Each year the Peace and Justice Studies Association presents various awards to teachers, scholars, activists, and distinguished peace and justice proponents by recognizing their service, accomplishments, and excellence at a ceremony held during the PJSA conference. The distinguished peacemakers are recognized and given the opportunity to present a message of challenge and hope. The awards are in six categories:
Social Courage Award: For exemplifying courage and honor in building and promoting a culture of peace and nonviolence in the face of political pressure and social struggle.
Peace Educator/Scholar Award: For exemplary teaching and/or great scholarship in forwarding peace education and peace studies.
Next Generation Peacemaker Award: For the best young peacemaker(s) of the year.
The Howard Zinn Lifetime Achievement Award: For outstanding contributions made to the field of peace and justice studies.
Best Dissertation/Thesis of the Year Award, and Best Undergraduate Paper of the Year Award: These latter awards recognize and reward a graduate student AND an undergraduate student whose research has been identified by the PJSA community as outstanding among those submitted during the awards cycle.
The Peace and Justice Studies Association extends eligibility for the awards to any and all peace practitioners of all ages and nationalities. Individuals submitting nominations may be from the same institution as the person who they are nominating.
2017 Winners
Peace Educator Award: Tom Hastings is not only a sharp scholar always keeping up with the latest developments in our field and adding his own work through regular publications, but also a tireless advocate for practicing what he teaches. He encourages and supports students to become active in a myriad of peace and justice issues through nonviolent means and helps the student group Students United for Nonviolence bring in key speakers of our field. With his project PeaceVoice, Tom brings public peace intellectual voices to mainstream audiences in the newspaper landscape and beyond.
Howard Zinn Lifetime Achievement Award: Scott Douglas served as Environmental Justice Organizer for the Sierra Club – Southeast, Executive Director of the Southern Organizing Committee for Economic and Social Justice, and Southern Field Representative for the Partnership for Democracy Foundation before joining the staff of GBM. Scott serves on the boards of AIDS Alabama, the Alabama Poverty Project, The Gulf Coast Fund, the Progressive Technology Project, the Equal Justice Initiative of Alabama, and the Steering Committee of the Alabama Organizing Project. He formerly served on the boards of directors of The Needmor Fund and The New World Foundation, among many others. Scott has published articles on human rights, community organizing and social change in Social Policy, Southern Exposure, and the Howard Law School Journal. Scott has been Executive Director of GBM for decades; and, has been a consistent, powerful voice of justice and nonviolence in the State of Alabama. He has worked with and led the leadership of traditional Civil Rights organizations in the City, as well as beginning new groups supportive of communities and issues related to Civil and Human Rights. Scott is from Nashville and graduated from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. He is married to Lynn Douglas; they have one son.
Next Generation Peacemaker Award: Lilly Kruglak founded Genocide Awareness and Action Week at Juniata College after having spent a semester in Uganda and Rwanda with the School for International Training in 2010. The program continues to strongly impact students’ understanding of, and ways to work towards, prevention and amelioration of genocide. She is currently the Reporting and Outreach Coordinator at Resolve Network, a grassroots peacebuilding organization promoting participatory approaches to address deep-rooted conflict and create sustainable pathways to peace in Eastern Congo. Lily spent significant periods of time in the DRC, assisting with program development, monitoring, and evaluation. We commend most highly her leadership as an undergraduate student as well as her commitment to developing grassroots peacebuilding opportunities in even the most violent regions in the world. Her research and practice in this region has been dangerous, but necessary in relation to including the voices of those most directly impacted by violence. Lily recently finished her Masters Degree at Georgetown in Conflict Resolution.
Social Courage Award: Ruby Nell Sales has been a freedom fighter, public theologian, and social change agent for more than 5 decades. Sales is an alumni of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. She has been a continual beacon for nonviolent social change. Currently the Director of SpiritHouse Project, Sales has been a leading figure in the struggle against the extrajudicial killing and mysterious murders of Black and brown men, women and children. Long before Ferguson, Sales was leading a movement for human rights and racial justice. She is a well-known public figure. She embodies the legacy of Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, Fannie Lou Hamer, and Vincent Harding.
