Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution

Carter School students attend the Oxford Consortium for Human Rights

Katarina Benson — Mon, 21 Apr 2025 17:08:27 +0000

Carter School students attend the Oxford Consortium for Human Rights Katarina Benson Mon, 04/21/2025 - 13:08

Four �鶹��Ƶ students from the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution traveled to Oxford University’s Magdalen College in the United Kingdom with Carter School dean Alpaslan Özerdem for the 2025 Oxford Consortium for Human Rights (OCHR). 

Billy Agwanda Nyadera, Anulina Sen, Hyoin Kim, and Avery Shippen attended the 2025 workshop “Human Rights in War and Climate Emergency” March 24 – 30, which explored the nature of modern warfare and the legal protections afforded to civilians, combatants, and detainees, as well as the science of climate change and its impact on humanity. 

Carter School students with Dean Özerdem. Photo provided

The workshop also examined the intersection of climate change and modern warfare, spotlighting the ramifications of combat on local environments. During the week-long event, the four students attended seminars on artificial intelligence (AI) and the impact of new technology, the use of religion in resolution tactics, mobilizing responses to build compassionate and just communities, and other topics.

“By joining this consortium, the Carter School offers its students a truly once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Not only do they get to collaborate with peers from other leading U.S. universities, but they also engage in a transformative learning experience guided by distinguished scholars from the University of Oxford,” Özerdem said. “Studying and living in Oxford—even for just one week—provides students with a unique and inspiring environment that fosters intellectual growth, enhances self-confidence, and broadens their academic horizons.”

“This immersive experience also significantly strengthens their professional development and employability prospects after graduation, equipping them with the global perspective and collaborative skills sought after in today’s competitive world,” he added.

Sen, a master’s student at the Carter School, found the setting and the dialogue inspiring. “The Oxford Consortium has clarified my research, showed me possibilities in this field and led to unexpected conversations that challenged my views.”

"Attending the Oxford Consortium deepened my understanding of the intersection between war, climate emergencies, and human rights, said Kim, a conflict resolution student at the �鶹��Ƶ Korea campus who put what she learned into practice upon returning to campus. “I immediately turned my insights into action by organizing a campus event where students could share actions for peace through storytelling."

The students found the seminars to be of immense value to their own research as well as to their understanding of the modern conflict, the threat of climate change, and the crossover of the two areas of research and their impact on human rights. 

"I saw and experienced the fusion of minds and hearts in pursuit of solutions to some of the most pertinent issues facing our societies today,” said Nyadera, a Carter School doctoral student. “I feel profoundly grateful for the opportunity to participate and contribute to this pioneering program to connect Carter School student community with global conversations and networks. OCHR has been a true catalyst for my own work."

Shippen, an undergraduate student at the Carter School and the Honors College, also appreciated the opportunity the conference provided. “It helped me better understand the connection of human rights, war, and climate emergencies, as well as how I can help address these topics as a student,” Shippen said. “As someone passionate about global education, it was inspiring to learn from professionals and faculty who care deeply about human rights and the way they intersect with global challenges."

In This Story

Alpaslan Özerdem

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Announcing the recipients of the 2025 Presidential Awards for Faculty Excellence

Lauren Reuscher — Mon, 14 Apr 2025 14:49:41 +0000

Announcing the recipients of the 2025 Presidential Awards for Faculty Excellence Lauren Reuscher Mon, 04/14/2025 - 10:49

�鶹��Ƶ President Gregory Washington has announced the recipients of the 2025 Presidential Awards for Faculty Excellence, honoring 12 George �鶹��Ƶ faculty members for their work on behalf of the university, students, and the broader community.

The awards honor faculty with up to six years of service, six to 12 years of service, and more than 12 years of service.

This is the ninth year for the Presidential Awards for Faculty Excellence. Recipients are selected by a review committee that includes prior award recipients and senior leaders from relevant areas. They will be honored at a reception May 13.

“Faculty excellence is an undeniable reason why George �鶹��Ƶ is consistently ranked as one the country’s top 50 public universities,” President Gregory Washington said. “We honor these faculty members’ scholarship and dedication to help students achieve their highest potential with the university’s highest faculty recognition.”

The John Toups Presidential Medal for Excellence in Teaching is presented to a faculty member whose teaching inspires and stimulates students in the finest tradition of higher education.

The Beck Family Presidential Medal for Excellence in Research recognizes extraordinary contributions by members of the �鶹��Ƶ faculty to consequential research of high impact. The award is presented annually to a George �鶹��Ƶ faculty member whose research represents groundbreaking advances in their field.

The United Bank Presidential Medal for Excellence in Diversity and Inclusion recognizes extraordinary contributions in teaching, research, scholarship, creative works, or service that directly advances diversity and inclusion inside and outside the George �鶹��Ƶ community.

The Earle C. Williams Presidential Medal for Excellence in Social Impact is presented to a faculty member in any discipline who makes extraordinary efforts to use their scholarship to solve real-world problems.

The complete list of 2025 honorees is below. See prior recipients for 2017 to 2024.

Bethany Cieslowski

Faculty Excellence in Teaching Award Recipient

Bethany Cieslowski

Chief Innovation Officer for Immersive Technologies and Instructional Associate Professor, School of Nursing

Bethany Cieslowski joined the faculty of the School of Nursing as an instructional faculty member in 2021. She serves as the chief innovation officer for immersive technologies and the bachelor of science in nursing director in the College of Public Health. Since 2017, when she received the Certified Healthcare Simulation Educator (CHSE) certification, she has devoted herself to educating the nursing workforce of the future using simulation and technology. Cieslowski has been a pioneer at George �鶹��Ƶ in the use of virtual reality (VR) simulations that immerse students in clinical nursing scenarios. To aid this effort she established the College of Public Health’s VR SIM lab, which is the first lab in the country to receive accreditation from the Society for Simulation in Healthcare for the use of immersive technologies in medical scenarios.

Angela Miller

John Toups Presidential Medal for Excellence in Teaching Recipient

Angela Miller

Associate Professor, College of Education and Human Development

Angela Miller is an associate professor in the College of Education and Human Development. Her primary teaching focus is on quantitative research methods. She has taught 13 different courses in her time at George �鶹��Ƶ, and she took the lead in redesigning the research methods curriculum for PhD students and developed three new courses to that end. While her own teaching has been focused on the graduate level, she took a lead role in developing, teaching, and now mentoring graduate students and other faculty in an undergraduate statistics course that is part of the �鶹��Ƶ Core for Quantitative Reasoning. Miller makes deliberate efforts to tailor her instruction to the unique needs of her students and she consistently receives outstanding evaluations. She has made significant contributions to graduate mentoring, having chaired six dissertation committees, served as the methodologist on an additional 18 dissertation committees, and chaired six MA thesis committees, as well as an additional 16 MA capstone projects. She was also a recipient of the 2017 �鶹��Ƶ Teaching Excellence Award.

Weiwen Jiang

Faculty Excellence in Research Award Recipient

Weiwen Jiang

Assistant Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering Department

Weiwen Jiang, an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in the College of Engineering and Computing, received his PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Pittsburgh in 2019 and spent two years at the University of Notre Dame as a postdoctoral researcher. Jiang’s research is in the relatively new field of quantum computing, which uses quantum mechanics to enable computers to solve more complicated problems. Jiang’s research has important applications. For example, one of his recent papers combines quantum computational techniques with machine learning to solve problems relating to the discovery of new medicines. Jiang has an impressive research record of top-tier conference presentations and publications, some of which are in the most selective journals in his field (Nature Communications, Nature Electronics, Scientific Reports).

Xuesu Xiao

Faculty Excellence in Research Award Recipient

Xuesu Xiao

Assistant Professor, Computer Science Department

Xuesu Xiao received his PhD in Computer Science in 2019 from Texas A&M University, and after three years in industry as a roboticist with Everyday Robots, an Alphabet/Google company, he joined the Computer Science Department in the College of Engineering and Computing. His research aims to develop intelligent mobile robots that can navigate in challenging terrain with minimal human oversight. His cutting-edge work in the field of social robot navigation seeks to develop robots that can navigate human-occupied public spaces safely while respecting social norms. At George �鶹��Ƶ, he established the RobotiXX Lab, in which he works with postdocs, graduate students, and high school students to develop deployable robots. An outstanding researcher, he was awarded the New Generation Star recognition at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

Aarthi Narayanan

Faculty Excellence in Research Award Recipient

Aarthi Narayanan

Professor, Biology Department

Aarthi Narayanan joined the George �鶹��Ƶ faculty as a tenure-line faculty in 2013 after spending six years at the National Centre for Biosecurity and Infectious Disease. She is currently a professor in the Biology Department in the College of Science. Her research focuses on the impact of viruses–including SARS-CoV-2, Ebola, Dengue, and HIV–on disease progression at the tissue and cell level. Her work has led to important discoveries in vaccine development, drug discovery, and biomarker identification for infectious diseases. Narayanan has an exceptional record of publications and external funding for her research. Moreover, she has been an exemplary citizen of the university and her profession. She has been a dedicated mentor to emerging scientists in academic and industry settings; a leader in mentoring junior faculty, postdoctoral researchers, and students; a vital contributor to curriculum development for undergraduate and graduate programs; and dedicated to outreach to the local community, participating in STEM programs for girls.

