The Moral Imagination

It is an honor to speak with you this morning. I am humbled by the invitation. The title of this conference rings particularly appropriate for our times: “Valuing Peace in the 21st Century: Expanding the Art and Practice of Conflict Resolution.” If we are honest we must admit it clearly sets our feet onto the pathways of a complex journey through a most difficult terrain. These are not easy times we live in. They do not value peace, nor do they value the practice of conflict resolution. In this field we live a certain irony. We perhaps have never enjoyed a wider recognition for what we do and at the same time we have never experienced such a wide gap between our fundamental propositions and values, and the driving and far too often polarizing forces of national and global politics.

Clearly one of our challenges is how to make clear, accessible, and relevant the growing body of knowledge and practice of conflict transformation and peacebuilding in the wider public and in particular political spheres…