Past Winners
2002-2008: Archived
2009
Social Courage Award: George Paz Martin was the National Co-Chair of United for Peace & Justice (UFPJ), the US’s largest peace coalition with more than 1,400 member organizations. George came to peace work through his involvement in the Green Party, USA. He has served as program director of Peace Action Wisconsin for several years. He initiated the Milwaukee Bring the Troops Home Referendum Campaign, the Wisconsin Peace Voter Campaign, and is a founding member of Black Caucus of the Green Party of the US. George has appeared on every major U.S. television network, C-Span, CNN, BBC and Democracy Now to speak against the War in Iraq, as well as countless radio and television stations around the world. He is an active leader in the World Social Forum: He was a speaker at the ’04 WSF in Italy and at the ’05 WSF in Brazil where his speech against the War in Iraq was broadcast to more than 350 TV and radio stations across the U.S. At the ’06 WSF in Venezuela, he was part of an international peace delegation that met with President Hugo Chavez, and he addressed the Global Greens Youth Conference prior to attending the \’07 WSF in Nairobi. He is a volunteer and activist on homeless issues, especially working for the needs of homeless veterans, and as staff and consultant to community based organizations at both the state and federal governments in developing, fundraising and operating both facilities and programs. He worked as a volunteer leader in Wisconsin Stand Down, a biannual event bringing hundreds of homeless veterans off the streets of Milwaukee for holistic services, including Iraq War veterans. George was an activist in the Civil Rights movement as a teenager, the Black Panther Party, and the War on Poverty Movement. George was honored on December 6th, 2006 in the U.S. House of Representatives in a statement read by Congresswoman Gwen Moore. In 2006, Martin was given a “Lifetime Peacemaker Award” by the Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice.
Peace Educator/Scholar Award: Dr. Joel Kovel has done extraordinary work over decades for nonviolence, anti-racism, ecology, and solidarity with the Palestine people. Joel is a world class educator, author, and, activist. He has lectured in psychiatry, anthropology, political science and communication studies. He held the Alger Hiss Chair of Social Studies at Bard College from 1988 to 2003, and Distinguished Professor of Social Studies at Bard from 2003 to 2008. He has also been a visiting professor at five universities. Joel attended Yale College, and graduated with a medical degree from Columbia University in 1961. He studied psychiatry at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, becoming Director of Residency Training (1977-83) and Professor of Psychiatry (1979-86). He also holds a diploma in psychoanalysis from the Downstate Medical Center Institute. Joel has published nine books and over a hundred articles in various publications. White Racism: A Psychohistory, released in 1972, was nominated for a National Book Award in Religion and Philosophy. Joel’s most recent book, Overcoming Zionism: Creating a Single Democratic State in Israel-Palestine, became the focus of intense controversy in 2007 for its defense of Palestinian human rights and co-existence. His work in the psychiatric-psychoanalytic system was widely acclaimed in 1981 with the publication of The Age of Desire: Case Histories of a Radical Psychoanalyst. The Radical Spirit: Essays on Psychoanalysis and Society won “Choice Outstanding Academic Book” for 1989. Other works have focused on politics and eco-socialism, including Against the State of Nuclear Terror (1983) and 1994’s Red Hunting in the Promised Land, a study of anticommunist repression in America. The Enemy of Nature: The End of Capitalism or The End of the World, was published in 2002. He is currently the Editor-in-Chief of Capitalism Nature Socialism, a quarterly journal on Eco-Socialism. He practiced psychiatry and psychoanalysis until the mid-1980s when he became disillusioned with the health care industry.
