Proposed Doctoral Concentration: Training the Next Generation of Leaders
Emory will advance lasting learning and engagement by supporting the most distinguished teaching, research, and writing on religion, conflict, and peacebuilding.

Emory’s proposed doctoral minor track in religion, conflict, and peacebuilding will be distinctive in educating students to be scholars and practitioners, academic and civic leaders.

Combining practical experience around the world with preeminent scholarship, alumni of the Emory doctoral track will be equipped to make major contributions to society in order to better address a wide range of problems in a rapidly changing world.

The Creation of a Global Network of NGO’s and Religious Leaders and Lay People
Because of their very different purposes in society, universities’ religious entities and non-governmental organizations too often operate independently of each other. The Emory initiative is designed to work across these differences to create networks for coordination and implementation of conflict resolution and peacebuilding strategies.

Through exchanges with NGO’s, faculty, fellows, and students will acquire valuable on- the-ground experience; and leaders and officers in humanitarian organizations will come to Emory to reflect, research, teach, and write about their experiences and develop a central databank on best practices in peacebuilding.

An International Summit on Religion and Peacebuilding
Regular international summits on Religious Conflict and Peacebuilding will be held to collect, benchmark, and publicize the valuable lessons learned through the global network. These summits will emphasize the work of NGO’s in their peacebuilding practices.

These summits will also provide an invaluable opportunity for religious leaders around the world to address in concrete ways the issues that divide them and to develop peaceful solutions.

The first summit will be held October 22-24, 2007, and will involve an address from His Holiness the Dalai Lama, and responses by world religious leaders. For additional information, visit www.dalailama.emory.edu

A Source for Media and Public Education
Education is critical to transforming relations between the world’s religions. To take one example: in a recent poll nearly half of Americans said they had a negative view of Islam, while at the same time, 60% admitted having scarcely any knowledge of it.

Public education will be a key component of the program. In addition to providing speakers and information for print and broadcast media, the Religion, Conflict, and Peacebuilding program will also generate curricula for primary and secondary schools on world religions.

Atlanta and the World: A “Glocal” Scope
Atlanta is an ideal site to develop a “glocal” scope for the new initiatives: global and local in its perspective. Atlanta is recognized as the cradle of the Civil Rights movement, and the base of two of America’s most internationally admired citizens and Nobel Peace Prize Winners, Martin Luther King, Jr., and President Jimmy Carter, leader of the Carter Center at Emory University.

• Under development are a number of projects in the metro area, which may serve as a model for other communities. These proposed projects include:
  
• Truth and Reconciliation Commissions: an examination of their effectiveness in addressing issues at the intersection of religion, race, restorative justice, conflict and human rights in the U.S. South.
  
• Youth and Violence: working with local religious institutions and child advocacy organizations to reduce the scourge of violence in children’s lives.
  
• Public Policy: an examination of concrete effects of public policy decisions on the lives of working people, the poor, immigrants, and other marginalized peoples in metro Atlanta.
  
• Comparative Religion Curriculum: an innovative curriculum designed through grassroots work of the “Interfaith Women’s Roundtable,” with support of the Atlanta Women’s Foundation, to advance interfaith literacy and self-efficacy among women.
  
• Conflict Mediation Curriculum: a curriculum to train religious and community leaders to address conflict and violence, and empower parties to work cooperatively in preventive ways.
  
• Religion and Torture Survivors: this collaboration with the DeKalb County Center for Torture and Trauma Survivors seeks to identify the role religion can play in meeting the treatment and social needs of torture survivors and to provide needed resources for those who assist those individuals.