Allison Redlich

The Beck Family Presidential Medal for Faculty Excellence in Research Recipient

Allison Redlich

Professor, Criminology, Law and Society Department

Founder and Director, Modeling Decision-Making in the Legal System (MoDiLS) Lab

Allison Redlich is a professor in the Department of Criminology, Law and Society in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences and is the founder and director of George �鶹��Ƶ’s Modeling Decision-Making in the Legal System (MoDiLS) Lab. Her research is deeply interdisciplinary. Trained in psychology, she brings insights from that field to address critical issues facing the legal system. For example, she has published influential research about interrogations and confessions in police and military contexts. This scholarship has been widely cited in amicus briefs to states and the Supreme Court, and Redlich herself has provided expert testimony in important cases involving contested confessions. She has produced similarly influential research on topics such as guilty pleas and mental health courts. Her work is credited with transforming scholarly thinking on these topics, and by all accounts is having a significant impact on current practices within the legal system. A prolific scholar and researcher, she has been elected a Fellow to the three most influential organizations in her academic fields: the American Psychological Association, the Association for Psychological Science, and the Academy of Experimental Criminology. Redlich has also distinguished herself as a mentor and has received mentoring awards from George �鶹��Ƶ and from the American Society of Criminology and the American Psychology-Law Society.

Daphne King

Faculty Excellence in Diversity and Inclusion Award Recipient

Daphne King

Assistant Professor, Social Work Department

Daphne King joined the faculty at George �鶹��Ƶ’s Department of Social Work in the College of Public Health in 2020 as an assistant professor and also serves as the MSW Online Program director. Prior to arriving at George �鶹��Ƶ, she had an impactful career as a social worker working with individuals experiencing mental health challenges, with homeless and incarcerated populations, and in school social work settings. King’s scholarship and national contributions focus on the intersection of social work practice, clinician identity, and pedagogical strategies. Within the Social Work Department at George �鶹��Ƶ, she has been proactive in providing leadership in course development, course refresh processes, and faculty training, particularly around online teaching to ensure that there is adequate support for diverse learners in digital and hybrid learning environments.

Janani Umamaheswar

Faculty Excellence in Diversity and Inclusion Award Recipient

Janani Umamaheswar

Associate Professor, Criminology, Law and Society

Janani Umamaheswar joined the Department of Criminology, Law and Society in 2021 as an assistant professor in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences. She is also an affiliate faculty member in the Women and Gender Studies Program. She is an accomplished scholar whose research addresses issues relating to social inequality, punishment and incarceration, and qualitative research methods. In her teaching she makes a point to include a broad range of perspectives on whatever subject matter she is teaching, and in her course design she creates assessment methods that give students of diverse backgrounds and viewpoints the opportunity to share their learning in different modalities. She has also created experiential co-curricular activities designed to help students grasp issues relating to inequality. For example, she worked with the Douglass Project, the country’s foremost prison visitation program, to take George �鶹��Ƶ graduate students for a guided dialogue session in the Washington, D.C., jail. She has been an active member of the mentoring programs run by multiple divisions of the American Society of Criminology.

Jacqueline McDowell

United Bank Presidential Medal for Faculty Excellence in Diversity and Inclusion Recipient

Jacqueline McDowell

Associate Professor, School of Sport, Recreation, and Tourism Management

Assistant Dean for Faculty Success

Jacqueline McDowell is assistant dean for faculty success and associate professor in the School of Sport, Recreation, and Tourism Management in the College of Education and Human Development. A well-respected scholar, her work focuses primarily on diversity and inclusion in organized sports and recreation organizations. She has published widely in this field, particularly on the experiences of women and sport, such as athletic administrators and coaches. One of her articles was awarded the 2017 President’s Award for Article of Distinction at the National Intramural-Recreational Sports Association. In McDowell’s teaching, issues of inclusion are central. She has also been active in advancing inclusion in her professional service, both here at George �鶹��Ƶ and in external professional organizations. For example, she serves on the American Kinesiology Association’s Membership Committee, where she has led efforts to bring more Historically Black Colleges and Universities into the field by developing outreach strategies. Due to the effectiveness of these efforts, she was asked to chair this committee for the American Kinesiology Association.

Margarita Tadevosyan

Faculty Excellence in Social Impact Award Recipient

Margarita Tadevosyan

Research Assistant Professor and Executive Director, Center for Peacemaking Practice, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution

Margarita Tadevosyan received her PhD in Conflict Analysis and Resolution from �鶹��Ƶ in 2019 and is a research assistant professor and executive director of the Center for Peacemaking Practice at the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution. She is a scholar-practitioner of conflict resolution and local peacebuilding, with a focus on South Caucasus and other post-Soviet areas. Specifically, she focuses on long-term peacebuilding, local conceptions of peace, local practices to build peace, and ways that international and local peacebuilders can work together respectfully. Tadevosyan’s social impact involves fostering dialogue and cooperation between communities that have experienced long-standing conflicts. She has also brought Carter School students into her work as co-planners, co-facilitators, and co-evaluators of conflict resolution and media literacy programs.

Susan Howard

Faculty Excellence in Social Impact Award Recipient

Susan Howard

Instructional Associate Professor, School of Integrative Studies

Susan Howard joined George �鶹��Ƶ as a full-time faculty member in the School of Integrative Studies in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences in 2016. Howard is an educator, behavioral scientist, and entrepreneur-innovator who leverages and humanizes technology for social impact. Her teaching, research, and entrepreneurial focus is broad, ranging from global health to environmental science and design thinking. Her impact beyond the university has come primarily through the free digital gaming platform that her company has produced for an audience of marginalized youth in India and Nepal. The games, which are free to play, are designed to educate youth about the social and public health decisions they face in their own lives. To extend the impact of her work, Howard has formed partnerships with stakeholders in the adolescent health sector, including NGOs, women entrepreneurs, and nonprofits. Howard’s gaming platform, “Games of Choice, Not of Chance,” has received multiple accolades for its work, including the 2024 Innovation Award at the Global Digital Health Summit.

Rebecca Goldin

Earle C. Williams Presidential Medal for Faculty Excellence in Social Impact

Rebecca Goldin

Professor, Mathematical Sciences

Rebecca Goldin is Professor of Mathematics in the Department of Mathematical Sciences in the College of Science. For many years she has served as a driving force behind a global effort aimed at promoting statistical literacy among journalists and connecting the scientific community to the media. In that capacity she has written more than 100 articles, appeared in dozens of high-profile news shows and podcasts (CNN, NPR, ABC News, and PBS), and given a great number of public talks and interviews to audiences at major conferences and mathematics festivals. In addition to her far-reaching communication and outreach efforts, Goldin has done extensive volunteer work locally. Her efforts have been widely recognized by professional organizations in her field. In 2013, she was given the Association for Women in Mathematics Service Award for her contributions to the cause of educating women and girls in mathematics. In 2019, she was named a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society, an extraordinary honor that goes to only a few mathematics scholars per year, for both her scholarly contributions to the field of differential geometry and for her efforts to promote mathematical and statistical thinking to a wide audience.

�鶹��Ƶ the Presidential Awards for Faculty Excellence

Patricia King is May Employee of the Month
April 30, 2025
Around �鶹��Ƶ: Week of April 29, 2025
April 29, 2025
George �鶹��Ƶ Retirees: October 2024 to April 2025
April 25, 2025
Around �鶹��Ƶ: Week of April 22, 2025
April 22, 2025
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Podcast — EP 66: Peace building amid the rise of global conflict

Sarah Holland — Mon, 17 Mar 2025 14:14:11 +0000

Podcast — EP 66: Peace building amid the rise of global conflict Sarah Holland Mon, 03/17/2025 - 10:14

The December 2024 conflict index by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data initiative reported that global conflicts have doubled over the past five years. Now more than ever, we need experts in conflict analysis and peacebuilding. And �鶹��Ƶ is ready to meet that call.

On this episode of Access to Excellence, President Gregory Washington is joined by Marc Gopin, the James H. Laue Professor of World Religions, Diplomacy and Conflict Resolution in George �鶹��Ƶ’s Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution, to discuss the art of diplomacy by building one relationship at a time and creating a shared vision of peace.

"The more that you humanize a relationship with people who you are afraid of, you develop compassion and then you morally reason together on the things you can agree on. And it turns out Americans agree on many things. They agree on the critical importance of freedom. Well, how would that express itself? What can we agree on in terms of freedom? What does it mean to us? And you build slowly policies that are bipartisan, and then you lobby for bipartisan policies." — Marc Gopin

Read the transcript

Intro (00:04):

Trailblazers in research, innovators in technology, and those who simply have a good story: all make up the fabric that is �鶹��Ƶ. We're taking on the grand challenges that face our students, graduates; and higher education is our mission and our passion. Hosted by �鶹��Ƶ President Gregory Washington, this is the Access to Excellence podcast.

President Gregory Washington (00:27):

The December, 2024 conflict index by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data nitiative reported that global conflicts have doubled over the past five years. Now more than ever, we need experts in conflict analysis and peace building, and George �鶹��Ƶ is ready for that call. Mark Gopin is the James H Laue Professor of World Religions, Diplomacy, and Conflict Resolution, and a director of the Center for World Religions, Diplomacy, and Conflict Resolution at George �鶹��Ƶ's, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution. He's a prolific writer and accomplished speaker, and has trained thousands of people worldwide in peace building strategies for complex conflicts. Mark, welcome to the show.

Marc Gopin (01:31):

Thank you. It's a pleasure to see you again and be here.

President Gregory Washington (01:34):

In 1983, you were ordained as a rabbi at the Yeshiva University. Were you always interested in pursuing rabbinical study?

Marc Gopin (01:46):

I've been studying since I was five years old in private school, and I was particularly motivated to do intensive study with my elders. I had master teachers who were master teachers of Talmud, but also PhDs from the University of Berlin in philosophy. So I was always fascinated by the combination of secular wisdom and secular science and religious traditions going back thousands of years. So I just totally immersed in that from the time I was kind of little.

President Gregory Washington (02:16):

Well, I always see those who learn the word, so to speak, you learn it from the perspective of being able to teach it, right, to spread it to others. But something had to move you, to inspire you to move from religious leadership into activism and teaching. So can you talk a little bit about that?

