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Building peace at the grassroots

Over three decades of peace work, John Paul Lederach has helped people find practical solutions and deep healing.

by Melanie Zuercher

Like many young people, John Paul Lederach began college without a clear idea what he wanted to do with his life. He did know, however, that he was “keenly interested” in “the notions of service and alternative lifestyle related to peace issues.”

After finishing two years at Hesston College, John Paul decided to spend three years with Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) in Belgium. From 1975-78, he lived and worked in a hospice for students, primarily from French-speaking Africa (e.g., Rwanda, Burundi, Zaire) with a smattering from South America and the Middle East. The experience was seminal in pointing him toward the newly emerging academic field of peace studies.

From 1978-83, John Paul did a field assignment with Mennonite Board of Missions in Barcelona while also completing a B.A. in history and peace studies at Bethel College (1980). He later earned a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Colorado. He served with MCC from 1985-96, first in Central America, then as director of Mennonite Conciliation Service (U.S.) and finally as director of International Conciliation Service. He was the founding director of the Conflict Transformation Program (master’s level) and the Institute for Justice and Peacebuilding at Eastern Mennonite University, Harrisonburg, Va., where he continues as Distinguished Scholar. Since 2001, John Paul has been professor of international peacebuilding at the University of Notre Dame’s Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies. In May 2009, he received the Reinhold Niebuhr Award, given annually to a Notre Dame student, faculty member or administrator whose life and writings promote or exemplify social justice.

For nearly all of his teaching career, John Paul has taught one semester, then spent the rest of the year working “on the ground,” mostly internationally. His work has taken him to more than a dozen countries. Currently, he spends time in Nepal (in the sixth year of a 10-year project), Colombia and the Philippines, in both of which he has worked since the 1980s.

Context: How did you find your way to Bethel College?

JPL: My time in Belgium was a real education about the world and people’s experience. There would be debates at the hospice late into the night about violence and nonviolence and could revolution happen or not. Many of the students came from countries where the situation caused them to argue for violent revolution. It was an introduction to the real-life application of peace theology to people’s lives.

At that time, peace studies was just beginning to emerge as an academic discipline and Bethel had a peace studies program. In my second year or so with MCC, I wrote to three or four places that had peace studies majors or co-majors. Bethel’s fit the best. The key for me was that Bill Keeney [who directed the peace studies program] was working with an adult education model that permitted credit for life experience, as well as directed studies. There were interesting things being done to facilitate practical learning and to integrate that with classroom learning. Now, as a professor, I know how complicated that is. For me, it launched a career.

I started out [as a teenager] interested in peace issues from theology and faith standpoints, and then from an international perspective – finally from the practical, moving beyond theology and theory.

Context: My impression is that you’ve been integral to the development of the peace studies discipline and the movement from mediation and conflict resolution to conflict transformation.

JPL: There is “attribution” and “contribution” – I would lean more toward being part of the “contribution.” While peace studies is still prominent in academic settings, over the last 20 years it has moved toward the practical. I have been part of [the movement] toward “transformation” from “resolution” – from “What are you trying to end?” to “What are you trying to build?” [Building peace] requires a shift in people’s relationships, alongside ending something conflictive or divisive.

Context: Could you say something about your more recent work with the arts and peacebuilding?

JPL: A lot of my work has been with protracted conflict that has deep roots and [results in] repeated cycles of violence. It’s easy to approach these with a technician’s manual and do one training after another. Building skills is important but it’s not sufficient for understanding the deeper complexities and layers.

[My 2005 book] The Art and Soul of Peacebuilding looks at two main things: First, a deeper understanding of the artistic process. Working with poetry, for example, is about capturing complex human reality in very simple form. Peacebuilding deals with enormous complexities and needs to somehow capture the essence – very much like art. Second, how do you sustain yourself in this work and help people in situations of very deep conflict sustain themselves?

I have worked a lot with music and poetry, [personally and] with colleagues who are long-term working in situations of violence – to help maintain resilience, to not “serious everything to death” and to recognize patterns that lead to burnout. I integrate poetry into my teaching and training. With the undergraduate peace studies majors at Notre Dame, my co-teacher, Scott Appleby, director of the Kroc Institute, and I approach the course using “lifebooks,” an idea we developed – personal essays that integrate poetry, prose and music, as do the lectures. In our work in Colombia, one of the exercises with communities affected by violence is to have people write poetry and produce small chapbooks – this helps [them find] a voice, touches aspects of reality not easily accessed and produces something tangible.

Context: In a time when it seems there are so many situations of intractable conflict and violence around the world, where can people who care about peace find hope?

JPL: A small portion of my work is [with political structures] but 95 percent is at the grassroots. It’s local. Conflict happens everywhere. You don’t have to go far – it’s in South Bend, or at Columbine High School, where my daughter had friends [at the time of the 1999 shooting].

Think local. The best way to develop capacity is at home. [Peacebuilding comes] in ways we do it with families, in schools, in communities. It’s not going to come from some miracle policy. It requires discipline, it’s not easy – but it can be done.