EMU’s John Paul Lederach appears on CBS
Dr. John Paul Lederach speaks with his wife and daughter by his side.
The EMU community knows him as the founder of the Conflict Transformation Program. Those who attended the Mennonite convention in Atlanta remember his inspirational speech on conflict. The rest of the world knows John Paul Lederach as an expert in conciliation and mediation, which is why CBS featured him in their special on conflict transformation on Sunday, Oct. 12.
The CBS special, entitled "Peacemakers," focused on some of the world’s hot spots—Iraq, Sierra Leone, Nicaragua, and Croatia—and presented the creative approaches that four peacemakers took to each of the conflicts. Lederach was one of them.
First he told a story about two rival tribes in Ghana, one of which had a chief and the other of which had never had a chief. When the paramount chief arrived at a meeting of the two tribes he said, "I have no one to meet with here," because they were young and had no chief. One of the tribesmen stepped forward and said, "You are exactly right, Father. It is because we do not have a chief that young boys like me are sitting here addressing you Father." The paramount chief was ashamed that he had treated them so disrespectfully because the man did not resent him.
Lederach also briefly discussed his experience in Nicaragua in the 1980s, as he tried to bring peace among the Sandanistas, the Nicaraguan government, and the various ethnic groups that kept up armed resistance. Through training with mediation and peacebuilding, the Moravian church leaders of the area constructed peace accords and agreements. The process took almost three years, but it prevented war from breaking out in Nicaragua.
The CBS special introduced three other peacemakers as well. Rev. Patricia Ackerman, who works with Fellowship of Reconciliation, has set up a center in Iraq to monitor the U.S. forces. The Occupation Watch Center not only focuses on military action, but also works at building relationships with the Iraqi people and empowering them with a voice in their country.
Masankho Banda performs his peacebuilding ministry through song and dance. This vice president of Pathways to Peace traveled to war-torn Croatia to meet with the same children year after year, to hear their stories of violence, and to lead workshops and songs about forgiveness. He has also traveled to Sierra Leone, where children have been drugged and abducted into the army. Sometimes, after the children had been forced to perform acts of hatred against their own people, the army released the children back to their homes. Not only did they return with immense emotional scars, but many children returned with amputated hands as well. In response to this brutality, the community held a party with music and dancing, welcoming the children back home.
Dr. William F. Vendley, the Secretary General of the World Conference of Religion for Peace, described how a handful of women in Kenya and Somalia brought people together to talk. In doing so, they stopped the war between the two countries.
Thirteen years ago Lederach joined EMU as a sociology professor, and within four years he had formulated an idea for the CTP. In 1995, it became a reality. Today the Conflict Transformation Program gives peacebuilding instruction and opportunities for service including disaster response, humanitarian relief, restorative justice, and socio-economic development. Lederach currently instructs a class in the CTP graduate program at EMU, but he also teaches in the Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame. After writing and editing twelve books and manuals on conflict, Lederach is still writing at his home in Colorado.
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