Marc Gopin (02:42):

Well, that's an interesting question. I think there are multiple motivations. I did grow up in a community that was both very provincial and very worldly at the same time. I grew up in Boston. I grew up in a community where many of my teachers were survivors of the Holocaust. I was keenly aware of war and its effects on people. My father was in the military in World War II, my uncles. So I was very aware of global events and yet also was nurtured in a very quiet space of religious people, but also doctors and healers. And so I guess from the influence of the doctors and the philosophers and the people experience the horror of genocide, I became very, very interested in what brings societies to the point of destruction and what brings them to the point of redemption. Because I grew up at a time when the very same society that had committed such a massive war crime and killed 40 million people, uh, in World War II, became a leading democracy.

Marc Gopin (03:44):

I'm speaking about Germany and Japan as well. And so the question of how people change and why they descend into absolute barbarism at some times and why they become within a generation, the the leaders of democracy, it fascinated me about the human nature. What does it say about human nature? Where can we go in order to move human nature towards compassion and enlightenment and rationality versus barbarity? And that was always the choice that I was, from the time I was little looking at these beautiful survivors of the Holocaust all the way to the science and philosophy that I studied. I said, you know, this is global. This is way beyond my community. And so I have to make a commitment to globally look at this and actually practice experimentation with people in war zones. And that's what drove me to war zones by the time I was in my twenties.

President Gregory Washington (04:41):

I've been looking forward to this conversation for some time. It's because this one is so timely relative to what's happening globally as we speak. So you pioneered peace building work across the Middle East, which is a confluence of three major world religions, Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. And so what role does religion play in developing conflict as well as resolving conflict? And given your rabbinical background, there's a very strong connection there.

Marc Gopin (05:18):

Well, I came to have a very healthy respect for the fact that religion is a passionate catalyst of the best of us and the worst of us. It becomes a tool of enlightenment in the hands of those who are rooted in compassion and a capacity to listen to many narratives at once. And then it also becomes a tool of rage and apocalyptic rage when people are so wounded that they look to the religion and they find what they need to find in the religion in order to justify an extremist or violent a direction. What I started to see was a pattern around the world from Judaism, Christianity to Islam, to Buddhism, and to Shintoism and Hinduism. Everywhere you looked, this double-edged sword of religion said to me that this is a potential to help in diplomacy, not just be a danger for society. So there has to be conflict resolution and conflict healing.

Marc Gopin (06:18):

And I focus on healing very much from my background, that conflict healing needs to take place between secular and religious segments of society, between liberal and conservative in order that religion should not be utilized and weaponized by those who are angry or destructive and lack a self-examining capacity. One of the things that I've emphasized in my writings and in my experiments in the field is that self-examination is the key to enlightenment. So it's not true just on a philosophical level. It's true at the level of conflict management, conflict resolution, negotiations, self-examination is everything. And there are religious foundations of that, and there are secular foundations of that, of those capacities, the psychosocial healing. So I started to see that people are making a mistake of religion versus society or religion versus secularism, and that the two could be allies if they are understood properly in all of their manifestations, the positive manifestations and the negative, just like secular, uh, there's a positive manifestation of capitalism. There's a negative manifestation.

President Gregory Washington (07:28):

No, I understand. I understand. You know, that kind of opens up a different question. We often have this discussion of Israeli, a person who's Jewish, and a person who's Zionist, right? I'm one of the belief that there are differences between the three. Can you talk a little bit about what those mean from the perspective of the modern state of Israel?

Marc Gopin (07:57):

Well, this is where we get into identity studies, and my colleagues and I at Carter School focus on identity and religion and culture, and they interact quite a bit, and they're fluid. So we have to accept the fact that for some people, Christianity means one kind of identity or another. And it's the same in Judaism. For some people, their Judaism is wrapped up in practice, in, uh, ritual, in ethics. Their Judaism is ethical monotheism, their Judaism is the observance of the Sabbath. For others, their Judaism is wrapped up in defending the Jewish people or building the Jewish people into a flourishing entity that can be safe in a post holocaust world. For such people, the state of Israel becomes part of their religious identity. For other people, it's a mixture. And there are many very religious people for whom the state of Israel is important in terms of saving Jewish lives.

Marc Gopin (08:55):

But it's not the expression of Jewish identity. It's a state. Others, a lot of young people today are very critical of the state for its policies, and some of them are in Israel, some of them are here, and their identity, their Jewish identity, is much more complex and nuanced than saying they're either Zionist or anti-Zionist. Everybody's choosing, it's a very fractious people. But I used to think that there was more uniformity in Christianity. There isn't, I used to think that in Islam there was clear uniformity. There is not. People are identifying and defining their religion all the time, and they're evolving in that. There's a very big evolution, even in my own lifetime, where now 50% of Jews live in Israel, are Israeli citizens, but 50% are not. 50% include lots of people in Russia, in Ukraine, on two sides of war, mostly in Ukraine. There are 5 million American Jews: a very, very tiny people with very, very different opinions about where does the state of Israel fit into their identity.

President Gregory Washington (10:01):

It's been a year, over a year now, since the events of October 7th and the most recent outbreak of violence between Palestine and Israel. As of the recording of this particular podcast, the ceasefire has held, continues to hold. You're seeing the exchange of hostages on both sides. There's so many opinions on how the conflict between Israel and Palestine should be resolved. And as an expert in peace building, from the perspective of peace building, what is something you wish people understood about this long standing conflict?

Marc Gopin (10:47):

I wish people understood how many thousands of Israelis and Palestinians have worked on coexistence and a two-state solution and equality for over a half a century. I wish people understood that there were many, many viable solutions other than the total destruction that's envisioned by extremists on either side of the other side. They dominate the news, just like violence always dominates the news. But unfortunately, information systems and digital ecosystems have come to radicalize all of us in thinking there are only violent solutions to things because fear sells the digital ecosystem. But I can tell you, because I witnessed it and I participated in, I created for 40 years an incredible number of idealistic Israelis and Palestinians who work together. Many of them live together. There's actually a village, a very vibrant community south, uh, near Jerusalem called Oasis of Peace, Neve Shalom. And there are many other experiments in coexistence and many people who fought for equality in Israel and also that build bridges.

Marc Gopin (12:10):

I also went between the enemy sides, even in the height of wars and bombings, and we were always overwhelmed by outsiders who were funding the extremists. Christian extremists were funding the settlers and Jewish extremists, of course, and then the funders of Islamic extremism were funding the radical groups that undermine the secular Palestinian idea of a democratic state. And that still holds. I wish people could realize that because then they wouldn't think in extreme solutions. They would realize that we have to do the hard work of reconciliation and building relationships in every country that wants to remain a democracy. Here too, it's the same analogy. You can't just legislate, you can't just have a couple of pieces of civil rights legislation. You have to build relationships, one community, one church at a time, and that peace building money is not there. It's not there for people-to-people relationship building because the powers that be did not take it seriously.

Marc Gopin (13:19):

So I wish people would know that this could have gone very, very differently. Now, we're in a state of catastrophe, but in the darkest days, you always want to know what's possible. We never thought a half a year ago that Syria would ever recover. I've worked for 20 years in Syria with my Syrian friends and inside Syria, in a police state, in the worst genocide imaginable--500,000 dead, 12 million removed from their homes, tens of thousands tortured. And here we are with a mass return to Syria of extraordinary Syrian citizens in the worst dictatorship in the world after North Korea. So to say that it's impossible to achieve coexistence between Palestinians and Israelis is to have a lack of imagination. And that's what I want people to realize. Things can always change in the blink of an eye with the right leadership and the right new ideas.

President Gregory Washington (14:19):

That is great food for thought. There are so many opinions on how the conflict should be resolved, right? And there have been previous ceasefires. So why do you think these previous ceasefires failed? Is it this lack of imagination piece you're talking, is it the external influences?

Marc Gopin (14:38):

Yeah, on all sides. On the Palestinian side, on the Israeli side, on the American side, on the European side, there was a tendency to disempower people-to-people, relationships. They did fund some of that relationships. There are many good efforts that have been funded by the United States, but it was too controlled from the top with very narrow agendas to what would be allowed and what would be acceptable. In my mind...I, I never saw a single grant for Palestinian and Israeli cab drivers to speak to each other. I never saw a single major grant for thousands of women to relate to each other across enemy lines, which is what turned the tide in Liberia, for example.

President Gregory Washington (15:21):

That's exactly right.

Marc Gopin (15:21):

And so in many countries in the world, there are surprising constituencies that when you allow them to speak to each other and build relationships, they have the solutions that the wealthy elites don't have, or the military elites don't have for lack of imagination. We need to invest much, much more in average people to build relationships. And we have done that in other parts of the world. For example, after World War ii, the Franco-German relationship had been, uh, two countries that had been at war with each other for a thousand years on and off. And now a Franco-German war is inconceivable. So history does change with people-to-people businesses, relationships. Many nationalists I've come across, many people who really can't stand the other side say to me, you know, I'll do some business with them. I, I've had very fanatical people say to me, I'll come on one year trips to do some business.

Marc Gopin (16:21):

So business sometimes is...where reconciliation cannot be, but business can be the link. Sometimes it's sports, sometimes it's other kinds of psychosocial healing or therapy, music, et cetera. But what we did for 40 years is that we did it only for very wealthy kids, chosen carefully from each side. And we didn't really get to the grassroots, to the refugee camps. I worked in refugee camps in Syria. I worked in refugee camps. I brought �鶹��Ƶ classes many times to refugee camps in Turkey, refugee camps in Palestine. And our work, our great work of relationship building, it didn't reach those places. And that's exactly where the extremists recruit. They recruit from the people who are really dumped on by all sides.

President Gregory Washington (17:09):

How can Palestine, Israel, and the Middle East move forward? There are current discussions, and I'm gonna ask you about those, but first I want to get your take on, you know, look, we are where we are. What's the move forward from here?

