INTERNATIONAL ADVOCATE FOR PEACE AWARD CEREMONY: OPENING REMARKS

Transcription

1 INTERNATIONAL ADVOCATE FOR PEACE AWARD CEREMONY: OPENING REMARKS Dr. Peter T. Coleman* Good evening. It is a very fun and exciting honor for me to be asked to introduce this year s recipient of the International Advocate for Peace Award, Abigail E. Disney. Abby Disney is a force of nature. Having known Abby for almost 25 years now, as a close friend and a colleague, this fact has become abundantly clear to me. Whether taking command and control at a board meeting of the New York Women s Foundation, on a volleyball court in her backyard, with a group of misogynous political luminaries at the UN, or while cooking like the Iron Chef in my yes, my own kitchen, Abby is formidable; undaunted, plucky, audacious. Abby not only plays by her own rules, but she makes them up as she goes along. Allow me a couple of stories. In the 1970s, when Abby was in high school at The Buckley School in Los Angeles, she joined the boys soccer team at her school because they did not have a girls team. She excelled on the team, outperforming many of the boys, and for this she was berated by both her family and by the principal of the school for bringing shame to the institution. The Disney Family, as some of you may know, has had something of a reputation in the past for supporting a rather conservative, pro-business, pro-american agenda. Abby Disney, grandniece to Walt, veered off this path quite young, and has today * Dr. Peter T. Coleman holds a Ph.D. in Social/Organizational Psychology from Columbia University. He is currently Associate Professor of Psychology and Education at Columbia University where he holds a joint-appointment at Teachers College and The Earth Institute and teaches courses in Conflict Resolution, Social Psychology, and Social Science Research. Dr. Coleman is Director of the International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution (ICCCR) at Teachers College, Columbia University, Chair of Columbia University s Advanced Consortium on Cooperation, Conflict, and Complexity (ACCCC), and a research affiliate of the International Center for Complexity and Conflict (ICCC) at The Warsaw School for Social Psychology in Warsaw, Poland. He has conducted research on ingroup/outgroup formation, the mediation of inter-ethnic conflict, intractable conflict, complexity theory and conflict, identity formation, moral emotions, ripeness and conflict, and on the conditions and processes which foster the constructive use of social power. In 2003, he became the first recipient of the Early Career Award from the American Psychological Association, Division 48: Society for the Study of Peace, Conflict, and Violence. Dr. Coleman co-edits The Handbook of Conflict Resolution: Theory and Practice (2000; 2nd edition 2006), and has authored over 60 journal articles and chapters. He is also a New York State certified mediator and experienced consultant. 527

2 528 CARDOZO J. OF CONFLICT RESOLUTION [Vol. 12:527 become a leading progressive voice in support of the rights of women and children to live in peace worldwide. Two years ago, I invited Abby to participate in a day-long meeting that Jeff Sacks and I organized at Columbia University on fostering sustainable peace. This was a meeting of big-shot academics, UN officials, and other global players in the foundation- NGO-peace world. After a couple of hours of rather mundane, predictable discussion, Abby raised her hand and said, When are we going to talk about gender? I don t see how we can speak about war and violence without addressing the dominant role men play in those activities, the extreme suffering and abuse experienced by women and girls in violent conflict, and the transformative role women often play in ending conflict and healing communities? Of course, this comment was met with a deafening silence... and a quick change of subject. But damn if Abby would give it up. I then watched Abby, again and again throughout the day, respectfully but tenaciously, inject the relevance and centrality of gender and women into a discourse that would have been very happy to ignore it altogether, thank you very much. (By the way, Abby and her colleague Leymah Gbowee have just authored an outstanding chapter on gender and peace for a new book I am editing with Morton Deutsch on sustainable peace look for it). And much like the Disney giants of art and industry from which she has descended, Abby has been an extraordinarily productive and creative force. I won t recite her CV tonight, but let me simply illustrate some of her more creative initiatives. Twenty years ago, Abby and her partner Pierre Hauser cofounded the Daphne Foundation, a progressive, social change foundation that has raised millions of dollars in grants to grassroots, community-based organizations working with low-income communities in New York City in areas ranging from women s rights to AIDS advocacy, children s health, labor conditions, incarceration, community organizing and environmentalism. More recently, Daphne has expanded its mission to help address the plight of women and children around the world. For decades, Abby has played a critical role in a number of other social and political organizations, including Chairing of The New York Women s Foundation, and helping lead the White House Project, the Global Fund for Women, the Roy Disney Family Foundation, and the Fund for the City of New York. She has also been on the advisory boards of a broad range of organizations working in the areas of poverty, women s issues, education and the

