For a more streamlined read, note the following:

–links to each CJP program are omitted. To learn more about the specific programs named here, please visit the .

— a faculty or staff member’s title is listed once, on first reference. To learn more about individual faculty and staff members, visit the .

Our alumni are accomplished people and a wonderful resource, which is why we include a link to each personal profile on the . This information is provided and updated voluntarily.

September 2019

• A class of 22 new graduate students begin their first semester of studies.
• The new graduate students participate in CJP’s Grounding Day: an opportunity to begin to ground students in the history and current social, political, economic and environmental justice realities in Harrisonburg.
• Fidele Ayu Lumeya MA ’00 returns to the Democratic Republic of Congo to direct the Congo Ubuntu Peacebuilding Center.
• Talibah Aquil MA ’19 performs “Ghana, remember me…,” a multimedia production that sprung from her 2019 travels in Ghana as part of her capstone project on the themes of identity, race, trauma and healing.
• Twenty-one participants join STAR 1 on campus with Lead Trainer Katie Mansfield and Ayman Kerols MA ’16.

October 2019

• CJP’s 25th anniversary year kicks off with a “TenTalks” event at EMU’s Homecoming and Family Weekend featuring Tammy Krause MA ‘99, Darsheel Kaur MA ‘17, and John E. Sharp, father of Michael J. Sharp ’05.
• Donna Minter, founder and executive director of the Minnesota Peacebuilding Leadership Institute and STAR Trainer, is honored with the Melanie Greenberg U.S. Peacebuilding Award of Excellence.
• Professor Johonna Turner, co-director of the Zehr Institute for Restorative Justice, gives the keynote address at a symposium on restorative justice hosted by the University of Richmond Public Interest Law Review. Attorney Brenda Waugh MA ’09 provides a talk on restorative lawyering and Suzanne Praill MA ’10, director of restorative justice at the Fairfield Center, contributes to a panel discussion.
• In collaboration with , CJP hosts Community Criminal Justice Days conference, bringing together community stakeholders for discussions and planning around reducing incarceration and recidivism in the local area.
• Howard Zehr, distinguished professor of restorative justice, is the featured speaker at the 2019 Vernon M. and Minnie I. Lynch Lecture at George Mason University.

November 2019

• CJP co-sponsors a conference in Mexico City on the intersection of gender and peacebuilding: “Construcción de Paz con Perspectiva de Género” at the University Iberoamericana, a Jesuit-affiliated institution. Alena Yoder, CJP’s program development associate, was a panel moderator. Vernon Jantzi, emeritus professor, and Jayne Docherty, CJP executive director, presented papers. 
• STAR trainers facilitate a workshop for the Grand Canyon National Park’s Public Lands for all Inclusion Summit to explore principles of restorative justice, trauma awareness, resilience, and truth and reconciliation and how those principles might be applied in the organizations and the workplaces. Read about STAR’s ongoing relationship with the National Park Service.
• Kajungu Mturi MA ‘18 facilitates a day of trauma and resilience training for EMU’s Intensive English Program staff and instructors.
• Gilberto Pérez Jr. ’94 GC ’99, vice president for student life at Goshen College, wins his bid for a city council seat in Goshen, Indiana. He will be the first Latino council member in a city that is 33-34% Latino.
• A Zehr Institute for Restorative Justice features multiple speakers on engaging communities of faith in promoting restorative justice, along with specific avenues and resources for collaborating with Catholic parishes and ministries.
• Eighteen people participate in STAR 2 with Katie Mansfield and Lisa Collins.

December 2019

• Katie Mansfield and Jon Swartz MA ‘14 facilitate three days of STAR-based training for the Department of the Interior’s Office of Collaborative Action and Dispute Resolution, including Sigal Shoham MA ’13.
• EMU recognizes Dawn Curtis-Thames MA ’20 and David Nyiringabo MA ’20, then second-year CJP students,  for their outstanding contributions to CJP and the larger university community. Read about their practicum studies.

January 2020

• Wayne Marriott MA ’18, a conflict coach and mediator based in Christchurch, New Zealand, receives the Resolution Institute’s 2019 Michael Klug Award for his support to the local community after the mosque shootings there last year.
• The 10-episode Peacebuilder podcast launches, featuring faculty and staff members reflecting on the program’s history and their own peacebuilding work.
• Twenty-two people, including 11 CJP MA students, participate in STAR 1 on campus with Katie Mansfield and Johonna Turner.

February 2020

• The fifth annual SPI Community Day welcomes about 100 participants to get a taste of Summer Peacebuilding Institute classes and hear from speakers on racial justice, including Chief Kenneth Branham of the Monacan nation and Frank Dukes, a professor at the University of Virginia.
• Professor Emeritus Barry Hart is the keynote speaker at a seminar organized by Initiatives of Change Sri Lanka in Sri Lanka, discussing the role restorative justice could play in restoring and healing wounded people to create a more just society.
• The Zehr Institute for Restorative Justice hosts a webinar on Equal Justice USA’s approach to the relationship between community and police in Newark, N.J., and how trauma-informed responses to violence that are community-driven can reduce harm for those most vulnerable and marginalized.
• Ten people join Kajungu Mturi MA ‘18 and Katie Mansfield at a STAR 1 training on campus.
• Katie Mansfield presents on a panel titled “Healing and Resilience: Taking a trauma-informed approach to delivering assistance” sponsored by the Peace and Security Workgroup of the Society for International Development-Washington Chapter. 

March 2020

• CJP staff and faculty start working remotely and moving academic classes online due to COVID-19.
• STAR provides three days of training for the George Washington Memorial Parkway.
• The 25th Anniversary Celebration, planned for the summer, is postponed for a year. The new dates are June 4-6, 2021. Alicia Garza, John Paul Lederach and sujatha baliga are among the scheduled speakers who plan to attend.
• Katie Mansfield launches the virtual community Dancing Resilience, through which participants all over the world meet via video conference multiple times a day to dance together. 
• The Zehr Institute for Restorative Justice hosts a virtual book launch for (Skyhorse Publishing, 2020), by Lindsey Pointer, Kathleen McGoey, and Haley Farrar.

April 2020

• SPI announces its move to an all-online format.
• Donors help to meet two $35,000 matching grants set up by two couples and gave generously during LovEMU Day in honor of CJP’s 25th anniversary.
• Cole Parke MA ’12 and Emmanuel Bombande MA ’02 are named as 2020 Peacebuilder of the Year honorees.
• STAR releases the Care “Together” video series: conversations between Katie Mansfield, STAR trainers and practitioners. 

May 2020

• SPI 2020 marks the 26th year of gathering peacebuilders for mutual learning and support – online this year using video conferencing and other digital tools. Eleven courses are offered to more than 180 people across 60% of the world’s time zones. Read general news coverage here, and more specific articles about creating community online and the digital peacebuilding class.                       
• Sixteen CJP graduates representing nine countries receive their degrees. 
• Johonna Turner is one of the three faculty presented with EMU’s annual Excellence in Teaching Awards.
• Christine Kindler MA ’17 receives the Berlin Fellowship from Humanity in Action.
• The new Master of Arts in Transformational Leadership is launched earlier than expected as CJP moves online. The degree with online, hybrid and residential options for working professionals includes courses in business and leadership and will continue to add courses from other programs at EMU as electives.

June 2020

• SkyHorse Publishing releases a new edition of Carolyn Yoder‘s Little Book of Trauma Healing.
• STAR provides a webinar for Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency’s Service Coordinators and Case Managers on trauma and resilience.

July 2020

• STAR trains campus ministry professionals at the National Association of Campus Ministers virtual conference.
• An advisory group of STAR trainers and practitioners work with Katie Mansfield to recreate STAR for online delivery. The group includes Donna Minter, Crixell Shell, Ram Bhagat GC ’19, Lisa Collins, Meenakshi Chhabra, and Johonna Turner. Elaine Zook Barge MA ’03, Vernon Jantzi, and Carolyn Yoder provide additional input and insight.
• STAR announces registration for STAR online.
• Johonna Turner contributes a chapter to Colorizing Restorative Justice: Voicing Our Realities (Living Justice Press, 2020), a collection of 18 essays penned by practitioners and scholars of color.

August  2020

• STAR wraps up four webinars for National Park Service staff.
• CJP welcomes 30 new students for orientation. This includes nine students in the new MA in Transformational Leadership program, with online, hybrid and residential options.
• Planning continues for the CJP “25+1” anniversary celebration.

During the 2019-20 academic year, as the commemorates its 25th anniversary, a series of guest authors will share reflections about CJP’s personal impact. We want to hear your thoughts, too!

Thousands of people have intersected with CJP over the years, and each of you has contributed to the work of making the world more just and more peaceful. Join us for our anniversary celebration June 5-7, 2020. Visit the anniversary website for more details.

