Congratulations to Niwano peace prize recipient John Paul Lederach!
Internationally renowned peacebuilder John Paul Lederach will be awarded the 36th Niwano Peace Foundation Peace Prize during a May 8, 2019, ceremony in Tokyo.
John Paul has committed his life and work to nonviolent approaches to conflict for more than 40 years.
He is a co-founder and the first director of the EMU’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding, which celebrates its 25th anniversary in 2020. He continues to offer guidance and support as a distinguished scholar and a member of the Board of Reference.
Now a senior fellow at Humanity United, John Paul is also professor emeritus of international peacebuilding at the University of Notre Dame’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, where he taught for 15 years.
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EMU has benefited greatly from the visionary peace-building leadership of John Paul Lederach, and we extend our congratulations to him on the occasion of this prestigious award.
Give to the John Paul and Wendy Lederach Endowed Scholarship (specify "Lederach" in the comment box), which prioritizes support for international and U.S. minority students, particularly Native Americans, to study at CJP.
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Million congratulations! You deserve the award. Your work is legendary and your mark in the world is permanent. Peace is paramount in the world and you have an indelible mark in that field. As a person who was new to the discourse of peace building, your scholarly work made it so interesting, informative and enriched my knowledge. A special gift to our world you are. All the very best. Keep shinning and illuminating the world too. Congratulations! Maryam Abdikadir GC '15
Congratulations! - Reynaldo Saligan, a learner from your writiings
The role that legend John Paul Lederach has played in Nepalese peace process in track 2 diplomacy is really remarkable. This has laid foundation to stabilize Nepal's peace process. Once again congratulation to John Paul Lederach and expect that your work will continue to be helpful to make world more peaceful. - Sudeep Gautam, Nepal
I have followed your life journey with keen interest ever since your graduation from Bethel College (KS) in 1980. In so many ways your life work and teaching have benefited humanity. Congratulations on the most recent recognition of your many contributions to peacemaking and justice. - Harold Schultz, President Emeritus, Bethel College
On behalf of the Mindanao Peacebuilding Institute (MPI), we send you, John Paul, our warmest congratulations on this auspicious occasion. You were the catalyst for the establishment of MPI and you have continued to inspire us with your commitment to peacebuilding and your dedication to train peacebulders from around the world. Your compassion, integrity, creativity, and humor have also been an inspiration to us and your friendship and moral support over all these years have sustained us. We are deeply grateful and we send you our very best wishes! - Christine Vertucci
Congratulations, John Paul! You have been a leader and an inspiration for many. Thanks for all you have given to our field and to the world. - Jayne Docherty, CJP professor and academic programs director
Congratulations, John Paul, on this well-deserved recognition! Although I arrived at CJP three years after you left in 2001, your ongoing influence was evident in multiple ways. Perhaps the most significant was the commitment to an elicitive and engaged pedagogy — to seeing the participants in the classroom as the richest resource available to us as instructors. I often heard you quoted, including this famous one: "Our students are colleagues masquerading as students." That fundamental respect for the participants in the education process was a wonderful gift to CJP — mainly because you lived it as well as taught it. - David Brubaker, CJP professor
Resonant wisdom
Emanating vibration
Being true to voice. - Diana Degner (Tovar-Rojas) MA '17
Congratulations, John Paul. You deserve this award for your tireless work as an extraordinary insightful leader, providing wisdom and inspiration to so many people in tremendous traumatic contexts. I feel blessed for learning from your lessons and your way of “walking the talk”. - Gachi Tapia, Buenos Aires
Your work and teachings have benefited so many. I still draw on many things I learned from you in class. You must have heard by now of Coming to the Table, which was birthed at EMU. I am very much involved in the group, and we use your teachings to help us navigate the path toward healing / transforming racial harms. - Phoebe Kilby GC '04
¡Muchas felicidades, Juan Pablo, desde el Instituto de Estudios e Investigación Intercultural en San Cristóbal de las Casas, México! Este honor para usted nos dignifica a todos y todas. ¡Gracias por su dedicación a los caminos de shalom! - Elena Huegel MA '07
Congratulations JP for this great news of you winning the Niwano Peace Foundation Prize! Let me also take this opportunity to thank you for showing me the way to this noble journey of peacebuilding. - Tecla Wanjala MA '03
Very well done, my best wishes and congratulations. We are preparing to receive the Middle East Mennonite Supported team of humanitarian staff at Corrymeela this Sunday for a week as part of a growing link the extended Lederach family did much to inspire. Every good wish from Corrymeela. - Derick Wilson
Congratulations, John Paul! You have been an outstanding leader in our field for many years, and so many of us have benefited from your wisdom. This award is well deserved. - Walter Wright
