Sessions
PANEL: INNOVATIVE APPLICATIONS OF CONFLICT RESOLUTION
10:45 a.m. to 12:15 p.m.
Shawn MacDonald is Senior Advisor at Verité, responsible for a variety of research, training, multi-stakeholder dialogue, and advocacy programs focused on issues like forced labor, freedom of association, compliance program design, trafficking, and standards-setting. He regularly leads workshops, trainings, and multi-stakeholder public meetings on labor and other CSR issues and consults for business leaders on CSR strategy and program design.
Shawn has broad international and domestic experience in social entrepreneurship, corporate social responsibility, multi-sectoral partnerships, conflict analysis and resolution, labor and environmental standards, public health, and civil society promotion. Before joining Verité, Shawn was Director of Accreditation at the Fair Labor Association; Vice President of Ashoka: Innovators for the Public; co-founder of the Development and Employment Policy Project; and worked for a variety of international NGOs in Asia, Africa, and Eastern Europe. He holds a Ph.D. from George Mason University’s Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, an A.B. in History from Harvard University, and was certified as a mediator by the Supreme Court of Virginia.
Todd Walters is the Founder and Lead Expedition Guide of International Peace Park Expeditions. Todd defined the term “Experiential Peacebuilding” for the Oxford International Encyclopedia of Peace, and develops programs that put the research and theory into practice. He holds a Master’s in International Peace and Conflict Resolution from the School of International Service at American University, where he focused his research on International Peace Parks and Environmental Peacebuilding. He is a National Outdoor Leadership School certified adventure guide with wilderness first responder medical training, and has led expeditions in dozens of locations around the globe.
Todd was the Balkans Peace Park summer program director in 2008, managing 22 international volunteers, three Albanian teachers and three Albanian translators to bring a summer school that taught English and environmental education to over 80 students from the greater Peace Park region. In addition to the school, Todd also managed a grant from the German Embassy in Kosovo that helped demolish and rebuild 2 local wooden bridges, install 4 trash/recycling bins, help with the construction of the Rugova Valley Waterfall Trail in Kosovo, and GPS many of the trails and mountain passes within all 3 countries of the Balkans Peace Park region.
Barbara Wien has worked in U.S. inner cities and foreign war zones to stop human rights abuses, violence and war since she was 21 years old. She has been awarded four times for her courage and visionary leadership by foundations, civic organizations and academic societies. She is named in Amy Goodman’s book Exceptions to the Rulers, and in The Progressive magazine for speaking truth to power.
Barbara served as Director of Peace Brigades International for five years, a highly-respected human rights organization with offices in 15 countries which protects civilians in war zones through a cutting-edge strategy called “nonviolent protective accompaniment.” She also worked with the playwright Eve Ensler to award over $7 million a year in royalties from her play, “The Vagina Monologues,” to end honor killings, bride burnings, female genital mutilation (FGM), rape, incest and war. Barbara served as Director of the Real Security Education Program at the Institute for Policy Studies, where she led delegations to El Salvador to stop the killing of priests, school teachers and trade union activists by the death squads in the 1980s.
Barbara has catalyzed over 280 university degree programs in the study of peace and human rights in Africa, the Middle East, Europe, the United States., Australia, NZ, and Canada. She teaches peace education classes on alternatives to war and violence at American University, Georgetown, Columbia, Catholic, and the University of Maryland and is the author of 12 articles and two books. Foreign Ministries and the U.S. State Department have sought her as an expert on gender equity and peace-building.
Barbara holds a B.A. in Public Communications and International Relations from American University and a teaching certificate in Peace Education from Teachers College, Columbia University. Barbara serves on the board of National Peace Action, Interfaith Peace-builders, PeaceVoice, The Hague Appeal for Peace, and the Baker Peace Institute of Juniata College.
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TWO-SPEAKER SESSIONS
1:00 to 2:30 p.m.
Please choose one of the following:
(1) Conflict Resolution and the Environment
James R. Lee is the associate director of American University’s Center for Teaching Excellence and a professor in the School of International Service. He directs program in statistics, new media, and online learning.
He is the creator of AU’s Trade Environment Database project, an inventory of nearly 700 trade and environment case studies. He also created the Inventory of Conflict and Environment and its current focus on climate change and conflict with about 200 case studies. Lee has written numerous books, articles, and reports on trade, environment, conflict, geographic indications, culture, industry and other issues, and has worked in the U.S. government at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative and the Environmental Protection Agency.
He teaches a variety of technically oriented classes with a social focus. Lee is the author of two computer software simulations used in teaching international relations. In addition to “Climate Change and Armed Conflict: Hot and Cold Wars” he also wrote “Exploring the Gaps: The Vital Links between Trade Environment and Culture”.
