Carter School’s Spring Peace Week examines “Conflict Resolution in a Changing and Uncertain World”

Since fall 2020, the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution at George Mason University has been hosting Peace Week, a semi-annual event that features a series of roundtables, webinars, and workshops. For Spring Peace Week beginning Monday, April 14, the theme is “Conflict Resolution in a Changing and Uncertain World. Events include lectures, panel discussions, including an event hosted by world-renowned cellist and conductor Diego Carneiro, and the return of the popular fireside chats on the Fairfax Campus. 

“In the unprecedented times in which we live, it is more important than ever to find sustainable, nonviolent means of resolving our differences, whether they are between individuals, groups, or nations,” said Carter School dean Alpaslan Özerdem. “Since Peace Week started in the fall of 2020, it has grown to become a tradition at the Carter School, where hundreds of faculty members, guests, students, and attendees from around the world gather to showcase their expertise, learn, and share ideas and stories on a wide range of current and engaging topics.” 

A few highlights include: 

• Monday, April 14, 2-3 p.m., Somalia Governance Capacity Gains: Impacts on Peace and Stability in the Horn of Africa. This session at Van Metre Hall at Mason Square is presented by the Mary Hoch Center for Reconciliation and features Somali Ambassador Dahir Hassan. Explore the interplay between improved governance and regional dynamics, addressing both opportunities and challenges.  

• Tuesday, April 15, 2:30-5 p.m., Science Diplomacy and Peacebuilding: A Negotiation Skills Workshop. This in-person workshop at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg Center in Washington, D.C., will focus on the connections between the environment, science, and peacebuilding and include a presentation by Professor Silvia Danielak of the Carter School. 

• Tuesday, April 15, 4:30-5:50 p.m., Book Talk: Chimpanzees, War, and History: Are Men Born to Kill? This virtual session cosponsored by the  Genocide Prevention Program at the Carter School, and the Department of Sociology and Anthropology features author Brian Ferguson, who in his book Chimpanzees, War, and History deconstructs efforts to illuminate human warfare via chimpanzee analogy, and provides an alternative anthropological theory grounded in Pan-human contrasts that is applicable to different types of warfare. 

• Wednesday, April 16, 10:30-noon, Countering Violent Extremism. This virtual session, led by Carter School professor Daniel Rothbart and two master’s degree students, examines how the social psychology of self-righteousness, perceived threats, and outgroup acrimony underpins the violence of most extremist groups.  

• Thursday, April 17, noon-1:20 p.m. The World Is My Country film, World Passports & Self-Sovereign IDs. This PBS film screening introduces the audience to Garry Davis, a song and dance man from the Golden Age of Broadway and his amazing adventures with Albert Einstein, Eleanor Roosevelt, John Paul Sartre, and Simone de Beauvoir. 

• Thursday, April 17, 1:30-3 p.m. Paths to Peace—A Musical Journey with Diego Carneiro at the Center for the Arts on the Fairfax Campus will be a captivating session with world-renowned cellist, conductor, Rotary Peace Fellow, and founder of Orchestrating Peace, Diego Carneiro, as he takes us on a transformative journey through the universal language of music. 

All Peace Week events are free and open to the public, although registration is required. For more information and a full list of events, go to the site.