10. World viewing

The tenth and final installment of the Peacebuilder podcast’s first season features Dr. Jayne S. Docherty, executive director of the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding (CJP) at Eastern Mennonite University (EMU). Docherty speaks on her path to the field, the importance of considering worldviews in a conflict, and how the program has grown and changed since she joined as the first non-Mennonite faculty member, shortly before 9/11.

The concept of worldview is a keystone in Docherty’s stories. It shaped how she interpreted the fiasco at Waco, Texas between the Branch Davidians and the FBI, which she wrote her dissertation on while a doctoral student at the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University. It’s also the reason she chose to teach at EMU – “it’s the only place nobody asked me what I meant by worldview,” she says.

But she prefers “the word ‘world viewing’ better, because it’s an activity that we engage in all day long.”

Docherty went on to publish a book based on her dissertation: Learning Lessons from Waco: When the Parties Bring their Gods to the Negotiation Table. That research taught her a lot about mediation and negotiation in a situation where two groups have a “toxic combination” of shared and different assumptions of the world.

“When the worldview differences are really, really deep, you can’t convince the other party to do anything. All you can do is construct a space in which they can convince themselves,” she explains. “Every worldview is a way of seeing, but it’s also a way of not seeing. So what are you not seeing?” Acknowledging your own and others’ ways of world viewing makes team-based conflict analysis all the more important, Docherty says. That way you can cover for one anothers’ blind spots.

Docherty had to navigate some differences in worldviews when she came to the then-Conflict Transformation Program as an Italian Catholic whose father was a career Air Force officer.

“At CJP, coming in as a cultural outsider, I was literally the first non-Mennonite hired into the faculty for this program,” she says. Even so, she’s found an “authentic care for one another. I think that’s what we have. I think that’s what we strive for here.”

Her hopes for CJP in another 25 years? That the program is recognized, not just internationally, but also in its own figurative and literal backyard as “a really dynamic organizing location for peace, justice, and nonviolence, and doing work in a trauma-informed way.” 

We already have a strong network of graduates doing good work in the field, Docherty says, but it’s somewhat of a “latent network. And our job right now is to try to plug that in.”

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Guest

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Transcript

Jayne Docherty:
I think the “world viewing” piece is, you need to have an understanding that that conflict looks different to everyone. And so, this is the map that you’re seeing, kind of looking at it from outside, but you’re never outside because you always have a bias. Like what do I say…”what am I not seeing?” I think one of the really important things about “world viewing” is every worldview is a way of seeing, but it’s also a way of not seeing. So, “what are you not seeing?” And that’s why you need kind of multi-vocal and why it’s really good to do analysis with a team of people and not just one person.

[Theme music begins and fades into back ground]

patience kamau:
Hello everybody, happy Wednesday to you!
Welcome back to Peacebuilder, a Conflict Transformation Podcast by the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding.
My name is patience kamau and with us this finale episode of the season:

Jayne Docherty:
Jayne Seminare Docherty, executive director of the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding.

patience kamau:
Dr. Jayne Docherty is our executive director here at the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding at Eastern Mennonite university. She has also taught at George Mason University and Columbia college, South Carolina. Professor Docherty earned her Ph.D. at the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University, and she holds an undergraduate degree in religious studies and political science from Brown University. She also studied theology at the university of St. Andrews in Scotland.

[Theme music swells and ends]

patience kamau:
Good morning?

Jayne Docherty:
Good morning patience, how are you?

patience kamau:
Good, good. Thank you for doing this.

Jayne Docherty:
My pleasure, thank you!

patience kamau:
Yes, indeed, I’m happy to do this.
So what was your journey here to CJP/EMU/CTP?

Jayne Docherty:
Interesting! It was CTP when I arrived, right?

patience kamau:
Conflict Transformation Program…

Jayne Docherty:
Yeah, exactly!

patience kamau:
And when did you arrive?

Jayne Docherty:
2001. So that was a big year, right? I got here in August and within weeks we were looking at a changed world. How I got here is interesting –I was at Bethel College in Newton, Kansas, North Newton, Kansas in the early ’80s. Um, my son was actually born there while I was resident director in one of the residence halls. And then I met Lisa Schirch when we were students at George Mason and she kept saying, “we need you to come to EMU,” and um, eventually there was a job opening when John Paul Lederach left.

And so that was an interesting experience to be hired as he was leaving. And there’s plenty of stories about that in terms of, um, you know, people coming to my office and saying, you know, I think trying to figure out “are you the new John Paul?” And so for about six months we danced around that whole, “do you think you are the new John Paul?” “Do other people think you are?” And then we were sitting at a faculty breakfast and I said, “you know, I really don’t think that’s the way we should be. I think we should not be a single star, but a constellation of all of us, each of us being an expert and recognized in some area –the field is really big and I think we need to change the paradigm.” So, um, I felt that was really important.

patience kamau:
Did you feel that people received that?

Jayne Docherty:
I think they did, but I think it’s also really hard to move away from the idea that there’s a leader in, in a system — that’s pretty culturally built, baked in in many ways. And then also making sure that the, the resources are focused in diversifying who’s out front, who’s getting attention and making sure everybody’s getting attention for the great work they’re doing.

patience kamau:
So you came here, Lisa Schirch talked you into…at least encouraged you…

Jayne Docherty:
…well into coming and applying, yes.

patience kamau:
Yes, um, what did you feel…like, what were your interpretations as she was saying to you, “we need you at CJP.” Why do you think she was saying that?

Jayne Docherty:
Well, I think she understood that I am Catholic and I come out of a faith-based orientation from Catholic Social Teaching –and there are many things that I think Mennonites and Catholics who take Catholic Social Teaching really seriously, have in common.

patience kamau:
Mm, such as?

Jayne Docherty:
I think commitments to social justice, um, recognition that uh, faith has to be acted on. I think there are some real differences –I think just because the Catholic Church is a lot older and has a longer, um, academic theology tradition –the teachings are a little more well-defined in the Catholic Church around this. We started in the late 1800s with Rerum novarum, which talks about workers’ rights and um, it’s pretty radical, right?

