Vision Series: Dr. Elavie Ndura “Educating for Social Justice and Peace: A Calling and A Journey”

Former PJSA Board Member, Dr. Elavie Ndura (George Mason University)

The enduring inter-group conflicts and violence that besiege communities around the world seem to defy the three groundbreaking declarations that the United Nations adopted to focus national and international policies and practices on building cultures of peace. The UN’s charge underlying the three declarations is to develop values, attitudes, behavior and ways of life that are conducive to the promotion of peace. Education, as the hub of human socialization, provides the context and opportunities to lead this charge. Grounded in the belief that every person can contribute to peacebuilding, this discussion calls for the re-framing of educational policies and practices to raise new critical questions and engineer new partnerships across ideological orientations and academic disciplines. The discussion highlights practical strategies for infusing multicultural education principles across the curriculum to guide the transformative journey that underlies efforts to educate for social justice and peace.

Elavie Ndura, Ph.D., is George Mason University’s 2015-2016 Presidential Fellow for Diversity and Inclusion, and a tenured Professor of Education. She is an international education expert and practitioner with over 20 years of experience in developing, implementing and managing intercultural education, peace and nonviolence capacity building programs in the United States and Burundi. She is the founder and coordinator of the Shinnyo Fellowship for Peacebuilding through Service and Education at George Mason University. She has pioneered youth peacemaking leadership development through community engagement in Burundi. Her signature interdisciplinary research, scholarship, and practice that unite multicultural peace education, and conflict prevention and transformation have been featured in her six books, more than 30 book chapters and professional journal articles, and numerous invited presentations and keynotes highlighting the central role of formal and non-formal education in advancing inclusive excellence, social cohesion, and peacemaking leadership.

Learn more about PJSA’s current and former board of directors here: https://www.peacejusticestudies.org/b…

Original source: George Mason University Television (2014)