“Opportunity”: When asked to describe this moment for the U.S. peacebuilding field, this was the most common word that hundreds of participants at the “American Peacebuilding as a Crossroads” conference chose. It would have been understandable if participants had...
Are we facing the dusk or dawn in the field of peacebuilding? Yes! Peacebuilding approaches that evolved from the end of the Soviet Union to the COVID pandemic are under duress, if not in collapse. Many analysts try to fit the emergent shape-shifting of U.S. domestic...
The U.S. government has launched a strategy to restore “American preeminence” in the Western Hemisphere through largely military means, “identifying drug and human trafficking” as a primary threat to U.S. security. Since September 2025, the U.S. military has conducted...
In July 1989, the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science published a special issue entitled “Peace Studies: Past and Future.” These essays were to explain the significant growth of American collegiate programs examining problems of war, peace,...
American peacebuilding stands at a crossroads. To chart the way forward, we must recall and reclaim the core ideas, adaptations, and innovations that shaped earlier federal investments in the study and promotion of peace—particularly those surrounding the creation and...
As the United States navigates a new war in the Middle East and other global conflicts persist, the U.S. Congress should assert its vast power to promote peace. Members on both sides of the aisle have played pivotal roles in shaping past U.S. initiatives aimed at...
Building peace through theatre is not easy, and its effects are neither immediately nor readily evident.
The use, development and ambivalences of photography are widely debated, especially considering the digital revolution.
ᏅᏩᏙᎯᏯᏓ. Nvwadohiyada. What is peace, and what does it have to do with poetry?
“Considering your own location in colonial systems, as well as in the web of relationships, what next step can you and your organization take to nurture decolonial possibilities?”
These are difficult times for peace supporters. Faced with Russia’s brutal aggression in Ukraine and rising militarization in the United States and around the world, we are troubled and uncertain about what to do. Millions of us marched against the Iraq war 20 years...
When the Taliban took over Kabul in August 2021, the Taliban asserted that the war was over and that they now had control of the entire country. But just a year into Taliban control, an armed opposition front is taking shape, albeit only in a few provinces. Some...
I grew up in the midst of a civil war in Sri Lanka. I have lived through the curse of violence and seen the prejudice and hate passed on by one generation to another. Sri Lanka has experienced many cycles of violence over the years. At each cycle, it was the youth...
Youth are key to creating sustainable peace, a just peace that is locally self-renewing, because they have roles, needs, and ideas that shape communities and cultures and they are uniquely-positioned change agents. As liminal actors connected to childhood and...
Recent scholarship has demonstrated that youth are not mere subjects of policy interventions, but vital actors in peacebuilding. I place this finding as the central starting point for peace research with youth in Colombia. For nearly a decade I have engaged in...
Melanie Greenberg is President and CEO of the Alliance for Peacebuilding. In her work on international conflict resolution, she has helped design and facilitate public peace processes in the Middle East, Northern Ireland, and the Caucasus. In September 2015, the...
Scott Appleby is Marilyn Keough Dean of the Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame. As a professor of history at Notre Dame, he specializes in the study of global religion. How might peace research, peacebuilding practices and peace policies...
David Cortright is Director of Policy Studies at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies. He is coeditor of Drones and the Future of Armed Conflict (Chicago University Press, 2015) and author of Ending Obama’s War (Paradigm, 2011). The connections between...
Peter Wallensteen Peter Wallensteen is Richard G. Starmann Sr. Research Professor at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies and Senior Professor in the Department of Peace and Conflict Research at Sweden’s Uppsala University. His most recent research...
Robert Johansen Robert Johansen is Professor Emeritus of Political Science and Peace Studies at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies. He specializes in issues of international ethics and global governance, the United Nations, and peace and world order...