Renowned peacebuilder receives award
Internationally renowned peacebuilder John Paul Lederach, who has committed his life and work to nonviolent approaches to conflict for more than 40 years, has been awarded the 36th Niwano Peace Foundation Peace Prize. Lederach, currently a senior fellow at Humanity United, is a co-founder and the first director of the Eastern Mennonite University’s (EMU) Center…
True connections
Walk into Hagar Association, a school in Be’er-Sheva, Israel, and it looks like almost any other school. But if you listen closely, you’ll hear children speaking both Hebrew and Arabic, and see them playing together—uncommon sounds and sights in the region. Hagar is a bilingual school for 330 children of Jewish-Israelis and Palestinian citizens of…
Nonviolent action in history and today
“In the Second World War there were over 10,000 loyal Canadians who served Canada without weapons. What were they called?” This is the question Conrad Stoesz has been asking students at the Red River Heritage Fair for more than a decade. War has long been the popular narrative throughout history and it continues to be…
Peace is everyone’s business
The political scientist Harold Lasswell once defined politics to be “who gets what, when and how.” If that is politics, peace studies in contrast can be seen as an attempt to answer the question “why” things are given to whom, when and how. While peace studies is concerned about the political challenge of stopping people…
Building bridges
In 1977, an academic concentration in Peace and Conflict Studies (PACS) was formally introduced at the University of Waterloo, launched by Conrad Grebel College, now Conrad Grebel University College. It was the first undergraduate peace studies program at a Canadian university. That same year, the student-run Peace Society was created at Grebel, giving residence students…
Bauman family gift focusses on mentorship and peace incubation
Peace has been an important value in the lives of Aden and Joanne Bauman and their sons Barry, who passed away in 2016, and Michael. “Peace is a Mennonite thing,” observes Joanne. “Peace is important to our family, and our boys remember that their Uncle Elias was a conscientious objector during [the Second World War],”…
Creating a Space for Peace
Looking back, it was one of the most energizing and renewing courses that I’ve taught so far. The combination of my co-facilitator, the participants, and the content was great, but more than that was the space that we created together. Theory and Practice of Peace Education took place in the second session of the Northeast…
