“If you want peace, work for justice.”
Not many papal exhortations find their way onto bumper stickers, but Pope Paul VI’s simple but profound statement also informs the research, teaching, and public service of the Kroc Institute.
A vision of societies flourishing under a just and sustainable peace lends coherence and passion to the many endeavors of the Kroc Institute’s scholars, teachers, and public intellectuals, who engage in the study and advocacy of strategic peacebuilding and who educate, train, and form strategic peacebuilders.
As scholars and teachers of peacebuilding, Kroc faculty study the causes and dynamics of inter-state, civil, ethnic, and religious wars and the practices of conflict transformation and culturally nuanced peacebuilding. They also explore peace processes, negotiated settlements designed to secure the peace, global and local networks and institutions dedicated to containing violence and advancing human rights and economic development, and restorative and retributive justice.
As scholars of strategic peacebuilding, Kroc faculty make the connections among these disparate elements of peacebuilding. Informed by this analysis, they devise comprehensive concepts, strategies, and public policies to enhance the effectiveness and coordination of local, regional, national, and transnational efforts to reduce violence and build the conditions for sustainable peace.
Perhaps most important, we strive to enlarge the circle of the growing, worldwide company of strategic peacebuilders — not only by educating and training generations of Notre Dame students, but also by reaching out and welcoming to the conversation multiple publics dedicated to the cause of peace. In this spirit, I invite you to become more familiar with Notre Dame’s Kroc Institute and to join us in building a more just and peaceful world.
R. Scott Appleby
Professor of History
John M. Regan Jr. Director of the Kroc Institute
