Join John Marks, the founder and long-time president of Search for Common Ground, as he speaks about how he and his wife, Susan Collin Marks, used the methodology of social entrepreneurship to create the world’s largest peacebuilding organization — with a staff of 600 and offices in 35 countries — and earned a nomination for a Nobel Peace Prize in 2018. Included in the presentation is a short video, demonstrating how a flexible, opportunistic approach led to breakthroughs in resolving conflict on a societal level and producing media for social change in such places as the Soviet Union, Iran, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Originally published at kroc.nd.edu.

As part of the Keough-Naughton Institute's fall 2024 speaker series, Professor Peter Shirlow will deliver a lecture titled “The Failings of Irish Republicans and the National Question in Ireland.” Lecture Abstract This lecture will explore how, despite post-Brexit Referendum predictions of a united Ireland by as early as 2021, there has been, at best, limited growth in recorded support for ending partition between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Growth of Northern Ireland’s Catholic population has been less dramatic than predicted and the region now has the fastest growing economy in the UK. Peter Shirlow asserts that in this context, pro-united Ireland campaigns and republican activism, especially via civic fora and social media, have failed to significantly close the gap between Irish unity and pro-union proponents. In this lecture, Shirlow will consider how Irish Republican arguments for unity contain internal contractions: underscoring the economic successes of the South while also indicating its structural deficiencies, or pointing to socio-economic deficiencies of Northern Ireland even while Republicans are co-authors of its new found economic growth. Ultimately, Shirlow argues, the shortcomings of Irish republicanism lie in its inability to read and understand the new sociology of Northern Ireland– particularly temporal and social shifts that potentially render the inevitability thesis of Irish unification inconsistent, if not ineffective, in the short to medium term. Speaker Biography Professor Peter Shirlow (FaCSS) is the director at the University of Liverpool’s Institute of Irish Studies. He was formerly the deputy director of the Institute for Conflict Transformation and Social Justice, QUB. He is the independent chair of the Executive Office's Employers' Guidance on Recruiting People with Conflict-Related Convictions Working Group and a board member of the mental health charity Threshold. He is a visiting research professor at the Senator George J. Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice. He sits on the editorial boards of Irish Political Studies and International Planning Studies. Professor Shirlow has undertaken conflict transformation work in Northern Ireland and has used that knowledge in exchanges with governments, former combatants and NGOs in the former Yugoslavia, Moldova, Bahrain and Iraq. He has also presented talks to members of the US Senate and House of Representatives and is a regular media contributor. Originally published at irishstudies.nd.edu.

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.

Join the Klau Institute and NDVotes for this installment of "Pizza, Pop, and Politics" as Chloe Gibbs, assistant professor of economics, discusses the imapct of the economy on the upcoming US election.  Originally published at klau.nd.edu.

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.