The Center for Social Concerns presents the 2024 Annual Rev. Bernie Clark, C.S.C., Lecture: An evening with Bryan Stevenson, founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative and author of Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption. Welcome from University President Rev. Robert Dowd, C.S.C. Part of Notre Dame Forum 2024-25 Free, no ticket required. Doors open at 5:00 p.m. Interested in taking a free shuttle from the Notre Dame campus? Shuttle Interest Form Co-sponsors: Department of American Studies, Klau Institute for Civil and Human Rights, Initiative on Race and Resilience, The Law School, Office of the President --- Bryan Stevenson is the founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), a human rights organization in Montgomery, Alabama. He is the author of the bestselling book Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption, which has been adapted into a feature film. Under his leadership, EJI has won major legal challenges eliminating excessive and unfair sentencing, exonerating innocent death row prisoners, confronting abuse of the incarcerated and the mentally ill, and aiding children prosecuted as adults. Stevenson has argued and won multiple cases at the United States Supreme Court, including a 2019 ruling protecting condemned prisoners who suffer from dementia and a landmark 2012 ruling that banned mandatory life-imprisonment-without-parole sentences for all children 17 or younger. Stevenson and his staff have won reversals, relief, or release from prison for over 140 wrongly condemned prisoners on death row and won relief for hundreds of others wrongly convicted or unfairly sentenced. Stevenson has initiated major new anti-poverty and anti-discrimination efforts that challenge inequality in America. He led the creation of EJI’s highly acclaimed Legacy Sites, including the Legacy Museum, the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, and Freedom Monument Sculpture Park. These new national landmark institutions chronicle the legacy of slavery, lynching, and racial segregation, and the connection to mass incarceration and contemporary issues of racial bias.

Peter Wallensteen, the Kroc Institute’s Richard G. Starmann Sr. Research professor emeritus, will discuss his new book, Sanctions for Nuclear Disarmament and Non-Proliferation: Moving Forward (Routledge, 2024). Co-edited with Uppsala University’s Armend Bekaj and appearing in Routledge’s Global Security Studies series, the volume examines the interplay between sanctions and nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation. Specifically, it studies the conceptual frameworks behind the application of sanctions and the decision by states to pursue nuclear disarmament in their theoretical and practical expressions. Wallensteen’s contribution does much to update and stimulate the academic and policy debates on these issues by recasting them in light of contemporary global events, and considering case studies from the EU, Latin America and the Caribbean, India, China, Pakistan, Iran, and Africa. This book launch will take the form of a panel discussion, moderated by George Lopez, Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, C.S.C., professor emeritus of peace studies, who authored one of the book’s chapters, “Sanctions as tools to achieve nuclear reduction policy: is there a better way forward?” Responses to the book will come from Kelsey Davenport, director for nonproliferation policy at the Arms Control Association, and Monica Montgomery (BA '19), policy analyst at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, and members of Kroc’s Advisory Board who have worked extensively on nuclear disarmament. All are encouraged to attend the launch of this significant volume, which will be of particular interest to students of nuclear non-proliferation, economic sanctions, security studies, and international relations. Lunch will be provided after the event in the Hesburgh Center Great Hall. Originally published at kroc.nd.edu.

Derek J. Mitchell is a non-resident senior adviser to the Office of the President and the Asia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). One of the nation’s foremost experts on global democracy and Asian and Pacific political and security affairs, Ambassador Mitchell, boasts a more than three-decade career in the U.S. government and the private and nonprofit sectors.   From 2001 to 2009, Ambassador Mitchell served as senior fellow with the International Security Program and director for Asia projects and founded CSIS’s renowned Southeast Asia Program. He served as the U.S. ambassador to Burma (Myanmar) from 2012 to 2016.  The U.S.-China Relations Lecture Series is facilitated by Liu Institute faculty fellows Joshua Eisenman professor of politics, and Kyle Jaros, associate professor of global affairs, in the Keough School of Global Affairs. In support of the Liu Institute’s growing commitment to sustainability, we will no longer be offering drinks at our public lectures and panels. We encourage audience members to bring their own water bottles or to drink from nearby water fountains. Thank you for your understanding. Originally published at asia.nd.edu.

