Community, Courage & Collaboration
How we banded together in 2025
I’ve heard before that we tend to overestimate how much we can achieve in a day but we underestimate how much we can achieve in a year. At the Center for Peacemaking, we teach students how much we can achieve collectively when we work together.
Throughout the past year we’ve banded together for community, courage, and collaboration to meet the challenges facing our world. We are demonstrating that peacemaking is an active, not a passive, pursuit. We are building connections, working together, and creating a more peaceful future.
Immersed in Culture and History
From experiencing a new culture to exploring historic sites, immersion experiences continue to mold students’ core values, beliefs, and aspirations.
The Civil Rights Pilgrimage continues to be a formative experience for students — especially at a time when civil rights, voting rights, and Black history are under attack. Each year we discover new opportunities and make more connections. And each year, we find new ways to immerse students in the history of the struggle for civil rights in the United States.
This year’s pre-trip readings included the archival document “Notes on Organizing” by Charles McLaurin. We surprised the students, when on the second day of the program, we met with Mr. “Mac,” as he is known, in Ruleville where he organized with Fannie Lou Hamer on behalf of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.
Other first-time locations we visited this year included: the Southern Tenant Farmers Museum in Tyronza, AR, where Black and white sharecroppers organized together for labor rights; the famous Club Ebony where luminaries such as Ray Charles, Count Basie, B. B. King, and others performed; and the barn where Emmett Till was tortured and killed.
Following a successful pilot program in 2023, we added the Indigenous Solidarity Immersion to our regular schedule of domestic immersion programs. And due to how the ideal travel times aligned with the academic calendar, we ended up running the program twice in the calendar year. The spring trip is documented through a travel diary.
The Fall visit included many similar activities, including discussing tribal sovereignty and governance with President Shannon Holsey, a forest walk with medicine woman Misty Cook, and tours of sites such as the Stockbridge Munsee Health & Wellness Center where we met Marquette alumnus and psychotherapist Ranier Posselt. We are grateful to alumna Jo Ann Schedler and her husband Jon for graciously hosting and teaching us throughout the program.
Restorative Justice in Schools & Beyond
The Peace Works program continues to partner with Milwaukee Public Schools on a number of programs, especially the MPS Success Center. We spoke with the program co-directors, Willie Maryland and Drew DeLutio, to walk through how the MPS Success Center works from the initial referral to post-program check-ins. We also published an article in Peace and Conflict: The Journal of Peace Psychology that proposes alternatives to the behavioral assignment disciplinary strategy.
Peace Works also renewed its engagement with Notre Dame Schools of Milwaukee. Macy, featured in the graphic below, is one of the Marquette undergraduate students that develops and teaches lessons with youth on conflict resolution, positive communications, and other social-emotional skills.
Dr. Gabe Velez leads the Peace Works research team and is also a leading researcher in the space of school-based restorative justice. His book Making Meaning of Justice and Peace: A Developmental Lens was released in the fall. He was also featured on the AML Conversations podcast that is hosted by alumnus John Byrne.
Students Put Values into Action
Our students continued to build on past activism projects, this year completing the following: hosting clothing swaps, an open mic night for peace, and art events during World Mental Health Week and International Day of Peace. They also collaborated on Banned Books Week with Raynor Library, a mending workshop with the Office of Sustainability, and the Justice in Action conference.
This summer we had another impressive cohort of student peacemaking fellows. Mary Moore completed an internship with American Friends Service Committee’s Palestine Activism Program. Abdullah Al-Basam completed a research project on Arab-Jewish relations in Morocco. Carmen Litzau focused on environmental and food justice with local nonprofit NourishMKE, where she was supervised by former student peacemaking fellow, Jenna Koch.
Cami Basadre arranged shadowing and volunteering opportunities to further prepare her as a future health professional who aspires to work closely with indigenous communities. Val Martinez completed a research project on corruption in international politics and continued to assist Programa Velasco, the organization she interned with the previous summer.
At a time in which our world yearns for peacemakers, the peace studies program continues to prepare young people to be nonviolent changemakers in their professional pursuits.
Addressing Trauma, Building Resilience
Scaling Wellness in Milwaukee (SWIM) settled into their space in the lively Concordia 27 Community Hub, offering a full slate of wellness, healing, and resilience programming. Faculty, graduate students, and staff collaborated on an overview of the program published by the Journal of Peace Psychology.
The nonprofit operates in coordination with the Center for Peacemaking, receiving operational support from staff and a team of students. Albert Asamoah, the current Bud Frankel Memorial Fellow, is halfway through his community placement with SWIM. He’s assisted with numerous projects including website design, mental health focus groups, and community outreach.
Other Marquette students are ever-present at events like the Milwaukee County Healthy County Challenge kickoff and Holiday Wellness Fair. Likewise, Marquette Physical Therapy students provide free assessments through SWIM’s collaboration with Marquette’s ComMUnity Physical Therapy Clinic. At the Holiday Wellness Fair, students helped distribute fresh food for Thanksgiving meals and directed attendees to other services such as free blood pressure checks.
