The Peace Professor

A few days before our meeting in this remote and sweltering corner of Colombia, John Paul Lederach sent me an e-mail message — from Nepal.

Nepal and Colombia are just two of the conflict zones on four continents where Mr. Lederach, a professor of international peace-building at the University of Notre Dame’s Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, makes regular stops. Nepal’s government and rebels recently reached a peace agreement, while Colombia remains embroiled in a four-decades-old, drug-fueled civil war. Yet frustrations and jet lag don’t prevent Mr. Lederach from arriving in high spirits that seem capable of bringing hope to the most desolate circumstances…