Education
In this episode, Dr. Gloria Rhodes, professor of peacebuilding and conflict studies here at the Center for Justiceand Peacebuilding (CJP) at Eastern Mennonite University (EMU), talks about the field of conflict resolution and transformation. Rhodes begins the episode by looking back on her own introduction to conflict-related work, as a fresh EMU alumna teaching in Russia. She tells of how one day, an argument between students came to blows during Bible class. “They didn’t have a sense of interpersonal peacemaking, and I had grown up with that as a Mennonite … they really trusted authority to always be the problem-solvers, the decision-makers,” Rhodes explains. She felt driven to know more – so she returned to the United States to earn her masters and doctorate degrees in conflict analysis and resolution from George Mason University. Rhodes says that she, and CJP at large, have learned about self-assessment and acknowledging privilege. “As a white North American female with a PhD and middle income,” Rhodes said, “probably I’m not the right person to enter many situations as the expert, or as the person who might help to bring about change. So I think we all need to be able to ask those questions of ourselves. And I’d say that’s a change that has happened in our curriculum.”Rhodes sees this as part of a larger movement at CJP to examine not only the technical processes of peacebuilding work, but the bigger picture of how practitioners and educators live out their values. She hopes this examination will continue in the years to come. As a place ofhigher education, “we have legacies and privileges that go with that, that I think we are in the process of asking hard questions about that, but I think we still have learning to do,” Rhodes says.