Marc Gopin (17:24):

Well, if I could wave a magic wand, I mean, the way forward from here would be a deep investment in the Palestinian authority that is reformed. In other words, Abbas is pressured to create a younger generation of leadership. I was just in Ramallah not long ago, and it suffers from the fact that a group of very aged men, a very small group, are in total control and young leadership is not allowed to move forward. That young leadership has prescriptions for how both secular and religious Palestinians could unite into one state, how they could control the terrorists, and then build relationships, which they already had years ago with the Israeli leadership, with the Israeli military. If they were all willing to give this a go to eliminate Hamas from the area, to build trust, build respect, apologies for harm done on all sides. October 7th was the worst Jewish atrocity since the Holocaust.

Marc Gopin (18:31):

And it's unimaginable how much suffering has spread. The amount of missiles that kept people in shelters in the north of Israel and the south, the hundreds of thousands of people, it changed people for the worst. So there's apologies for that. And then there's apologies for what is done on a regular basis in the use of excessive force in Gaza in other places. This can be arranged if the parties and the Gulf states are willing to allow people to speak for themselves. And that's the consensus that we need. And I believe the Palestinian authority is waiting there as a potential partner for Israelis who are ready for a two-state solution. That's not the current leadership, but I believe that with a strong third party presence, we could push that. We could insist on building a partnership with Palestinians who are willing to make a deal in order to keep the rule of law and build safety and security for every citizen on all sides.

Marc Gopin (19:38):

And in the end, it's going to have to be a Jewish state, a Jewish majority state that has equal rights for Palestinian citizens. Don't forget, there are 2 million Palestinian citizens of Israel. And then the state of Palestine is going to have to be a state with Jewish citizens who remain a minority, but who are protected in ways that are clearly guaranteed as equal citizens. And that is a formula that could also re-envision Gaza as well. Both sides need to get used to coexistence. There's no way around it, but we have to build with people who are serious and willing. And I think they exist on both sides.

President Gregory Washington (20:19):

Okay, well, well, let's take the current conflict that's on the table. We're in agreement that something has to happen now, right? At some point you get to an outcome where you have settled on what's happened with the hostages, right?

Marc Gopin (20:41):

Right.

President Gregory Washington (20:42):

Folk have been released on both sides. And at that point you have to start talking about what is the future of Gaza,

Marc Gopin (20:54):

I think, sorry.

President Gregory Washington (20:54):

And so, and so, what happens then? What, what do you think will happen at that stage? Because that stage is most likely coming.

Marc Gopin (21:02):

The antecedents of this is that Iran, which is a rogue state, took advantage, and Russia was happy to participate, in an arc of power stretching across the Middle East all the way to Lebanon. That has now been decimated by the Israeli defense forces, particularly the destruction of he Hezbollah. And that created a chain reaction to release Syria from a, that--

President Gregory Washington (21:27):

That's how Syria--

Marc Gopin (21:27):

Dictatorship.

President Gregory Washington (21:28):

That's how Syria fell.

Marc Gopin (21:30):

Right. So this is an opportunity for the Gulf states that are publicly, and I believe sincerely, anti-Hamas, anti-terrorism. And that includes the UAE, and it includes the present Saudi Arabia. I believe this is an opportunity for them to work with the Israelis and work with the Palestinian authority on the rebuilding of Gaza together with the Europeans. And I believe it can be rebuilt for Gaza. And I believe it can be the basis for a two-state process that will give Palestine a seaport, it'll give them a lot of wealth. Eventually that could be invested in by everyone. It could be the seeds of renewal of the dream of a two-state solution if Palestinians are treated equally, and if the Gulf States and Israel and the King of Jordan and others guide a process of rebuilding this for Palestinians. It's not such a terrible thing if a few Jews wanna live there.

Marc Gopin (22:33):

This is where everybody's gotta get, you know, there are 2 million Palestinians living in Israel with citizenship. It's not terrible if a few religious Israelis wanna live in Gaza. These are not terrible things as long as there's equality and safety and security for all. And I believe that this wiping of the slate clean, this total destruction could be the opportunity. And maybe President Trump is gonna get tired of dealing with belligerence on all sides and say, yeah, I'm, this was just my opening gambit. And then people start coming forward with alternatives, which hasn't happened yet. Said, yeah, that's it. He often will say outrageous things in order to stimulate change. Right, right. And then he claim, then he claims credit for it. So, so what was agreed to in, in Canada, look

President Gregory Washington (23:19):

And look, if it works, it works, right?

Marc Gopin (23:20):

Yeah. What it, what it worked in Canada is that they, they agreed to what Biden had already agreed to , and then that was the solution to the tariff problem. So if this is a game of threatening and therefore achieving some real change, uh, that would be a wonderful outcome, a surprising outcome. But it's possible. The slate was cleaned and wiped, unbelievable destruction in World War ii, and yet Germany and France and many fascist countries rose to become leading democracies. We have to believe that human change is possible because it's not a fantasy, it's actually a neuroscience reality. You can shift your brain anytime you want. And, and with leadership, we can do that.

President Gregory Washington (24:05):

So what happens to Hamas?

Marc Gopin (24:07):

Hamas is a tool of Iran and, Iran--eventually that regime must fall because the vast majority of Iranians inside and outside Iran want that regime to fall. The question is how to do it with the least amount of human destruction. There's a lot of consensus on that. The last thing to do is to give them a reason to be the great saviors of the Middle East with keeping terrorism alive to fight the Wicked Israel. And you do that by a bipartisan, multipartisan collaboration for rebuilding. Then it delegitimizes the destructive solutions, and that's gonna weaken Iran. And eventually their people are gonna take to the streets and never leave. That's a separate question, but I believe the way to do this is to weaken the current Iranian regime by creating a multipartisan approach to rebuilding Gaza.

President Gregory Washington (25:05):

Interesting, interesting. I had never heard that concept before. And so that's, that's a good one.

Marc Gopin (25:10):

The majority of people in Gaza, by the latest polls that were done before the destruction were all against Hamas. It was 80% against Hamas. But as there were more violations in the West Bank from the IDF and from settlers, then people were shifting towards Hamas. But those who have lived under Hamas hate Hamas, the majority, and we have to give them voice too, as to what they want.

President Gregory Washington (25:38):

George �鶹��Ƶ's Center for World Religions, Diplomacy, and Conflict Resolution holds several global education programs for students to see the impact of conflicts around the world. Studies include Bosnia and Turkey, Northern Ireland, Israel and Palestine, and Jordan. What is the value in students directly engaging with the people and places of conflict?

Marc Gopin (26:10):

Well, we have a good 40 years of theory development and conflict analysis, conflict management, conflict anticipation, my own theories that I've built on conflict, healing, compassionate reasoning. All of these things are wonderful, but theory is helpless without practice Theory is only built by practitioners who then reflected on their own actions. Every generation of young people needs to build for themselves their own exposure to what it is to be in a refugee camp, what it is to have empathy and pain from two sides, where does vision come from, and a focus on the future. My next book is on future healing, because future and vision is a remarkable part of the brain that builds rationality. It builds ethical principles. All of this cannot be appreciated without sitting with traumatized kids who are going through a wonderful program in Jordan on healing from what they witnessed as refugees.

Marc Gopin (27:16):

So the programs in Jordan and Turkey were all with Syrian refugees, for example. And before that, I knew the Syrians before 2011, worked in Damascus for many years on public diplomacy. But then we shifted towards refugee work with children and women, et cetera. So when I take students to these places, they say that this is the most important moment of their lives. People have changed careers over this because to immerse yourself in a conflict zone is to change your perspective on the nature of the world. I try to steer them toward it not being traumatizing and toward it being a concrete exploration of what they can do that's meaningful. Many of us are searching all the time for meaningful life. And that's where the students find that in that practice. They immediately start writing papers on what we could do back in Chicago, in the educational system and many other places, 'cause conflict is a part of life in every place. And now we have major American conflict, and we need exactly the skills that we have practiced in violent conflict zones. We need them right back here. And the United States, and I specifically direct the students on a regular basis, say, okay, you see what's happening here, let's extrapolate. You see that incredibly resilient person helping the kids. What do you think their best characteristics are? And how could you apply that elsewhere? It's a constant inquiry and exposure to the real world.

President Gregory Washington (28:51):

You know, we deal with conflict constantly, global conflicts between nations to interpersonal conflicts between friends, family, and other acquaintances. And sometimes it feels like conflict is such a natural component of our lives, that it's inevitable. What strategies from solving large scale global conflicts, can be applied to the smaller scale conflicts that people are dealing with in their everyday life?

Marc Gopin (29:24):

Well, what we discovered is that all the things that work in the height of war also have remarkable effects, positive effects inside family life, inside all relationships. So when French and Swiss and German people were trying to hide Holocaust survivors from being shot or being killed, they had to develop an ability to both have empathy but not be destroyed by the empathy. They had to find a visionary way to figure out one step at a time what could be done. If you remember the movie Schindler's List, on the possibility of change on the fact that even a perpetrator and a criminal and a crook could turn around and become, uh, like an angel. And that belief in repentance, that belief in change is something that works in violent war, but it works in families. The belief that, I don't see it right now, but the belief that, I don't know who it is in the family, but we have to always hold out with a compassionate hand to the possibility of evolution and change.

Marc Gopin (30:34):

It also requires a lot of moral reasoning. And I write a lot about the skills of seeing everybody's ethical position. And that's very important in family life, is that even when you disagree with somebody's moral position, you look for the principle that they're guided by. You say, you know, that's not fair. Well, what's your principle here? What's your theory? And it works. So I have a series of steps that involve listening skills, the use of the word, the use of the deed, imagination, and the use of imagination in a joint way...basically simple questions. One police officer who then became a chief of police in Massachusetts, said to me, once he saved somebody's life who had a knife, he was in a domestic violence situation, he had every right to shoot him. And then he thought to himself, he protected himself. And then he asked the knife wielding fellow who was out of control, he said to them this, he said, "how are we gonna get outta here today so that we both get back to our families?"

Marc Gopin (31:38):

So what that chief of police said was that he stimulated the brain with a question, not with an attack, not "you stupid guy, what's wrong with you?" You know, "how could you hold that knife to somebody you love?" It's "how can we get out of this? How can we get out of this to back to family?" And that brought out the best in the criminal. He dropped the knife and he was very sorrowful.

