, co-winner of the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize, will give the address at 草莓社区鈥檚 on Sunday, April 27. Gbowee is a 2007 graduate of EMU, with a from the .
She was honored with the Nobel Prize for her work to end the long civil war in her native Liberia. Gbowee鈥檚 involvement in the peace movement began in the late 1990s, when she began volunteering with a trauma healing program in the war-torn capital, Monrovia. (CJP professor played a key role in this program, as did one of CJP鈥檚 earliest graduates, , MA 鈥�98, who served as a mentor to Gbowee.)
Within a few years, Gbowee had become a leader of a grassroots women鈥檚 movement, the Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace. Using demonstrations, sit-ins and other nonviolent tactics, the group eventually forced the country鈥檚 warring factions to negotiate and sign a peace agreement in 2003.
Gbowee is one of the main characters in the 2008 documentary, Pray the Devil Back to Hell, about this movement to end the Liberian civil war. She is also the author of a memoir about her life and activism during the war, Mighty Be Our Powers.
She shared the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize with Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the first female African head of state, and Tawakkol Karman, a Yemeni peace activist.
In 2011 鈥� months before the Nobel Peace Laureates were announced 鈥� Gbowee was named .鈥� She spoke several times at EMU鈥檚 homecoming weekend that fall, just days after learning that she鈥檇 won the Nobel Prize. (.)
This year鈥檚 commencement will have an important personal component for Gbowee as well 鈥� her oldest child, Joshua Mensah, will graduate with a bachelor of arts in digital media. Gbowee has said that .
Gbowee is spending the 2013-14 academic year as a Distinguished Fellow in Social Justice at Barnard College in New York. She is the founder and president of the , which supports education and leadership development in Liberia, and a co-founder of both the and the , a global peacebuilding and reconciliation organization. She also serves as an , working on the international nonprofit鈥檚 campaigns against poverty and injustice, and as a board member of the and the .
EMU will confer 481 degrees at its 2014 commencement, including 210 earned through its traditional undergraduate program, 146 awarded through its , 117 from its graduate programs, and eight through the offered at EMU鈥檚 Lancaster, Pa., site.