3 2011] OPENING REMARKS 529 environment. This includes forming Liberty Media with Gloria Steinem and a group of other passionate investors to rescue and secure the fate of Ms. Magazine when it was in danger of extinction. But Abby s more recent work on peace and conflict constitute perhaps her most ambitious and visionary efforts, and the accomplishments for which she is being honored tonight. In 2006, Abby began to act as a catalyst for women and peace around the globe. Having met the inspiring Liberian peace activist Leymah Gbowee, she became instantly compelled to tell Leymah s then-unknown story of how a small band of women (mothers, aunts and grandmothers) dared to challenge the barriers of gender and politics in Africa to help bring an end to a century of civil war through persistent but peaceful tactics. It was at this point that she turned to the family business of filmmaking to tell Leymah s story. The result of her collaboration with Leymah, the director Gini Reticker and many others, was the film, Pray the Devil Back to Hell, an extraordinarily hopeful documentary about the role that the women s movement played in ending the civil war in Liberia. The film was met with high praise and critical acclaim, including winning the Best Documentary Film Award at the Tribeca Film Festival in NYC. But Abby and her team did not stop there. In 2008, following the groundswell of interest in Pray the Devil Back to Hell, she launched Peace is Loud, an organization that supports female voices and international peace-building through nonviolent means. Following this, as part of Pray s distribution campaign, Abby organized a 2009 Global Peace Tour, a nine-month grassroots screening tour which brought the film to hundreds of community screenings in churches, living rooms, community spaces, and forums in the U.S. and abroad. The Tour culminated in a showcase event in New York City on the UN s International Day of Peace. The Tour had three main goals: 1. To reach audiences in the U.S. and the developed world in order to increase awareness of women s activism in wartime, heighten sensitivity to the impact of war on women and give women reason to feel greater enthusiasm and hope for their own activism. 2. To reach influentials and policy makers through targeted screenings at the ministry level (such as the U.S. Depart-

4 530 CARDOZO J. OF CONFLICT RESOLUTION [Vol. 12:527 ment of State) and in places where people of influence gather (like Davos). The goal of these screenings was to ensure that in future peace talks women would be taken more seriously, that press would be more likely to cover these events when they occur, and to heighten the likelihood that when women do try to influence these gatherings, they ll find allies positioned inside the rooms where the decisions get made who will argue for their point of view. 3. To reach out to women and men in conflict zones, post conflict zones and places of political tension and instability to spark creative thinking about political organizing, to inspire with an example of incredibly strategic and courageous work, and to remind people that once in a while, such movements really do succeed. During the Global Peace Tour, over 350 groups hosted public and community screenings spanning countries and continents, using the film as an advocacy tool to shine a light on their cause and to demonstrate the potential of peaceful conflict resolution. It was exhibited at least 411 times during the tour, screening in 235 American cities, 45 states, and 31 foreign countries. It reached over 31,200 viewers. Pray screened in art house theaters, United States embassies, museums, high schools, universities, vacation resorts, public libraries, social service agencies, neighborhood and community empowerment coalitions, film festivals, cruise ships, international development organizations, film societies, yoga studios, performing arts centers, and academic conferences. Among faith groups, the film was screened in churches of nearly every Christian denomination Mennonite, Methodist, Unitarian, Catholic, Baptist, Lutheran, Quaker, Presbyterian, Nazarene, Mormon as well as by groups identifying as Muslim, transcendental Buddhist, inter-faith, and Jewish. As a result of this growing movement, Abby s team was contracted to develop an upcoming television project, Women, War & Peace, which is currently in pre-production for PBS Wide Angle by Fork Films, Abby s production company. Here, I have to say on a personal note, that in the midst of all these world-class achievements, Abby, the person, somehow remains to be one of the smartest, most genuine, honest, generous, and fun people I know, who shows a remarkably candid sense of humor about herself, and whose ability to navigate through the different worlds of business, academics, filmmaking, peacemaking,

5 2011] OPENING REMARKS 531 philanthropy, development, friendship and direct, on-the-ground, hands-in-the-dirt service, continues to amaze me. Finally, I would be remiss if I didn t note Abby s most promising creative acts. My mentor, Morton Deutsch, has said that the best measure of a leader s accomplishments in this world is the number and quality of leaders that they spawn and inspire. Abby has done this in all of her work as a philanthropist, educator, producer, and activist... but most centrally, with her partner, Pierre, Abby has spawned four extraordinary human beings, Eamon, Henry, Olivia and Charlotte, who I suspect one day one of you will be introducing up here, to honor the creative, groundbreaking work that they, too, have gone on to do to make this world a more peaceful place. So please, join me in welcoming and congratulating, Abby Disney, recipient of the 2011 Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution International Advocate for Peace Award, and her team of leaders.

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