President Gregory Washington (32:04):

Really?

Marc Gopin (32:05):

Yeah.

President Gregory Washington (32:06):

It worked that easily.

Marc Gopin (32:07):

It just worked like a magic because he shifted his brain away from rage and counteraction and humiliation and shame and defiance to how do we get to tomorrow? It just had a remarkable effect on reshifting his brain towards a vision of himself in tomorrow. That has a remarkable impact on many, many simple fights in families, is just to ask people and say, okay, I hear you. Let's stop the tit for tat. What do you wanna do? Like, how, how are we gonna be a a family in two years from now? What, what would you like it to be? What does it look like to you? I do a lot of neuroscience study now.

President Gregory Washington (32:45):

And so that stimulates what...?

Marc Gopin (32:47):

It stimulates the default network of the frontal cortex that focuses on vision and imagination and planning for things that are not yet there. And that is related to compassion more than the amygdala, which is related to rage and resentment. So when you shift people, when you start swearing at people, it stimulates their amygdala. You know, you say a swear, they say a swear, and it's like your amygdalas are talking to each other. It's useless 'cause it just descends. But if you say, how are we gonna live together? What do you think we should do? And you authentically are asking a question, then suddenly the default network of the prefrontal cortex gets in, and your compassionate sense of how can we both get to the future? How can we live together? What is it gonna look like? How can we both take care of mom together? That reformulates the brain towards the future. And it's not a simple path, but it's far less violent, it's far less angry, it's far less vengeful, and it's very much focused on compassion. I call it compassionate reasoning. And there is actual neuroscience proof for this in the work of Olga Klimecki on the neural pathways of compassion that are closer to reasoning.

President Gregory Washington (34:08):

Well, speaking of that, that's your book, right?

Marc Gopin (34:12):

Yeah.

President Gregory Washington (34:12):

And in your book, "Compassionate Reasoning", you state that compassion is one of the most amazing and important emotions and ethical principles that brings healing and hope to human beings.

Marc Gopin (34:25):

Compassion stimulates the best biochemistry that lowers your heart rate, that lowers your blood pressure, that lowers your body temperature. Whereas rage increases your cortisol. It makes you need to get outta there, fight or flight. And empathy, when you feel the pain of another, which is a good value, it actually isn't very healthy because the more you feel the pain of the other, the more it sends you into despair, which is why a lot of the progressives who focus on pain and despair are missing the boat on how to stimulate a bipartisan approach to the future. So compassion though, is much more like, how can we all be happy? How can we all be safe? Those kind of questions stimulate a very different focus that is all-inclusive, more democratic. So basically, compassion is an ally of medical health, and it's an ally of democracy. It focuses on a much more all-inclusive approach to pro-social relations, and that part of the brain that's the most highly developed brain for solving problems.

President Gregory Washington (35:39):

Well, I wanna shift gears a little bit. You have given our audience a lot to think about relative to the Israeli, uh, Gaza conflict. Let's talk about the US for a moment. You know, a common refrain nowadays is how divided we are as a country. Is there any hope for us as a country? Uh, is there any hope to bridge the gaps between our differences and to heal that divide? Right? If you go back and look at our history, we're, we're almost as divided now as we ever have been. And so I'm interested in hearing your thoughts on that.

Marc Gopin (36:16):

Well, this all comes down to leadership. And I think there's been a failure of the two party system to create common values and common policies that do unite people. And in this sense, we're far too focused on party identities and identity identification with a bipolar party system is a prescription for civil war. There are countries in Africa, for example, that every four years they go to war because every four years they have an election. The election actually brings out the worst. It's one country in particular because the tribes divide at that point, who's gonna be the majority tribe, and then they go back to normal afterwards. So multiparties and multitribalism, and Republican and Democrat have become tribes, is the worst possible way to get policy moderation and new policies and imagination. Bernie Sanders focused on policies, and of course a lot of capitalists are terrified of Bernie Sanders, but he was the one that went down and worked with the religious right.

Marc Gopin (37:22):

He spoke to the religious right. He was able to cut across the boundaries of identity. I've had political leaders say to me, I said, why don't you talk to more rural people? Why don't you engage the rural community? Uh, these were progressives. They said, what would be the point? That's exactly the opposite of the conflict resolution skills. We have seen work around the world. Around the world, engagement changes consciousness and for, uh, liberals to work with rural whites, with young white people, and to hear them both wealthy and poor, and for people on the more conservative side who are terrified of the violence that's going on, to listen and engage progressives, those skills and moderating those kind of conversations and building with imagination and compassion, some third ways, that's gonna be the key to the United States. It's happened before. I think it can happen again.

President Gregory Washington (38:26):

So I hear you saying, and, and I'm, I'm gonna ask it, could compassionate reasoning be a solution here?

Marc Gopin (38:34):

When I frame all of these things, I mean compassionate reasoning. I mean that the more that you humanize a relationship with people who you are afraid of, you develop compassion and then you morally reason together on the things you can agree on. And it turns out Americans agree on many things. They agree on the critical importance of freedom. Well, how would that express itself? What can we agree on in terms of freedom? What does it mean to us? And you build slowly policies that are bipartisan, and then you lobby for bipartisan policies. Let's say civil rights. A lot of people agree in principle to equal civil rights. You wouldn't think that with all the rhetoric flying around, but all it was was legislation. We legislated civil rights, we legislated that people should be equal. Well, it doesn't work that way. It works that way only through relationships, only through compassionate reasoning. In every church, in every synagogue, in every community. And then you figure out what equality will look like.

Marc Gopin (39:39):

But in the end, legislation only goes so far in building trust and positions with people on education. You have to do it one relationship at a time. I would like to see in the future, millions of dollars go into relationship building between people of different political points of view in this country. We have never taken civil rights to that level of deep relationship building. I think that's the key to the future. It is compassionate reasoning. It is conflict healing. I don't care about the label. I mean, I don't need my label to be on anything. It's more about the relationships and shared reasoning and building a point of view that there are people on the other side, and I have those relationships. That's how I survived in Syria. That's how I did work in Afghanistan and Iran. That's how I did work in Israel Palestine for 40 years on both sides, running across borders all the time.

Marc Gopin (40:37):

Because you have to embody it in yourself to be able to listen to multiple narratives and to say to all of those narratives, how can I help? How can I help Jewish identity? How can I help Palestinian identity? How can I help you get back to being a proud Republican? How can I get you to get back to being a proud Virginian? What does it mean to be a proud Virginian? Wouldn't that be a wonderful conversation?

President Gregory Washington (41:03):

What does it mean to be a statesman?

Marc Gopin (41:05):

Yeah, that's great. You know,

President Gregory Washington (41:07):

You, you, you get what I'm saying?

Marc Gopin (41:07):

Yeah.

President Gregory Washington (41:08):

These are the kinds of things that we gotta get back to. I think you are hitting the nail right on the head.

Marc Gopin (41:13):

So it's a question which is good for the brain, and it's a vision which is good for the brain, and it's enticing in terms of returning to something optimistic. And Marty Seligman's work on optimism, Stephen Pinker's work on optimism suggests that optimism is far more--Jane Goodall's work on this--it's far more embedded in human nature than we realize. We just have to get control of the digital information systems because people have divided us according to the digital ecosystems, which is an AI question. And I have some ideas on that in terms of the algorithms of what we should...

President Gregory Washington (41:51):

Well, well, well, let's you know, well, let's talk about that. Technology and technological advances are changing the nature of conflict, right? We know this. According to the United Nations, artificial intelligence and machine learning have the potential to enhance cyber, physical, and biological attacks. By making 'em more targeted, more accessible, and actually harder to trace. We've seen now mass communications and engagement through social media frameworks and the like. We know that bots and other artificial-like entities have exacerbated, uh, some of those conflicts, right? Have been used to inflame people. How do we flip that? Right? Because what can be used for negativity, what can be used for disruption, can actually be used to build people up? So, how do you do that?

Marc Gopin (42:52):

So I'm working with trying to influence peace tech people on this very subject, people who work on the algorithms of conversations globally. I believe that with the right words, see, just like words are used to harm and words are used to polarize, words are also used to bind people together. So there are ways to steer global conversations in more constructive directions and building relationships across enemy lines with algorithms that you put in, in a subtle way, and that you keep repeating. People in the business school, people in advertising, people in information technology, they know this very well. We have to create this technology together. We can even make it profitable. Let's say a company wants feedback from their, their employees. You can make a tech that encourages algorithms of can-do optimism. They don't cover up things, but they simply shift conversations towards what's possible and what's better.

Marc Gopin (43:55):

That's a technology and a skill that we can insert into our AI requests. I do it all the time with AI. I ask positive questions. I ask, what is I ask for good news? You know? And every day I try to fill my head with some of the new good news, like for example, that the bee population of the world is rising for the first time in many, many years, which is the key to the survival of all of our fruits and vegetables. I look for the fact that many of the patches of plastic across, uh, the ocean in five years could be completely sucked in by new technology that could take it out of the ocean. There are many exciting discoveries, and those discoveries are a way, if we insert that into the AI aspects of our algorithmic digital ecosystems, I think those ecosystems are gonna stimulate young people, especially to new ideas and new possibilities that are, uh, the opposite of polarization and fragmentation.

Marc Gopin (44:57):

If we can do that with American kids, American kids, and we keep politics out of it, you're gonna see a tremendous amount of excitement, especially if it creates jobs or if it creates companies that makes political polarization a little bit more silly, immature, and a waste of time. So if you can redirect people's energy towards things that are not polarizing, I think you can do that with AI. I think you can do that with global conversations. And we could think about what would be those conversations. For example, �鶹��Ƶ has so many different campuses and we have different point--political points of view. What would be the conversations that would yield the most positive feedback that would yield the most participation with people of multiple backgrounds? And then how would we reinforce that and make it move forward? That's an interesting question for information tech, and for the business and marketing, and for conflict analysis and resolution.