Read reflections by��Phoebe Kilby,��Mohammad Abu-Nimer,��Maryam Sheikh, Sanjay Pulipaka, and Shyamika Jayasundara-Smits.

Ruth Zimmerman and Howard Zehr served as co-directors from 2002-07. Both brought significant experience in other roles with the organization before that time. Here they collectively share their paths to CJP, their partnering leadership and significant work of their tenure.

In the early 1990s, Ruth had returned from eight years in the Philippines and was searching for a job. One of the positions she applied for was administrative secretary at ��ݮ����’s newly-forming Conflict Analysis and Transformation Program (later shortened to Conflict Transformation Program, or CTP). Though Ruth thought her experience and degree positioned her for something more challenging, then-director Professor Vernon Jantzi convinced her that this program would expand and provide good career advancement possibilities.  As is often the case, his vision was prophetic.

Ruth accepted the offer. Her first day on the job included the task of going through the complete filing system for the new program, all within one cardboard box. The second task was to buy office furniture. But her role soon did become more challenging, and in a few years, she became associate director while Vernon was director.

Howard had been director of the Mennonite Central Committee U.S. Office for Criminal Justice since the late 1970s. From that base, he developed restorative justice materials and assisted communities in establishing such programs. By the mid-1990s, he had concluded that he had probably done what he could do for the field. Then Ray Gingerich, professor of sociology at EMU, began urging Howard not to take any other jobs without considering CTP. Both Ray and Vernon felt that conflict transformation needed the restorative justice component. 

Howard first taught an RJ course in a weekend format. In 1996, he joined the faculty. Although he had administrative experience, he had no intentions of ever administrating again. Obviously he failed to keep that commitment, and he also was proven wrong about his involvement in restorative justice: the center and its students proved a base and catalyst for significant expansion of restorative justice. 

In the late 1990s, while Vernon was on sabbatical, Howard served as interim director with Ruth continuing as associate director. The duo worked together well, but Howard felt that Ruth deserved recognition for the key role she was playing. When Vernon later stepped away from his leadership position, Howard reluctantly agreed to take on a part-time director role for a transitional period, but only on the condition that he and Ruth serve as co-directors. 

This was a time of many unknowns within the center, causing some tension amongst various parties. External advice was that a co-directorship is a problematic structure with many possibilities for conflict, and often that is true. However, Howard and Ruth had built up a relationship of trust and respect in the interim year and were convinced the unusual structure would work. Howard focused primarily on academic affairs while continuing his teaching responsibilities while Ruth managed staff, programs and budget.

Ruth:  “A key element I always appreciated in working with Howard, even through some tough stuff, was his ready question:  ‘Are we having fun yet?’ We could always find things to laugh about. This was such a critical glue for the team since many students were coming from dire conflict situations which could create a heaviness in the atmosphere.”

Howard: “Ruth had a proven record as a full-time administrator and had played a key role in keeping the center going and growing. I thought that this contribution and role had to be recognized structurally. We dealt with some heavy stuff during this time, but I appreciated Ruth’s sense of humor and relied heavily on her competence and knowledge.”

With a departmental team of more than 20 employees and 80 or more students, all with rich life experience and different perspectives and personalities, there were bound to be conflicts — even within a peacebuilding program. And indeed there were during these years. There were also many challenges involving budgets and relationships within the EMU structure. As a community, we didn’t always practice what we preached.

On one occasion, Ruth returned from a wilderness bike trip during which she had to ride through a terrifying gauntlet of eight rattlesnakes. She reflected on her return that each of the snakes seemed to be a metaphor for one of the challenges we were facing. One year we reworked “Old MacDonald Had A Farm” to name some of our challenges and frustrations and sang it at the staff/faculty Christmas party. Fortunately that text has been lost.

A significant milestone during these years was the beginning of the program’s relationship to the Fulbright Program. Thanks to Ruth’s initiative and guidance, CJP became the primary venue for Fulbright scholars from South Asia and the Middle East who wanted to study conflict transformation. This resulted in highly diverse groups of students from many countries, religions and professions. They brought tremendous richness and legitimacy to CJP and when they returned to their home countries, built networks and programs that continue to this day.

A number of curriculum developments occurred during these years, including the clarification of concentrations and the establishment of an annual “curriculum camp” that brought faculty together to work on curriculum issues and strengthen relationships. The Practice Institute was formally established and provided with its own director. Several new endowments supported faculty research and student scholarships. We also worked hard to clarify and streamline decision-making processes within the program. During these years, Janelle Myers-Benner moved from student assistant to staff. She is now the longest-employed CJP staff and it would be difficult to overstate the value of the administrative management she has brought to the program.

During this time, we also led a process to rename the program from the Conflict Transformation Program to the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding. Restorative justice was playing a growing role in the program, and the scope of peacebuilding was expanding to include such fields as trauma healing and organizational development. The program needed a name that was more inclusive than conflict transformation.

We are gratified to see where CJP is today.  Succeeding directors have brought new gifts to the program. Competent staff and hundreds of “students” (John Paul Lederach used to call them “colleagues masquerading as students”) have contributed more than can be spelled out here.  We are grateful to have played a part in this story.

 ***

Ruth left CJP to join Mennonite Central Committee as a regional area representative, giving leadership for programs in India, Nepal and Afghanistan. Following those three years, she joined World Vision as a senior program manager and has had responsibility for both Asian and African development programs.

Howard is mostly retired but still employed “very part-time” with the , a program of CJP that began in 2012 and carries on Howard’s emphasis on connecting practitioners in the field to resources, networks and opportunities.

It was the second year that CJP has co-sponsored the event.

“It was nice to see the wide range of people working in peacebuilding,” said Vernon Jantzi, professor emeritus of sociology and social work and former executive director of CJP. “I find it really encouraging that peacebuilders attended representing a wide range of work, from the grassroots to the national level.”

The three-day event featured 11 panels with 54 panelists and moderators discussing a range of topics including peacebuilding, trauma, restorative justice, transitional justice to women and security, cartels, masculinity, and peace education.

CJP representatives each contributed to a panel on trauma, migration and education for peace. Alena Yoder, program development associate, was the moderator, with Jayne Docherty, CJP executive director, presenting virtually on grassroots peacebuilding and Jantzi presenting his collaborative research with STAR trainer Elaine Zook Barge MA ‘03 on trauma and migration. The panel also included Lorena Rodriguez Álvarez from Peace and Sport International and Yanela Elizalde from CISV Mexico.

Among the CJP alumni in attendance was attorney Katia Ornelas MA ‘13, who will be co-teaching a Summer Peacebuilding Institute class next year.

Yoder said that there were significantly more attendees than in previous years, with peacebuilders coming from Mexico, Spain, the U.S., Colombia, El Salvador and Guatemala. Some participants from universities joined via live stream.

“The panels reflected a real wealth of knowledge and experience,” Yoder said. “So many people expressed gratitude that we were able to spend valuable time together discussing the influence and impact of women in the peacebuilding field and movements.”

Jantzi said he was gratified to hear many of the attendees recognize and appreciate CJP’s contributions to conflict transformation and restorative justice.

“CJP has long-standing relationships in Mexico, Central America, and South America,” Docherty noted. Much of the CJP curriculum was born from the hands-on education that American restorative justice practitioners received from community leaders in those regions.

“This was an opportunity to celebrate and acknowledge the great work that they continue to do. It is extremely important that we continue to learn from those who are working in the field,” Docherty said.

At the time of her death, she was director of the Frederick Douglass-Isaac Myers Maritime Park in Baltimore, Maryland.

A wake will take place at Vaughn Greene Funeral Home, 4905 York Rd., Baltimore, Maryland, on��Monday, Jan. 29, from 4-8 p.m.

The funeral is at Bright Morning Star Church, RR 617, Dillwyn, Virginia, on Tuesday, Jan. 30 at noon.

A pioneer and champion

Swann-Wright joined the EMU community as an assistant in the learning center in August 1990. [She was then known as Dianne Wright.] She served as director of multicultural programs from 1993-97. During this time, she taught African American history courses and led cross-cultural groups to Kenya, encouraging African American students to learn more about their heritage.

From 1997-98, she became the first African American to hold a senior administrative role on campus when she served as interim vice president for student life.

While at EMU, she earned a doctorate in American history from University of Virginia.

From 1998 to 2005, Swann-Wright was director of African-American and special programs at Monticello. Her hiring as the first African American senior staff member was “,” wrote historian Kendra Hamilton in 1999. Before her hiring by then-Director of Research Lucia “Cinder” Stanton,” Hamilton notes there was “a gaping crater in the institution’s allegedly comprehensive knowledge of life on Jefferson’s mountaintop.”

