education

• March 31, 2013

  Crusades, and the Challenge of Violence Reduction in Language Across Cultures

  This podcast reflects on the different uses of the word crusade, and how we can reduce violence communication between cultures over time. Please click here to listen, and please offer your comments Language and violence reduction-1…

• March 31, 2013

  Less Violence

  This podcast introduces a new direction of analysis that is best expressed by the phrase “Less Violence”, which is neither peace nor nonviolence nor exactly conflict resolution. It is a new way of examining the processes by which human institutions move from a state of greater violence to less and less violence and finally approaching nonviolence and positive peace. Click here to listen to this short podcast on Less Violence…

• April 20, 2010

  Professional Development Seminar in Citizen Diplomacy w/ Rabbi Dr. Marc Gopin and Palestinian Peacebuilder Aziz Abu Sarah

  Professional Development Seminar in Citizen Diplomacy

  with Rabbi Dr. Marc Gopin and Palestinian peacebuilder Aziz Abu Sarah

  
  

  May 27th – June 4th

  Based in Jerusalem with day trips to neighboring cities and Holy sites

  REGISTER TODAY – LIMITED SPACE

  • Contact: Scott Cooper or Becca Grimm at ‘crdc@gmu.edu‘ or 1-703-993-4473 (USA)

  

  This seminar will be a combination of theory exploration, training, and concrete practice in the field. Based on Dr. Gopin’s most recent theories in To Make the Earth Whole: The Art of Citizen Diplomacy, the course will create space for participants to understand and measure in a new way the dynamics of their own potential impact on war and peace. It explores:

  1. The theory and practice of positive incremental change and citizen diplomacy
  2. A central case study from the Middle East
  3. The philosophical and spiritual ethics, East and West, of decision making in conflict interventions.

  Along with

  …

• November 21, 2009

  Marc Featured in Latest Edition of the Mason Spirit

  By Mallory Huggins

  The Mason Spirit, a magazine published for the George Mason University community, featured Marc in its Fall 2009 issue as part of a piece about various faculty members who have “create[d] a stir with their expert opinions and groundbreaking ideas.” The article and the photo that ran alongside it are below.

  

  Thanks to the Mason Spirit for recognizing the efforts and accomplishments of Marc and the CRDC as a whole!…

• November 15, 2009

  Peace Education and Fort Hood

  By Cheryl Duckworth, PhD

  

  Could peace education have done anything to prevent the shooting at Fort Hood?

  Can peace education help to prevent the violent loss of life, such as we all witnessed recently at Ft. Hood? I believe that it is an essential piece of the puzzle. People offer various explanations regarding why a soldier murdered fellow soldiers. Some are pointing to Maj. Hassan’s Islamic identity or possible extremist views. Others point to his impending deployment to Iraq or sense of humiliation and social isolation. Since we know that very few behaviors are motivated by just one cause, I think it’s likely that all of these dynamics interacted.

  Why do I think that peace education could have prevented such a violent act? At its core, peace education nurtures two vital skills, which are problem solving and relationship-building. Peace education also challenges stereotypes and resists the easy, pat explanation for …

• June 10, 2009

  The Jewish Mind in the Age of Obama

  
  
  “Our best protection is to communicate with the people we are most afraid of.”

  By Kobi Skolnick

  Before becoming a peace activist, I spent years as a settler in the hills of the West Bank, planting trees and cultivating the soil. Some of my family and friends still live there, and I remain deeply connected to them. For this reason, as the Obama administration’s new policies unfold, I am of two minds. I understand the settler perspective, but I have a second view that comes from years of experience working for peace.

  My two perspectives are reflected by millions of people in the world. After Obama’s speech on June fourth , one group rejoiced, but for others his words were a dark cloud. For the first group, their hearts were filled with excitement, but others felt the tight grip of fear and distress. Some looked at his words and saw …

• October 3, 2008

  Does the U.S. Bipartisan Group’s Report on Engaging the Islamic World Favor Obama?

  The recent U.S. report on Muslim engagement was crafted carefully by a very bipartisan group in which I played a role, but this article argues that it strongly favors Obama’s foreign policy.

  U.S.: Bipartisan Group Urges Deeper Diplomacy with Muslim World

  WASHINGTON, Sep 24 (IPS) – In an implicit indictment of President George W. Bush’s “global war on terror” and the hawkish pronouncements by Republican candidate John McCain, a bipartisan group of nearly three dozen U.S. leaders called here Wednesday for Bush’s successor to place much greater emphasis on high-level diplomacy — including direct engagement with Iran and Syria — in dealing with the Middle East and the Muslim world.

  In a 152-page report, the group, which included former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Bush’s former Deputy Secretary of State and McCain adviser Richard Armitage, also called for any new administration to work “intensively for immediate de-escalation of the

  …

• September 29, 2008

  What is *Reality*? – Welcome to the Sulha

  In the context of major global conflicts, where everyone is analyzing what is right or wrong, black or white, left or right, it has occured to me that the definition of reality sometimes gets lost in the mix.

  Here are few definitons of reality occording to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary

  ‘Reality’

  1: the quality or state of being real

  2 a (1): a real event, entity, or state of affairs reality(2): the totality of real things and events realityb: something that is neither derivative nor dependent but exists necessarily

  Imagine for just a moment if headlines coming out of the Middle East read like this tomorrow….

  Today thousands of Arabs, Jews, Israelis,
  Palestinians, Seculars and Religious, Christians, Muslims,
  Druze, young and old gathered to dance, to cry, to share, to
  laugh, to work, to play and ultimately, to live together for
  three days just a few miles outside of …

• August 17, 2008

  MALIK’S DREAM: AN INSIDER’S EFFORTS TO REFORM PAKISTAN’T MADRASAS

  

  A young Pakistani man who I met recently said to me, “If Pakistan is safe the world is safe, if Pakistan is in danger then the world is in danger, because we have “atom.” And Pakistan is in deep danger.” He was sincere, persuasive, brilliant, but also blunt in that special way that survivors whose lives are in danger tend to be. He was also on a mission to rediscover the religion of his youth, an Islam he could be proud of. He watched helplessly in his lifetime as the contest for Pakistan and Afghanistan that ensued between the Soviet Union, Iran, the United States, and Saudi Arabia morphed into a bloody battle in the name of religion.

  The young man, who we will call Malik, has been searching to restore the earlier Islamic culture to his native Pakistan, but the forces arrayed against him are enormous. This is what …