President Gregory Washington (45:59):

As I wrap up here, I have one final question. In your TEDx talk at Berkeley, you pose the question where and how we become good despite the worst of circumstances, where and how we become good despite the worst of circumstances, which in some cases, especially in Palestine and Israel, that's kind of what we have now, have you found an answer to that question? And if so, what is it?

Marc Gopin (46:33):

I forgot how you had asked that question. And I like it. Not surprisingly, my experience with the wisdom traditions, all the way from stoicism to Buddhism, to Dalai Lama's wisdom and, and then the secular philosophies, and now the neuroscience and especially is seen through cognitive therapy, that it's the smallest memes and the smallest statements that guide people in a direction that's less destructive towards more constructive. So for example, some people have memorized love your neighbor as yourself. Some people have memorized that everyone is created in the image of God. Some people have memorized, I see this in cabs all over the Middle East, that Allah made everyone diverse in order that we can come to know each other. Almost every cab driver knows that verse from the Quran. So what matters when you're faced with misery and horror is what can you train yourself to flash in front of somebody's mind?

Marc Gopin (47:35):

And that has a lot to do with kindergartens and education and public advertising and what we choose to make the, the essential wisdom pieces of what it is to be human. I think we have to pay more attention to that and to think about repetition and repetition of truly deep inclusive truths. What is it to be a democracy? And you have five or six things that you say, you know, uh, quotes from Lincoln or, or others or from the Gettysburg address. You, we simply have to work harder at those memes, those things that occur to us naturally. This is what it is to be an American. This is what it is to be American. This is what it is to be a Christian. Love your neighbor as yourself. Great, but what is it to be an American? How do we bind as an American? We don't have enough American civic education that comes down to those core teachings.

Marc Gopin (48:33):

Uh, and I think we can, and I think it'll create a shared ethics. The postmodernism and enlightenment is great, but we also lost a lot of common ethics. We can build those ethics with basic truths that we can all agree to that are catchy, that can roll around in the brain and roll around in conversations. This is what it is to be American. You know, I think we have enough bipartisan instincts on that to recapture that and then move it forward to build. Okay. What then? What do we do together? So you keep asking questions, building on those wonderful values.

President Gregory Washington (49:11):

Outstanding. Outstanding. Well, we're gonna have to leave it there. Marc, thank you for your tireless work to build peace both around the world and in our own backyard. I am �鶹��Ƶ President Gregory Washington. Thanks for listening. And tune in next time for more conversations that show why we are all together different.

Outro (49:44):

If you like what you heard on this podcast, go to podcast.gmu.edu for more of Gregory Washington's conversations with the thought leaders, experts, and educators who take on the grand challenges facing our students and graduates in higher education. That's podcast.gmu.edu.

Learn more about the Access to Excellence podcast

Listen to more episodes

Podcast — EP 67: Building community and conversation through the arts
April 21, 2025
Podcast — EP 66: Peace building amid the rise of global conflict
March 17, 2025
Podcast — EP 65: James Baldwin’s insights on American life and identity
February 17, 2025
Podcast — EP 64: Navigating AI’s risks and rewards
January 21, 2025
Podcast — EP 63: The economic perceptions driving U.S. politics
December 11, 2024

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Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution

Conflict Analysis and Resolution

The Carter School named a United Nations Academic Impact Sustainable Development Goal Hub Chair

Katarina Benson — Wed, 15 Jan 2025 17:51:09 +0000

The Carter School named a United Nations Academic Impact Sustainable Development Goal Hub Chair Katarina Benson Wed, 01/15/2025 - 12:51

The Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution was named a United Nations Academic Impact Sustainable Development Goal Hub Chair for (SDG) 16: Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions.

There are 17 SDGs, including “No Poverty,” “Clean Water and Sanitation,” and “Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure.” Currently, George �鶹��Ƶ is one of only two universities in the United States to chair a Sustainable Development Goal Hub.

Out of more than 330 applications, George �鶹��Ƶ was selected to chair SDG 16 Hub, a position it will hold for the next three years. In a letter from the United Nations, it says George �鶹��Ƶ “was selected based on its pioneering research and programs focused on promoting peace and conflict resolution” as well as the university’s educational policies.

As Hub Chair, the Carter School will be responsible for education and training, research, community engagement, developing partnerships, and working with other SDG hubs to strengthen and further the United Nations’ mission of peace and justice.

“This prestigious recognition highlights our school’s longstanding commitment and impactful contributions to the field of peace and conflict resolution,” said Carter School dean Alpaslan Özerdem. “As chair for SDG16, we will have the privilege and responsibility of generating, coordinating, and amplifying SDG16-related programs and activities on a global scale. This role represents not only a significant milestone for the Carter School but also an exciting new chapter in our journey toward advancing global peace, justice, and institutional resilience. It positions us to foster meaningful partnerships, drive innovative initiatives, and contribute thought leadership on critical global issues.”

Andre Marshall, George �鶹��Ƶ’s vice president for research, innovation, and economic impact, highlighted that this new role aligns perfectly with �鶹��Ƶ’s global challenges agenda, offering opportunities to amplify the university’s contributions to global peace and justice. “The Carter School’s successful bid to lead the United Nations Academic Impact SDG16 Hub not only elevates George �鶹��Ƶ’s profile in the international community for sustainable development, it is also a well-deserved recognition of the Carter School and George �鶹��Ƶ’s leadership in and commitment to producing research, scholarship, and impact that moves the needle on the world’s grand challenges,” Marshall said.

In the coming months, Özerdem will engage with academic and research units across George �鶹��Ƶ to identify collaboration opportunities, ensuring a transformative �鶹��Ƶ stamp on all aspects of the SDG16 agenda over the next three years.

Learn more about the Carter School

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Alpaslan Özerdem

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Susan Allen joined WTOP’s Sarah Jacobs to discuss Jimmy Carter’s achievements, including being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.

Paul Snodgrass — Tue, 31 Dec 2024 05:21:26 +0000

Susan Allen joined WTOP’s Sarah Jacobs to discuss Jimmy Carter’s achievements, including being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002. Paul Snodgrass Tue, 12/31/2024 - 00:21

Susan Allen, director of the Center for Peacemaking Practice at �鶹��Ƶ’s Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution joined WTOP’s Sarah Jacobs to discuss Jimmy Carter’s achievements, including being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.

Listen to the interview with WTOP News.

Dr. Allen's interview appeared as part of a special segment entitle "LISTEN: WTOP hears from historians, political reporters and those who personally knew Jimmy Carter"

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The Anti-Defamation League honors George �鶹��Ƶ’s Charles Chavis Jr. for his work in civil rights education

Paul Snodgrass — Wed, 06 Nov 2024 19:32:34 +0000

The Anti-Defamation League honors George �鶹��Ƶ’s Charles Chavis Jr. for his work in civil rights education Paul Snodgrass Wed, 11/06/2024 - 14:32

Charles Chavis Jr., a professor at �鶹��Ƶ’s Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution and the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, as well as the founder and director of the John Mitchell, Jr. Program for History, Justice, and Race, will be honored at the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) In Concert Against Hate, which celebrates everyday heroes who speak out against hate and make a difference in their communities.

Founded in 1913, the Anti-Defamation League is one of the country’s largest and most influential anti-hate organizations with a long history of addressing bigotry, antisemitism, and injustice.

Charles Chavis. Photo by Ron Aira/Office of University Branding

Chavis is a historian and prolific author whose work focuses on the history of racial violence and civil rights activism as well as Black-Jewish relations in the American South. Recently, Chavis and the Mitchell Program expanded the experiential learning initiative and began a partnership with Operation Understanding, DC (OUDC), to expand upon shared goals to build community among high schoolers and advance peacebuilding and social justice.

“I am deeply honored and humbled by this recognition,” Chavis said. “The work of building community never ends; we have a responsibility to plant, nurture, and grow partnerships that advance our common ideal for a better world, beginning in the communities where we live.”

Chavis will receive the Kay Family Award from the ADL for his scholarship and work in the field of civil rights, activism, and Black and Jewish relations, as well as his work on bridgebuilding and conflict de-escalation.

Alpaslan Özerdem, dean of the Carter School, praised Chavis for his groundbreaking and transformational work in the field of race relations. “His dedication and commitment to fostering understanding and reconciliation among diverse communities has made a significant impact. This prestigious award highlights why his work is crucial in our ongoing journey towards creating more just, equitable, and peaceful societies. Dr. Chavis’ contributions not only inspire us but also pave the way for a future where peace and justice prevail.”

Ann Ardis, dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, highlighted Chavis’ work: “Dr. Chavis' commitment to civil rights education and advocacy, his place-based research uncovering untold local histories of both trauma and community-building in the U.S., and his leadership in fostering relationships among Black and Jewish youth enriches our academic community and exemplifies values we hold dear as a college.”

“Each year, at this powerful event for our organization, we relish the opportunity to shine a light on heroes who should be celebrated,” said Meredith R. Weisel, ADL Washington, D.C. Regional Director. “At a time when our world is so rife with conflict and division, Dr. Chavis is an embodiment of a light we all need. We are thrilled to highlight him and his crucial work.”

Also receiving Kay Family Awards at this year’s event are Mehnaz Afridi, director of Manhattan University’s Holocaust, Genocide, and Interfaith Education Center; and Holocaust survivor Rosette Goldstein. Previous honorees have included Ruby Bridges, the first African American student to integrate into a southern elementary school; Holocaust survivor Tova Friedman and her grandson, Aron Goodman, who create TikTok videos to educate people about the Holocaust; and Susan Bro, the mother of Heather Heyer who was killed in Charlottesville, Virginia, and the founder of the Heather Heyer Foundation.