Swann-Wright and Stanton co-founded the , which has identified and collected oral histories from descendants of families enslaved at Monticello. The duo also co-authored the official Monticello report linking Jefferson to Sally Hemings. Much of their research helped to develop programming and interpretation around African American life, experiences and culture at Monticello.

Influencing, empowering

At EMU, Swann-Wright was no less influential.

“She was the reason why I was able to succeed as a student at EMU, and she was why I came back to be her successor at EMU as director of multicultural services,” says , now a professor of social work at EMU. “She was the reason why I had the courage to return again and teach. She believed in me.”

Several other alumni share similarly strong admiration and affection for Swann-Wright. “Outstanding woman and supporter,” wrote one alumna in a Facebook post.

Swann-Wright’s passion for sharing and celebrating African American history was remembered by Professor Emeritus , who served with her on an advisory council to support multicultural efforts, appreciation and programming.

Pannell also recalls this influence: “She ensured that as a student of color, I was immersed, engaged and empowered by voices within the community-at-large that reflected my history and ancestry. She took me and other students to meet in person Cornell West, Maya Angelou, Sonya Sanchez and James Farmer, powerful voices that each spoke to the importance of raising my own voice, critically and with creatively, about issues of social justice.”

Longtime friend Linda Alley first met and worked with Swann-Wright in what was then called the Student Life Division.

“I watched as Di went far beyond her job description in mentoring students, many of whom kept in touch with her for years,” Alley said. “She would report to me how proud she was or which ones needed extra prayer. She sent pictures of them and their children, because they were her spiritual family. My own son benefited from a tutoring session when she came to our house and spent some hours with him. Teaching was her gift, and she did it from a place of deep wisdom.”

Swann-Wright had an insightful way of helping faculty and administrators to see the causes and potential effects of decisions, Alley said. “EMU would be a different place without the lingering effects of Dianne’s sojourn there.”

“She told once told me that her life’s work was helping people to recognize and respond to society’s lies and views. She called this ‘the Great Re-Education Project,’” recalls nursing professor . “Dianne was deeply influential among EMU faculty and staff due to her honesty, openness and ability to name truth.”

Lee Snyder was academic dean when Swann-Wright was at EMU. “We worked closely together. I learned much from Dianne, a generous colleague and dear friend,” Snyder said. “She taught me the power of story in furthering appreciation of diversity and she modeled a gracious spirit which has enriched all of us who knew her.”

When Snyder was president at Bluffton College, she invited Swann-Wright to speak about her Monticello research.

“And we all celebrated with her when her book, A Way Out of No Way: Claiming Family and Freedom in the New South, was published in 2002 by University of Virginia Press,” Snyder said, recalling that much of that research was completed while Swann-Wright was balancing full-time work at EMU with her doctoral work.

Remembrances of Dianne Swann-Wright are encouraged (use the comment box below) and will be shared with the family.��

Authors and editors will be present at a celebration and book-signing from 12:30-1:30 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 13, at Martin Chapel in the seminary building. The book will also be available at the and from .

��Making a Difference in the Journey features 15 Mennonite and Church of the Brethren writers who tell their stories “with candor” and “a good dose of self-effacement and humility, providing a delightful read and giving hope for the future,” writes Richard L. Benner in the book’s introduction.

The 15 authors, many of whom are alumni of EMU and/or Eastern Mennonite Seminary, include Robert Earl Alley, Martin Lehman, Fred W. Swartz, Beryl H. Brubaker, Joe Lapp, W. Robert McFadden, Lee M. Yoder, Doug Hostetter, Paul Swarr, Rick Yoder, Dick L. Benner, Larry Hoover, Allon H. Lefever, Peggy B. Shenk and Shirley H. Showalter.

“These are leaders whose different ways of serving enriched and, indeed, saved the lives of many,” said Nancy V. Lee, the managing editor. “Like the earlier volumes, this volume is a historical EMU treasure, providing, as it does, the memoirs of men and women, many related to EMU through their tumultuous years as students, professors, administrators, pastors, writers and overseas directors.”

In addition to Benner’s introduction, the book includes an editor’s preface by Lee, the series editor’s preface by , a foreword by Lee F. Snyder, and an appendix by .

Making a Difference in the Journey describes “the series of events — often awakenings — that led [the storytellers] to high positions of responsibility and resulting actions,” said Lee.

In her foreword, Snyder writes that each contributed story includes “all the elements of a good read: suspense, outrageous encounters, and examples of courage and uncommon grace. What moves me about these stories is a sustained sense of awe in life’s unfolding surprises…. This is wisdom literature, offerings by sages, creative thinkers, professionals in the trenches, individuals called to second and third careers.” Snyder is president emeritus of Bluffton University and has held numerous roles including an interim presidency at EMU.

The book series developed as ACRS members began telling each other their stories at the group’s monthly meetings, according to series editor Ray C. Gingerich, professor emeritus of theology and ethics and founding director of ACRS.

“We said, ‘We’ve got to write this stuff up,’” Gingerich said. “That gave birth to the first two volumes. It was never intended to become the flagship of ACRS, but it has become our most prominent identity.”

ACRS is “a community of elders with an Anabaptist perspective” that meets monthly during the academic year, according to their website.

Learn more about the series

The Geography of Our Faith series includes three previous volumes,: Making Sense of the Journey, , and .

Drawn to peacebuilding work since she was a child, Tovar will help connect alumni around the world. She’ll also help current students and faculty connect with alumni.

Like most CJP students, she brings a host of experiences to her academic work, her peacebuilding practice and her current position.

Shaped by violence

Her father, “a very big motivator of my work,” was kidnapped twice by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. After the second kidnapping, he moved with his family to Romania for security reasons, where he was a diplomat in Bucharest. Tovar, then 13, and her three younger brothers attended a French school.

Her family returned to Colombia around her 18th birthday, and she enrolled at Pontificia Javeriana University to study political science, conflict analysis and resolution, and research for peace.

There, a class on consensus building proved to be pivotal, as well as reading CJP co-founder John Paul Lederach’s The Moral Imagination. This sparked what would be her later research interest in the intersections between transitional and restorative justice, and eventually led to her studies at CJP.

A circle-keeper with Chicago youth

A second life-changing event, she says, was an internship with , a nonprofit working on civic engagement and community-strengthening. Through , she was introduced to a number of restorative justice practitioners, and trained to be a facilitator of circle processes.

After the summer, Tovar returned to Bogota where she served as project coordinator for a transitional justice project based at Pontificia Javeriana University in collaboration with George Mason University. Colombia’s Victims and Restitution Law of 2011 had just been passed, which “was the first time the government was acknowledging the victims” of decades of internal armed conflict, explains Tovar.

Tovar’s project involved listening to victims who had resettled in Soacha about how their wounds and losses could be redressed. Soacha “is a microcosm of Colombia,” she says, where the country’s refugees – peasant farmers, indigenous people, Afro-Colombians and ex-combatants alike – live in tight quarters.

“That was the first time I really understood that victims and perpetrators had to live together,” says Tovar.

When that project ended, Tovar returned to Illinois, where she interned with the Cook County Juvenile Detention Department. She was moved by her experiences with the Chicago gang youth.

“There I understood … this dichotomy between victims and offenders was something really damaging.” While accountability is necessary, explains Tovar, she saw each offender as both a victim and perpetrator.

Narrowing her focus

In Chicago, Tovar attended a lecture by Professor on the intersection of transitional and restorative justice, the topic of her then-in progress thesis.

After graduation from Pontificia Javeriana University, Tovar assisted with several projects, among them a two-month joint project with the Victim’s Unit, in which providers analyzed the collective reparation needs of a community affected by war. Tovar contributed to the self-care component among those who had direct contact with victims. She was then was hired by UNICEF as a consultant, a job which appeared at the right time among personal upheaval, but which eventually led her to graduate school.

“Deep, deep in my heart, I knew that I only wanted to study peacebuilding,” she says.

At CJP, Tovar is pleased to be among “amazing and incredible people who go back to their communities and do amazing work,” she says. “When we come here, we have a shared value, and it’s wholeness, the interconnectedness that makes us responsible to our local and global neighbors.”

The conference, sponsored by a spectrum of Mennonite-related organizations and higher education institutions, brought together viewpoints from inside and outside the Mennonite church. Author and consultant and Mother Earth News founder headlined an array of speakers who shared over the course of six sessions.

Block, addressing the event via a live videoconference from Cincinnati, encouraged participants to seek a “third way of leadership” that overcomes a tendency toward isolation and emphasizes community.

“How do we in small groups come together so that everyone’s voice is heard?” Block asked. “A small circle means you’re facing the people you’re creating a life with.”