The Howard Zinn Lifetime Achievement Award: Bob Johansen is professor of Political Science and Senior Fellow at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies. He is author of The National Interest and the Human Interest: An Analysis of U.S.Foreign Policy (Princeton University Press), co-editor of The Constitutional Foundations of World Peace (SUNYPress), and has published in World Politics, Journal of Peace Research, Global Governance, Third World Quarterly, Journal of International Affairs, Political Studies, and periodicals such as The Atlantic, Harper’s, and The New York Times. As program chair for the International Studies Association, past president of the World Policy Institute, and founding editor-in-chief of the World Policy Journal, he has played a seminal role in transnational research on international peace and global governance. He has held visiting appointments at Princeton University in the Center for International Studies and at Harvard University in the Center for International Affairs and the Center for the Study of World Religions. He writes on United Nations peace building; ethics and international relations; and enforcing international law prohibiting crimes against humanity and war crimes. Bob holds a B.A. from Manchester College; and an M.A. and Ph.D. from Columbia University. In addition to his scholarly books and articles, Bob has tirelessly promoted peace through popular articles, speeches, panels, newspaper, radio and television interview, and congressional testimony. He has been a Senior Fellow of the Kroc Institute since 1986 influencing a generation of peace scholars and practitioners and served as Director of Graduate Studies for much of that time. He was President of the Institute for World Order in New York where, along with Richard Falk, Saul Mendlovitz, Samuel Kim, Rajni Kothari and Yoshi Sakamoto, he helped to build a global network of over 10,000 academics to promote a more just, equitable, and sustainable, international economic order to rid the world of weapons and war. He was a longtime contributing member of Consortium on Peace Research, Education and Development (COPRED), our predecessor organization.
Best Undergraduate Paper of the Year Award: Maya Karwande of Tufts University (Faculty Adviser: Paul Joseph), BA in Peace &Justice Studies, “Failure to Engage: Outreach at the Bosnian War Crimes Chamber”
Best Dissertation/Thesis of the Year Award: Catia Confortini of University of Southern California (Faculty Adviser: J. Ann Tickner), Ph.D. in International Relations, “Imaginative Identification: Feminist Critical Methodology in the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, 1945-1975”
2010
Social Courage Award: Chief Ovide Mercredi, a Cree, a lawyer, a negotiator, an author, a lecturer in Native Studies, and an activist on behalf of First Nations in Canada. He is currently serving as Chief of the Misipawistik First Nation, Grand Chief of the Swampy Cree Tribal Council, and is also National Spokesperson for Treaties 1 through 11. In 1989 he was elected Manitoba Vice-Chief of the Assembly of First Nations, and was first elected National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations in 1991 where he served two terms. In 2006 he was invested with the Order of Manitoba, the province’s highest honour. He was nominated for the Gandhi Peace Prize and has received honourary degrees from Bishop’s University, St. Mary’s University, and Lethbridge University.
Peace Educator/Scholar Award: George Lakey, an internationally-recognized facilitator, having led over 1500 seminars on five continents. Author of eight books, he is a professor at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania and was the founder and director for fifteen years of Training for Change, a nonprofit organization devoted to education and skill-building in conflict resolution and social change. Lakey’s new book (published by Jossey-Bass), Facilitating Group Learning, appears in October 2010. He has spoken and given seminars at universities in numerous countries, and has been hosted by Canadian labor unions, nonprofit organizations, and universities in many provinces over the last twenty years.
The Howard Zinn Lifetime Achievement Award: Cynthia Enloe’s career has included Fulbrights in Malaysia and Guyana, and guest professorships in Japan, Britain and Canada, as well as lecturing in Sweden, Norway, Germany, Korea, Turkey and at universities around the U.S. Her books and articles have been translated into Spanish, Turkish, Japanese, Korean, Swedish, and German. She has written for Ms. Magazine and has appeared on National Public Radio and the BBC. Enloe’s dozen books include Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics (2000), Maneuvers: The International Politics of Militarizing Women’s Lives (2004),Globalization and Militarism: Feminists Make the Link (2007), and Nimo’s War, Emma’s War: Making Feminist Sense of the Iraq War (2010).
Next Generation Peacemaker Award: Caitlin Eliasson graduated from the University of Winnipeg (UW) in June 2010 with an undergraduate degree in Conflict Resolution Studies and English and earned three gold medals for her academic achievement. She has been involved in a variety of community projects, recently co-coordinating the Menno Simons College Social Justice Fair, participating in Compassionate Listening trainings, acting as a dialogue facilitator with the Youth Peacebuilding Project, and working with disabled and at risk youth as part of Air Canada Dreams Take Flight. Caitlin is presently assisting with the experiential course “The Making of Peace and War in Literature,” and notably has served with distinction as the administrative assistant for the 2010 Peace and Justice Studies Association Conference.
