMU alumni), stepped forward when they learned of the hope of a center devoted to peace education at EMU. They guaranteed the funds necessary to support CJP for its first year of existence, plus made CJP the beneficiary of their estate. The Paynes made an initial donation of $25,000 (by 2007, their donations totaled more than $500,000.)CJP began in the fall of the 1994-95 academic year with two masters-level students: Jonathan Bartsch, an American who had studied and worked in the Middle East for almost three years and who spoke Arabic, and Jim Hershberger, an American who had spent eight years with Mennonite Central Committee in war-torn Nicaragua and was fluent in Spanish. They started their studies a year before accreditation of the program was granted. They were joined in the spring semester of 1995 by Moe Kyaw Tun, who had been involved with the resistance movement in Myanmar (Burma) before fleeing to Thailand.
With their multi-lingualism and extensive experience in conflict zones, these first three students exemplified the kind of field-oriented individuals for whom CJP was established and who continue to be attracted to the program.
Mennonite-style peacebuilding
The 1995 directory of the Consortium on Peace Education, Research and Development listed 15 colleges and universities in the United States offering both undergraduate and graduate programs in peace studies, but these programs varied widely. Many focused on “dispute resolution,” often viewed through a legal or business-management lens. Others centered on research into war, peace and security issues, often staffed and backed by people who viewed the military as an acceptable vehicle for arriving at peace, or at least for suppressing open hostilities.Characteristics
In establishing CJP, its founders said they sought to build on the lessons learned by MCC and other Mennonites in the peace arena. Some of those lessons are repeatedly referenced by scholars who have analyzed Mennonites’ contributions to peace and social justice. Five recurring characteristics are:- Humility: Instead of playing the role of “educated professional telling social subordinates how to do things,” anthropologist Sally Engle Merry wrote that Mennonites tend toward “listening, being creative and innovative, remaining vulnerable, making space for others to take control over their lives. This contrasts with models of intervention that emphasize mastery and accomplishment. The Mennonite approach runs counter to dominant North American cultural themes of individualism, success, and being sure to get the credit for personal achievement.”
- Openness to personal change: Rabbi and scholar Marc Gopin wrote: “The Mennonite intervener is prepared to go through a spiritual transformation... [I]t seems quite clear that ethical traits, such as gratitude, an eagerness to learn from others, an openness to positive change, and generosity are all critical to Mennonite conflict transformation.” In a Crossroads magazine article summarizing the parting thoughts of 16 graduating CJP students – whose average age was 39 and who represented eight countries on three continents – the students focused on their personal transformation, rather than on the knowledge they had gained. Ameet Sharma Dhakal, a Fulbright-supported student who was returning to a high-level editorial position with a daily newspaper in Nepal, said that the best part about the program was “growing together with other people. Before I always thought that you have to fight and win for yourself. But … I’ve learned that transformation of self is the beginning of transforming conflicts… And it is a life-long process.”
- Long-term commitment: Dr. Sally Engle Merry wrote that a distinctive feature of Mennonite-style peace work is “commitment to long-term involvement in the conflict situation. This is related to the emphasis on learning the languages and culture, on developing workshops and trainings out of local languages and practices, on building relationships and serving as bridges, all of which require an investment of time.”
- Community: Dr. Marc Gopin has observed that Mennonites’ ability to persevere in their peace-justice work despite often “witnessing the worst human degradation” seems to be linked to feeling supported by the prayers and other expressions of care by their home communities. This reliance on community “is a vital component of who they are and also something the field of conflict resolution in general may be able to learn from them.” This community rootedness may also account for Mennonites’ belief that “peace cannot be imposed from the top down without …long-term, incremental changes in local communities.” Thus Mennonites tend to focus as much, or more, of their efforts at engaging with ordinary people at the grassroots, as with those at the top of a social or political hierarchy.
- Non-violent stance: CJP personnel and many of its graduates, regardless of their faith traditions, have taken a clear stance against the use of violence. As one might expect, CJP-trained people cite Jesus and Martin Luther King Jr. as role models, but they also reference such figures as Mahatma Gandhi (Hindu), Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan (Muslim), and Thich Nhat Hanh (Buddhist).
