Carter School Faculty

It’s been a year since George Mason University’s Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution touched base in the war-torn Democratic Republic of the Congo. Their goal? Accompany locals in creating their own sustainable peace—something the country has not experienced in more than 30 years.

Carter School Dean Alpaslan Özerdem, and Charles Davidson, PhD ’19, Carter School research faculty and alumnus, visited the Congo in October 2022 to check in on the “Peacemaking + Initiative,” funded by Milt Lauenstein, and assess the direction for its next phase.

The ongoing war in Ukraine is unique from other conflicts, and the international community can take five actions to control the situation, said Karina Korostelina, professor and director of the Program for the Prevention of Mass Violence at George Mason University’s Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution.

Korostelina shared her perspective over Zoom:

Students and faculty from the early days of the Center for Conflict Analysis and Resolution (CCAR), the center that later became the Carter School, will undoubtedly recall Joe Camplisson, who passed away in his native Belfast on Friday, July 9, 2021, at the age of 92.

Though several public opinion polls have shown a decrease in support for the Black Lives Matter Movement year after the murder of George Floyd, the political victories gained by the movement’s earlier momentum will set the stage for what’s next, said Carter School professor Tehama Lopez Bunyasi.

“#BlackLivesMatter and the Movement for Black Lives have played critical roles in not only shaping our contemporary discourse on racism, but we have seen how those mobilized in concert with this movement have brought about important electoral victories,” Lopez Bunyasi said. “This racial justice movement endures and evolves alongside a countermovement that seeks to restrict who participates in our democracy and what stories get told about our country.”

Can enemy groups learn to develop compassion for one another? That was the question Carter School professor Daniel Rothbart set out to answer in his research at Rondine, a two-year “laboratory for peace.” Now, the results are in.

“This is the first in-depth case study of compassion among civilians who live in conflict zones,” said Rothbart, who collaborated with George Mason University professors Thalia Goldstein, Marc Gopin and Karina Korostelina. “We hope this is a model that can help create new practices for peacebuilders to cultivate compassion.”

Following decades of war and genocide in Sudan, in April 2019 a mass movement from civilians overthrew the dictatorship of Omar al-Bashir. As the country transitions to democratic rule, George Mason University’s Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution is working to empower civilians to use their voice to impact the future.

The Mason team, working with partners in Sudan, has been interviewing and video recording oral histories of 100 Sudanese civilians who have lived through both war and peace. Their answers, which expand upon their experiences, also include their vision for a just Sudanese society.

The COVID-19 pandemic has made it so most museums are closed, but students and researchers at George Mason University’s John Mitchell, Jr. Program (JMJP) are working hard to create a digital one that sheds light on civil rights pioneers with largely untold stories.

Thanks to an $8,000 grant from Virginia Humanities, the team is building a digital exhibit on the life of anti-lynching advocate John Mitchell, Jr., and his colleagues Frederick Douglass and Ida B. Wells. The grant is part of $181,500 in funding awarded to 25 nonprofits.

George Mason University’s Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution will host its Spring 2021 Peace Week virtually March 22-26, focusing on how to foster anti-racism approaches in the field of conflict resolution in the United States and around the world.

The eastern region of Ukraine has been an intense battleground since 2014, when Russia controversially annexed the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea and invaded the Donbass region in eastern Ukraine. Though a ceasefire was called, it has been violated daily. More than 10,000 people have died and roughly 1.6 million are registered as internally displaced people (IDP).

But a step toward hope and peace may be on the horizon, thanks to George Mason University’s Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution, and their new project funded by a $50,000 grant from the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine.

Dr. Özerdem is Dean of the Carter School and specializes in conflict resolution, peacebuilding and post-conflict reconstruction. With over 20 years of field research experience in Afghanistan, Bosnia-Herzegovina, El Salvador, Indonesia, Kosovo, Lebanon, Liberia, Nepal, Nigeria, Philippines, Sierra Leone, Solomon Islands, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Tajikistan, and Turkey.