And then there’s this whole set of teachings that have come out. So we have kind of a guide, um, that we’re embedded in, and I think, um, Mennonites have a slightly different history of being a sect that’s withdrawn from the world and then the whole change into engaging with the world and finding kind of a voice for justice and peace. But I think that the two need to be talking with one another and I think that’s what Lisa felt. I think she also felt that the work that I had done on worldview conflict was really necessary.

patience kamau:
What was that work?

Jayne Docherty:
So I was, I was looking at what happens when you get people to the table and they don’t even live on the same planet. Like the way they see the world is so different or the way they understand the problem is so different that mediation, negotiation, all the stuff we were studying at George Mason, you can’t just do what you were taught because the problem’s much bigger. And I studied the negotiations in Waco, Texas between the Branch Davidians and the FBI, and I’d written a book, my dissertation that became a book studying what happens when people are trying to negotiate a situation in which they don’t share an understanding of the world.

And I felt Mennonites get that. I interviewed in many, at several different universities and when people used to ask me, “well, why did you choose EMU?” Right? Like “it’s so small.” I said, it’s the only place nobody asked me what I meant by “worldview.” Mennonites get that people have different worldviews because they’ve been living in that status their whole time. And I didn’t have to deal with the, “Oh, you mean perspectives?” “No, I don’t mean people just have different perspectives on a shared problem, I mean they are defining it completely differently.”

patience kamau:
So what’s your definition of a “worldview”?

Jayne Docherty:
So, um, I actually like the word “world viewing” better because it’s an activity that we engage in all day long.

patience kamau:
Mm, it’s active!

Jayne Docherty:
It’s very active. It’s our constant making sense of the world and it happens for us individually, but it also happens in our communities. So it’s both a personal and a social process of making meaning of the world. And, um, I think the best way to think about it is, you go around all day long unconsciously answering a set of questions, what’s real and what’s not real, right? Like, so there’s always the opposite question –how do I know about it? What’s real knowledge? What’s valuable or not valuable? Oh, I’m trying to remember the others…you’ve read my book… [laughs]

patience kamau:
[Laughter continues] What’s the title of the book, in case someone want to look it up?

Jayne Docherty:
Sure. It’s, um, “Learning Lessons from Waco: when the arties bring their gods to the negotiation table.”

patience kamau:
What did you find in that –tell us about what, what was Waco? When did it happen?

Jayne Docherty:
So in 1993, the Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms [ATF], um, agency of the federal government raided a religious community called the Branch Davidians outside of Waco, Texas. And they were concerned that the community was collecting guns, and there was also something of a manufactured moral crisis around what might’ve been happening with um, the leader marrying multiple young women, having many babies, and the ATF did a dynamic entry raid –they literally went in with 80 heavily armed agents and the Branch Davidians fought back.

And then there was a 52 day negotiation with the FBI negotiation team and their, their hostage rescue team or their tactical team trying to end this standoff. There are 12,000 pages of transcripts, a little over 12,000 pages of transcripts of everything that was said between these two groups. So it was a really ideal data set to look at “what happens when people are trying to negotiate, when they don’t share an understanding of the world?” Because here’s this religious community that believes the end-time is coming and here’s the, the FBI trying to clean up a mess. Um, and, and looking at what they think of as a hostage situation, which isn’t really a hostage situation. So…

patience kamau:
…and what did you find in your dissertation?

Jayne Docherty:
So I think some of the things that were really interesting that I found is, um, I think the field of conflict resolution was afraid to talk about worldview conflicts, they’d really didn’t want to go there because they, at some gut-level understood, straight up mediation and negotiation the way we’re talking about it might not work. But what I found is a couple of really important things –when there’s a crisis and it gets bad, it’s usually because the parties have a combination, I call it kind of “a toxic combination of shared and different assumptions about the world.”

So if you think about the Branch Davidians and the law enforcement, the difference is the Branch Davidians are a religious community waiting for “the end” –um, waiting for “the second coming,” seeing themselves as having a role in that, and the FBI don’t share that worldview. The FBI sees themselves as just legitimate enforcers of secular law, which the Branch Davidians recognize, but it’s not the most important law for them. And they both believe in it’s okay to shoot people, right? [Wry chuckle]. They both believe it’s okay to use guns to, um, to defend their own way of seeing. So if you didn’t have that shared part, the difference wouldn’t be so bad, right?

patience kamau:
Yes!

Jayne Docherty:
Yeah. So I think when you look at worldview conflicts, I’m always looking for that combination –“what’s similar?” “What’s different?” Uh, so that’s one thing, and then I think the other thing is, because it’s a process, and you could see that in the transcripts, I realized that people can come to some kind of, um, they have something that they can share –so they’d get a negotiation success and then they may mistakenly think they can succeed in everything, right? But as the issues change, on some things they can get there and on some things they can’t.

But if you think, “Oh, we got here, so all the other stuff should fall into place,” and it doesn’t, then you tend to accuse the other party of having negotiated in bad faith, right? Like “you betrayed!” I think another thing was just the woeful, woeful ignorance and lack of preparation for most people in government and in law enforcement to understand religion as a force in people’s lives, and really to be able to work with, uh, faith dynamics in a sophisticated way. So that was…

patience kamau:
…like the importance of how people hold their faith and not dismissing it or minimizing it?

Jayne Docherty:
Right! Well, and I also think that there’s this, there was kind of a tendency from a lot of the FBI agents to think that, uh, religion has always pro-social –like that if you’re really a person of faith, you’re going to be “an obedient, good citizen,” right? As opposed to your faith might make you say, “the state is wrong and I need to do something different,” right? Yeah, and then at the end, there was one agent who was himself “a born again Christian,” and he gave them a test based on his faith and because they didn’t answer it correctly, he said, “Oh, they’re not really people of faith, they’re just using that as a cover.” And that then created the space for the final catastrophe, which is when the hostage rescue team or the tactical team went in and stormed in and you know, 90 people died in a tragic fire.

patience kamau:
What was the test that he presented? Do you remember?

Jayne Docherty:
It was…I’m trying to remember the details, but was around, “does David Koresh really believe he’s the savior?”

patience kamau:
Oh, this is so interesting!