Dear John Paul: Congratulations on this well deserved recognition of your contribution over years to peacebuilding! I am so honoured to have studied with you at EMU and I regularly reflect on how much I have learned from you. I am delighted that you have been awarded this prize and hope to congratulate you in person at some stage in the future! - Emily Stanton MA '00
Dear John Paul, Congratulations. I am proud of you. With best wishes, - Moussa David Ntambara MA '02
A well-deserved award. Keep it up. - Abdinasir Nur MA '11
A turn to his foe
fleet feet over broken ice
An earnest rescue
For your life-long seeking and building peace, harmony, and fulfillment, congratulations
John Paul on this much deserved award! - Tim Ruebke MA '99
Wow! What a great news for the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding family! Congratulations to you, John Paul Lederach, for this noble award. May God shower you with his blessings. From Liberia - Grace Towah Jarsor GC '13
Congratulations, John Paul, for the Niwano Peace Prize. Your enduring work and commitment in building peace woldwide is truly inspiring many people and a living sign of hope for peace in the world. - Paulus Rahmat MA '09
Dear John Paul Lederach, My warm, warm greetings and congratulations for all your
inspirational work for peace through interfaith dialogue, done so with conviction,
humility, in love and for love for all peoples. Thank you and Abundant Blessings. - Jennifer Jag Jivan MA '06, Pakistan
Professor John Paul Lederach, congratulations! John Paul Lederach deserves the Niwano Foundation Peace Prize. What he teaches is
what he lives. He is strong philanthropist. If our planet could have about 100 persons
like John Paul Lederach, our world would be a place of real paradise. John Paul highly influenced me with his passion, commitment to his values, genuine
fairness, integrity, diversity accommodation and living simple lives when I was student
at EMU. I wish him long live for may people. - Simon Badi MA '02, Ethiopia
I am so proud of and grateful for my connection to CJP and its amazing international community of fellow peacebuilders! Congratulations, John Paul, and thank you for your role in establishing this organization. - Adrian Hackney MA '10, former adjunct faculty
Congratulations, John Paul! An honour well earned. - Ana Latu Dickson
Congratulations for the award. You deserve this honour for exemplary selfless service not only at EMU but the world over. A peaceful world requires the dedication and commitment you have for years put in your work, written word and scholarship. Be blessed Paul, you are amazing. - Judith Mandillah GC '17
Congratulations, JPL. Well deserved honor. Your wisdom on peace matters is unmatched. - William Kiptoo
Receiving the Niwano Peace Foundation Peace Prize is a much deserved honor for John Paul. He has been the inspiration for many of us to see others, irregardless of race or religion or gender or political persuasion or social status, as part of our beloved human family. He has demonstrated by his life and work that peacebuilding must be a communal process that invites people, on all sides of a conflict, to open their hearts to the possibility of engagement with and ultimately love of the other. - Pat Hostetter Martin
Congratulations from Montreal. Just included some of your theory in a presentation at McGill university - around for sustainable collaboration. You are an inspiration to my work. - Andréa Morrison
Congratulations, John Paul. You are my mentor, still. Living in the Shenandoah Valley again where my ancestors have lived since 1610, (member of VA Assembly,1619/first Quakers in Virginia/slaveholders for a generation/non-violent resistors through the wars). Now working on ERA ratification, civil conversations projects here. You remain my touchstone as you have been from day one when I first met with you at EMU. All this to tell you, your work lives through the lives of so many of us, and perhaps in unexpected ways. - Lee Scharf, Woodstock, Virginia
Felicitaciones Juan Pablo, te mereces eso y mucho más Maestro por tus aportes a la transformación de conflictos y la construcción de la paz! - Víctor León Gemmell, aprendiz en OEA-PROPAZ hace 23 años
John Paul, you and Wendy have been such amazing friends and mentors to me and our family through the years. Receiving this prestigious award is so very well deserved. As you know, I am so proud to call you and Wendy my dear friends. We will have a toast this summer on your patio to celebrate you and this award! With love and admiration,- Rhoda Blough, friend of CJP
EMU has benefited greatly from the visionary peace-building leadership of John Paul Lederach, and we extend our congratulations to him on the occasion of this prestigious award. - Susan Schultz Huxman, president, EMU
The awarding of the Niwano Peace Prize to John Paul helps us all appreciate more fully the magnitude of the sea change that he has helped create here at EMU and in the global peacebuilding field. His low-key, inclusive approach has partially obscured how revolutionary his vision and practice have been. A people-centered practitioner, down-to-earth philosopher, artist, and engaging teacher, he has always believed that durable peacebuilding happens when we manage to bring the best of our humanity to bear on our most inhumane behavior and structures.- Vernon Jantzi, professor emeritus, Center for Justice and Peacebuilding
Congratulations on receiving the prestigious Niwano Peace Prize, John Paul! Your impact on the formation and development of CJP has been profound. Even though you are no longer teaching here, our students regularly cite your work and writing. And those CJP students who have participated in your weekend Colorado retreats have reported transformative experiences, being especially touched by your deepening emphasis on the spirituality of peacebuilders. Your CJP family is honored with you in this well-deserved award! - J. Daryl Byler, executive director, Center for Justice and Peacebuilding