Both Sally Engle Merry, who is a Quaker, and Marc Gopin, who is Jewish, say that the Mennonites’ “brand” of Christianity appears to play a crucial role in enabling them and those they train to persist at working at deep, intractable conflicts over many years.
CJP’s niche
In a book published in 2000, R. Scott Appleby called the Mennonites “the elder statesmen” in the “rapidly growing but still inchoate field of religiously motivated conflict transformation.” Appleby was at that time, and remains now (through 2011), a faculty member at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, housed within a Roman Catholic university (University of Notre DameUniversity of Notre Dame
The University of Notre Dame du Lac is a Catholic research university located in Notre Dame, an unincorporated community north of the city of South Bend, in St. Joseph County, Indiana, United States...
). The Kroc Institute was founded in 1986, eight years before CJP enrolled its first two students. Appleby may have been referring to the historical spectrum of Mennonite efforts, from the post-World War II work of Mennonite Central Committee through the founding of EMU’s “Conflict Transformation Program,” now known as its Center for Justice and Peacebuilding (CJP).
Since its inception, CJP has been aimed at persons with cross-cultural or extensive domestic experience who were already working in conflict resolution, humanitarian assistance, development, or social justice. As urged by founding director John Paul Lederach
John Paul Lederach
John Paul Lederach is Professor of International Peacebuilding at the University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana, and concurrently Distinguished Scholar at Eastern Mennonite University. He has written widely on conflict resolution and mediation. He holds a Ph.D. in sociology from the University...
, CJP has sought to avoid imposing North American models on conflict resolution on the rest of the world; instead it advocates strategies suggested by “cues and patterns elicited by the culture in question,” preferably by people intimately connected to that culture.
As part of their graduation requirements, students are expected to test their new understandings through doing “reflective practice” (also called an “internship” or “practicum”).
Northern Ireland model
Joseph Campbell, a Presbyterian who spent decades on peace work in Northern Ireland, is an example of the type of person attracted to CJP. Campbell became interested in CJP through his interactions with several CJP-linked Mennonites who led workshops in mediation, reconciliation and restorative justice in Northern Ireland in the 1980s and 1990s. Campbell’s persistent and sometimes heroic efforts to “bridge the divide” – by working with youth, citizens traumatized by the violence, police officers, prisoners and angry communities on both sides of the Protestant-Catholic schism – prompted the Queen of England to award him the Order of the British Empire in 1997. Campbell came to CJP as a graduate student after receiving the Queen’s award because he felt the need for respite and wanted to deepen his understanding of the peacebuilding field.Campbell valued the low-key, respectful working style of the Lederachs and other Mennonites he met, according to one published report. They did not need or seek immediate results; they sought to be faithful to the biblical call to do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with God. "A lot of North Americans and South Africans came and gave us simplistic, quick answers – or they just threw up their hands – but the Mennonites didn’t do this," said Campbell. "They accompanied us through the uncertainty and hopelessness of those years. Their main priority was developing and maintaining relationships across all lines."
Campbell completed his master’s degree in 2002 after attending a succession of Summer Peacebuilding Institutes. In 2006, he and his wife went to Nepal to work for United Mission to Nepal, to offer “the kind of quiet support to Nepalese peacebuilders that Mennonites offered to them and their colleagues in Northern Ireland during ‘The Troubles.’”
“Elicitive” approach & assessments
CJP engages in what it calls an “elicitive style” of teaching. A page on the EMU website describes the style in this way:CJP uses the elicitive or participatory model of education. In this model, students are actively involved in teaching themselves and others. Participatory learning differs from the “transfer learning” found in most educational institutions where the teacher is assumed to be the holder of expert knowledge that must be transferred to the student. In participatory learning, the teacher facilitates the exchange of knowledge and experiences, enabling students and teachers to work together to deepen their understanding of the subject matter. This approach to learning fosters mutual respect and the kind of personal reflection and transformation needed for “justpeace” work.
In 2009, CJP began requiring a final comprehensive exam for master’s degree candidates. The exam was intended to assess these “core competencies”: presentation skills; case analysis; self-management; self-care; teambuilding/role-playing; interpersonal relational skills; understanding peacebuilding theories, including conflict transformation, restorative justice and trauma healing; research and interview skills; reflective practice; cultural competency; ethical issues; social change theories; and other specific practice skills and concepts, such as principled negotiation.