Jayne Docherty:
Um, and if he were the savior, this is what he would say. And he didn’t say the right thing. So he doesn’t really believe he’s the savior –he’s just saying that so that he can have babies with all these women and you know, he’s a manipulative cult leader. Totally a wrong understanding of that community!

patience kamau:
This is interesting to me because what comes to mind, I think I heard someone else say this awhile back, I don’t know who, that “worldview is common sense to us until it encounters someone else’s worldview,” that doesn’t make sense –that clash right there.

Jayne Docherty:
Correct, correct!

patience kamau:
So in your opinion, how do you think this could have gone better if they had understood the concept of the different ways of world viewing?

Jayne Docherty:
Well, I mean, I think they…so the other thing that I had as part of the data set I was working with was the, the logs that the negotiators keep. One shift of negotiators, they write down what happened and what’s important, what’s going on so the next shift can pick up. They would not have written “Bible babble” every time this community was trying to explain what they were doing.

patience kamau:
Oh. So they will disregard that?

Jayne Docherty:
Totally, totally! Literally “Bible babble,” “preaching again.”

patience kamau:
Oh, that’s what they would write down?

Jayne Docherty:
That’s what they put in the log! So I’m looking at pages and pages of the Branch Davidians explaining a pretty sophisticated worldview, and I’m seeing opportunities where you could have had a conversation that might’ve…the thing about this is when the worldview differences are really, really deep, you can’t convince the other party to do anything –all you can do is construct the space in which they can convince themselves. So there was no way the FBI agents were going to convince these people who thought that they were being faithful to God, to decide that the way to be faithful, faithful to God was to come out, right? Only they could do that, or people who shared enough of their worldview, right? So…

patience kamau:
Yeah, yeah.

[Transition music plays]

patience kamau:
So how did you end up within peacebuilding? You studied at George Mason –how did you end up wanting to study conflict resolution there?

Jayne Docherty:
Yeah, conflict analysis and resolution, yeah, that’s interesting. I’m not only not Mennonite, I’m Catholic and I’m the daughter of a career air force officer who went to Vietnam when I was 11 and came home when I was 12 and I had joined the antiwar movement. So my pathway into this was definitely opposition to war, and um, so then it was after that it was Central America and our policies in Central America…and then some things happened and I discovered –because a faculty member did an interview on the radio– I discovered there’s this program right in my own backyard. I was living in Northern Virginia, at George Mason and that they had a Ph.D. in conflict analysis and resolution, so I was running a daycare at home, taking care of kids all day and started taking classes at night to test it, to see if that’s what I wanted. And then a couple of years later I applied into the program and that’s where I went…

patience kamau:
…and the rest is history…

Jayne Docherty:
…the rest is history.

patience kamau:
Right. Um, do I recall correctly that when you came to CJP, among the things that you introduced was conflict analysis?

Jayne Docherty:
Yes, there was an “intro to conflict transformation” class, but there wasn’t a “conflict analysis” class and I, I felt like, well, we’re really missing that. That’s the first step, right? If you’re going to do something about it, you first have to actually map it and understand it. And Lisa had been pushing for this as well and I think that when we got two of us on faculty, that was just enough to say, “okay, we’re going to add this class and we’re going to alter this intro to conflict transformation class into more of an analysis class.”

patience kamau:
What is involved in conflict analysis?

Jayne Docherty:
That’s interesting –what I like to say is, um, we all tell stories about conflict. That’s just human nature, all right? Name a conversation you’ve had that was meaningful where people didn’t start talking about somebody who was having a conflict. So stories are fine, but I think what analysis does is it says, “okay, slow down, don’t take your story as the reality, think through what’s going on.” And there are different kinds of analytical tools. So some of them are like a photograph –you freeze the conflict and you look at it and you go, “who are the parties, how are they relating to one another?”

And you just build the biggest map you can um, or “what are the power differentials and what does that look like?” And then some analytical tools are more dynamic –“how is this changing over time?” “What’s going on?” “What might happen next?” “What could happen next if we do something like this?” And then you begin developing your “theories of change” –you’re looking at the situation, you’re saying, “well, if we change this one element, then maybe it will move towards less violence,” right? But you have to have the analysis first. You can’t just walk around going, “I’m a mediator,” so every time there’s a conflict, mediation is what’s needed or “I’m a negotiator, so let’s negotiate everything.”

patience kamau:
You need to have an understanding of what it is that’s actually…

Jayne Docherty:
…yeah, yeah. And I think the world viewing piece is you need to have an understanding that, that conflict looks different to everyone. And so this is the map that you’re seeing kind of looking at it from outside, but you’re never outside because you always have a bias. Like what do I…what am I not seeing? I think one of the really important things about world viewing is every worldview is a way of seeing, but it’s also a way of not seeing, so, what are you not seeing? And that’s why you need kind of multi-vocal and why it’s really good to do analysis with a team of people and not just one person.

patience kamau:
Mm-hm, so in order to actually pay attention to the parts of world viewing that we don’t see, I mean you just said that one way is a way of seeing and it’s also a way of not seeing; how do we get peacebuilders and practitioners to actually interrogate that, those parts of themselves that they cannot see?

Jayne Docherty:
Well, I mean, I think that’s why encounter and working in groups and teams is so important and why we emphasize it so much here, right? In terms of what we’re teaching students and what we’re encouraging people to do. The only way to…I think there are some reflective ways to think about the world where you can say, “okay, what am I not seeing?” I mean, one thing is to say, “here’s what I think is going on, can I tell three other stories that would explain it?” Right? So “this person did that and it’s because blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” Okay. Try in your head, coming up with one, two, or three other explanations for why that person did what they did, that would make sense. That’s a good self-discipline.

patience kamau:
It takes the ego out of things, quite a bit!

Jayne Docherty:
Yeah. I mean I think it’s really important not to mistake our story for the reality.

patience kamau:
So let’s turn back a little bit towards CJP.
Um, what are some of the academic changes that have happened in your time here?

Jayne Docherty:
Well, that’s interesting –you already asked about one adding the analysis class. So I’ve watched the curriculum change multiple times and it’s one of the things I really appreciate about CJP a lot, is collectively as a faculty, we sit together and think very seriously about “what should we be teaching and how should we be teaching it?” And the other dynamic here is we don’t have a, I wouldn’t say we don’t have any “prescriptive” things because we do, like I just said that –analysis is important, right? Um, but we are responsive to the students who show up in our classroom. They come from conflict places and they bring experience and we are creating a learning community and space where they are challenging us.