He said Mennonites are particularly well-equipped to shift the focus toward dialogue and building something new due to their values.

“Mennonites have the strongest foundation to initiate that conversation in the world because you stand for something,” Block said. “Everywhere I go where I see democracy breaking out—an egalitarian spirit, caring for the whole—one of you is always in the room.”

Melia Watkins, a Goshen (Indiana) College junior, was one of numerous millennials from six Mennonite colleges and universities invited to share reflections during the gathering.

“The most impactful thing I learned was to think about what I really care about,” said Watkins, a marketing major from Cincinnati. “Ever since Peter Block mentioned that phrase I’ve been thinking, ‘What do I really care about?’ I’m really glad I’ve been here to experience that.”

, faculty emeriti and former director of EMU’s , said Block also struck a chord for him.

“The thing I’ve resonated strongly with is Peter Block’s comment on leadership as convening—creating spaces for new forms to emerge,” Jantzi said. “For those of us who are now in my generation, our task is to be space creators in the world. That’s where the miracle of transformation is going to occur.”

Earlier, Welch—now CEO of B the Change Media, which encourages socially and environmentally responsible business practices—looked at leadership trends through the eye of a business executive.

“One of the most important movements shaping the 21st century is the global movement of people with a passion for using business as a force of good,” Welch said. He also underscored the need for a positive spirit and consensus-building. “No one wants to follow a pessimist,” he said.

Anabaptist entrepreneur and Mennonite Central Committee founder Orie O. Miller received significant attention during the conference as a foundation for discussing leadership. Hesston (Kan.) College professor John Sharp, author of a , shared reflections and noted Miller’s “genius at connecting people.” EMU also dedicated a new, flag-filled in its University Commons.

Speakers underscored the need for new styles of leadership to meet today’s needs, examining values, theology and identity. EMU professors and hosted sessions and facilitated discussion, including a closing plenary session that allowed small groups to generate ideas. Five workshop choices provided additional learning opportunities.

, vice president and dean of at EMU and one of the primary organizers of the conference, said he was pleased with the event and hopes similar gatherings happen in the years ahead.

“There’s a lot of polarization today in society in general and in our church,” Smucker said. “The hope of the conference was that we could contribute to new models of leadership and ways we can work together going into the future that are more constructive. We had lots of rich conversation, lots of rich input from a variety of voices; it probably exceeded my expectations in terms of the quality of input.”

Participants seemed to echo that sentiment, closing the conference with a simple unison benediction of “Wow!”

The conference was sponsored by ��ݮ����, Everence, Mennonite Central Committee, Mennonite Economic Development Associates, Mennonite Health Services, and the Anabaptist Center for Religion and Society. Co-sponsors included Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary, Elkhart, Ind.; Bethel (Kan.) College; Bluffton (Ohio) University; Canadian Mennonite University, Winnipeg; Conrad Grebel University College, Waterloo, Ontario; Goshen (Ind.) College; Hesston College.

Published with permission from

“We sought to bring together a cross-section of restorative justice practitioners, theorists and innovators,” said , co-director of the Zehr Institute and the project’s leader. “Some of the invitees were world-recognized in the restorative justice field, but others were invited to ensure that diverse and often-unheard voices would be represented.”

One-third of the 36 participants were from populations that are under threat socially and economically in their regions of the world. The genders were equally represented. One person was under age 21, though two other young adults had been expected to attend.

Conversing about RJ’s ‘revolutionary intent’

The idea behind the unusual mixture of invitees was to foster provocative conversation about the possibilities for restorative justice (RJ), particularly for addressing structural injustices, said Stauffer.

In the prospectus for the three-year project submitted to the funder, , the organizers wrote: “On the social margins, there is growing research and experimentation with RJ as a tool for addressing structural harms and injustices. This project will explore and document these emerging practices in order to recapture the revolutionary intent of RJ.”

The organizers called attention in their prospectus to what they viewed as the danger of RJ settling into a “social service practice” centering on “repair at the micro-interpersonal level.” Instead, they wished to highlight the ways that RJ can “provide a coherent framework for transforming macro-social structures that cause harm.”

Aware that many of the 36 attendees at the first consultation would not have prior relationships with each other, the organizers devoted about half of the five days to exercises and facilitated conversations designed to establish trust and a common basis for exploring future possibilities. Senior graduate students at EMU’s served as facilitators for the process.

Tough questions

First, the attendees prepared a history line of RJ, then they explored identity, power and privilege in the field. On the third day, they embarked on a discussion of best practices.

“We accepted the challenge of bringing together a highly diverse group, especially given that many of the participants are international leaders in the field, [being] accomplished researchers, authors, practitioners and facilitators in their own right,” Stauffer said.

“The challenge was heightened because the group grew beyond the original envisioned size of 20 to 25,” he added. “We needed to go well beyond 25 to have a true cross-section of voices, but it was difficult to develop coherence among three dozen people with strong opinions, especially in only five days.”

Yet the participants were largely positive in their final evaluations, he said, indicating that they had not regretted investing a workweek in wrestling with each other over tough questions, such as the extent to which RJ should be viewed as a social movement, as opposed to simply a set of restorative practices.

Stauffer did not pretend to be neutral on this last point. In his opening remarks to the group, he referred to the U.S. penal reform movement having been “co-opted.” In contrast, he said he hopes RJ continues to grow into a social movement in North America, with the aim of “transforming deep structural conflicts and injustices.” Toward this end, North Americans have much to learn from their international brothers and sisters about “large-scale applications” of RJ, he said.

Agreement on RJ’s core values

For a social movement to be successful, Stauffer told the group, it requires political opportunity, resource mobilization, a framing message, and critical mass (or a “tipping point”).

On the last day, in a final small-group presentation, a participant observed that the 36 attendees had largely agreed during the week on RJ’s core values, but not necessarily on how to practice restorative justice.

This first consultation will be followed next year by a public conference attended by up to 120 people. Next time, Stauffer said, his organizing team will work to create a conference format that moves participants more quickly into discussions on the future of the field, with a view of moving into a research and writing phase in the final year of the project.

Participants in the consultation

The 36 participants were:

1. Aaron Lyons, Fraser Region Community, Justice Initiatives, Canada
2. Ali Gohar, Just Peace Initiatives, Pakistan
3. Barb Toews, University of Washington Tacoma / Designing Justice+Designing Spaces, USA
4. , Center for Justice and Peacebuilding, EMU
5. Brenda E. Morrison, Centre for Restorative Justice, Simon Fraser University, USA
6. Carl Stauffer, Center for Justice and Peacebuilding, EMU
7. Carolyn Boyes-Watson, Center for Restorative Justice, Suffolk University, USA
8. Catherine Bargen, Restorative Justice Coordinator Crime Prevention and Victim Services Division, Government of British Columbia, Canada
9. Dan Van Ness, Center for Justice and Reconciliation, Prison Fellowship International, USA

10. , Center for Justice and Peacebuilding, EMU and Atlanta (Ga.) consultant, USA
11. Fania Davis, executive director of Restorative Justice for Oakland (Calif.) Youth, USA
12. Cameron Simmons, youth worker with Restorative Justice for Oakland (Calif.) Youth, USA
13. Gerry Johnstone, University of Hull, UK
14. , Center for Justice and Peacebuilding, EMU
15. Jeanette Martinez, Circle of Justice LLC, New Mexico, USA
16. Jennifer Graville , Community Conferencing Program, KBF Center for Conflict Resolution (Md.), USA
17. Jodie-Ann (Jodie) Geddes, Center for Justice and Peacebuilding, EMU
18. Josh Bacon, James Madison University (Va.), USA
19. , ��ݮ����
20. Katia Ornelas, Independent Consultant, Mexico
21. , (STAR), EMU
22. Kay Pranis, Circle Trainer, USA
23. Kim Workman, Stout Research Centre for New Zealand Studies, Victoria, University of Wellington, New Zealand
24. Linda Kligman, Vice President for Advancement, International Institute for Restorative Practices, USA
25. Lorenn Walker, Hawai’i Friends of Restorative Justice, USA
26. Lorraine Stutzman Amstutz, Mennonite Central Committee, USA
27. Mark Umbreit, Center for Restorative Justice & Peacemaking, University of Minnesota, School of Social Work, USA
28. Matthew Hartman, Clackamas County Juvenile Department, Restorative Justice Coalition of Oregon, NW Justice Forum, USA
29. Mulanda Jimmy Juma, Africa Peacebuilding Institute, St. Augustine College of South Africa
30. Najla El Mangoush, Center for Justice and Peacebuilding, EMU
31. Robert Yazzie, Chief Justice Emeritus of the Navajo Nation, USA
32. Seth Lennon Weiner, Porticus, New York, USA
33. sujatha baliga, Impact Justice, USA
34. Susan Sharpe, Advisor on Restorative Justice, Center for Social Concerns, University of Notre Dame, USA
35. Theo Gavrielides, The IARS International Institute and the Restorative Justice for All Institute, UK
36. , Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience (STAR), EMU

The facilitators were led by project manager , and included CJP graduate students Janine Aberg, South Africa; Michael McAndrew, USA; Jordan Michelson, USA; Mikhala Lantz-Simmons, USA; and Ahmed Tarik, Iraq.