Summer Peacebuilding Institute
As of 2008, 2,200 people from 119 countries had come through the Summer Peacebuilding Institute (SPI), taking courses either for credit or training purposes. SPI typically offers five choices of courses lasting seven days. This comprises one session. Each SPI has four successive sessions; the first starts in early May and the last finishes in late June. This means a participant might take a maximum of four courses (out of perhaps 20 listed in the course catalog), scheduled one after another over a five-week period from May through June.Nobel Peace Laureate Leymah Gbowee
Leymah Gbowee
Leymah Roberta Gbowee is a Liberian peace activist responsible for leading a women's peace movement that brought an end to the Second Liberian Civil War in 2003. This led to the election of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf in Liberia, the first African nation with a female president...
started formal training in peacebuilding by attending a session of SPI, as did three of her close colleagues in West Africa: Liberian Sam Gbaydee Doe, who attended in the late 1990s while earning his master’s degree (’98); Nigerian Thelma Ekiyor, who attended in 2002; and Liberian Lutheran pastor Reverend “BB” Colley, who attended in 2000 and 2001.
A Switzerland-based committee that nominated 1,000 women as a group for the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize — the committee published a hardbound book containing the photos and brief bios of all 1,000 women — included eight women from six countries who had received training at EMU, usually through SPI.
Farida Aziz, an Afghan peace activist who has focused on the rights of women, took three courses in SPI in 1999 and returned in 2003 for a fourth course. Before, between, and after these SPI sessions, Aziz returned to Afghanistan (or to Pakistan near the border with Afghanistan) to do relief work aimed at easing the plight of Afghan women and children. After the Taliban threatened her and her family, including two young children, with death, she was granted asylum in the United States, with the help of then-Senator Hillary Clinton. She has testified to the U.S. Senate on women’s roles in rebuilding Afghanistan and was beside President George W. Bush
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....
when he signed the Afghan Women and Children Relief Act in 2001.
Five CJP-published booklets, issued in 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011, contain portrait-photos and reflections of some of the participants in that year’s SPI. Predictably, many students comment on having learned much from their courses and fellow students. However, the SPI participants also refer to having fun. Babu Ayindo, a 1998 master’s degree graduate from Kenya who returned to teach in SPI 2011, said: “Through song, dance, poetry, and music, people are finding another language to transcend the conflicts that they are experiencing.”
STAR (Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience)
Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience — usually called STAR — is a program that was launched at EMU in response to the events of 9/11. “STAR’s mission is to strengthen the capacity of leaders and organizations to address trauma, break cycles of violence and build resilience at the individual, community and societal levels.” STAR consists of a foundational five-day training seminar and STAR specialty trainings. STAR was made possible by nearly $1 million in grant money in 2002 (renewed in 2003 with another $1 million) from Church World ServiceChurch World Service
Founded in 1946, Church World Service is a cooperative ministry of 37 Christian denominations and communions in the United States, providing sustainable self-help, development, disaster relief, and refugee assistance around the world...
to give a series of “seminars in trauma awareness and recovery” to hundreds of people from New York City following the 9/11 attacks.
These seminars have gone far beyond their original NYC clientele. More than 7,000 people have taken STAR over the last decade, though not always in the same format. STAR has been adapted to particular audiences. There is, for instance, a STAR for “adults who want practical skills to work with youth in addressing trauma, resolving conflict and preventing violence. It has been piloted in Palestine, Kenya, New Orleans and Northern Ireland. It is part of the curriculum in 57 high schools in Nairobi, Kenya” Other variations are used for war veterans and for dealing with the continuing effects of historical harms, such as slavery.
Work of alumni
As of December 2010, 360 people from 51 countries had earned a master’s degree (42 to 45 semester hours) or graduate certificate (15 semester hours) in conflict transformation from CJP. The most famous of these is Leymah GboweeLeymah Gbowee
Leymah Roberta Gbowee is a Liberian peace activist responsible for leading a women's peace movement that brought an end to the Second Liberian Civil War in 2003. This led to the election of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf in Liberia, the first African nation with a female president...
of Liberia
Liberia
Liberia , officially the Republic of Liberia, is a country in West Africa. It is bordered by Sierra Leone on the west, Guinea on the north and Côte d'Ivoire on the east. Liberia's coastline is composed of mostly mangrove forests while the more sparsely populated inland consists of forests that open...