Building Community and Peace through Interfaith Engagement
We again offered a January study abroad program in India. The two-week program focuses on faith-based peacemaking from many different religious traditions. This year, at the suggestion of the Jesuits in Northeast India, we visited Bhutan to gain an understanding of their relationship with communities there. You can follow the day-by-day experience through a travel diary.
The emphasis on faith-based peacemaking continued in February with the 2025 Peacemaker in Residence, Norbert Litoing, S.J., director of the Center for Interfaith Studies in Africa (CISA) at Hekima University College in Nairobi, Kenya. Litoing’s stay at Marquette coincided with Mission Week, during which he presented his Peacemaker in Residence keynote, delivered guest lectures in classes, and was interviewed about interreligious peacemaking.
In Spring, Marquette University Press released the second edition of Interfaith Engagement in Milwaukee: A Brief History of Christian-Muslim Dialogue by Irfan A. Omar and Kaitlyn C. Daly. The new edition includes research on how interreligious dialogue continued and transformed through the COVID-19 shutdowns, Black Lives Matter uprisings, and initial post-October 7 engagement on Israel-Palestine.
We also collaborated with the Interfaith Conference of Greater Milwaukee, Campus Ministry and others to host “Amazing Faiths” dinners in the spring and the fall.
Called to be Neighbors
The Center and Marquette continue to play an essential role in Milwaukee’s Near West Side. Marquette students and faculty engaged through the resident survey, housing survey, and commercial corridor audit. The university remains a key stakeholder and anchor institution. And Center for Peacemaking student employees also assisted with the home repair grant program.
This marked the ten year anniversary of the Near West Side Partners and Promoting Assets, Reducing Crime (PARC) initiative. Among the activities and festivities were the Rev-Up MKE business plan competition, another design charette, Near West Side Week, and an anniversary celebration.
Marquette students are always excited to come together for opportunities to volunteer in the Near West Side, including for the student-led, fall break Near West Side Immersion with CAMPus Impact and MARDI GRAS (https://www.instagram.com/p/DRAe15pjwA1/).
A World Without Nuclear Weapons
In August, a delegation of students, faculty, and staff participated in a reconciliation and remembrance program in Japan in recognition of the 80th anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The delegation engaged in education and advocacy to the end of abolishing nuclear weapons.
Will deGuzman was one of the Marquette student representatives. Reflecting on the program, he said, “Ultimately, what I brought home from Japan is a deeper conviction that peace is not a distant ideal. It is something we build together in the way we live, speak, and act. At Marquette, I want to live and encourage a way of life that embodies the Gospel call to be peacemakers.”
Archbishop Etienne of Seattle, in a reflection on the program in America Magazine, recommended Center for Peacemaking co-founder Terry Rynne’s book Jesus Christ, Peacemaker: A New Theology of Peace as a must read to learn more about how Jesus practiced nonviolent direct action.
Excellence in Scholarship
In May, we celebrated T. Michael McNulty, S.J.’s retirement after nearly a decade serving as the Center for Peacemaking’s Scholar in Residence. We are so grateful for the many relationships he developed with faculty, including those featured in Marquette Today with the real estate program.
In March, we hosted the Wisconsin Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies annual conference. This included a full day of student and faculty presentations. Among the awardees recognized, was Dr. Patrick Kennelly, who received the Dick Ringler Distinguished Peace Educator Award. Marquette graduate student Rosemary Akpan won the Student Paper Award.
The conference started with a panel on Gaza and collective liberation. The panel featured global health expert Dr. Thaer Ahmed, international and civil rights law expert Huwaida Arraf, and organizer/activist Julie Kosowski.
This summer’s Rynne Research Fellows included Dr. Alexandra Crampton’s (Social and Cultural Sciences) research on ageism, ableism, and other social stigmas and Dr. Noelle Brigden’s (Political Sciences) research connecting how sport and fitness spaces in the US, El Salvador, and Philippines serve as locations for peacemaking, empowerment, and resistance. Additionally, Dr. Grant Silva (Philosophy) received the Peace Studies Course Development Grant for his course titled Global Justice.
Former Rynne Fellow, Dr. Enaya Othman (Languages, Literatures, and Cultures) published a new book Crafting Marriages: Palestinian Women Transforming Gender Boundaries. She also received a mini-grant that funds two undergraduate research assistants for her next book project on Palestinian women’s activism through cultural clothing. Dr. Anthony Peressini (Philosophy) was another mini-grant recipient for a lesson that featured local Palestinian and Israeli advocates for justice.
Peace Studies program director, Dr. Louise Cainkar, was also recognized for her excellence in scholarship on the Arab and Muslim experience in America.
As we enter 2026, we know there is a long struggle ahead. Yet, we bring to this an even longer track record of equipping students with the skills, experiences, and knowledge of how to building the community, coalitions, and alternative systems that the moment demands.
Together we are stronger. Together we will accomplish even more that we imagine.