Many names were tossed at the night of May 23, as his writing career and restorative justice work were humorously honored with a “roast” at ��ݮ����. While most retiring professors of �ܱ���’s stature and worldwide celebrity are feted with a more standard banquet, a roast more suited both the man and his varied work.

More than 300 attendees agreed, traveling from around the world to honor �ܱ���’s influence as a reformer, teacher, a mentor, and visionary; to mark his retirement as a full-time faculty member; and to celebrate the 25th��anniversary of the publication of �ܱ���’s groundbreaking work, .

The evening also provided an opportunity to support the ongoing work of the , of which Zehr will remain a co-director with friend and colleague . A silent auction of global artifacts, artwork, locally crafted food and libations, and books, along with other donations, also raised about $15,000, not including pledges, for the continued work of the Zehr Institute.

After dinner…

Among comedians, a “roast” is a gathering at which a guest of honor is subjected to both praise and good-natured jokes at their expense. Stauffer, dressed in a suit and tie, emceed the evening’s festivities with , a longtime colleague since �ܱ���’s arrival at the in 1996. Jantzi came more appropriately appareled to the podium in the requested “Howard Zehr-styled formal wear:” boots, tan khakis, a tan shirt, a camera slung about his neck and a Indiana Jones-looking hat.

When queried by Stauffer about his neckwear, Jantzi looked at his floral tie and retorted: “This is a tie that’s as ugly as sin. I tried to get one as ugly as Howard would wear, but this is the best I could do.”

First on the program was a panel of alumni roasters, all of whom remarked in some capacity on their strong and shared personal friendship with Zehr, his sense of humor, and quiet way of inspiring confidence and empowerment. Among them was , MA ‘08, now restorative justice coordinator at the Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General in Vancouver, Canada, who spoke of becoming �ܱ���’s student one day and shortly after, accepting an invitation to co-present with Zehr at a conference.

“Howard sees something in you before you see it in yourself and he nurtures it until it comes to fruition,” said , MA ‘99, a 14-year veteran of working federal capital cases who is herself a pioneer of an approach called defense-oriented victim outreach.

The youngest member of the panel, MA ‘13, spoke of the in her native Mexico, between Zehr – in Tamaulipas to present the keynote address at the First National Conference of Alternative Dispute Resolution Mechanisms – and poet and victims advocate Javier Sicilia, “two men who share similar bodies and souls.”

MA ‘04, contextualized Zehr with a reference to Malcolm Gladwell’s “The Tipping Point,” which describes three types of “change makers.” “Howard for me is the consummate connector,” said Malec, citing Zehr’s skills in networking between practitioners and connecting his colleagues and students with exciting opportunities.

MA ‘09, took the microphone in “protest” to argue that the breadth and sheer vivacity of Zehr’s creative contributions in a variety of fields do not render him “the grandfather of restorative justice,” as he’s sometimes referred to, but rather “the Lady Gaga of restorative justice!”

, MA ‘06, a founding member of the nonprofit Latino Initiative on Restorative Justice, spoke movingly of �ܱ���’s influence on her personal journey from her native Ecuador and her current work as an educator and training of restorative justice in many Latin American countries.

, which focused on the aging body, took the brunt of several spirited jokes from , MA ‘00. Toews is a former student who has written and co-edited .

Guest Roasters

A panel of guest roasters included nine distinguished colleagues, some of whom wrote or provided video greetings: RJ practitioner honored �ܱ���’s influence in New Zealand, criminologist John Braithwaite sent congratulations from Australia, and �ܱ���’s longtime friend, Bruce Bainbridge, did the same from the State Correction Institution Graterford, where he is serving a life sentence.

, currently co-director of Mennonite Central Committee‘s Office on Justice and Peacebuilding, proclaimed that she had “30 years of stories” to fit into the next three minutes, speeding through Zehr’s powers of suggestion, his fast pace of speech, and his commitment to well-made coffee.

Actor, director, and playwright Ingrid DeSanctis remembered ,” based on Zehr’s book which received a standing ovation from 500 inmates at Graterford Prison in Pennsylvania.

, a mediator and consultant with a history of teaching in Center for Justice and Peacebuilding programs, proclaimed that he and Zehr shared something that nobody else in the room did: both are alumni of Morehouse College, a historically black college in Atlanta, which boasts graduates such as Martin Luther King Jr.

“You carry the mystique of a Morehouse man well,” said Hooker, adding that the “Morehouse man” is “well-read, well-traveled, well-spoken, well-balanced and…” He stopped. “You’ve got to work on well-dressed,” he concluded, to laughter from the crowd.

Kim Workman, director of the New Zealand-based organization Rethinking Crime and Punishment, not only told humorous stories, but played the keyboard and sang an original ditty he called “Ode to Howard.”

The Zehr bobble-head

As the evening drew to a close, �ܱ���’s family joined in the fun. His wife, Ruby, recalled one of their first dates in college, when Howard invited her to the snack shop to share a Coke because he did not have enough money for two. She was followed by Howard’s brother, Ed Zehr, who reminisced about Howard’s boyhood skills tinkering with electronics and gadgets.

When Zehr assumed the stage after 9 p.m., he was met with a standing ovation. Cracking jokes, he recounted the early days of restorative justice work with Canadian colleague David Worth, announcing their next 50-year plan for the field – expansion to a social movement.

At the end of the night, , director of the and mastermind behind the festivities, presented the honoree with a custom Howard Zehr bobble-head doll.

“Ruby says my memorial service is taken care of, so she won’t need to have one when I die,” Zehr reflected afterwards. “I got off pretty easy overall!”

Orie O. Miller is a well-known name, but the reputation of this Mennonite lay leader, missionary, and businessman may grow, deservedly, in legend and stature with the publication of John E. Sharp’s long-awaited biography, ” (Herald Press).

Miller was a “20th century leader, and considering his extensive leadership in his day in many, many church institutions and agencies, it’s important to introduce Miller to 21st century leaders,” says ’63, steering committee chair of the (ACRS), a community of Mennonite elders and scholars who meet monthly for fellowship and intellectual engagement at ��ݮ���� (EMU).

The biography, six years in the making, was initiated and partially funded by ACRS. Other funders include the Brethren in Christ church, and two organizations that Miller helped found, and , known commonly by the acronyms of MCC and MEDA, respectively.

EMU President says he’s looking forward to reading the biography. “For many years, I have heard fascinating stories about Orie O. Miller and his legacy from those who worked directly with him,” he said. “So many Anabaptist ministries and institutions launched by Orie have improved the lives of people around the globe. I am pleased this project was sponsored by ACRS and rooted at EMU.”

At the ACRS May 11 Annual General Meeting, a handful of Miller’s contemporaries will share anecdotes and stories about this consequential man who, from his first pioneering trip as a relief worker to Russia in 1919, forever changed Mennonite education, business, relief work and peacemaking.

The meeting, which begins at 7:30 a.m. with coffee and pastries in the west dining room on the EMU campus, is open to the public.

‘Visionary and hard-nosed realist’

Former colleague Calvin Redekop, the ACRS representative to the editorial committee, says Miller’s “work and leadership are difficult to condense.”

“He was a person who represented best the challenges and opportunities of his time, an unusual combination of visionary and hard-nosed realist who expected persons to be accountable,” Redekop said. “He was one of the most disciplined persons I ever knew.”

Redekop served under Miller as administrator of a post-war alternative service program called Pax. Redekop and colleague Paul Peachey ’45 had conceived this program in August of 1950, and a mere eight months later, with Miller’s support and that of MCC, “Paxers” arrived in war-ravaged Europe to help resettle refugees.*

Born in Indiana in 1892, Miller attended Goshen College before answering the call to engage in relief work in 1919 and shortly after, helping to form MCC, for which he served in various capacities, including executive secretary, from 1921-1963.

Miller helped to engage and steer Mennonite values and ministry into a global perspective, while integrating sound business and organizational principles.

He was “an incredible catalyst” with unique organizational skills, and “passionately committed to the church with a vision for mission,” says ACRS founder , who was director of an Anabaptist-Mennonite bookstore financed by Miller and other Lancaster businessmen in the mid-1960s in Luxembourg, Belgium. “He would start a project, then find the personnel and the organizations to carry it on.”