Best Undergraduate Paper of the Year Award: Emily Watkins, B.A., Brandeis University; Advisor: Gordon Fellman; Title: “On the Border of Fire: Origins of the National Religious Settler Movement in Israel”
Best Dissertation/Thesis of the Year Award: Maya Eichler, Ph.D., York University; Advisor: Sandra Whitworth; Title: “Militarized Masculinity in Post-Soviet Russia: A Gendered Analysis of State and Society in the Context of the Chechen Wars”
2011
Social Courage Award: Dr. Mazin Qumsiyeh was born and raised under Israeli occupation in Beit Sahour, on the outskirts of Bethlehem. He is a scientist, professor, nonviolence leader, human rights activist, and a Palestinian Christian educated in both Middle East and US universities. Qumsiyeh teaches and conducts research at Bethlehem and Birzeit Universities in occupied Palestine. He previously served as Associate Professor of Genetics and director of cytogenetic services both at Duke University and Yale University, before giving up his post to work in the Palestinian nonviolent struggle. He practices daily acts of resistance against land confiscation and the Israeli Apartheid Wall. He serves as chairman of the Palestinian Center for Rapprochement Between People and coordinator of the Popular Committee Against the Wall and Settlements in Beit Sahour.
Peace Educator/Scholar Award: Elavie Ndura, Ed.D., is Associate Professor of Educational Transformation in the George Mason University Graduate School of Education Master’s in New Professional Studies–Teaching program. She has written and taught widely on critical pedagogy; Pan African peace studies; multicultural peace education; educational transformation; nonviolence; obstacles to equal opportunities for refugees in the U.S.; cultural competences for teachers to create peaceable classrooms; and reconciliation. Her article calling on institutions of higher education to join the quest for social justice and peace appeared in the Harvard Educational Review. Her most recent books include Seeds Bearing Fruit: Pan-African Peace Action for the Twenty-first Century and Building Cultures of Peace: Transdisciplinary Voices of Hope and Action.
The Howard Zinn Lifetime Achievement Award: Dolores Huerta is the co-founder and First Vice President Emeritus of the United Farm Workers of America, (UFW), and a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. She worked with Cesar Chavez as a community organizer in southern California in the mid-1950s. In 1965, she directed the UFW’s national grape boycott, which resulted in the table grape industry signing a three-year collective bargaining agreement with the UFW. On June 5, 1968, she stood beside Robert F. Kennedy during his victory statement after winning the California Democratic primary, moments before his assassination. Huerta received an honorary degree from Princeton University in 2006, and was lauded: “Through her insatiable hunger of justice and her tireless advocacy, she has devoted her life to creative, compassionate, and committed citizenship.”
Next Generation Peacemaker Award: Formed in 1997, United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) is a grassroots organization of youth and students who believe that a powerful and dynamic labor movement will ensure greater justice for all people. They use their roles as students, consumers, workers, and members of campus communities to win victories that set precedents in the struggle for self-determination of working people everywhere, particularly campus workers and garment workers who make collegiate apparel. USASdevelops youth leadership and runs strategic student-labor solidarity campaigns with the goal of building sustainable power for working people. They envision a world in which society is organized cooperatively, and struggle towards a world in which all people live in freedom from oppression, in which people are valued as whole human beings rather than exploited in a quest for productivity and profits.
Best Undergraduate Paper of the Year Award: Danielle Fulmer, BA (Peace and Conflict Studies), Juniata College; Advisor:Celia Cook-Huffman; Title: Addressing Identity in Civil War Peace Accords
Best Dissertation/Thesis of the Year Award: Jeffrey Pugh, Ph.D. (Political Science), Johns Hopkins University; Advisor: Margaret Keck; Title: Overcoming the Invisibility Bargain: Institutional Adaptation, Host-Migrant Peacebuilding, and Human Security in Ecuador
2012
Social Courage Award: Kandi Mossett, Native Energy & Climate Campaign Organizer, was born in North Dakota and grew up in an area known today as the Fort Berthold Reservation. She obtained her undergraduate degree from the University of North Dakota in Natural Resource and Park Management, and earned a Masters of Environmental Management Degree within UND’s Earth Systems Science and Policy Program. She began working for the Indigenous Environmental Network as the Tribal Campus Climate Challenge Organizer in 2007, and took part in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Copenhagen during December of 2009 to speak out against tar sands development and demand that the U.S. sign on to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. She attended the World Peoples Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in Cochabamba, Bolivia helping to put forth The People’s Agreement. She attended the UNFCCC in Cancun, Mexico in 2010 where she spoke out against the idea of commodification of the sacred through carbon trading schemes. The work continued in Durban, South Africa at the UNFCCC in December of 2011. Her current focus is on creating awareness about the dangers of fracking while working to protect Native lands.