William E. Hall is an adjunct professor in the Conflict Resolution Program at Georgetown University. Dr. Hall’s current course offering, “The Environment and Conflict Resolution,” explores the relationship between the environment, social conflict, and conflict resolution on multiple levels of analysis from both theoretical and practice perspectives. His research interests include process dynamics in environmental negotiation and the environmental and economic results of environmental conflict resolution.
Dr. Hall serves as a staff facilitator and mediator for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Conflict Prevention and Resolution Center. In that capacity he coaches clients, conducts case intake, presents training, and manages case tracking and evaluation systems. Prior to joining the CPRC, Dr. Hall spent eight years developing national water pollution policy at U.S. EPA and worked as a water/sanitation volunteer in the U.S. Peace Corps (Congo-Zaïre). He completed his Ph.D. in Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University.
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(2) Conflict Resolution and the Military
Lorelei Kelly is a national security specialist who focuses on helping citizens and elected leaders re-frame security in light of the challenges revealed by 9/11. She currently directs the national security program at the American Progressive Caucus Policy Foundation, an organizational hub between the new progressive movement and its elected leadership in the U.S. Congress. Her goal there is to help progressives set the course for a new era in national security where the safety of people is considered as important as the sanctity of borders. She believes the first step for the Left is to become more active in civil-military issues. Her latest publication is A Woman’s Guide to Talking about War and Peace, which includes two community dialogue models for local leaders and veterans. The dialogue topic is “What is the role of the military in American democracy?”
Recently Kelly worked with the White House Project whose mission is to elect more women to public office. She also was active with the underground democracy movements of eastern Europe throughout 1989. Kelly has taught at Stanford University’s Center on Conflict and Negotiation and been a senior associate at the Henry L. Stimson Center, a Washington, D.C. think tank. She also spent more than eight years doing bipartisan work on national security in Congress. She has a BA from Grinnell College, an MA from Stanford, and has been trained as a professional mediator in both domestic and international settings. She has also attended continuing education programs at the Air Command and Staff College of the U.S. Air Force, the National Defense University, and the Army War College. She blogs at www.huffingtonpost.com.
Lieutenant Colonel (ret.) James K. Morningstar is currently the Deputy Professor of Military Science at Georgetown University. He served more than twenty years in the United States Army with tours of duty as a tank platoon leader in Germany, a tank company commander in the first Gulf War, and a task force Operations officer in Brcko, Bosnia, during the final arbitration of that city. In that last role he was charged with planning and executing Peace Keeping Operations that involved a number of NGOs in close coordination with the UNHCR. His headquarters assignments have included a tour as the ground plans officer for the United States Second Fleet and duty as Chief of Mobilization for the Army from July 2001 to February 2004. LTC Morningstar graduated from West Point in 1983 and later picked up B.A. in History at Kansas State University and a M.A. in International Security from Georgetown University.
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KEYNOTE SPEAKER: WILLIAM ZARTMAN
2:45 to 4:00 p.m.
I. William Zartman is Professor Emeritus of the Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University. For nearly 20 years, he served as the Jacob Blaustein Distinguished Professor of International Organizations and Conflict Resolution SAIS. He was previously all-university head of the Politics Department at New York University. He has been a distinguished fellow of the United States Institute of Peace, Olin Professor at the U.S. Naval Academy, and Elie Halevy Professor at the Institute for Political Studies in Paris, and he received a lifetime achievement award from the International Association for Conflict Management. He has written several books on negotiation, including The Practical Negotiator, Ripe for Resolution, and Cowardly Lions: Missed Opportunities to Prevent Deadly Conflict and State Collapse, and edited other works on the subject, including Power and Negotiation, Elusive Peace, and Peacemaking in International Conflict. He is president of the Tangier American Legation Museum Society and past president of the Middle East Studies Association. He received a doctorate from Yale and an honorary doctorate from Louvain.
Peter Wallensteen, a leading international peace researcher, will be joining Professor Zartman as a commentator. He is the founder of the Peace and Conflict Resolution Program at the University of Uppsala in Sweden and the Richard G. Starmann Senior Research Professor of Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame.
He is the author of the widely used Understanding Conflict Resolution: Peace, War, and the Global System, which was published in 2002 and in Arabic in 2006. The second edition was published in 2007. His interest in targeted sanctions resulted in an edited volume, International Sanctions: Between Wars and Words, in 2005 (with Carina Staibano and with contributions by Kroc Institute sanctions researchers). Making Targeted Sanctions Effectivewas the outcome of a large international process for improving sanctions and was presented to the UN Security Council in February 2003. The same year an edited book on Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Alva Myrdal, Alva Myrdal in International Affairs, was published. His other research interests include the durability of peace agreements and the impact of preventive measures on the dynamics of disputes and conflicts.