Seeing a need often meant forming an organization to meet that need: Miller was the motivating force behind the founding of many Mennonite organizations, including Mennonite Mental Health Services, Mennonite Indemnity, Mennonite Mutual Aid, Mennonite Travel Service, and several others.

Hundreds of young men were indebted to Miller – and had their lives changed forever – because of Miller’s creation and administration of Civilian Public Service, the alternative to military service that allowed conscientious objectors to fulfill their civic responsibilities.

Miller married into the shoe manufacturing business and ran it with acumen and dedication throughout his life. Yet “to the end his life, he maintained his vision for service, never allowing his considerable wealth to determine his needs,” Gingerich said, adding that Miller could have easily afforded a Lincoln Continental, but instead drove a Ford Falcon.

Miller died in 1977 at the Landis Retirement Home in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, yet another enterprise he was instrumental in founding and supporting.

Keim’s work provides inspiration

A standard feature of the ACRS Annual General Meeting is a time to discuss the group’s ongoing work and vision. At one of those times, many years ago, members noted the need for a comprehensive biography of Miller that would address the full range of his personality and involvements not covered in a previous 1969 biography by Paul Erb.

Another inspiration for the Miller project was the work of the late Albert N. Keim ’63, professor emeritus of history at EMU and an ARCS member. Keim’s biography of Harold S. Bender, a professor of theology at Goshen College and Goshen Biblical Seminary, was published in 1998.

“Harold Bender was tremendously influential on theological matters in the same way that Orie Miller was tremendously influential in shaping Mennonite influence today,” said ’64, ACRS interim director.

Miller’s accomplishments as a leader are widely recognized. EMU houses an , which promotes interdisciplinary activities and scholarship modeled after the man’s visionary integration of business, mission, development, education, justice and peace.

In addition, EMU, ACRS, Mennonite Central Committee, and Mennonite Economic Development Associates are in the early stages of planning a leadership conference at EMU in early April 2016 that will highlight Miller’s leadership within the Mennonite church, according to, vice president and dean of the .

Editor’s note: In April 2015, the Pax program was chosen as the recipient of the annual Gandhi Center Community Service Award. To read about this event, click .

Subsequent legs in her journey:

• Three years with in Kenya, where she did STAR work with Doreen Ruto, a from ��ݮ���� (EMU).
• Four years with the for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame, where she studied under and then apprenticed with John Paul Lederach, founding director of .
• Beginning a PhD in expressive arts and conflict transformation from the .

It began here

On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Mansfield was on the 18th floor of an office building in lower Manhattan when she noticed scraps of paper floating by her window. She and her colleagues evacuated the building and began walking rapidly northward to get away. She heard and then saw the collapse of the twin towers. Dozens of people from her home suburb of Garden City died in the attack.

“For over a year I couldn’t plan more than five days out,” Mansfield recalls. “A Somali friend later told me, ‘Now you know how we feel every day.’” Ultimately she quit her job at Goldman Sachs, traveled for a year, and found her way to teachers and mentors working in peace education and conflict transformation.

One of these teachers was , who co-facilitated Mansfield’s STAR cohort in 2010. Now they are working as a team, together with program associate and trainer . Zook Barge’s focus is on curriculum development and training; Mansfield’s is on administering the program, developing the STAR network (“learning community”), and producing communications.

STAR’s birth

In late 2001, STAR was born as a partnership between CJP-EMU and to provide resources for responding to trauma in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.

“What began as a program to provide tools to pastors working with traumatized congregations in New York City and Washington,” says CJP executive director , “has blossomed into a valuable resource for peacebuilders from East Africa to the Middle East to Central America.”

STAR has trained over 5,000 people from 62 countries on five continents. The program has been a springboard for: , which deals with the wounds of racism; , addressing veterans’ re-entry; and , emerging from post-Hurricane Katrina work with teenagers.

“STAR is proof that even out of the most dreadful violence it is possible to grow life-giving and peace-supporting responses,” says , CJP’s program director.

Becoming the director

Mansfield was named director of STAR in early 2015, a position she will hold while continuing to pursue her doctoral studies focused on dance-based and movement-based healing, restorative justice and transforming the wounds of trauma. She succeeded Zook Barge, who had led the program as both its top administrator and chief instructor for eight years, until her requests for splitting the duties bore fruit.

Mansfield’s first job after earning a bachelor’s degree from Harvard in 1996 was at Goldman Sachs. She started as an analyst, then became an associate and finally a vice president in the investment management division. She spent four years in New York City and four years in London.

In STAR trainings, participants create a drawing called the “river of life.” Reflecting on the flow of her river, Mansfield says the powerlessness she experienced immediately after 9/11 set her on the path – and helped prepare her – for her new role with STAR.

The -sponsored workshops in July and August introduced the approaches used by EMU’s for addressing trauma, breaking cycles of violence, and building individual and collective resilience, said STAR lead trainer .

Though the content was condensed and delivered in two- or three-day sessions, the workshops “affirm the power of the integrated STAR curriculum,” Barge said. “When you look at conflict and violence through a trauma lens, it gives people on the ground new perspective and new possibilities.”

Barge facilitated the August training in South Sudan’s capital city, Juba. She was joined by faculty member and two alumni of , (MA ’06) and (MA ’98), both from Kenya. Shiphrah Mutungi, a Ugandan alumnus of EMU’s , also facilitated.

The introductory workshops, held in Nairobi in July, were led by Ruto and a 2005 CJP grad, of , with input from CJP administrator .

Having experienced violence . . .

Many of the participants had recently returned to South Sudan, after having fled with their families during a December 2013 attempted military coup and related ethnic violence. This upheaval displaced more than 1 million people. The men in the workshop – almost all were male Foreign Service Nationals – were from a range of professions, including drivers, guards, program managers, office staff, doctors and lawyers.

In the six months when they were displaced, many had similar experiences of “running, refugee camps, and deaths in the family,” one participant explained.

Many also came to the trainings preoccupied by strong feelings of anger and abandonment towards “others they felt had wronged them, such as the political system, the government and their employer,” said Ruto. “Most of them felt that the training would not be sufficient to resolve some of the unmet needs and grievances that had not yet been expressed.”

But after activities and small-group discussions that focused on the impacts of the conflict in their personal and professional lives, workshop participants began to see these events with a new perspective.

Seeing with a new perspective

“They realized that traumatic events are caused by multiple events, especially in a situation of war, and that the evacuation they were focused on might not have been the only traumatic event they were experiencing at the moment,” Ruto said.

One participant noted that learning about the cycles of violence “helps us understand how we keep hurting each other and why the violence/conflict hasn’t ended.”

“As participants learned about more tools and developed more of an understanding of the STAR principles, they became more hopeful about how they could use this training for themselves and their families,” Barge said.

Participants advocated for further exposure of trauma-resilience training beyond the “foreign service national” community served by the USAID-sponsored workshops.

More trainings wished for

“They do not want their children to experience 21-plus years of conflict and violence, and they see that this training could play a real peacebuilding role in the region,” Barge said. “It’s important that USAID supports the development of trauma-informed staff, but the positive reaction of the participants and their recommendations to get this training to more people in South Sudan challenges USAID and CJP to do more.”

Generations of South Sudanese have been affected by two civil wars lasting a total of nearly 40 years, encompassing 1955-1972 and 1983-2005. In 2005, a comprehensive peace agreement was signed. South Sudan voted for independence in January 2011 and was declared a sovereign nation six months later. Inter-ethnic warfare, a large refugee population, and internal unrest are among the young nation’s challenges.

In de-briefing sessions after the workshops, Barge said that (who recently left that role, but stays engaged with South Sudan issues) and other officials expressed optimism about the training. Discussion touched on the potential for longer and more extensive workshops for local and expatriate staffers, as well as STAR trainings for a trauma resource team and USAID employees.

Both Barge and Ruto return to South Sudan in October 2014 to lead follow-up workshops.

Organizers, including CJP founding director John Paul��Lederach, sociology professor Vernon Jantzi, and Hizkias��Assefa, a mediator in conflicts around the world, invited friends and colleagues to talk and think about the cutting edges of practice and theory in international peace work. Some uncertainty surrounded the launch of CJP itself, Jantzi recalls, and the organizers of the Frontiers conference didn’t have any particular plans to make it an annual event.

And they surely didn’t imagine that 20 years later it would be thriving, would have brought 2,800 people from 121 countries to EMU’s campus and would have directly inspired the creation of at least 10 other short-term peacebuilding institutes in Africa, Asia, the South Pacific and North America. Nor could Lederach, Jantzi and Assefa have imagined that they would remain involved to varying degrees ever since, though Assefa is the only one has taught every year at the summer institute.