, named Nobel Peace Prize
Nobel Peace Prize
The Nobel Peace Prize is one of the five Nobel Prizes bequeathed by the Swedish industrialist and inventor Alfred Nobel.-Background:According to Nobel's will, the Peace Prize shall be awarded to the person who...
Laureate in October 2011. Two CJP master’s alumni – Sam Gbaydee Doe, a Liberian who graduated in 1998 and finished a PhD at a British university in 2010, and Emmanuel Bombande, a Ghanaian who graduated in 2002 – founded what has become (as of 2011) the largest peacebuilding organization in Africa, the West African Network for Peacebuilding, known as WANEP. This organization provided the seed money and support for Women in Peacebuilding Network, the women’s organization that Gbowee co-founded and led during its successful struggle to end the second civil war in Liberia in 2003.
From January 2001 through April 2008, CJP was home to the Fulbright Foreign Student Conflict Resolution Program. Each year a cohort of eight to ten students – the cohort alternated annually between students drawn from Middle Eastern countries and those from southwest Asia – joined the master’s program in conflict transformation. Each cohort included students from groups in conflict with each other – i.e., from Israel and Palestine or from India and Pakistan. They totaled 52 students over seven years. In the fall of 2004, the Fulbright group represented 11 countries, including a handful that weren’t part of a cohort: Morocco, Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Indonesia, Rwanda, Kenya, Uganda, Pakistan and Syria.
CJP’s graduates can be found working in government, such as an embassy posting for their country or in a US agency such as USAID; in para-governmental organizations, such as the Peace Corps
Peace Corps
The Peace Corps is an American volunteer program run by the United States Government, as well as a government agency of the same name. The mission of the Peace Corps includes three goals: providing technical assistance, helping people outside the United States to understand US culture, and helping...
and United Nations
United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
; in refugee assistance programs, plus the media, educational institutions, and numerous non-governmental agencies, such as World Vision
World Vision
World Vision, founded in the USA in 1950, is an evangelical relief and development organization whose stated goal is "to follow our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ in working with the poor and oppressed to promote human transformation, seek justice and bear witness to the good news of the Kingdom of...
, Himalayan Human Rights Monitors, Seeds of Peace, Search for Common Ground, Open Society Foundation, and Catholic Relief Services
Catholic Relief Services
Catholic Relief Services is the international humanitarian agency of the Catholic community in the United States. Founded in 1943 by the U.S. bishops, the agency provides assistance to 130 million people in more than 90 countries and territories in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and...
. In North America, a preponderance of the graduates are associated with mediation and dispute-resolution centers and restorative justice initiatives, including those in the criminal justice sector and in schools and colleges. A 2010 survey of the first 36 graduates of the program found that 22 percent pursued doctoral degrees in the field within 10 years of graduation.
People who were affiliated with CJP (or SPI), as students or teachers, in earlier years have gone on to found peacebuilding organizations or programs in a dozen countries.
- West African Network for Peacebuilding (Ghana)
- Women Peace and Security Network, Africa (Ghana)
- African Peacebuilding Institute at the Mindolo Ecumenical Peace Foundation (Zambia)
- JustaPaz (Mozambique)
- Ministry of Peace and Reconciliation (Burundi)
- RECONCILE (Sudan)
- Pacific Centre for Peacebuilding (Fiji)
- Mindanao Peacebuilding Institute (Philippines)
- Northeast Asia Regional Peacebuilding Institute (South Korea)
- Canadian School of Peacebuilding (Winnipeg, Canada)
- Peace Academy in Sarajevo (Bosnia-Herzogovina)
- School for Peace & JustaPaz (Colombia)
- Summer Peacebuilding & Development Institute at American University (Washington D.C.)