So when I was hired, it was really interesting. I was interviewed in like March or April and the program was pretty small and they wanted me to come in because I was doing U.S. work; I wasn’t going to other countries. I said, there’s a lot of stuff that we need to be working with here in the U.S. and there were a lot of students from the U.S. in the program, relatively speaking, to the size of the program. In between the time I was hired and the time I arrived in August, we got the Fulbright cohort program. So I arrived to a classroom full of people from South Asia, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, all sitting in the classroom and I’m like, “wait a minute, this isn’t the student population that I came to teach.”

And then 9/11 happened and the world changed, right? You totally knew, in this field that nothing was going to be the same as what we had been working with. We were working in the remnants of a post cold-war era in the international level and thinking about this, and now we were going to be in a post 9/11 world. So I think all of those factors kept pushing us. The Fulbright students, because they didn’t really choose CJP, quite frankly. They chose to study in the United States on Fulbright looking at conflict and Fulbright said “this is where you’re going to go,” and there was such a big group.

So one year was from South Asia, the next year was from the Middle East and it was 10 to 12 students each year that their demands for more strategic thinking, higher…you know like what’s happening at the higher levels in policy, pushed this program as well. I was happy to see that because I believe we should be working at policy levels as well as community levels and that the role that we can play that I think is something CJP does really well is to say, look, the core of it is what people live in their daily lives, but that needs to be brought up to the policy level. You have to connect what the policy makers are doing and the big leaders are doing with what’s really happening on the ground, and empower the people on the ground to have voice to participate.

patience kamau:
So it’s this give and take between the micro and the macro, basically.

Jayne Docherty:
Absolutely. And I think that’s, that’s really kind of what we are –and that’s where we start talking about “strategic peacebuilding,” which not all the faculty members liked that term…

patience kamau:
What is meant by the term?

Jayne Docherty:
Well, I mean, so to me, strategy is making sure that you’re not just thinking about what you’re doing right now, but a strategy is thinking three or four steps ahead, right? So what do I want to have happen after this and after that and after that, and how do I have to do what I’m doing now to make sure that what I want to have happen three steps from now, right, is going to happen. And, but it’s a military term, so people really objected, like they said, “no, that’s just very militaristic.” And I’m like, well, peacebuilding isn’t going to get anywhere if we aren’t as sophisticated about change and setting goals and figuring out how to get there, as the military. So…

patience kamau:
Um, why did the, you said earlier that the Fulbright program told the students that “this is the program you’re going to go to” –why did that happen that way?

Jayne Docherty:
So that’s how Fulbright works uh, just generally students, um, even single students who apply who aren’t in that kind of group program that we had, if they apply, then their agencies that run the Fulbright system, and they send the files out to several universities, they get the acceptances back. They may tell the student, “these are the two or three that have accepted you, what’s your preference?”

But very often they don’t and what they’re figuring out…cause they get rewarded on placing as many students as they possibly can, so, um, they look at the finances. For a long time, CJP was very inexpensive compared to other schools and we got a lot of Fulbright students even after the cohort program ended. But now because people can’t get visas and it’s harder for international students to get in, the wealthy schools are getting all the Fulbright students because they’re just giving them full scholarships and we can’t afford to do that.

Uh, but this cohort program was actually specially designed. The theory behind it was that if you educated people from a region together, they would build relationships enough to go back and be kind of “network of effective action” in their area. Uh, I think that’s a good theory and I think we’ve operated on that with some of our other programs, like the Women’s Peacebuilding Program, but it doesn’t just happen, you really have to sustain it and support it. I think in South Asia, some of our graduates have kept in touch and worked together, the Middle East was much harder.

patience kamau:
In your opinion, what do you think is something unique that we can celebrate about CJP at this particular milestone?

Jayne Docherty:
So I think, one thing is what I already said about how we are responsive to the people who come to the, to the program, that the curriculum changes, that isn’t, that isn’t stopping, it’s happening now. We’re getting more U.S. students, more U.S. students of color who are saying, “you’ve got to deal with the legacy of slavery and racism,” um, and we’re saying, “yep, you’re right, haven’t been doing good enough on that, we need to do, uh, to do that.”

But I think the other big thing that I really think we should celebrate and that I think is the future for us is the network of graduates that we do have. If you look at the graduates, where they are around the world, if we can connect them to each other and stay connected to them, we are more than just a graduate program and we do more than any other program I know, to work with our graduates. Like if they come to us and say I have this project and I want to work on it, we on occasion have been able to find grant money, work with people. That’s how the Women’s Peacebuilding Program happened, and I think more of that, that’s what we need to be building up.

Dave Brubaker says this –he says the next step for us, the next phase of CJP is all about its graduates. And I think of it as there’s this latent network and our job right now is to try to plug that in, which is why I want to try to get as many graduates back here for the celebration as possible because I’ve had the experience of going someplace and introducing graduates to each other. They’re working in the same space, they may actually even know each other and they didn’t know they studied here, right? Or that somebody was at SPI, cause if you include SPI and not just the degree programs, …

patience kamau:
…the Summer Peacebuilding Institute…

Jayne Docherty:
Yeah, Summer Peacebuilding Institute or STAR, the Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience program, many thousands of people in conflict zones have had some CJP experience, they just don’t always find each other and go, “oh yeah, we’ve got that shared kind of perspective.” So yeah.

patience kamau:
So if they’re able to come here and re-gather, it could be a place where we start connecting people to one another.

Jayne Docherty:
Mm-hm, right, to one another and also back to us –like, tell us what we’re supposed to be working on now. What is it looking like on the ground?

patience kamau:
What is your vision for CJP in the next 25 years? What’s CJP at 50 in your opinion –what do you hope for, what’s your dream?

Jayne Docherty:
[Makes an excited sound] CJP at 50 um, will be a really dynamic organizing location for peace, justice and nonviolence and trauma informed…doing work in a trauma informed way and we will be seen as a place that has huge impact. I’m a big dreamer and we’ll be on the map in the U.S. not just everywhere else. I think, when I first got here and started doing local work, I would go and say, “hi, I’m from the conflict transformation program at Eastern Mennonite University” and people two miles down the road would go, “what’s that?” And, but you could go to Nairobi and say, “hi, I’m from, you know, EMU and this conflict transformation program,” and everybody go, “oh, hi, great to see you.” [Laughs]

patience kamau:
[Laughter continues] Right, right, wow. What do you think is going to put CJP on the map in the U.S. in the next 25 years? What do you hope?