“There was so much energy generated,” Jantzi recalls, of the first conference. “People were so eager to share their experiences.”

Participants found that simply being together at a week-long peacebuilding conference was tremendously beneficial and inspiring for their work, and the response was enthusiastic. During the following academic year, CJP received its accreditation, had three students in the master’s program and admitted a dozen more to begin in the fall of 1995, and had hired its first full-time administrative staff member, Ruth Zimmerman. Things were heading in a good direction, and CJP organized a second Frontiers in International Peacebuilding conference in the summer of 1995.

Conference becomes “SPI”

For its third year, CJP gave its one-week peacebuilding conference a new name: the Summer Peacebuilding Institute, or SPI. Word was spreading, interest was growing, and SPI was about to begin growing quickly in size, scope and length. By 2002, SPI attracted around 150 participants from about 50 countries and offered 20 classes over a two-month period.

One of the major early emphases at SPI – and CJP more generally – was grounding the academic curriculum and classroom instruction in practical, on-the-ground application of peacebuilding and conflict resolution. Early in SPI’s history, outside funders helped bring participants from different sides of several major conflicts around the world, including groups of Catholics and Protestants from Northern Ireland and members of the Hutu and Tutsi ethnic groups from Rwanda and Burundi.

This created a rich and challenging environment at SPI, adding a heavy dose of real-life experience from difficult, violent conflicts – sometimes involving opposing sides of the same conflict – to complement the theory-based aspects of the curriculum.

“In the classroom, that was pretty powerful,” says Tim Ruebke, who attended four years of SPI before earning his master’s degree from CJP in 1999.

Rich experiences outside classroom

Many report that the most powerful moments at SPI, though, occurred during informal, social times away from the classroom. Ruebke recalls an evening gathering at a home in Harrisonburg where participants from Northern Ireland shared stories, songs and dancing with each other and the rest of their classmates.

While the daily sessions focus on the cerebral, “head” aspects of peacebuilding, these informal, social times in the evenings get at its emotional “heart.” This aspect of SPI, Ruebke says, mirrors the reality of many real-life peace negotiations, where the hard work of compromise, connection and understanding between parties often occurs in relaxed, social settings before being finalized at the formal negotiating table.

“A lot of stuff that happens here is informal and relational,” says Jantzi. “We think it’s very significant.”

And as SPI participants often discover, the emotional aspects of peacebuilding aren’t always happy times of singing and dancing. One of the early SPI sessions included visitors from the former Soviet republic of Georgia as well as Abkhazia, a disputed region within Georgia over which a civil war was fought in the 1990s. One evening, an SPI professor had planned a discussion about this conflict and began by displaying a map of the region.

Ruebke was in the audience, and remembers that one of the parties was upset in some way by what was (or perhaps, what wasn’t) portrayed on the map. This immediately and badly derailed the session, and by the time things had been patched up and discussion about the conflict was able to proceed, the importance of the “felt” aspect of peacebuilding had been brought home to Ruebke in a memorable way.

“Even though we were a peacebuilding program, people brought their stuff with them,” remembers Ruth Zimmerman, who says that these sorts of conflicts would periodically flare up between participants. “We had a great learning ground for using some of those [conflict resolution] skill sets over the years.”

At the very beginning, the Frontiers in International Peacebuilding conferences and SPI were simply opportunities for professional development and learning. Before long, however, participants and graduate students in CJP began lobbying for an academic credit component to SPI. Though hesitant to accept the constraints of a pre-planned curriculum, CJP added a credit component to provide students with more flexibility in earning degrees through the program.

Some core courses have been offered year after year, including ones dealing with conflict analysis, restorative justice and trauma healing, and others that focus on practical peacebuilding skills like negotiation and reconciliation. Yet SPI stays true to its roots by exploring the field’s frontiers and updating its course offerings to reflect emerging themes in peacebuilding. Examples of new courses in 2014 include ones on media and societal transformation, playback theater, trauma-sensitive peacebuilding, mindfulness, and architecture as a peacebuilding tool.

Things ran on the skinniest of shoestring budgets in the very first years of SPI, when CJP professors opened their homes to participants after the day’s sessions had ended, while their spouses pitched in to help with meals. Volunteers filled many support roles. This contributed to the organic, intimate atmosphere that remains an important aspect of SPI to this day. But it was an exhausting and, in the long run, unsustainable way to run the event that itself led to conflicts between overworked staff members.

“It was so much work,” recalls Zimmerman, who filled leadership roles at CJP from 1995 to 2007. “I used to put in 70-hour weeks.”

Huge logistics behind SPI

In addition to planning courses and lining up faculty to teach them, coordinating the many moving parts of the growing SPI program presented huge logistical challenges. Once, a participant booked a flight to the Dallas, Texas, airport rather than Washington, D.C.’s Dulles Airport. Another one hopped in a taxi and directed the driver to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, 185 miles north of Harrisonburg, Virginia.

In 1998, just after she became one of CJP’s earliest master’s program graduates, Pat Hostetter Martin (also a participant in the very first Frontiers in International Peacemaking conference) joined SPI to help relieve the growing crisis of stress and exhaustion the workload was placing on other staff. The following year, Martin became SPI’s co-director with Patricia Spaulding, and then sole director from 2004 until 2008.

In 2000, William Goldberg – a 2001 master’s program graduate of CJP – joined the SPI staff as the transportation coordinator. He later served as an associate director, co-director and, as of 2013, the director of SPI, which now has two full-time staff members and employs about 10 temporary staff each summer. (Other SPI leaders: Gloria Rhodes in the ’90s, Sue Williams, 2008-’11; Valerie Helbert, 2011-’13.)

As the first Jewish program administrator at EMU, Goldberg embodies one of the ways that SPI has affected EMU as a whole by bringing such wide cultural and religious diversity to campus. From the very first Frontiers in International Peacebuilding conferences, CJP leaders wanted faculty to reflect the religious and cultural diversity of the participants – a desire at odds with EMU’s requirement that all faculty profess a Christian faith. After some discussion, CJP was able to negotiate exceptions to EMU’s hiring practices and hire non-Christian faculty members during the summer, which Jantzi points to as an example of the strong support SPI has generally enjoyed from university administrators since its beginning.

EMU’s hospitable community

Support from the university extended well beyond the administration, remembers Jantzi. Cafeteria staff embraced the opportunity, rather than resented the hassle, of serving participants with a variety of religious and cultural dietary preferences, while the physical plant staff went to great lengths to ensure everyone stayed comfortable during their time on campus. Together, the welcoming atmosphere the entire university created at SPI for visitors from around the world became an important part of its success.

As employees and departments outside of SPI pitched in to help it succeed, SPI also tried to build closer ties to the broader university community by making events like the opening ceremonies and the periodic SPI luncheons open to anyone on campus and in the surrounding community. And when these general open invitations didn’t attract large audiences, Martin found greater success when she started targeting specific people and departments with invitations and paying for their lunches.

SPI staff have also made similar efforts to share the diversity present on campus each summer with the broader community in and around Harrisonburg. As SPI’s community relations coordinator for about a decade, Margaret Foth worked to connect participants with families, churches and civic groups in the area. She helped form a particularly strong relationship with the Rotary Club of Rockingham County, which hosts a speaker from SPI each year and has helped underwrite an SPI trip to Washington D.C. A close relationship also developed between SPI and Park View Mennonite Church, just down the road from EMU, which has welcomed numerous international visitors in Sunday School classes and as participants in worship services.

“We wanted [participants] to know that it was an area that was welcoming and hospitable,” says Foth. “They weren’t just coming for an academic session. They were coming for relationships in a welcoming community.”

From 2000 to 2010, vanloads of SPI participants made connections farther from campus when they attended a peacebuilding conference held each summer by a group of churches in Knoxville, Tennessee, 360 miles southwest of Harrisonburg. (The minister who organized this conference, Jim Foster, is a graduate of Eastern Mennonite Seminary.) By staying with host families, the visitors enjoyed a more immersive experience in American culture; Foth says she could always count on enthusiastic reviews the following Monday, after participants returned to campus.

One year, a Vietnamese-American lawyer from California made the 12-hour round trip to Knoxville, and ended up staying in the home of a Mennonite pastor who, decades earlier, had fought in the Vietnam War. After they stayed up one night talking about their experience of that conflict, the lawyer returned to SPI and told Foth it had been a moment of great healing.

“I can still see him running across campus to give me a hug and say it was the best thing to have happened to him,” she recalls.

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Akin to heaven on earth?

In 2014, a total of 184 people from 36 countries attended SPI – about the size that SPI has been for the past five years, Goldberg says. As its third decade begins, SPI is as strong and as thriving as ever – planning for 2015 began before the books had even been closed on this year’s session.