Peace Educator/Scholar Award: Nancy Carlsson-Paige was awarded for her tireless, passionate work spanning decades. Nancy is a professor of early childhood education at Lesley University in Boston, and a founder of their Center for Peaceable Schools, where she has prepared teachers for more than 30 years. Since the mid-1980s, Nancy has written and spoken extensively about the impact of media violence on children’s lives and social development, and how children learn the skills for caring relationships and positive conflict resolution. Nancy is a passionate advocate to save our public schools from corporate privatization, and to encourage skills and attitudes that further peace and nonviolence in our children. Nancy has written five books and numerous articles on media violence, conflict resolution, and peaceable classrooms and schools, including: Taking Back Childhood: A Proven Roadmap for Raising Confident, Creative, Compassionate Kids (2009); War Play Dilemma: Balancing Needs and Values in the Early Childhood Classroom (2006); Before Push Comes to Shove: Building Conflict Resolution Skills With Children (1998); and Helping Young Children Understand Peace, War, and the Nuclear Threat (1989).
Next Generation Peacemaker Award: Founded in 1988, Roca is committed to serving the most disenfranchised and disengaged young people ages 14-24 (street/court/gang involved; drop-outs; young parents; and refugee and immigrants) in the Greater Boston area. Through transformational relationships, Roca helps young people re-engage in society, moving them into educational, employment, and life skills programming. Roca has helped more than 25,000 young people make positive changes in their lives, creating a nationally acclaimed model of transformational relationships as a vehicle for youth development, and pioneering effective local, regional, and national relationships with government, state, religious, health, and community partners. Roca’s mission is to help disengaged and disenfranchised young people move out of violence and poverty. Roca can see a different future, a future in which young people leave the streets and gangs to take responsibility for their actions and make contributions to society.
The Howard Zinn Lifetime Achievement Award: Marc Pilisuk earned his PhD in 1961 from the University of Michigan in Clinical and Social Psychology. A Professor Emeritus at the University of California, he currently serves on the faculty at the San Francisco-based Saybrook Graduate School and Research Center where he has taught extensively on conflict resolution, globalization, ecological psychology, and sustainability. Prof. Pilisuk’s distinguished academic career spans five decades, delving unabashedly into humanitarian topics of peace and violence, social justice, environmental politics, social networks and family caregiving. Dr. Pilisuk edited two books about poverty in 1971 and 1973 with wife, Phyllis, and completed another text on International Conflict and Social Policy in 1972. He joined the faculty of UC Davis in 1977 where he taught for 15 years as Professor of Community Studies and chaired the Department of Applied Behavioral Sciences (renamed the Dept. of Human and Community Development in 1992). Most recently, he co-edited Peace Movements Worldwide, a three-volume collection examining the history of peace movements around the world, with Contributors including Daniel Ellsberg, Howard Zinn, Johan Galtung, Joanna Macy, Jody Williams, Kathy Kelly, David Korten, and Michael Lerner.
Best Undergraduate Paper of the Year Award: Arianna Pattek, BS (Certificate in Justice & Peace Studies), Georgetown University
Best Dissertation/Thesis of the Year Award: Sara Koopman, Ph.D. (Geography), University of British Columbia; Title: Making Space for Peace: International Protective Accompaniment in Colombia (2007-2009)
2013
Social Courage Award: Sylvia McAdam, an activist with Idle No More, was born and raised on the Big River Reserve in Treaty Six Territory. She holds degrees in law and human justice and teaches at the First Nations University. Sylvia is the author of the book Cultural Teachings: First Nations Protocols and Methodologies, a guide to appropriate traditional etiquette for individuals attending ceremonial activities of indigenous peoples in Saskatchewan.
