, PhD in Social Work 2008, Osmania University in Hyderabad, India. Dissertation title: “A Study of the Quality of Life of Sri Lankan Refugees Living in Camps in Tamil Nadu.” Current work: Chief Zonal Officer in CASA (Church’s Auxiliary for Social Action). “We work in the villages of India. I coordinate development efforts in the four southern states of India. Our focus is on poverty alleviation and political awareness and empowerment of the oppressed classes, particularly the dalits, tribals, women and backward castes.”

, PhD in Theology 2005, University of Durham in the United Kingdom. Dissertation title: “Corporate Discipline and the People of God: A Study of 1 Corinthians 5.3-5.” Current work: College and seminary professor of religion and a mediator in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois. Previously Brenneman was an assistant professor of religion and the director of peace and conflict studies at Mennonite-affiliated Bluffton University in Ohio. “My dissertation was a study of community discipline in the ancient church in Corinth, with implications for churches today.”

, PhD in Peace Studies 2008 from the University of Bradford in the United Kingdom. Dissertation title: “A Transformative Approach to Public Dispute Resolution: A Study of the U.S. Model and the South Korean Case.” Current work: Education and publication, including book writing, focusing on peacebuilding and conflict transformation; lecturer at universities, special events and workshops for different groups. “I published a book titled Conflict Resolution in Korean Society in 2010. I also translated a book entitled Managing Public Disputes. Both books are my efforts to introduce conflict resolution/transformation to Korean society and encourage people to take different approaches to conflict based on dialogue and collaboration.”

, PhD in Political Science 2004 from Banaras Hindu University in Varanasi, India. Thesis title: “Refugee Problematic and Regional Security in South Asia.” Current work: Assistant professor in the  in Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. Kaushikee’s online curriculum vitae list dozens of seminars given, workshops led, conferences organized, and papers, monographs and a book published, both in India and in other countries, notably the Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland and the United States. Her range of interests is wide—from human rights to conflict resolution—but she has demonstrated a particular interest in the Gandhian approach to peace and conflict resolution.

, Doctor of Letters (D.LItt.) 2012, Drew University in New Jersey. Dissertation title: “On the Survival of Mennonite Community in Modern-Day America: Lessons from History, Communities and Artists.” Current work: Editor-in-chief at ��ݮ����, including writing and editing Peacebuilder magazine. “The Mennonite church-community offers the world a distinctive and much-needed minority voice on behalf of living peacefully and helping people who are suffering. I hope this community will resist the historic trend of the assimilation of minority communities into the dominant culture.”

, PhD in Conflict Analysis and Resolution 2010 from the School for Conflict Analysis & Resolution at George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia. Dissertation title: “The Politics Of Ritual: Exploring Discourse Regarding The Use Of Ritual In Northern Uganda.” Current work: Chief of Programming and Training for Africa Region of the United States Peace Corps. “In this role I provide strategic oversight and guidance to the development efforts of 25 country programs in Africa.  It is the largest regional program in the Peace Corps—approximately 41 percent of Peace Corps Volunteers serve in Africa. Though not the largest part of what I do, I have started a post-conflict support initiative for our programs in Rwanda, Uganda, Sierra Leone and Liberia.”

PLUS: Three female graduates earned doctoral-level law degrees before enrolling in CJP: , Doctor of Law 1988 from the Catholic University in Quito, Ecuador; , JD 1988 from George Washington University School of Law; and , JD 1987 from West Virginia University School of Law.

Bluffton, Ohio

After completing a bachelor’s degree at EMU in 1996, Laura Brenneman joined Lutheran Volunteer Corps in Chicago where she was an activist for human rights through 1998. She was among delegations that visited the US Congress, advocating for a change in foreign policy in Latin America to reduce human rights abuses. She also organized delegations to Cuba and Guatemala, and she “went after Nike, The Gap, Disney, and other corporations with sweatshops around the world.”

Today, as a professor who explores the intersection between religion and conflict transformation work, Laura values the way CJP is willing to deal with the “tension” between the concepts of peace and justice. Pushing for justice tends to cause disharmony, at least in the short term, she says. “Folks who feel comfortable with the way things are will see you as an irritant if you point out that the existing structure is unjust, that oppression is structuralized.”