�鶹��Ƶ the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution

�鶹��Ƶ’s Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution is a community of faculty, students, staff, alumni, and partners with a fundamental commitment to building peace. Through the development of cutting-edge theory, research, education, and practical work, we seek to identify and address the underlying causes of conflict and provide tools for ethical and just peacebuilding on the local, national, and global stages. Learn more at carterschool.gmu.edu.

�鶹��Ƶ the College of Humanities and Social Sciences

The College of Humanities and Social Science is one of the largest colleges at George �鶹��Ƶ, employing more than 800 faculty and staff, delivering critical courses for the university community, and offering an expansive range of disciplinary and interdisciplinary degree programs (23 undergraduate majors, 14 graduate certificates, 18 master’s degrees, 9 doctoral degrees, and 22 accelerated master’s degree pathways). Learn more at chss.gmu.edu.

�鶹��Ƶ �鶹��Ƶ

�鶹��Ƶ is Virginia’s largest public research university. Located near Washington, D.C., George �鶹��Ƶ enrolls more than 40,000 students from 130 countries and all 50 states. George �鶹��Ƶ has grown rapidly over the past half-century and is recognized for its innovation and entrepreneurship, remarkable diversity, and commitment to accessibility. In 2023, the university launched �鶹��Ƶ Now: Power the Possible, a one-billion-dollar comprehensive campaign to support student success, research, innovation, community, and stewardship. Learn more at gmu.edu.

�鶹��Ƶ The Anti-Defamation League

ADL is the leading anti-hate organization in the world. Founded in 1913, its timeless mission is “to stop the defamation of the Jewish people and to secure justice and fair treatment to all.” Today, ADL continues to fight all forms of antisemitism and bias, using innovation and partnerships to drive impact. A global leader in combating antisemitism, countering extremism and battling bigotry wherever and whenever it happens, ADL works to protect democracy and ensure a just and inclusive society for all. More at www.adl.org.

In This Story

Charles Chavis

Alpaslan Özerdem

Listen to Podcast - EP36: Charles Chavis: The truth will set you free

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April 16, 2025
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March 17, 2025
The Carter School named a United Nations Academic Impact Sustainable Development Goal Hub Chair
January 15, 2025
Susan Allen joined WTOP’s Sarah Jacobs to discuss Jimmy Carter’s achievements, including being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.
December 31, 2024

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Solon Simmons looks for win-win opportunities in his role as Faculty Senate president

Melanie Balog — Wed, 04 Sep 2024 16:17:28 +0000

Solon Simmons looks for win-win opportunities in his role as Faculty Senate president Melanie Balog Wed, 09/04/2024 - 12:17

Solon Simmons, professor of conflict and analysis in the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution, enters his first year as the �鶹��Ƶ Faculty Senate president. At George �鶹��Ƶ since 2006, Simmons has been a member of the senate for eight years. He also has served, among other roles, as interim dean for the Carter School and the university’s vice president for global strategy during the pivotal start-up years of �鶹��Ƶ Korea.

The George caught up with Simmons to discuss the senate’s recent achievements, issues the group will be tackling this year, and how his academic expertise might serve him as Faculty Senate president.

Simmons

What do you consider some of the Faculty Senate’s major achievements in recent years, and what issues do you envision being focal points for the senate in 2024-25?

One thing that becomes immediately clear when you look at the history of the Faculty Senate here at �鶹��Ƶ is the strong legacy of independent leaders who have served there. In just the past decade, we have seen significant growth in collaboration between faculty and administrative leaders. What stands out to me are the roles that senate leaders played in co-chairing the last presidential search, chairing the recent provost search, and in establishing new norms for the acceptance of financial support [of the university]. Faculty representatives have served on every major initiative in the university from promoting the rights of term faculty, to supporting �鶹��Ƶ’s COVID-19 response, to developing the conversation about how to have difficult conversations across lines of difference.

This coming year will bring many challenges, but my hope is that we focus on our people, using evidence to center employee engagement and placing proper value on the contributions of both faculty and staff and helping to modernize and update our concept of what a university is for. We are here to pursue both excellence in knowledge and access to wisdom, and all of us—staff, student workers, tenured faculty, term faculty, and administrative/professional faculty—have an important role to play. The faculty job is changing, but in an era of automatic thinking and information overload, it is more important than ever.

How do think your expertise in peace and conflict resolution will serve you both within the Faculty Senate and as the faculty representative on the Board of Visitors?

I direct what’s called the Narrative Transformation Lab. Our baseline assumptions are that emotions matter as much as arguments do and that facts are only intelligible when situated in relation to values. From what I have seen of our new board members, they are very principled people who want the best for the university as articulated from their own point of view. Assuming that everyone brings the best intentions to the case makes it easier to look for those win-win opportunities that are almost always available if you search for them, and no one should forget that win-win is a peace and conflict resolution concept if not THE concept that defines the field.

From a global perspective, American universities have a real advantage over most other countries. Our decentralized structure allows and even forces each of our institutions to serve as global laboratories for the organization of knowledge, producing an intellectual ecology in which we have developed and sustained most of the best universities in the world. Look at the data. Whether it’s Nobel Prizes or global university rankings, the world still looks to the U.S., and increasingly the U.S. looks to �鶹��Ƶ. The board members know what a great value proposition �鶹��Ƶ is and they have no intention to compromise that. Our job is to make sure intentions match the available opportunities and to keep faculty centered in that conversation.

How significant of an issue is AI for �鶹��Ƶ faculty? What sort of discussion is the Faculty Senate having about the implications of AI?

I’m really excited about AI, especially that part that works with language and writing. I like the metaphor of the old Texas Instruments calculator that people often use about the 1970s. We used to think of using a calculator as “cheating” just like we think of writing with the aid of a language model today. I use AI almost every day now, and I find it makes me that much smarter. It feels like what it was like in the ‘90s to start using Google and the other search engines that we had back then. You can just do so much more. Over the summer, the leadership team had a great presentation from a colleague at the University of Michigan who made a point that stuck with me: all good uses of AI require a human-in-the-loop. Maybe someday machines will tap into some form of universal consciousness and discover how to do without us, but so far, it looks like only the human being has the wisdom, contextual awareness, and moral judgment that is necessary to apply knowledge to meaningful problem solving.

If AI is not something to be afraid of but something to use, nevertheless, it really is time to wake up. What we mean by knowledge is changing and our modes of assessment will have to change along with that. It seems to me that AI places emphasis on lived experience and the present moment that will challenge all of us to grow in ways that will be both painful and exhilarating.

Since the pandemic, Faculty Senate meetings have taken place entirely on Zoom. Will that continue? Do you find that meeting virtually leads to greater engagement from senators and from faculty around the university?

There is nothing like face-to-face interaction, but we will continue to use Zoom for the actual Faculty Senate meetings. I think it’s just part of the new normal of higher education. Not only can a senator access the meeting from any one of our many campuses and locations (including �鶹��Ƶ Korea), but this format allows for a much larger array of visitors to attend as well. I think the format expands the value of the senate to the university community and makes it easier and more efficient for us to manage our deliberations.

You’re coming up on two decades at the university. What are the major differences between the George �鶹��Ƶ you came to in 2006 and the George �鶹��Ƶ of today?

I will admit that the first I heard of �鶹��Ƶ was its famous Cinderella Final Four run in 2006, the year I arrived. Back then it was described almost like a commuter college with peaks or pillars of excellence. Now the university feels like a major player. In 2006, we were known for a variety of innovative and special programs like the old multidisciplinary Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution (now the Carter School) that I joined. Now, we are good at almost everything we do, and getting better each year. I like President Washington’s line that this is the most competitive university environment in the country, and still we excel and grow. This is a great place to work and a great place to be a professor. My goal is to make the job even better.

Editor's note: Earlier versions of this story gave Simmons' rank as associate professor. We regret the error.

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Carter School student knocks the socks off year-long internship

Shayla Brown — Fri, 23 Aug 2024 17:53:35 +0000

Carter School student knocks the socks off year-long internship Shayla Brown Fri, 08/23/2024 - 13:53

�鶹��Ƶ senior Nathaniel Socks has had two internships in his field, and he credits a course he took his sophomore year with his advisor Jane Walker for helping him get them.

“I took Jane [Walker]’s course CONF 314 Career Development Seminar, which was so helpful because we created resumes and [practiced] interviews,” said Socks, who is majoring in conflict analysis and resolution in the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution.

Nathaniel Socks. Photo provided

“I was able to get an internship with the Department of State that spring, and then also got accepted to do this Pathways internship, which could turn into a full-time job, so I’d say her class worked exactly how it was supposed to for me,” he said.

The Pathways Internship program is designed to provide students with opportunities to explore federal careers while being paid for the work performed. Socks is interning with the General Services Administration (GSA), a federal agency that works on procurement and acquisition services, and after completing a year-long internship, he’s eligible to convert to a full-time position through competitive hiring.

“As an intern here, I've been providing overall general support for different projects, as well as creating a newsletter for the team on travel industry updates. A big part of what my office does is work with travel management companies to get them contracted with different agencies,” said Socks.

Rather than zeroing in on one optimal career path, Walker, director of Undergraduate Student Services for the Carter School, said she uses the Career Development Seminar to help students expand their career focus and consider a minimum of three options.

“Conflict is everywhere, our students can apply their degrees to many different career paths—we want them to fully explore those opportunities within the class,” said Walker.

“Nathaniel is an excellent student, but more importantly, he is a hard worker that approaches life with humility—these are traits that will take him far in his career as they are valued and important for advancement and success,” she said.

For his previous internship at the Department of State, Socks was a staffer for the front office at the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs.

“As a staffer, we did everything from drafting department documents to pushing papers to get cleared by heads of leadership. I would say that, because of everything going on in the Middle East, that position was a little bit more hectic and versatile, [whereas] this job with GSA and my responsibilities are more consistent,” said Socks.

Socks, who is working on a minor in intelligence studies, said it was originally his goal to work in international relations, but his internship at GSA has opened up the possibility of working in the travel industry.