Martina Evans is the author of 13 books of poetry and prose. American Mules (Carcanet 2021) won the Pigott Poetry Prize in 2022. Her latest narrative poem, The Coming Thing, was published by Carcanet in September 2023 and is shortlisted for the Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry. She is an Irish Times poetry critic and fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. This event is co-sponsored by the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies, the Creative Writing Program, and the Center for Social Concerns. Originally published at irishstudies.nd.edu.

As part of the Keough-Naughton Institute's fall 2024 speaker series, Emma DeSouza, founder and co-facilitator of The Civic Initiative, will give a lecture titled, "From Partition to Partnership: The Future of Ireland's Peace Process.” Lecture Abstract The Good Friday Agreement is globally recognized as one of the most successful peace agreements of the last century. Its success was the culmination of decades of civic-led cross-community efforts, tilling the ground for a landslide 'Yes' vote. Emma DeSouza considers how civic society remains the backbone of the peace process today. As a new generation emerges, unburdened by the historically entrenched concepts of identity which came to define prior generations, civic society, and the young people within it, are creating a new path. This lecture explores the changing demographics and dynamics in Northern Ireland, the future of the peace process, and the prospects of a united Ireland. Speaker Biography Emma DeSouza is a journalist, campaigner, and peace builder who changed UK law in a landmark human rights case relating to the Good Friday Agreement. She is the founder and co-facilitator of deliberative democracy platform The Civic Initiative, Director of the Northern Ireland Emerging Leaders Program at the National Committee on American Foreign Policy, and a transatlantic adviser on peace processes and civic innovation. Emma writes for several publications including the Guardian, Irish Times, Irish News, and Byline Times. In 2023, she hosted a limited podcast series on the implementation of the Good Friday Agreement titled 'Lost in Implementation.' This event is co-sponsored by the Klau Institute for Civil and Human Rights. Originally published at irishstudies.nd.edu.

In this event, professor in the School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies, and director of the Global Insecurities Centre, at the University of Bristol, Roddy Brett will present his monograph, Victim-Centred Peacemaking: Colombia’s Santos-FARC-EP Peace Process (Bristol University Press, 2024), which he wrote during his time as Kroc Institute visiting fellow (2022–23). The book addresses the fundamental question of how, in the face of unrelenting barbary and adversity, survivors of political violence and atrocity have sought to assert agency and contest power as they painstakingly forge a path through which to bring an end to political violence, craft the effective means through which to reckon with the past, and reconstitute their political and moral communities. The book is, in part, about how war is fought, what its impact is, particularly on civilians, and the means that armed groups employ in order to achieve their ends. It is also about how those who survive atrocious violence narrate and make sense of war and attempt to construct peace, and, in so doing, transform political subjectivity, shape formal peacemaking processes and accountability mechanisms, and reconfigure relations of power. Based on unique empirical research into Colombia’s Santos-FARC-EP peace process (2012-2016), this book interrogates, specifically, how, if at all, survivors and victims may assert agency and contribute to formal peacemaking and transitional justice initiatives. The research argues that victim inclusion — through the so-called victims’ delegations — meaningfully transformed victim-perpetrator relations and dynamics in Havana, while partially shaping the content of both the Victims’ Agreement and Final Agreement. As such, the delegations created paths for empowerment at the individual and, in part, collective levels. However, victim inclusion also precipitated experiences of victim depoliticization, revictimization, retraumatization and instrumentalization. Drawing on insights from across academic disciplines, the book proposes an instrumentalization/empowerment spectrum to analyze the complex impact of victim-centered approaches to peacemaking/transitional justice, and is valuable for both researchers and practitioners. Brett will be joined by Kroc Institute PhD student, Patrick McQuestion (peace studies and political science) and visiting scholar, Alison Ribeiro de Menezes as respondents. Josefina Echavarría Alvarez, professor of the practice and director of the Peace Accords Matrix (PAM) will provide opening remarks. This event is cosponsored by the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies. Originally published at kroc.nd.edu.