Laura is not the type to parse her words. She views the lack of access to health care for all US citizens as “scandalous,” adding that it is “egregious to be willing to throw away the most vulnerable in our society.” Laura supports activism more than engaging in it these days: “It takes a lot of time to be an activist, and I can’t do my teaching job and that too. I have to trust that other people are doing what I can’t do.” Concurrently with earning her MA at CJP, Laura earned a second MA at Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary, followed by a PhD from the University of Durham in the United Kingdom.

In her classes, she never misses the opportunity to highlight “the economic disparity between the rich and the poor, and what systems lead us to this disparity.” But she also tells her students not to feel that the problems are so big, they are impossible to solve. “The trick is not to be immobilized by the fact that we can’t do everything or see quick results. I tell my students to start at the local level by breaking down the barriers in our own community between the rich and the poor and by working to get food, shelter and clothes to those who need it.” Laura is also working to establish restorative justice and mediation programs in the Bluffton area.

The post-EMU paths followed by CJP’s 36 earliest graduates are as diverse as the 10 countries in which they are currently living.  Yet several themes tended to recur in the interviews, regardless of the nationality, gender, or vocation of the speaker.

Theme No. 1: Peacebuilding begins with oneself and one’s close personal relationships.

Twenty-one of the 36 graduates (58%) specifically mentioned personal sacrifices or career changes they had made to enable their children to be raised in a healthy home environment with attentive caregiving. Four of the alumni are in couples where the husband is devoting, or did devote, years to being the full-time parent. Three of the female alumni are full-time parents now, and two couples are job-sharing or otherwise evenly splitting child-rearing responsibilities. One at-home parent explained, “I want my children to be part of the solution, not part of the problem, when they grow up.”

Theme No. 2: Peacebuilding needs to be extended beyond self, home and immediate community into the transformation of entire systems that perpetuate widespread injustices and thus foment violent conflict.

“In becoming a parent I have become increasingly aware of the world that we are leaving to future generations,” wrote Jeff Heie in an e-mail to the editor of Peacebuilder. “Our current economic system assigns very little value to prevention and the ‘common good’… I have come to view many forms of conflict as rooted in issues of lifestyle. When Western cultures demand a certain level of comfort and wealth, they sow the seeds of conflict.”

Theme No. 3: Wrestling with transforming systems and structures in the absence of clarity on what would be better and how to get there.

In February 2009, at the Global Baptist Peace Conference in Rome, Aküm Longchari of Nagaland (in northeast India) asked those present, representing 59 countries, to consider how they use nonviolent campaigns around the world: Are they merely addressing the outcomes of a violent society, but not addressing the structures that create it?

In a 1999 paper written with fellow alumnus Babu Ayindo of Kenya, Longchari elaborated:

In almost every part of the world, greed and insecurity have led to astronomic consumerism and domination. What we have now is a culture of lies and death primarily guided by fear and profit. Humanity has turned anti-life. We are now evolving a culture that does not have humans and life at its center… Things will get better when more third and fourth world and indigenous people overcome the [Western] definitions of culture that suffocate their capacity to transform their world according to their needs, as their ancestors did.

Build Relationships, But Then?

Upon graduating from CJP (called “CTP” in their era), most of the 36 alumni felt they had been well prepared to develop the interpersonal relationships necessary for reaching out to parties in conflict and bringing them into dialogue with each other. They felt they had learned to listen respectfully, regardless of the nature of the speaker, and to converse in a diplomatic, culturally sensitive manner. They also had learned to be aware of the array of factors that play into a conflict, including who are the stakeholders and what might be their motivations.

In other words, these alumni often spoke of emerging from CTP with a new lens through which to view themselves and the world, of being sensitized to how others view life. They also emerged with analytical tools to help them know “where to start” in their efforts to sow seeds of peace.

Nobody interviewed expressed regret at gaining these insights and skills. Almost all spoke of the ways they had benefited from learning them.

Nevertheless, about a third of the interviewees expressed a desire, as Ayindo and Longchari voiced in their paper, “to search for new paradigms of governance and systems… with the inherent capacity to meet the aspirations of peoples.”