Peace Educator/Scholar Award: Karen Ridd is an instructor in Conflict Resolution Studies at Menno Simons College, an affiliate of the University of Winnipeg. Karen has designed and led workshops for young people, teachers, labour leaders, Cambodian Buddhist monks, Thai farmers, Mohawk activists, and Bangkok human rights workers. She is also a professional clown and has years of experience working in healthcare. Karen has also worked in El Salvador and Guatemala, where she provided protective accompaniment for human rights leaders who were threatened with assassination. In addition to her mediation work, she is a freelance consultant on nonviolent activism, non-competitive games, communication skills and conflict resolution. Her work with Peace Brigades International has won her numerous awards, including the 1992 Governor-General’s 125th Anniversary Medal.
Next Generation Peacemaker Award: Brigette DePape is a Canadian activist from Winnipeg, Manitoba who came to Canadian national attention on June 3, 2011. While a participant of the Canadian Senate Page Program in 2011, DePape stood in protest during the Throne Speech in the Senate, silently holding up a sign that said “Stop Harper!” This action led to her prompt dismissal, due to its breach of the non-partisan nature of the page position and DePape’s disruption of the Governor General in parliament. Between June 26–27, 2010, DePape participated in protests at the G20 summit in Toronto. On September 26, 2011, she took part in a protest on Parliament Hill against Alberta oil sands development and TransCanada Corp.’s proposed Keystone XL pipeline. On April 23, 2012, DePape was again silently protesting in an unofficial page uniform, this time outdoors and apparently against Alberta’s provincial Wildrose party, when she was photographed holding a sign reading “Stop Harper’s Gang” when Danielle Smith (leader of the Wildrose party) cast her vote. DePape wrote the one-woman play She Rules with Iron Stix, which she performed in Ottawa, Winnipeg, and Saskatoon at their respective fringe theatre festivals, as well as the TEDxYouthOttawa conference. She is the author of the 2012 book, Power of Youth: Youth and Community-Led Activism in Canada.
The Howard Zinn Lifetime Achievement Award: Ernie Regehr, OC, is a Canadian peace researcher and expert in security and disarmament. He co-founded Project Ploughshares, a peace research organization based in Waterloo, Ontario, with Murray Thomson in 1976 and served as its Executive Director for thirty years. Project Ploughshares is an ecumenical project supported by the Canadian Council of Churches. Regehr has been a Canadian NGO representative and expert advisor at numerous international disarmament forums including UNConferences on Small Arms. Regehr is currently a Research Fellow at the Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies at Conrad Grebel University College (Waterloo, Ontario) and The Simons Foundation (Vancouver, BC). He also serves on the Board of Directors of the Africa Peace Forum in Kenya.
Best Undergraduate Paper of the Year Award: Elowyn Corby, for her thesis titled “Training for Change: Moving from Theory to Practice in Adult Education for Empowerment,” completed at Swarthmore College.
Best Dissertation/Thesis of the Year Award: Joshua Bazuin, Ph.D., for his doctoral thesis on “Religion in the Remaking of Rwanda after Genocide,” completed at Vanderbilt University.
2014
Social Courage Award: Almudena Bernabeu is an International Attorney and Transitional Justice Program Director at the Center for Justice and Accountability (CJA) in San Francisco. She led the CJA’s work in Spain in the recent genocide trial in Guatemala against Efrain Rios Montt. That trial was the first time in history that a head of state was sentenced for genocide in a national court. Almudena was also responsible for filing a landmark case against senior Salvadoran officials for the massacre of Jesuit priests in 1989, making CJA internationally known for its work on Universal Jurisdiction in Europe. In 2011, Almudena’s work in Guatemala was featured in the documentary Granito: How to Nail a Dictator that debuted at the Sundance Film Festival. In 2012, she won the Katharine and George Alexander Law Prize and the Yo Dona Magazine prize for her exemplary professional career, and was listed as one of Time magazine’s 200 most influential people.