Those who have been involved with SPI in some way over the past 20 years treasure the many memories and friendships they’ve formed along the way.

“I think it’s one of the best things that’s happened for EMU,” says Jantzi. “It’s one of the most exciting things I’ve been involved with here …. It’s just a really, really energizing time.”

One year, Jantzi and an Iranian seminary student who came to SPI struck up an intriguing, weeks-long conversation about whether converting other people to their respective religions could be done in a nonviolent, non-coercive way. This man later became a high-ranking diplomat who, years later, returned to the United States as part of an Iranian delegation to the United Nations. He contacted Jantzi and invited himself back to Harrisonburg to give a guest lecture in one of Jantzi’s sociology classes – an encouraging indication, Jantzi says, of the high regard this former SPI participant still had for EMU.

Goldberg says he’s often inspired by the great lengths that people will go to so they can attend SPI. In 2014, a group of Syrian participants traveled at least 12 hours each way, through difficult and unsafe conditions, to Lebanon to get their visas to travel to the United States. Then they did it again to catch their flights – an illustration, he says, of “the need that people have for this training.”

And he’s similarly inspired by the eagerness with which people return to very difficult circumstances in their homes to put that training and learning into practice.

“No matter how difficult the conflict someone comes from, they want to go back and make it better with the new skills they’ve learned here,” Goldberg says.

More generally, Martin, as well as others interviewed for this story, says one of the most important enduring memories of SPI is “the rich diversity of the whole thing. Oftentimes, that came out so well in the opening ceremonies. That just humbled you.

“You want heaven to be like this,” she says.

— Andrew Jenner

EMU’s cross-cultural program is intentionally different from that of almost every college in America, says Vernon Jantzi ’64, who became a faculty member at EMU after earning his PhD in the sociology of development from Cornell University in 1975.

Jantzi, who has held a number of key administrative positions at EMU (and who passed up a chance to work at Harvard to come to EMU), was one of the founding faculty members of EMU’s and served as its second director for seven years, after its founder John Paul Lederach.

“We have slightly different ways of measuring success and what a program gives back to the students than a secular college or university,” explains Jantzi. “Our cross-cultural is not just an education for the intellect but it is a life-changing experience that is spiritual and changes students’ entire educational experience.”

EMU’s aims to improve the communities in which students spend time, while cultivating a sense of humble respect in the students for the wisdom, knowledge, and culture of the people they meet.

“There certainly are benefits in the professional world in doing a cross-cultural,” says Jantzi, “but our focus is on how it is going to change your life and outlook. This has been the goal since the program was implemented in 1982.”

As a case in point, Jantzi wrote his master’s thesis on Chile, but had never actually been to that country before leading a cross-cultural trip there in 1990. “I wrote my paper about how the government influences the Pentecostal Church. But when we actually went to Chile I saw a lot of that information in a different way.”

One of Jantzi’s criteria for a successful trip is for students to live within typical households. “I want students to be exposed to the cross-generational experience in that country and the things involved in family life in that country. . . .

“[In Chile] some of the students even lived with families who had been tortured or had family members killed by the military. They experienced families with very different political views than they had ever seen before. Some things can’t be learned from a book.”

Jantzi and his wife, Dorothy ’62, lived over 12 years in Latin America, notably Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Peru; he has been a consultant on development and restorative justice matters in a number of other countries.

(The Jantzis’ son, Terry ’87, also earned a PhD from Cornell in international and community development. Fluent in Spanish, he taught full-time at EMU from 1999 to 2010 and co-led, with his wife Elizabeth, a Peru cross-cultural in 2007. He then moved to international work with World Vision.)

In the mid-1980s, Jantzi spoke wherever he could – in churches, other universities, Congressional hearings – on the disastrous impact of U.S. military support for the “Contra” militias in Nicaragua. Alternatively, Jantzi advocated U.S. support for dialogue between the opposing factions and for development efforts to alleviate poverty.

At the time, he expressed amazement at Washington’s ignorance about Central America, adding that Mennonite Central Committee volunteers working there at the grassroots seemed to be much better informed than the policymakers were.

Jantzi, who speaks Portuguese and German in addition to Spanish, led a nationwide adult literacy program in Nicaragua in the late 1960s. In the early 1980s in Costa Rica, he was director of Cornell University’s program on worker-owned and -managed enterprises in collaboration with the Instituto de Tierras y Colonizacion. In New Zealand in the last decade, Jantzi helped found peace centers at two universities.

In 2009, Jantzi was tapped to coordinate a feasibility study for the now-established Center for Interfaith Engagement, under which EMU invites Christians, Jews, Muslims and others from diverse streams to build relationships based on mutual respect and understanding. He now works as a facilitator for EMU’s Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience (better known as “STAR”).

Reflecting on his early-career decision to pass up a position at the Harvard International Institute of Development, Jantzi says, “It was a struggle, not an easy choice, because there was sacrifice involved.

“But EMU has been good. I estimate that 75 to 80 percent of faculty members have made those same kinds of choices. We choose to stay because there’s something about EMU that you don’t find anywhere else. It’s worth the sacrifice.”

—Rachael Keshishian & Bonnie Price Lofton

EMU’s cross-cultural program may never have come to be, had it not been for the efforts of Albert Keim ’63, dean of students from 1977 to 1984. Keim had a passion for education, service and travel, which he lived out for 35 years at this university.

Keim felt all EMU students should be immersed in a culture different from their own before graduation, yielding life-changing experiences.

We are conceiving of the college as… a place – a village – during this four-year phase of the life of our students,” wrote Keim in a 1982 memo advocating for the program.

The rich tapestry of human villages – humans always live in groups – becomes a means to heighten awareness, enrich the learning experience and prepare students for a service which transcends the village and the nation.

…We are reaching for a vision of the world as a sister-brotherhood under the tutelage and guidance of God the Father.

Keim was raised in an Amish community in rural Ohio. “In that tightly knit community I was a child surrounded by grandparents, uncles, aunts and many degrees of cousins,” he wrote in his autobiographical chapter in Making Sense of the Journey: The Geography of Our Faith (2007). “One cannot grow up in an Amish community such as mine without forever being impressed by the benefit of communal mutuality…. Quite frankly I cannot imagine a more desirable environment in which to spend a childhood.”

But he added, “The Amish community is not as good an environment for intellectually ambitious adults.”

At age 20 (1955) Keim was drafted. A conscientious objector, Keim was able to satisfy the draft board by doing two years of service as a volunteer with Mennonite Central Committee, helping refugees in war-devastated Europe. This period overseas, which included a month on a kibbutz in Israel, changed his life path.

“I went to Europe Amish, but by the time I returned, it was clear to me that I could not be an Amishman. I had discovered the world was simply too rich and complex to be narrowed down to the relative simplicity of an Amish life.”

After returning to the United States, Keim earned a degree in history from EMU in 1963. He immediately continued his education through a master’s degree in medieval history from the University of Virginia and a PhD in history from Ohio State University

Ann Hershberger ’76, a professor who served with Keim on the task force that launched EMU’s cross-cultural program, says she always admired the way he honored his insular, communal past while embracing a broader, more global vision of the world. “He valued his roots and never disrespected them and that was an important lesson for me. He didn’t choose to live in that community but he never lost contact.”

During a “winter term” in 1972-73 Keim and his wife, Leanna Yoder Keim ’68, led the first EMU-sponsored cross-cultural trip to Switzerland and Germany, with time in Rome, Paris, London and Amsterdam. (They took along their child, Melody ’83, then age 11.) This optional trip focused on history, Keim’s field of expertise, but the group also took in music, art and literature. At times Keim rented cars and let the students drive and explore on their own.

“He was really a trusting man and he gave us the freedom to experience new things and to see the world,” says Karen Moshier-Shenk ’73, one of Keim’s students on that first trip.

Recalls professor Vernon Jantzi ’64, one of Keim’s contemporaries: “He was so good at dealing with various opinions and issues that arose and always had a way to find a compromise. He was truly an amazing man.”

Keim’s first wife, Leanna, died in 1998. Keim retired two years later and married educator Kathy Fisher ’73. They spent 2000-2001, the first year of their marriage, in Saudi Arabia, where she had worked as a teacher for 20 years. After they returned permanently to the United States, he became a founding board member of the Valley Brethren-Mennonite Heritage Center in Harrisonburg and otherwise led an active life, until his health deteriorated. He died on June 27, 2008, of complications following a liver transplant.

—Rachael Keshishian

Learn more about the four task force members who served with Albert Keim in the following articles:

• Calvin Shenk: Knowing joy and pain around the globe
• Vernon Jantzi: Viewing the program as a spiritual journey
• Ann Hershberger: Experiencing the cauldron of war
• Ken J. Nafziger: Making music with appreciative Cubans