The 30th Annual Hesburgh Lecture in Ethics and Public Policy featuring Leymah Gbowee

Leymah Gbowee, 2011 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, will present her lecture, "Redefining Peace: A Necessity for Global Sustainability." 

Gbowee is a Liberian peace activist, trained social worker, and women's rights activist. She is widely known for leading Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace, which brought together Christian and Muslim women in a nonviolent movement that was pivotal to ending Liberia’s civil war in 2003. Ms. Gbowee’s life and work is chronicled in her memoir, Mighty Be Our Powers, and in the documentary, “Pray the Devil Back to Hell.”

Gbowee is the executive director of the Institute on Gender, Law, and Transformative Peace Initiative at the City University of New York (CUNY) School of Law. She is the founder of the Gbowee Peace Foundation Africa, the founding head of the Liberia Reconciliation Initiative, and the co-founder and former executive director of Women Peace and Security Network Africa.

A global thought leader and international facilitator for peace, Gbowee has been named one of the 100 Most Influential African Women by Avance Media, one of the World’s 100 Most Influential People in Gender Policy, by Apolitical, and one of the World’s 50 Greatest Leaders, Fortune Magazine. In 2020, Ms. Gbowee was honored with the Martin & Coretta King Inaugural Peace & Justice Award.

The annual Hesburgh Lecture in Ethics and Public Policy, established by the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies in 1995, honors the Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, C.S.C., president emeritus of Notre Dame, a global champion of peace and justice, and the founder of the Kroc Institute. Each year a distinguished scholar, policymaker, and/or peace advocate is invited by the Kroc Institute director to deliver a major lecture on an issue related to ethics and public policy in the context of peace and justice.

Photo: Michael Angelo for Wonderland