Peace Educator/Scholar Award: (1) Loreta Navarro-Castro is the Program Director of the Center for Peace Education, a Center which she founded in 1997 in Miriam College, and of which she was Executive Director until March 2013. Among the programs she currently handles are interfaith peace building, including a twinning project between Christian and Muslim youth; peace education mainstreaming, including workshops for colleges of education and educators in general; and advocacy for a global nuclear weapons ban. Loreta is currently the President of the Philippine Council for Peace and Global Education. She is a member of the Advisory Committee of the Global Campaign for Peace Education (GCPE) and the Peace Education Working Group of the Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict (GPPAC-PEWG). She was the initiator (1999) and former coordinator of a local Peace Education Network until 2013. She was also in the steering committee of the Waging Peace Philippines Network and a core group member of the Mindanao Solidarity Network for many years. She was a member of the Executive Committee of Pax Christi International from 2004 until 2010. In 2005, she was chosen as one of the 1000 women from around the world who were collectively nominated to the Nobel Peace Prize by the “Association 1000 Women for the Nobel Peace Prize”. In 2010, she received the Grassroots Peace Champion Award from the Mindanao People’s Caucus. Among her published works is a book she co-authored, Peace Education: A Pathway to a Culture of Peace.; (2) Nico Amador is a writer, educator, and community organizer who has spent over ten years serving grassroots movements working for social change. Nico’s involvement in social justice work stems from a deep passion for racial justice and a motivation to support transformation and empowerment in people of color, queer, and trans communities. He got his start as a student responding to racial profiling, militarism, and the detention of immigrants in the aftermath of 9/11. Since then, he has also worked on projects for trans rights, counter-recruitment, urban farming, and prison abolition. Nico’s taken what he’s learned as an organizer and led workshops for organizations in the U.S., Canada, Europe and South America on everything from campaign strategy to experiential education. Since 2009 Nico has served as a trainer and co-director with Training for Change, an organization dedicated to teaching activists the skills they need to stand up for social, economic, and environmental justice. In this role he helped to found the annual Philadelphia Organizing Skills Institute, a leadership program for emerging immigrant rights leaders, and a national fellowship program for trainers of color working in social change contexts.
Next Generation Peacemaker Award: Noor Mir was the anti-drone campaign coordinator for CODEPINK and is based in the Washington, D.C. office, although she calls Islamabad, Pakistan her home. She graduated from Vassar College in 2012 with a major in Political Science and minors in French and English. While studying abroad at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, she took courses on international law and targeted killings and was driven by what she learnt to turn it into a year-long research thesis on drone warfare in Pakistan. Noor is passionate about killer drones, humanitarian law and race relations.
The Howard Zinn Lifetime Achievement Award: Aurora Harris was born in Detroit, Michigan of African American and Filipina parentage and grew up in a Catholic and Muslim family. She holds an M.A. in Social Foundations of Education from Eastern Michigan University and a B.A. in Sociology from Wayne State University. Aurora is an advocate for students with special needs; a co-founder of We The People of Detroit, a grass roots organization that assists people who are victims of Detroit’s water shut off crisis; and an award winning published poet. Her book of poetry, Solitude of Five Black Moons, won the 2012 PEN-Oakland Josephine Miles Award for Excellence in Literature. As a spoken word artist, she records and performs with the In The Tradition Afro Jazz Band. Aurora is a Lecturer at the University of Michigan-Dearborn that teaches Advanced Composition and African American Literature. She serves as a board member of Broadside Press; a committee member of Detroit’s Martin Luther King Freedom and Justice March; Vice Chair of the Wayne RESAParent Advisory Committee; and the Secretary of a Parent Teacher Student Association. Past positions include being a Co-Chair of the Diversity Committee for the National Writers Union; Assistant Editor for Educational Studies: A journal of the American Educational Studies Association; and a member of The Action Committee for Justice 4 Maryanne (Godboldo). Her poems have appeared in Brooding the Heartlands: Poets of the Midwest; DrumVoices Review; Abandon Automobile; Poet in the House; Tilting the Continent: Southeast Asian American Writing; New Working Class Studies; Michigan Feminist Studies; and Educational Studies: A Journal of the American Educational Studies Association.
Best Undergraduate Paper of the Year Award: Daniel Hirschel-Burns (Swarthmore College), “Filling the Gap: Nonviolent Strategies for Civilian Self-Protection during Mass Atrocities”
Best Dissertation/Thesis of the Year Award: Janet Gerson (International Institute on Peace Education), “Public Deliberation on Global Justice: The World Tribunal on Iraq”
2015
Social Courage Award: (1) Faculty Against Rape (Simona Sharoni accepting): FAR is a volunteer-run collective dedicated to getting more faculty involved in confronting campus sexual assault as researchers, teachers, survivors’ advocates, and policy reformers. FAR is committed to supporting faculty members who experience retaliation because of their efforts to address sexual assault on campus.; (2) Claudia Bernardi (California College of the Arts), works in the fields of art, human rights, and social justice, combining installation, sculpture, painting, and printmaking. Her praxis has focused on working in collaboration with communities that have suffered state terror and violence, and with victims of human rights violations.