Jayne Docherty:
I think we already have the capacity, I mean I think we already have something. The fact that, um, our STAR program, the trauma program was so celebrated at the Alliance for Peacebuilding Conference just last week, [recorded in October 2019] we have stuff. Um, I think what’s going to put it on the map is when we stop hiding it, right? And when we make it accessible to more people in more ways. So I think the other thing that we’ll be at 50 is, we’ll be, uh, we’ll be a program that runs education programs in the formal “credit sense,” but we will also have a very large and robust program for non-credit education.

patience kamau:
For training?

Jayne Docherty:
For training. Um, yeah, and I think we’ll be doing some more research. I think that actually, um, applied research is something that we need to develop. I don’t think that’s the very next thing to, for us to be a research center, I think that’s 10 years from now after we really established the, the, um, non-credit education side and grow it bigger than Summer Peacebuilding Institute and STAR, I think we’ll be a place where people come and say, “my organization or my community needs something, can you help us design what we need?” And we co-create with people.

patience kamau:
And you said one of those was the Women’s Peacebuilding Program was a sort of example?

Jayne Docherty:
So Women’s Peacebuilding Program happened when, um, you know, Dekha Ibrahim…

patience kamau:
…mm-hm, the late Dekha Ibrahim…

Jayne Docherty:
…the late Dekha Ibrahim, um said to Jan Jenner, who was working on our practice side, “we really need something for women, you know, we need to empower women in this field.” And then we ended up with this large grant funded program, bringing women with that cohort model, from a region where they were getting a, uh, graduate certificate, not the full degree, but in a program that was partially here and then partially there, in their own home, and that included accompanying them with a praxis coach in acting out, acting out of what they were learning and building networks with each other. And in Kenya, we see that, right? They’ve created a network that’s actually continuing to work as a network…

patience kamau:
…with one another. So what are the countries where this happened for the WPLP, so Kenya…?

Jayne Docherty:
So it was the Somali region and that included Somalia, Somaliland, uh, Kenya, that kind of all that area. Uh, there was a small group from Liberia and then there was the South Pacific, so Fiji and the Pacific islands and you know, had different sources of funding. But like a lot of things that are grant funded, it’s never going to last forever because the funders go, “Oh, that was a nice thing, and now what’s the next hot topic?”

And I think that’s something that, that we haven’t done well. Um, one of the reasons that I, I’m kind of fighting to hold staff here is because we’re putting in four and five grants, you need enough capacity, and you can’t get a grant and then turn all of your attention to running the program and not think about, well, what else should we be developing next?

patience kamau:
Strategy!

Jayne Docherty:
It’s strategy, exactly right. [Both laugh] Because this is going to end sometime, right. Um, and what I think we have is a lot of experience that can be translated into new programs. So what we learned by working with the women’s program can be turned into something that we can do in another, with other people in a slightly different way. But we learned a lot about how to work with groups. So let’s go find different groups. It doesn’t have to look just like that –that was a very expensive program and funders, not many funders are going to fund that, so…

[Transition music plays]

patience kamau:
Switching a little bit, how have you experienced community at CJP? So you’ve been here since 2001 that’s how many years?

Jayne Docherty:
18!

patience kamau:
18 Years.

Jayne Docherty:
Which for a military brat…

patience kamau:
…that’s a lot?

Jayne Docherty:
That’s a long time in one place. [Both laugh]

patience kamau:
Are you feeling like your nomadic roots want to move on?

Jayne Docherty:
Well, in some ways I did, right? So, um, when I went out on sabbatical, it was supposed to be for a year.

patience kamau:
When did you go on sabbatical?

Jayne Docherty:
I went on sabbatical in 2008 –I was supposed to be gone in 8-9 that academic year. The place I was working in Myanmar, they asked me to extend for another six months, so I came back and taught SPI and negotiated to get another six months and then they asked me to come back six months out of each year for the next couple of years after that. So in some ways I satisfied my nomadic roots by taking a very extended sabbatical and moving back and forth for a few years.

patience kamau:
Yeah. So in what ways have you experienced community being in the CJP community?

Jayne Docherty:
I think the [silence] …why am I hesitating? I’m hesitating because I think that other people in the system may experience community differently because for them, this is a very thick community, in the anthropological sense of a “thick community,” many, many layers of relationships.

patience kamau:
“Thick culture”?

Jayne Docherty:
Yeah, a very “thick culture” because if you’re Mennonite, um, you work here, you may go to church with the same people. You may have known them since you were a kid, um, and that creates a whole level of community that an outsider is never going to be a part of. Um, but that’s okay with me, honestly. That’s okay with me!

patience kamau:
Say more…

Jayne Docherty:
To me for whatever reason, that sounds a little smothering and I’m not sure I, I don’t really need to be fully inside that level of a thick community. What I have experienced is that when, um, I or anyone else in our system has had a family crisis or, or issues people are here for each other. I was a little nervous when I got divorced that, you know, it would be a very “couple culture” and that there would be no place for me –I haven’t found that. I’ve had people invite me to dinner, it doesn’t matter that I don’t have a plus one or a partner. I think I’ve had as much of the community experience here as I have wanted.

Um, and I also, um, have felt very supported and I, I think that we’ve supported, uh, other members of our community through really significant family events and health crises with children and, and that, that’s been really powerful.

patience kamau:
Yeah. Um, let’s see…

Jayne Docherty:
…I would say, I would say “authentic care.”

patience kamau:
“Authentic care”?

Jayne Docherty:
“Authentic care” for one another, I think that’s what we have, I think that’s what we try for. We don’t always hit it, right? Nobody’s perfect, but I think that’s, that’s what we strive for.

patience kamau:
Yeah. What do you think CJP could be doing better?