“The GSA also contracts to the Department of State, so there’s still possibilities of me being able to get more experience with international affairs there,” he said.

Socks is set to graduate from George �鶹��Ƶ in December and hopes to continue his journey at GSA.

“I didn't always feel confident in these different positions, especially with them being federal agencies, but the biggest lesson I’ve learned is to just be confident in your abilities,” said Socks.

In This Story

Jane Walker

Find your own internship with the help of Career Services

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Satellite imagery could aid in seeking justice for human rights violations in Sudan

Sarah Holland — Wed, 21 Aug 2024 13:26:43 +0000

Satellite imagery could aid in seeking justice for human rights violations in Sudan Sarah Holland Wed, 08/21/2024 - 09:26

On April 15, 2023, intense violence erupted in Sudan’s capital city of Khartoum between the state-run military and a non-state militia group. Over the past 16 months, the conflict has continued to expand in scale. Peace negotiations have collapsed. Civilians have experienced catastrophic humanitarian conditions.

�鶹��Ƶ’s Daniel Rothbart has for many years investigated the plight of civilians in war globally. He believes that out of the 59 protracted violent conflicts around the world, the civil war in Sudan is among the most horrific.

“This conflict has had catastrophic humanitarian implications,” explained Rothbart, the Druscilla French Chair in Conflict Analysis and Resolution in the Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter School of Conflict Analysis and Resolution. “There have been an estimated 16,000 fatalities and numerous cities destroyed. Right now, Sudan has the largest number of internally displaced persons in the world at 10.7 million people.”

As peace talks failed and conflict escalated, the Conflict Observatory, managed by the MITRE Corp and funded by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization operations, approached Rothbart and the Carter School to support an investigation into the human rights violations associated with the civil war.

In areas of violent conflict, scholars like Rothbart must find remote methods of data collection. One such method is through Open Source Investigations (OSINT), where publicly and commercially available information, such as satellite imagery, social media posts, and news reports, are collected and analyzed.

Because the Conflict Observatory specifically requested satellite imagery evidence, Rothbart enlisted a team of researchers from the College of Science’s Department of Geography and Geoinformation Science, including department chair Dieter Pfoser, to gather and analyze the images. Through this method, they can show side-by-side images of the large-scale destruction of civilian areas over the course of the conflict, such as markets, neighborhoods, and health care facilities.

Comparison photos of an area of El Fasher, North Darfur, Sudan showcasing the destruction of civilian property as a result of the ongoing civil war, as featured in the Sudan Conflict Observatory Situation Report "Impact on Civilians from Fighting in El Fasher, North Darfur, May 9-27, 2024"

This is a valuable kind of data for understanding the impact and trend of protracted violence, Rothbart said. “It captures the evolution of events over time in a particular region, and the amount of detail these experts are able to gleam from these images has been used to great effect.” As detailed in the report, the experts can distinguish between a building burned and a building bombed: important evidence for building a future case in prosecuting human rights violations.

But satellite imaging only tells part of the story of the destruction and devastation. Other information comes from witness testimonies, which Rothbart and his team gather with the help of the Sudan Human Rights Hub. By combining these two methods of data collection, they can paint a more robust picture of the breadth and depth of violence.

“For example, with both testimonies and open-source intelligence, we have documented that some militant forces have systematically killed civilians, bombed hospitals, and engaged in large-scale gender-based violence, ” Rothbart said.

Through these reports, Rothbart and his team are the primary source of evidence of civilian devastation in the war in Sudan. And while the evidence submitted by the team is under the discretion of the State Department, it could be used to prosecute the perpetrators of the described human rights violations.

The project is also an opportunity for students to gain valuable experience. Current conflict analysis and resolution PhD student Beltina Gjeloshi, and alumnus Mathieu Bere, PhD Conflict Analysis and Resolution ‘22, are both supporting members of Rothbart’s team.

“I’ve learned best practices in open-source investigations, a myriad of new digital tools, and how to capture evidence via different channels, such as satellite images and social media,” said Gjeloshi. “Coupling the training with my human rights and conflict resolution background has allowed me to formulate unique insights and use tools transdisciplinarily.”

“This deliberate violence against civilians requires that the international community takes measures to enforce international humanitarian law, protect civilians, and hold perpetrators accountable. The work that we have been doing in this project contributes to the fulfillment of that moral and legal requirement,” said Bere.

Daniel Rothbart. Photo by Creative Services/Office of University Branding

"On a purely academic and scientific side, we have been using, and hope to contribute to improve, some innovative technological tools, especially OSINT and GIS tools, for remotely monitoring and documenting what is happening in conflict zones, and for conducting real-time conflict research,” said Bere. “For example, we are exploring the possibility of developing an AI model that will facilitate some of the steps of the data-gathering process that may be automated. The project is an interdisciplinary work, which requires collaboration between experts from various disciplines."

Every conflict is unique, but there are repeated patterns in motivations, actions, and strategies. Rothbart hopes that the global peace community can learn from why and how peace talks have been unsuccessful in Sudan to improve their approaches to other protracted conflicts.

“We must be prepared to recognize that under certain conditions human beings can commit horrific acts,” Rothbart explained. “But in every case of protracted violent conflict, we find human beings who show an enormous degree of courageous compassion in the face of horrific violence. And that’s important to keep in mind.”

Find pathways to peace at the Carter School

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Daniel Rothbart

Dieter Pfoser

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High school students learn conflict resolution skills at annual Conflict Resolution Youth Summit

Colleen Rich — Tue, 20 Aug 2024 19:42:17 +0000

High school students learn conflict resolution skills at annual Conflict Resolution Youth Summit Colleen Rich Tue, 08/20/2024 - 15:42

�鶹��Ƶ’s Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution hosted its largest group of high schoolers to date, 46, for its ninth annual Conflict Resolution Youth Summit in July.

The ninth annual Conflict Resolution Youth Summit included a trip to Washington, D.C. Photo provided

Students came to George �鶹��Ƶ’s Fairfax Campus from as far as Massachusetts, Texas, and China to participate in the four-day summit, which included a day trip to Washington, D.C., and 15 skill-building workshops designed to explore and address the various dimensions of conflict through mediation, negotiation, and collaboration.

The summit began with a workshop by James Coan from “More Like Us,” an organization dedicated to spreading the message that that Americans are more similar across the political spectrum than people realize. This workshop, titled “Defining the Perception Gap,” was aimed at fostering political depolarization and focused on engaging participants in meaningful dialogue about the misperceptions surrounding different political ideologies.

Following this, participants moved into the Carter School's bridge-building activities, which further challenged their perceptions, teamwork, and communication skills. These activities were instrumental in strengthening the group dynamics and enhancing their effectiveness throughout the summit.

The first simulation, known as the Portlandia Project, was conducted by Ryen Middleton, a graduate student from �鶹��Ƶ’s College of Public Health. In this simulation, participants took on roles in a multi-stakeholder scenario addressing an environmental crisis affecting working-class communities, applying negotiation skills to meet diverse needs.

The Conflict Resolution Youth Summit saw its highest attendance ever this year. Photo provided

The simulation had a big impact on Olivia Ossa, a student at Thomas Worthington High School in Worthington, Ohio. “I loved the simulations,” Ossa said. “[The Portlandia Project] gave me the opportunity to experience negotiating and compromising, as well as getting a chance to play a crucial role in community building and forming connections with my teammates. I really enjoyed the Model UN vibes it gave and learned a lot from it!”

To illustrate the broad spectrum of conflict, the Carter School hosted two community artists. Sol O'Neill worked with participants to create two, 5-foot-tall Indigenous figures, symbolizing place and home for Virginia tribes, with influences from South American culture. Renowned artist and �鶹��Ƶ Artist in Residence Abi Naanseh introduced participants to the traditional techniques of Arabic calligraphy through his mural "Mahaba and Salaam."

“Abi was fantastic. I learned a lot, and he was clearly very passionate about his work,” said Owen Simmons, from Osbourn Park High School in Manassas, Virginia.

On the final day, participants tackled the issue of human trafficking in collaboration with Freedom Connections, a group of Carter School students who work on issues surround human trafficking. They focused on identifying signs of trafficking and exploring resources to support affected individuals.

The summit concluded with the conflict capstone event, where participants applied their newly acquired skills to address issues identified by their peers. Their findings and solutions were presented to their families during the closing ceremony.

New for the summit this year, students were able to stay overnight in George �鶹��Ƶ residence halls. This was important for the soon-to-be college-bound students, such as Eli Wike from Potomac Falls High School in Sterling. “My favorite part was probably getting to get a taste of college life through the experience,” Wike said.

Additional support for the summit was provided by George �鶹��Ƶ’s Student Success Coaching, Facilities, and �鶹��Ƶ Exhibitions.

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The Anti-Defamation League honors George �鶹��Ƶ’s Charles Chavis Jr. for his work in civil rights education

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Solon Simmons looks for win-win opportunities in his role as Faculty Senate president

What do you consider some of the Faculty Senate’s major achievements in recent years, and what issues do you envision being focal points for the senate in 2024-25?

How do think your expertise in peace and conflict resolution will serve you both within the Faculty Senate and as the faculty representative on the Board of Visitors?

How significant of an issue is AI for �鶹��Ƶ faculty? What sort of discussion is the Faculty Senate having about the implications of AI?

Since the pandemic, Faculty Senate meetings have taken place entirely on Zoom. Will that continue? Do you find that meeting virtually leads to greater engagement from senators and from faculty around the university?

You’re coming up on two decades at the university. What are the major differences between the George �鶹��Ƶ you came to in 2006 and the George �鶹��Ƶ of today?

Topics

Carter School student knocks the socks off year-long internship

In This Story

Find your own internship with the help of Career Services

Related Stories

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Satellite imagery could aid in seeking justice for human rights violations in Sudan

Find pathways to peace at the Carter School

In This Story

Related News

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High school students learn conflict resolution skills at annual Conflict Resolution Youth Summit

Make a difference at the Carter School

Related News

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