Peace Educator/Scholar Award: Douglas Fry, chairs the Anthropology Department at the University of Alabama-Birmingham and also holds an affiliation at Åbo Akademi University in Finland. He is a prominent scholar, noted lecturer, and passionate teacher on issues of war, peace, and human nature/societies, who has worked tirelessly and profoundly on such matters for many years.
Next Generation Peacemaker Award: JMU’s CARE (Campus Assault ResponsE), is a student-run organization that addresses the issue of sexual assault and prevention on campus. The CARE helpline is designed to assist students who have been directly or indirectly affected by sexual assault and who are in need of crisis intervention or information.CARE volunteers also serve as an active support for survivors by guiding them through the process of pressing charges and accompanying them to court.
The Howard Zinn Lifetime Achievement Award: Howard Zehr (Distinguished Professor, Center for Justice & Peacebuilding, Eastern Mennonite University), is widely known for his pioneering work in restorative justice. Zehr began as a practitioner and theorist in restorative justice in the late 1970s at the foundational stage of the field, and has led hundreds of events in more than 25 countries and 35 states. A prolific writer and editor, speaker, educator, and photojournalist, Zehr actively mentors other leaders in the field; more than a thousand people have taken Zehr-taught courses and intensive workshops in restorative justice. He is the author of many books, including the popular Little Book of Restorative Justice.
2016
Social Courage Award: Virgil Seymour, Arrow Lakes Facilitator, was a deeply committed to establishing and strengthening relationships between the Sinixt people and organizations and institutions in Canada. He was deeply committed to ensuring that Sinixt people, who largely now reside in the US and have been declared extinct by the Canadian government, were included in matters pertaining to the Upper Columbia river, including traditional ways of life, history and the land. During his time as the Arrow Lakes Facilitator, Virgil’s kindness and genuine interest in building relationships as the Arrow Lakes facilitator brought together countless people, and created many new relationships. He helped create space for dialogue and understanding where it did not exist before. He shared so much and empowered others to walk in a good way.
Peace Educator/Scholar Award: JJ Verigin is the Executive Director of the Union of Spiritual Communities of Christ (Doukhobors). As the leader of the Doukhbobors, a pacifist Christian sect, JJ has spent his adult life as a community leader, educator and activist. His work has included leadership roles with the Kootenay Regional United Nations Association, Selkirk College, the Mir Centre for Peace and far beyond the region. In the 1980’s JJ worked as a disarmament advocate in New York City – working closely with others to lobby United Nations departments on issues of peace and social justice.
Next Generation Peacemaker Award: Htoo Paw came to Canada in 2012 as a refugee, having spent her youth in a refugee camp for Karen refugees along the Thai-Burmese border. Htoo Paw had become involved in in women’s rights issues as a youth and later became involved in the political struggle for Karen rights I Burma’s ongoing civil war. After coming to Canada, she studied Peace Studies at Selkirk College, later continuing at Canadian Mennonite University, and currently pursuing the Master of Arts in Human Security and Peacebuilding at Royal Roads University. Since 2012, Htoo Paw has been participating in the peace negotiation process by providing technical support to Karen leaders. During her summers she returned to the refugee camps and reconnected with the political wing of the Karen movement, and worked with leaders to explore the incorporation of transformative justice principles in the future negotiations between the parties of the Burmese civil war.
The Howard Zinn Lifetime Achievement Award: Sandra Moran began working as a grass roots community activists as a young woman during Guatemala’s notorious civil war. Her activism led to death threats which necessitated her to flee to Mexico and Canada, where she continued her work in exile. Sandra returned to Guatemala shortly before the civil war ended and continued her work for rights for indigenous and women’s rights. In Guatemala’s last election, Sandra was elected to the Guatemalan Congress as its first openly gay and openly feminist member.