CTP did not contribute to this search, at least not in their era of study. “The one area that I wish would have been stronger at CTP was a critical analysis of how economic systems and relationships perpetuate conflict,” said Jeff Heie. “The military-industrial complex is an example that we all know about. An economy that relies so heavily on the economic activity generated by arms sales and military spending has a vested interest in keeping violent conflict alive.” Heie and other alumni expressed frustration at addressing the effects or symptoms of cycles of destruction, rather than breaking the cycles.

On the local level, for instance, Jim Bernat has worked for a community services board in a semi-rural area of Virginia long enough to notice that some of the clients coming into his treatment system are the sons and daughters of clients treated for mental health or substance abuse problems many years ago. “Our system is clearly broken, when the kids arrive at our doors as harmed as their parents were,” said Bernat.

In El Salvador, Sandra Dunsmore said she ended up doing “damage control” in her role as a facilitator of dialogue for the stakeholders involved in winding down the war in El Salvador in the mid-1990s, rather than hearing the stakeholders address the social and economic issues underlying the war – issues that fester to this day in El Salvador.

Need to Understand Power

“I used to think that if your arguments are good enough, people will listen to you,” Dunsmore said. “Often that isn’t true, especially when there are very powerful interests at play.” Back in her day at CTP, Dunsmore added, “We talked very little in class about power dynamics.”

Upon returning to West Africa after graduating, Sam Gbaydee Doe kept seeing something that he did not know how to stop, even with his rapidly growing network of peace organizations: certain African power-players went about winning a place in the post-conflict power structure by intentionally doing horrific things. Doe observed: “One of the best ways to get recognition, to get a seat at the negotiation table, is to cut off the limbs of babies and children.”

Eventually Doe developed a hunger to move beyond scenarios of dealing with sickly violent characters to figuring out “how we can make the state work for ordinary people.” In 2005, he entered a doctoral program in Britain to study the history and mechanisms of statebuilding, intending to apply his findings to Africa.

No interviewee suggested that demonstrating in the streets, in the manner of the French Revolution or even of Mahatma Gandhi, was an effective way of transforming the “system.”

“We can’t just protest,” said Dunsmore. “We must come up with proposals for things that will work in the real world. We need to understand the deep, complex phenomenon underlying our global problems.”

From her professor’s perch in Ohio, Laura Brenneman agreed: “Oppression is definitely structuralized, but [in the US] folks are mostly comfortable and don’t want that pointed out.”

Yet even those folks who aren’t complacent, who are willing to acknowledge “structuralized oppression,” are handicapped by their lack of a socio-economic “paradigm” to work towards. As
Dunsmore puts it, “We’re flying blind. We can’t see around the corner.”

The Impact of Money

A final consideration in this discussion is money. None of the 36 alumni featured in this Peacebuilder have deep wells of money at their disposal. Many depend on grant-based funding that provides for short-term interventions or other types of work focused on specific problems.

Yet “sustainable peacebuilding takes years, decades, generations,” says Jan Jenner, director of CJP’s Practice and Training Institute.

A major source of grant money for CJP in its formative years was the Hewlett Foundation, according to CJP’s leaders in the 1990s. After a decade, however, Hewlett shifted its priorities to environmental and development issues, withdrawing funding from CJP and other peace organizations it had been supporting.

In hindsight, Hewlett does deserve recognition for hanging with CJP for 10 years – many foundations shift their funding priorities much more quickly than that. Ironically, however, Hewlett shifted its funding just as CJP had started to develop a track record, as exemplified by the work of our first 36 graduates.

One can dream of the long-term impact Hewlett might have engendered if it had maintained its support, perhaps providing CJP with the resources to explore the structural issues troubling so many of our alumni today.

As matters now stand, many of our graduates spend considerable time writing grant applications for short-term funding. If successful, they subsequently must prepare detailed reports to meet the typically rigid requirements of their funders. Rather than being accountable to the people they are trying to serve, they must tailor their work to the funders’ current interests, which may be “natural resource conflicts” this year, HIV/AIDS next year, and “human security” the year after. Few of our alumni are willing to speak on the record on this matter, because of fear of losing all funding possibilities.

An African dependent on grant money said: “The whole peacebuilding field is becoming monopolized by USAID, which exists to advance the foreign policy of the United States. I have seen funding of a particular project suddenly cut off, not because the work we were doing wasn’t good and effective for the people at the grassroots, but because Washington DC saw no benefit for Americans in what we were doing.”

