MEETING TO HOST PEACE LEADER MAY 28

David C. Jehnsen, who is known throughout the world as a social change activist, organizer and teacher of nonviolence and of adult education for democracy, will be the guest of North Columbus Friends Meeting on May 28, when he will be visiting the discussion group, from 9 a.m. to 10 (please note that this is a half hour earlier than usual, with coffee available from 8:30 a.m. to 9).

Jehnsen’s acquaintance with nonviolence began with exposure to Martin Luther King Jr.’s leader- ship style in the civil rights campaign in 1962, when, as part of a national delegation of interfaith leaders, he was able to be directly involved in Dr. King’s campaigns through 1968.

Jehnsen helps public and private organizations to design institutional programs to educate leaders about nonviolence, conflict reconciliation, and social change for democracy. He conducts seminars and programs that educate people at many levels of society about the philosophy and methodology of nonviolence.

After Jehnsen had obtained his graduate degree from Harvard University School of Education in 1977, he joined Bernard LaFayette Jr., another leader in the human rights movement begun by Dr. King, to form, in 1978, the Institute for Human Rights and Responsibilities, which seeks to promote conflict reconciliation programs and strategies in the United States and internationally. Jehnsen is chair and founding trustee of the institute, which he continues to serve in a range of programs related to social change and development. He and LaFayette co-authored The Leaders Manual: A Structured Guide and Introduction to Kingian Nonviolence: The Philosophy and Methodology.

In 1980-81, when serving as Deputy Director of the U.S. congressional commission charged with design of the United States Institute of Peace, Jehnsen drafted the commission’s first proposal and sup- porting legislation at the request of Senator Spark M. Matsunaga. In the late 1980s and early 2000s, he was one of the members of the committee of faculty and community members, many of them from the historic peace churches (Church of the Brethren, Mennonites, and Quakers), who worked tirelessly to create an interdisciplinary Peace Studies Program at Ohio State. The Chair in Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution now enables OSU to pursue in-depth studies of nonviolent resolutions to conflict as well as other peace-related issues. (The Chair, an initiative of the Ohio Council of Churches, was established in 2003 with over a million dollars in gifts. The current holder of the chair is Christopher Gelpi, who came to Ohio State in January 2013.) Since 2012 Jehnsen has been helping to create an advanced program called Kingian Nonviolence Leadership Development, which is designed to produce, by the end of 2018, twenty-five to thirty new faculty and movement organizers per year who can guide institutions in making these programs their own as well as in developing new ones.