Jonathan Rudy, Peacemaker-in-Residence with Elizabethtown College’s Center for Global Understanding and Peacemaking, recently was named senior advisor for human security for Washington, D.C.’s Alliance for Peacebuilding (AfP).
AfP works for peaceful and just societies around the world, serving as a think-tank and vocal advocate for more than 100 member organizations. By linking policymakers and citizens, AfP imagines innovative solutions to the most pressing conflicts facing our world today.
The program on Human Security specifically works to achieve a people-centered security strategy, which has been found to be more successful, cost-effective and sustainable than traditional approaches. The program opens channels of communication between the Pentagon and local community organizations working to build human security through conflict prevention and peacebuilding.
Rudy’s work in the field of human security spans 30 years on three continents. Since 2005 he has been part of a team that has trained military officers in the Philippines in the area of conflict transformation and peacebuilding. Because of this work, he was invited to facilitate a breakout session at a conference in The Netherlands. His talk, “Preparing a New Generation of Civil-Military-Police Coordination in Peace Support Operations,” was sponsored in part by the AfP.
Rudy’s past involvement with the AfP has given him the opportunity to advise and engage civil society and military, in the United States and around the globe, on people-centered security. He brings decades of community-level experience in Africa and Asia to panels, symposiums and lectures sponsored by the CGUP and has taken numerous trips to Afghanistan, Philippines, Laos, Somaliland, Ireland and The Netherlands to teach and facilitate, offer curriculum design support, peace program mentoring and peacebuilding evaluation.
Rudy also teaches two Humanities courses in the Peace and Conflict Studies minor. “Conflict Dynamics and Transformation” deals with understanding and learning conflict interventions such as negotiation and mediation; “Peacebuilding Themes and Trends” looks at current challenges and best practices in the field of peacemaking.
Rudy has been recommended to the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and the Institute of International Education’s Council for International Exchange of Scholars Fulbright Specialist Roster. He has worked with The Alliance for Peacebuilding, Brethren Colleges Abroad, CDA Collaborative Learning Projects, Catholic Relief Service, Eastern Mennonite Seminary, Interfaith Center for Conciliation and Nonviolence, Institute for Global Engagement, Ka-ili-Yan Peacebuilding Institute, Lingana Foundation, Mennonite Central Committee, Mennonite Disaster Service, Mindanao Peacebuilding Institute (Philippines), Pennsylvania Council of Professional Geologists, On Earth Peace, Oxfam GB, Oxfam Novib, United States Institute of Peace and University of Hargeisa (Somaliland).
His work has taken him to Botswana, Burkina Faso, Djibouti, Kenya, Mozambique, Somalia, Somaliland, South Africa, South Sudan, Swaziland, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe and in Afghanistan, Australia, Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, East Timor, Indonesia, Iran, Philippines, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Laos, Myanmar (Burma), Nepal, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam.