Jayne Docherty:
Um, I would like to see us get some more research grants for “applied research.” The challenge is, that’s not always easy to find funds for. Research funding often is still very traditional in the way it thinks about “knowledge,” and we think of “knowledge” as something that exists in the community that we want to elevate, kind of, “grounded knowledge” and pull it up and work with the community. That kind of funding isn’t always easy to find, but I think we could do, be doing more of it. On the other hand, our faculty carry a heavy teaching load. This is not a research university, right? So I think people need to remember that!

patience kamau:
If we’re not a “research university,” what are we?

Jayne Docherty:
We’re a “teaching university.” We’re teaching, we’re a teaching university, and there are different categories of universities. At a research university, a faculty member teaches maybe two courses a semester, sometimes two courses a year, right? If you’re in a tenure or tenure track position and our, our faculty are teaching three, 3-credit courses a semester or you know, two courses a semester plus SPI –Summer Peacebuilding Institute. So I mean it’s a much heavier teaching load.

patience kamau:
Okay, okay.
Um, how about in living together? What could CJP be doing better with…you said the population of students changes from cohort to cohort. Is there anything we could be doing better? Are we doing well?

Jayne Docherty:
I think one thing we’re doing well that I don’t think that a lot of schools invest in is, we hire a student to be the Community Building Coordinator, right? Like we say, “community doesn’t just happen, we’re going to invest some resources into helping each group of students build the kind of community that they want with each other.” And I’ve watched that, it’s been very different. I mean, really each class is very different or every couple of years changes kind of the culture of how much community they want. I mean some years it’s with the, with the Fulbright, you know, it’s, everybody’s having dinner together all the time, right?

patience kamau:
Yeah, yeah. Can you say something about the Foundations courses? How did that come to be? What are they?

Jayne Docherty:
[Hearty laughter] Yes, okay…

patience kamau:
Why do you laugh?

Jayne Docherty:
I’m laughing because, um, because that was a real journey and I think it’s one of the things that’s pretty special about CJP faculty really sitting together and saying, “what do students need to know and how is the, what is the best way to do…to make that experience happen?” Right? What do they need to know and what do they need to know how to do?

So we went from the first iteration was we said, okay, we’re going to set some more, um, more required courses. And we had “analysis” and “practice,” “theory” was not required when I arrived here. Um, and then we said “theory” and then “skills” classes. So those were separate courses taught by individual professors. And then we put in the comprehensive exam as a way of monitoring “how effective are we?” The students think it’s about testing them, really it’s about telling us, are we teaching what we think we’re teaching? Um, it’s both but, but I mean it was a major feedback loop for the faculty. We set the exam as –have the students choose a case, analyze it, think about a position or an organization that they would be and what would…and tell us what they would do and what they think would happen from that. And we got the first papers back and they were disjointed and not what we expected, not overall and not everybody, but enough so that we were sitting in the conference room reading the papers going, “Oh dear!”

Um, so then we tried like overlapping the “practice” and the “analysis” class, like let’s share some sessions, let’s do this. And that still didn’t get the effect that we wanted. So eventually we said we’re not going to get it inside the traditional three credit hours, single professor box. Let’s blow up the box –metaphorically– and build a six hour container.

So the equivalent of two courses taught by a team and then we sat and designed what would it happen, what would happen in the first semester of those six hours, what would happen in the, in the second semester. And that’s been evolving, right? And it’s been interesting to watch how it evolves –I think it puts a lot of pressure on the faculty. First of all, teaching with other people means you’re always in negotiation about what you’re going to teach, how you are going to teach it, what matters; and then we’re also getting very quick feedback loop. It’s a tight feedback loop on whether people are kind of getting the skills set and the knowledge set that we are expecting or think that they…hoping that they get.

patience kamau:
Is that improving? Is the model of Foundations I and II actually showing that people are gaining the tools you hope them to gain?

Jayne Docherty:
I think so. It’s a little hard to tell because we actually have other variables that have come in, right? So faculty have changed in the middle of this. So we actually have two, this is a little bit, we have to think about how effective is this –we have two more senior faculty members teaching Foundations I and two new faculty members teaching Foundations II and those two new faculty members are not part of the George Mason…

patience kamau:
Ah, alumni…

Jayne Docherty:
Right? So for a long time, what I would say CJP was when my colleagues from George Mason said, what is CJP? “CJP is what you get when you set a whole bunch of George Mason graduates loose and let them build a curriculum,” because almost everybody here had their degree from there. That’s not true anymore. So now we’re actually having conversations about “what is in the field” and, and how do you bring in Johonna’s expertise and Tim’s expertise and orientation….

patience kamau:
Johonna Turner and Tim Seidel.

Jayne Docherty:
Johonna Turner and Tim Seidel, right. So, but it’s, I mean, I think people can tell from that –even just saying it that way, that’s not what happens at other universities. You hire in an expert who has this expertise and they sit in their box and they teach what they teach and you don’t have to integrate it.

patience kamau:
Right, right. Well, it sounds like the size of CJP being small makes it nimble and responsive to what’s actually needed, in a quicker fashion.

Jayne Docherty:
Yes, right! Yeah, I think so. Yeah. I think that’s right.

patience kamau:
So thinking of you, what’s…for yourself and your career within peacebuilding, um, what’s been the most challenging thing you’ve faced and how could you have done it differently?

Jayne Docherty:
In peacebuilding or at CJP? [Laughs]

patience kamau:
Go in the direction that you want to go in?

Jayne Docherty:
Hmm. So at CJP coming in as a “cultural outsider,” I was literally the first non-Mennonite hired into the faculty for this program, not on campus overall, but for this program. And it was a big deal. Joe Lapp was the president –all tenure hires go to the board, but mine had to be walked through the board.

patience kamau:
What do you mean by that?

Jayne Docherty:
Uh, he, he really I think had to go and say it was okay to hire this Catholic into the premier peacebuilding program, right? Um, maybe I’m making a bigger deal of that, but that’s how it felt.

patience kamau:
That’s how it felt to you.

Jayne Docherty:
That’s how it felt –that, that was kind of a big step. And then I arrive, 9/11 happens! I’d been studying, because of the work I had done and was, had done with the FBI and stuff, I had been studying extremist groups in the United States and working around kind of the Michigan militia and things like that –and everybody looks at me and goes, “is this international or domestic,” right? And I get thrown up in front of, literally within a month, I’m standing in front of the entire campus giving a keynote address at the big teach-in after 9/11. Where are we going? And what was the question?

patience kamau:
What’s been the most challenging thing and how could you have done it differently?

