Letter from the Director

As we gathered online in June to celebrate the delayed 25th Anniversary of CJP, my heart was filled with gratitude and grief. Gratitude for the many different ways our students, faculty, staff, and supporters helped CJP thrive in spite of huge challenges. Grief for those lost to Covid-19 and to violence in its many forms.

Covid taught me a new word. When an infectious disease overlaps with underlying noncommunicable diseases in the context of social and economic disparity, the result is a syndemic. In a syndemic, the interaction of factors amplifies and complicates the negative impacts of each problem. Even in Harrisonburg, we could see that lower-income communities paid a far heavier price from the pandemic than middle-class communities where ill family members could isolate inside spacious homes and necessities were delivered every day. Insofar as class overlaps with race, the inequities created by decades of racial injustices were also staring us in the face. Then we all witnessed the impunity of Derek Chauvin kneeling on George Floyd’s neck for nine minutes and 29 seconds. Something broke open and thousands of people, including many of us, took to the streets saying, “Enough! This has to change.”

Our program started 26 years ago against the backdrop of the hot conflicts popping up around the world at the end of the Cold War. We adapted our work through the global war on terror. Now we are asking, “What is required of us as we do justice and peacebuilding education in the context of a syndemic that includes a mutating communicable disease, sustained racism and oppression, poverty and inequality in every country and between countries, the impacts of global climate change, a frightening rise in authoritarian movements, and deep political polarization?” What must change in the way we do our work? What is still valid and needs to be sustained even if in modified forms?

Peace cannot be built on a foundation of injustice and unaddressed pain. There can be no peacebuilding without addressing the trauma of long-standing systems of racism and oppression. To do justice we must also honor and learn from the resilience of communities that have borne the brunt of violent policies. We must center the voices of those who have suffered injustice and still committed themselves to nonviolent change, which is why we invited Sonya Shah, sujatha baliga,

and Talibah Aquil MA ‘19 to challenge us at our anniversary alongside Alicia Garza from the Black Futures Lab (view at emu.edu/cjp/anniversary/ video-links). We also brought in the wisdom of communities that have experienced sustained oppression as we revised the STAR curriculum (page 4).

Anniversaries are also about our past. We asked John Paul Lederach to reflect on what made CJP unique at its founding and what we should consider as we take our work into the future. He reminded us that our strength has always been our “proximity to practice.” Our continued commitment to practice is evident in the story on pages 8-9 about CJP graduates, staff, and current students working with others to promote change in the criminal legal system.

Speaking about the future, John Paul observed that the “convening model” of peacebuilding practice – gathering people in one place for conversations and negotiations – is being replaced with a “circulating model” – working with people where they live to transform violence and injustice in that specific location. We are seeing parallel changes in peace and justice education. In recent years, fewer people have been able to attend our degree programs or the Summer Peacebuilding Institute (SPI) in Harrisonburg. By shutting down our convening spaces, the pandemic pushed us into a bold experiment with a circulating system of online teaching and learning. It accelerated our launch of the mostly distance-based Master of Arts in Transformational Leadership (see page 6). The impact in the communities where our students live is evident. We would love to combine this degree with the lessons we learned while educating regional cohorts. See page 7 for an invitation to let us know of groups of individuals who would benefit from studying together while working in their shared location.

CJP has experienced the same kinds of personnel changes that other workplaces are seeing in what one business columnist called “the Covid churn.” This publication features our newest tenured faculty member, Executive Director for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Jackie Font-Guzmán, as well as a host of other exemplary faculty, staff, and visiting fellows who join us this year.

It has been exciting to welcome people to campus again, including students who started with us online last year. We are now teaching courses in a hybrid format with some students in the classroom and some on Zoom. The university’s investment in technology upgrades plus our own crash course in teaching technologies have made this blend of convening in one place while also reaching people where they live and work possible. We realize we may never go back to what we had before: Faculty working on curriculum changes now start with the pressing question, “How do we make our programs accessible to the many students who want to enroll?” Expect more news of change and innovation later this year.

As you read this publication, please see yourselves woven through all of the stories. We could never have changed as rapidly and as effectively as we have without your generous support for CJP.

Blessings to all of you as we continue to navigate the many challenges of our time.