Alumni playing key roles in peacebuilding, restorative justice and trauma healing around the world include:
WOMEN — Nuria Abdullah Abd, MA '07, Women's leader in International Peacebuilding Alliance (UN-affiliated), based in Kenya. http://www.interpeace.org; Iris De Leon-Hartshorn, MA ’05, director for Transformative Peacemaking, a cabinet-level position with the Mennonite Church (USA); Sandra Dunsmore, Graduate Certificate '97 — Latin America Director for the Open Society; Leymah Gbowee
Leymah Gbowee
Leymah Roberta Gbowee is a Liberian peace activist responsible for leading a women's peace movement that brought an end to the Second Liberian Civil War in 2003. This led to the election of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf in Liberia, the first African nation with a female president...
, MA' 07 , 2011 Nobel Peace Laureate; Carol Grosman, MA '08, director of Jerusalem Stories, a project of the Democracy Council (www.jerusalemstories.org); Claudia Henning, Graduate Certificate '02, recipient of 2006 award from International Association of Chiefs of Police for restorative justice work with juveniles; Tammy Krause, MA ’99, founding director of JustBridges, a U.S. group representing the needs of victims, working across barriers between prosecuting and defense lawyers, winner of Soros Justice Fellowship and Ashoka Fellowship; Jan Jenner, MA ’99, director of the Practice & Training Institute at EMU and author of two books on peacebuilding; Arieta Koila Olsson, MA '05, co-founder and director of the Pacific Center for Peacebuilding, based in Fiji; Krista Rigalo, MA '00, U.S. Peace Corps chief of programming and training for Africa; Nilofar Sakhi, MA '07, Afghanistan country director for the Open Society; Manjrika Sewak, MA’02, senior program officer at WISCOMP (Women in Security, Conflict Management and Peace) in New Delhi, a peace-building initiative of the Foundation for Universal Responsibility of the Dalai Lama; Anjana Shakya, MA '02, founder and chairperson of Himalayan Human Rights Monitors (www.himrights.org) and executive coordinator of Beyond Bejing Committee (www.beyondbeijing.org/); Jebiwot Sumbeiywo, MA ’04, chief of party, Peace II, PACT, Inc., in Africa; Ruth Zimmerman, MA ’02, World Vision country program manager for India, former co-director of CJP.
MEN — Babu Ayindo, MA '98, consultant on peacebuilding in Africa since late 1990s, employed by multiple foundations and agencies for work in 11 countries and teaching at eight peacebuilding institutes in six countries; Jonathan Bartsch, MA '97, CEO of CDR (Collaborative Decision Resources), the oldest mediation and facilitation organization in the United States; Emmanuel Bombande, MA '02, co-founder and executive director of West African Network for Peace (www.wanep.org/wanep/), awarded the Millennium Excellence Peace Award in Ghana in 2005; Joseph Campbell, MA '02, received Order of the British Empire from Queen Elizabeth in 1997 for his peace efforts in Northern Ireland; Ameet Sharma Dhakal, MA’02, editor-in-chief of Republica, an English language daily published in Kathmandu; Sam Gbaydee Doe, MA '98, PhD (U. of Bradford), co-founder and first executive director of West African Network for Peacebulding (www.wanep.org/wanep/), advisor to the United Nations on development and reconciliation; Ali Gohar, MA '02, co-founder and director of JustPeace International (http://www.justpeaceint.org), working extensively in Pakistan, merging restorative justice principles with traditional jirga processes; Husam Naji Jubran, MA ’04, trainer of thousands of non-violent activists concerned with the future of Palestinians and leader of non-violent actions to protest the situation in the West Bank and the treatment of Palestinians generally; John Katunga, MA '05, leading peacebuilding efforts for Catholic Relief Services in East Africa; Jae Young Lee, MA '03, founding director of the Northeast Asia Regional Peacebuilding Institute, networking and educating peace workers on the Korean peninsula, Japan, and China; Akum Longchari, MA '00, co-founder and director of The Morung Express newspaper in Nagaland (India) who is a main player in peace efforts between minority population in Nagaland and the central government of India; Dev Anand Ramiah, MA ’02, conflict and prevention specialist, United Nations Development Programme; Saeed Murad Rahi, MA '07, rule of law expert, USAID program in Afghanistan; Fred Yiga, MA ’0, UN chief technical advisor to the Minister of Internal Affairs and inspector general of police in South Sudan; Alfiado Zunguza, MA '99, founder and executive director of JustaPaz, the principal peace organization of the Portuguese-speaking world.