Jayne Docherty:
So, I think one of the most challenging things was coming in as the first not Mennonite faculty member with a very different cultural background. I’m Italian. When my family’s mad, they yell at each other and that’s not very Mennonite. So, um, I probably over the years could’ve done a better job in the early years navigating how to fit into the culture a bit better or how to navigate that uhm…

patience kamau:
…difference?

Jayne Docherty:
Difference. Um, there’s so many things, patience, …

patience kamau:
…mm-hm…

Jayne Docherty:
…every time you do practice, there’s something that you’re going, “well, I could have done that differently.” So in the work in Myanmar, it’s very complex. I was asked by graduates of the program to come over and work with the ethnic armed groups in a civil war that’s been going on for more than 60 years now, right? Resistance to the government –ethnic groups not wanting to be assimilated into the dominant culture. The privilege of working for multiple years with them in the way that we were able to do, where we could keep designing and redesigning in response to what was happening was phenomenal.

I would say at a couple of points in that we made some strategic decisions that probably were…could have been done better, like, we gave up on one person and took me off of coaching them. I think we should have continued that coaching, those kinds of things happen all the time. You have limited resources, limited time, and you make decisions about where you’re going to put your energy and then you go, was that the right one? Right? Or if we’d put a little more time with her, would this process have moved along? Because one of the things you learn when you’re on the ground in those situations is, it’s actually personal, right? Whole conflicts and war systems are held in place by people’s personal stuff.

patience kamau:
Mm-hm, mm-hm, wow that brings it really into focus!

Jayne Docherty:
It’s really, really scary. Um, you know, somebody’s mom hurt somebody’s dad’s feelings and it’s hard for them to get to a negotiation table.

patience kamau:
What do you think have been the most significant changes in the peacebuilding field in the last 25 years?

Jayne Docherty:
Oh my goodness! Can we expand it beyond 25? Slightly beyond 25, let’s say 30 years. So first of all, the word “peacebuilding,” the big fight over who started it, right? Like what is “peacebuilding”? I think for the Mennonite community “peacebuilding” is a word that John Paul Lederach started using and we have a certain understanding of it. And then the UN started using the word and you know, they fight about who said it first and they are using it in a very particular way.

patience kamau:
So what are the different ways of using it?

Jayne Docherty:
So I think for, for us here, when we say “peacebuilding,” we mean “locally-led,” “locally-owned” –um, not something that comes from a government, right? Even though there may be peace negotiations going on, real “peacebuilding,” is about transforming the relationships between real people and changing the systems and the drivers and all of that, but including the people in that. Then the UN has their idea of what peacebuilding looks like and then all of a sudden in the early 2000s, USAID, US agency for international development, discovered peacebuilding.

And I remember when it happened because we had a practice Institute, Jan Jenner was the director, her phone started ringing off the hook from development agencies. The normal people who contract with USAID, right? They didn’t have any peacebuilding capacity at all, but here’s USAID writing peacebuilding into their calls for proposal. So we became a hot commodity, right? Like, “who can help us with this?” And we didn’t know how to navigate that system of contracting –and so it took us a couple of years to realize, if you don’t go “exclusive” on a contract with one of those agencies, they won’t include you in the design process, they’ll just use your name and they may or may not ever contract with you to do anything…

patience kamau:
…ever again…

Jayne Docherty:
…ever. They just may use your name to get the contract, right, and they don’t know, and it was fascinating to watch Washington, all the various ways that these agencies just tried to get “peacebuilding” into their repertoire. Mercy Corps merged with Conflict Management group, which was the old “getting to yes,” Roger Fisher team and basically it was a merger, corporate merger. Other people hired experts and some of them really successfully let them push their expertise into the whole system, and others made them just little agencies, little offices inside their system that didn’t really affect anything else, and you can’t do peacebuilding…

patience kamau:
…that way…

Jayne Docherty:
…because peacebuilding, you can’t, you have to do development differently. If you’re serious about this, then it becomes a way and a perspective and a set of practices that has to…it doesn’t just stand by itself, it shapes the way your…where you’re putting the well and how you’re negotiating to build a road and…and just watching that whole process. And now peacebuilding is very embedded into, kind of, the state funded development or relief and development –and I, on my most cynical days, I say really now the word peacebuilding -when used in that context- is just a way to stabilize countries, so the multinational corporations can take their resources. That’s not really about peacebuilding at all.

And I see CJP as needing to stand over and against that, while also sometimes taking that money and collaborating and working with it, but being very picky about when we do that. That was a big argument at CJP –“would we ever take USAID money?” When I got here, the answer was “no.” And then…

patience kamau:
…how did that shift?

Jayne Docherty:
Well and then it became, “well, we should ask the local people on the ground wherever the work is being done, is it okay with them?” So we’ve always deferred to our partners and our local contacts and our network and we continue to do that –we wouldn’t take their money if our local partners, all of our graduates said, “no, you can’t do that here.”

patience kamau:
So with our definition, with the definition of “peacebuilding” that you defined for us, what have been the changes in the last 30 years, as you put it?

Jayne Docherty:
Oh, well there I think paying more attention to policy and strategy and more recognition that it, it needs to, um, it needs to not just be at the community level, that you also then have to think about the structures and the laws and the systems. So I would say that’s a change for us and it’s a good one.

patience kamau:
And in the field in general?

Jayne Docherty:
…and in the field in general, uhm, see, when you say field, like…

patience kamau:
…whose field?

Jayne Docherty:
Whose field, right? It’s kind of like worldview, whose worldview? Whose story?

patience kamau:
Mm-hm, that’s a good point of clarification.

Jayne Docherty:
Yeah, and I think that the field, “the field” doesn’t look the same even for our restorative justice colleagues, right? And I think that when we named, renamed ourselves The Center for Justice and Peacebuilding, um, and so when we renamed ourselves that, and then when we put in the masters in restorative justice and we started getting more people who are really uh “social justice” focused, we always had this tension in our class between those who are fighting for justice and those who want to make peace, right.

