the
Justice www.thejustice.org
The Independent Student Newspaper Volume LXXII, Number 9
of
B r a n d e is U n i v e r sit y S i n c e 1 9 4 9
Tuesday, November 5, 2019
‘HOW A PEACEBUILDER UNLEARNED HIS TRADE’
Waltham, Mass.
DINING
Univ. to develop dining Request for Proposals ■ Brandeis and Sedexo
ended their contract early and Brandeis is working on finding a new vendor. By EMILY BLUMENTHAL JUSTICE EDITOR
IVY DALL/the Justice
A NEW APPROACH TO PEACEBUILDING: 2019 Gittler Prize winner Dr. John-Paul Lederach gave a lecture about how he "unlearned" older, more traditional approaches to peacebuilding through his experiences and work around the world.
University awards 2019 Gittler Prize to notable peacebuilder ■ The Gittler Prize is awarded
to a scholar whose work has contributed to improving cross-cultural relations. By HANNAH TAYLOR JUSTICE STAFF WRITER
Dr. John-Paul Lederach received the 2019 Joseph B. and Toby Gittler Prize on Oct. 30 and gave a lecture entitled “Dispatches from Nowhere Near the Promised Land: How a Peacebuilder Unlearned his Trade.” Provost Lisa Lynch said during the award ceremony that the selection committee chose Lederach for being “a powerful and insightful scholar whose theoretical construction of such concepts as the moral imagination and peacebuilding work … has influenced a generation of men and women who have brought his thinking to work in some of the world’s most instrumental conflicts.” The Gittler Prize, Lynch said, “Recognizes an individual who has made an outstanding and lasting scholarly contribution to contributions to racial, ethinic, and/or religious relations.” Lynch explained that the prize was established in 2008 and is funded by contributions from Professor Joseph B. Gittler, honoring both him and his mother, Toby Gittler. It includes a $25,000 prize and is administered by the International Center for Ethics, Justice, and Public Life. During the lecture, Lederach
Image Courtesy of CREATIVE COMMONS
discussed how he “unlearned” the old approaches to peacebuilding, which, he explained, were damaging to the communities he was helping. Lederach told stories of three trips to Guatemala, Nepal and Nicaragua. In each of these places, he said that he learned more about the “habits of harm” that often come with outside aid, and in that way learned how he needed to reshape the peacebuilding approach. In Guatemala, Lederach said that he had unintentionally “fallen into the long repeated patterns of imperialism” by using the old approaches to peacebuilding he had been taught. He said this included setting up demonstrations of mediation scenarios, which did not go over well with the local people. He and his colleagues were also there with the notion that they were intervening — they were not there with the goal of forming a meaningful relationship with the community. In Nepal, he said his experiences taught him more about what it meant to “show up differently,” especially as a philanthropist who ultimately contributes to the conflict by not solving the underlying issues and by treating the local people in a dehumanizing manner. In Nicaragua, Lederach listened to a colleague recite a poem, helping him realize that “peacebuilding is not primarily a labor of social engineering. It is an artistic process that must, over and again, open up what is known, but not seen, and bring into life that which does not exist.”
Lederach conducted a three-day residence from Oct. 29 until Oct. 31, where he delivered presentations on his work as a peacemaker. The panelists for the discussion included COEX faculty Prof. Isabella Jean, Prof. Pamina Firchow, Prof. Ted Johnson, Prof. Sandra Jones and moderator Prof. Alain Lempereur. The Heller School for Social Policy and Management’s Conflict Resolution and Coexistence graduate department held a panel discussion earlier in the day with Lederach entitled “The Evolution of Conflict Transformation.” Firchow began the panel by introducing Lederach, who is professor emeritus at the Kroc Institute of International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame, and was formerly a professor and founding director of the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding at Eastern Mennonite University. She said he “embodies the concept of a pracademic” in his peacebuilding work because he both studies and actively participates in his field. Firchow also mentioned the most well-known of the 24 books Lederach has written: The Moral Imagination, The Art and Soul of Building Peace, The Little Book of Conflict Transformation, and Building Peace: Sustainable Reconciliation in Divided Societies. She explained that Lederach’s most recent work has been in Colombia, where he is currently serving as a member on the advisory council of the Colombian Truth Commission
See GITTLER PRIZE, 7 ☛
The University is in the beginning stages of developing its Request for Proposals for a new food services vendor and is seeking community feedback about its dining program. The RFP steering committee and the TMC Group, a consulting group retained by the University for the duration of the RFP process, co-hosted two open forums on Oct. 28 and 29 with the goal of eliciting feedback about the University’s dining program. Using community input and discussions with various key stakeholders and administrators, consultants from the TMC Group will write the RFP within the next few weeks. After the RFP is released in midNovember, five or six food service companies will be invited to submit proposals, including the “Big Three” food service companies
— Compass, Aramark and Sodexo — along with two or three smaller vendors, TMC Group consultant Ted Mayer said during the Oct. 29 forum. Although a number of outside vendors will be invited to present plans, Sodexo will also be participating in the RFP process and could end up with the new contract, Director of Dining Services Jeff Hershberger told the Justice in an Oct. 2 interview. The University and Sodexo mutually agreed in September to end Sodexo’s current contract three years early to facilitate the University’s planned reexamination of its dining program and negotiation of a new dining contract, Hershberger said during the Oct. 2 interview. The contract, a 10-year deal which was supposed to last through June 2023, is now slated to expire at the end of the fiscal year on June 30, 2020. Going into the negotiations, both parties were resolved to bring the contract to an end in a mutually beneficial way, and there were no tensions or disputes throughout the negotiation process, Hershberger said. “It was clear to both parties that in order to make the necessary
See DINING PROPOSALS, 7 ☛
DEPARTMENT OF COMMUNITY LIVING
Changes to DCL room inspections implemented ■ DCL room inspections
took place last week and follow-up inspections will begin this week . By GILDA GEIST and HANNAH TAYLOR JUSTICE EDITOR AND STAFF WRITER
The Department of Community Living is currently working to improve its Health and Safety Inspections process and has assembled a working group for input on the subject, according to a Sept. 18 email to the Brandeis community from DCL requesting volunteers for the group. Initial inspections are taking place from Oct. 23 to Nov. 6, according to an Oct. 15 campus-wide email from DCL. Follow-up inspections for those with violations will be conducted by a Community Advisor from Nov. 6 to Nov. 13. The working group met for its first discussion on Sept. 27. During this meeting, the working group reviewed the Health and Safety Inspection Process, which included an evaluation of CA training and of DCL’s communication with students about the inspection process, according to a Nov. 1 email to the
Justice from DCL Assistant Director Melody Smith. “The group gave us great suggestions for improvements including the reformatting of our email (which we updated for this semester) as well as the option to schedule a time for the inspection (which we are also piloting in East and Skyline),” she wrote. In her email, Smith further explained that DCL wants to hear feedback from residents and answer their questions with the goals of improving the inspection process and helping residents to understand its importance. “We have heard that residents felt they were not given informed consent about the inspections, so we hope with better communication and messaging, this will give residents more awareness of the process and the timeline in which these inspections occur,” Smith wrote. According to Smith’s email and the Sept. 18 email from DCL, DCL hopes these discussions will improve the Health and Safety Inspection process and better inform students about the inspection process. “The goal DCL has for this evaluation is to gain [residents’] feedback, answer any questions they
See DCL INSPECTIONS, 7 ☛
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