Another spoke of a $5 million USAID grant supposedly earmarked for peacebuilding work in Africa that was siphoned off by US contractors and other “experts” en route to Africa, resulting in only $175,000 actually being available for work by Africans for Africans.

These views are the stuff of uncomfortable conversations. But they are exchanges that need to be held, according to Jenner, formerly a CJP student and now an administrator. She says more resources need to be put into “longer term, harder work, [including] having hard, disagreeable conversations about problems, confronting power, and building peace that is sustainable.”

How to do this “longer term, harder work” may be CJP’s biggest challenge over the next 10 to 15 years.

— Bonnie Price Lofton

Photos courtesy EMU/CJP archives



1. More impact than they foresaw

In the booklet When You Are the Peacebuilder, published just nine years ago [2001], the three authors – then all fresh graduates from CJP – wrote: “Most of us – including the authors – will never be famous. We’ll not work at the UN, or appear on television, or be written about in history books.” Actually, one of the three authors (Sam Gdaydee Doe) now works for the UN, and all of them have found themselves in media reports in reference to their work or views on building peace. If you Google their names – Babu Ayindo and Janice Jenner were the other two authors – you will see they have had a far greater impact on the world than they anticipated back in 2001. They have been research-based analysts, trainers, strategists, communicators, and developers of new peace-related programs. They have directly influenced tens of thousands and indirectly influenced countless more. In a generation or two, they may even be in history books.

2. Space to regenerate

About half of this group of early alumni came to CJP because they were hovering at the edge of “burn-out.” They needed time and space to regain their resiliency. They had experienced war-inflicted trauma, the violent deaths of loved ones, or were exhausted from struggling to address terrible wrongs over many years. In their interviews, all of those who faced burn-out said CJP recharged their batteries, though one spoke of the ongoing effects of the genocide-type trauma he survived. In short, CJP served as a resource for hope and regeneration for this group.

3. Good people, trying hard

Every person in this group of alumni appears to be as well motivated as he or she was a decade or so ago. But certain members of the group have gone through divorces, bungled paying jobs, and found themselves at odds with other peacebuilders. In other words, being a trained peacebuilder is no guarantee of success in transforming all situations of conflict. Yet, by and large, when any of them meets another CJP-trained person in the world, there is an immediate sense of kinship. They nod when hearing the term “EMU mafia,” coined by Babu Ayindo in reference to the CJP-trained people he often meets in trainings, research, and social action processes around the world. This “mafia” consists of overwhelmingly well-intentioned people who are doing their best to, first, do no harm and, second, if possible, have a positive impact, while learning from the mistakes they have made along the way.

4. North-South differences

Alumni whose work is focused upon the Southern Hemisphere are most likely to spontaneously voice concerns about socio-economic structures or systems that they believe are fundamentally unfair and that fuel violent conflict. In a paper they wrote in 1999 and revised in 2004, alums Akum Lonchari and Babu Ayindo made this trenchant comment: “It is time third world people asked themselves rather seriously whether people who live in squalor, who are oppressed by national and global forces, and who are struggling for a little freedom are in urgent need of prejudice reduction workshops, communication skills, and peace manuals.” By contrast, alumni working in the developed parts of the Northern Hemisphere are more likely to express interest in personal transformation and interpersonal relationship-building as ends in themselves, rather than as building blocks for systemic change. There are, of course, exceptions to this general observation, as exemplified by Laura Brenneman in the US and Jeff Heie in the UK.

5. Thirst for doctorates

The founders of CJP did not intend for the MA in conflict transformation program to be a stepping stone for students who wished to subsequently earn a doctorate. On the contrary, they envisioned a unique graduate program – one that would prepare “reflective practitioners” for real-world work, rather producing graduates oriented toward academic teaching and research, as was being done at another Virginia institution, George Mason University, at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and elsewhere. Yet the last decade has shown that even people heavily involved in practice often hunger to acquire the highest degree offered. Some CJP grads want to teach at the university level. Some feel that having a doctorate gives them more credibility, regardless of their field of work. A few want the additional time in a university setting to think, research and analyze. Of the 36 alums in our group, eight (22%) have entered doctoral programs, and three have completed this degree.

— Bonnie Price Lofton

Photo courtesy EMU/CJP archives