Um, and I think one of our strengths is that we are holding those two things together –it’s not always comfortable and you know, you have to manage the dynamics in the classroom where…but, but in reality, both things are needed for genuine peace, which means peace based on a just set of relationships and everybody needs to learn from each other.

patience kamau:
Yeah, yeah.

[Transition music plays]

patience kamau:
All right, well we are almost done.

Jayne Docherty:
Are you kidding, have we been talking for two hours?

patience kamau:
No, for one hour, almost one hour.

Jayne Docherty:
All right.

patience kamau:
So what are you working on for yourself, um, developing right now for…?

Jayne Docherty:
Well, I don’t have much of myself in this seat, right? I mean, so for me myself, my work is CJP –my work is the institution and organization of CJP.

patience kamau:
When did you become the executive director?

Jayne Docherty:
Very surprisingly, and suddenly in May, right?

patience kamau:
May of 2019…

Jayne Docherty:
May of 2019, the day after graduation. So, and I didn’t know that that was happening until a month before…and, um, what am I working on now? What I’m working on now is making, uh, supporting this organization and becoming as resilient and creative and dynamic as it can be, so that we can be responsive to opportunities. Higher education is in a lot of turmoil and for a lot of reasons; there’s finances –fewer students want to get into more debt for a graduate degree, right? Visas aren’t being issued, we’re having great difficulty getting international students in.

So what does then our education process and where should we be in that, in that environment and what, what should we look at? We have a phenomenal staff –I am so excited to be working with the staff here and the faculty. Um, I think often in programs like this, the faculty gets centered and a lot of attention is on the faculty, and they are important, but we have a staff here that has, has been and has the capacity to even do more in terms of creating dynamic learning spaces that are accessible to a lot of people. So, yeah, that’s, that’s my goal. And, you know, trying to make sure that we find the money that supports it. I, I’d love to stabilize, um, our own sources of funds because then you can weather the storm and the, and the turmoil in the education arena a little better if you have an endowment. So working on that, and telling the story in a bold way!

patience kamau:
Yes!

Jayne Docherty:
You know, I’ve been here 18 years and I keep saying Mennonites are great, they do phenomenal work, and then they hide it, right? They don’t brag about it.

patience kamau:
Put the lamp under a bushel?

Jayne Docherty:
Yes, exactly –they don’t brag! And, um, right after I got this, this job and was asked to do this, somebody said, “so what’s your goal?” I said, “brag about this place” –tell the stories,” right? Tell the stories!

patience kamau:
Yeah, I like your demeanor, you, you look proud –physically.

Jayne Docherty:
I am, I don’t have trouble bragging about this place, it’s phenomenal. Um, and I don’t have trouble asking for money either, so…

patience kamau:
Yeah, we need support.
Um, what do you do outside, CJP, that’s life-giving to you outside this work?

Jayne Docherty:
So I’m spending time with my parents who are aging, um, and I really am working at, at enjoying that, right? They’re not going to be here forever. So, um, it has its burdens, but it’s also a great privilege to, to be close enough to them –they are a couple of hours away. I just bought a new house, so I’ve been having fun decorating my house and in the last few years I’ve gotten very actively involved in politics, local politics. I have declined to run for office, I might do that after CJP, but I’m, I’m working on campaigns and helping candidates and asking for money for candidates –I don’t have any trouble asking for money.

patience kamau:
Right, right.

Jayne Docherty:
Yeah.

patience kamau:
All right.
Um, is there anything else you’d like to add?

Jayne Docherty:
So one of the questions that was on here, um, I don’t know where I was going to say that –uh, “positive outcomes of my time at CJP.” What I wanted to talk about there was, um, arriving in 2001 and 9/11 happened, Church World Service asked us to create a program which became the Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience Program, for community leaders, in the communities affected by conflict.

I was a negotiator –I didn’t want to mess with this trauma stuff. Largely because I came to realize my family had been living with “postwar trauma” since my dad came home from Vietnam in 1968, right. He’s, he wasn’t…people think about someone with trauma as this messed up person –he was highly functional, loving dad, wonderful guy. But there were effects on our family system, and so I think for me personally and professionally, really grappling with the importance of doing trauma and resilience work, as part of peacebuilding, that has been huge! Uhm, yeah, so…

patience kamau:
Thank you.

Jayne Docherty:
Yeah, thanks!

patience kamau:
I think that’s all.

Jayne Docherty:
All right!

patience kamau:
Thank you very much for your time.

Jayne Docherty:
Well, that was easy!

patience kamau:
It’s been a great conversation, I’ve enjoyed it.

Jayne Docherty:
Yeah, it’s been fun.

patience kamau:
All right.

Jayne Docherty:
Are all your conversations fun?

patience kamau:
Yes they are! Yeah, they are –would you like to do…Carl sang us out– would you like to do something unique? [Laughter]

Jayne Docherty:
[Laughter continues] I am not singing! So, that’s where I’m going to plead being Catholic.

patience kamau:
[More laughter] Yes, no singing! All right. Well thank you so much Jayne.

Jayne Docherty:
Okay, thanks.

patience kamau:
Bye.

patience kamau:
Jayne is the author of two books, Learning Lessons from Waco and The Little Book of Strategic Negotiation.

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All right, this bring us to the end of our first season; thank YOU all so VERY much for your accompaniment in the last 18 weeks. For a small podcast, we count ourselves extremely blessed that we’ve had close to 5,000 downloads so far! Thank YOU! It has been an absolute joy for me to have these conversations with these ten people, as we commemorate this silver jubilee year of the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding’s founding. The first half of 2020 has presented itself as a serious challenge to the world, wounding us all in many ways, but as we sit with the discomfort this wound causes us, let’s remember, as Rumi so aptly put it, “the wound is where the light enters you.” Blessings to you now and always! And faith willing, we’ll see you again next time.

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[Outro music begins to play and fades into background]

All the music you hear on this podcast has been composed by: the one and only Luke Mullet. Our audio mixing engineer extraordinaire is: Stephen Angello. Audio editing support was generously provided by: Michaela Mast. And I am the podcast executive producer, audio recording engineer, editor and host: patience kamau. As you are able, please remember to subscribe, rate and review this podcast so that other peacebuilders may find it. Thank you so much for listening and join us again next time!

[Outro music resumes normal volume and plays till end]