Professor Wins Two Major Peace Awards

Howard Zehr, a professor of restorative justice at Eastern Mennonite University, is the 2006 recipient of the annual Community of Christ International Peace Award, one of the world’s top awards for work in the peace field. The award comes with $30,000, which will go to EMU’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding.

Howard Zehr

Previous recipients have included U.S. civil rights leader Rev. James Lawson, British primate researcher and environmentalist Jane Goodall, Children’s Defense Fund founder and president Marian Wright Edelman, and Egyptian social reformer Dr. Jehan Sadat.

The award is in recognition of Zehr’s role as "one of the founders of the contemporary restorative justice movement," according to the organization’s website, www.cofchrist.org/peaceaward. Zehr is currently co-director of the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding (CJP).

In addition, The Journal of Law and Religion will be giving Zehr its "Lifetime Achievement Award" at a ceremony on Oct. 5 at Hamline University in St. Paul, Minn.

Zehr plans to use the awarded $30,000 to assemble and publish "the wisdom and learning of CJP’s masters-degree graduates who have studied restorative justice and are now practicing it in some way, not only in criminal justice but in schools, transitional justice, and other arenas."

Author of Seven Books

Zehr has written or edited seven books, including the widely-cited "Changing Lenses: A New Focus for Crime and Punishment," which is in its third edition and has been published in Russian, Ukrainian and Japanese. An easy-to-read version of Zehr’s ideas is contained in his "Little Book of Restorative Justice," which also has been translated into multiple languages.

A second leader affiliated with EMU, founding CJP director John Paul Lederach, received the same prize in 2000. It is unprecedented for two people linked to the same organization to receive this award. In terms of cash value, the prize is among the top 20 awarded for peace.

Zehr’s two 2006 awards follow three earlier ones conferred by: the Restorative Justice Association of Virginia in 2005, which named an annual award after Zehr and made him the first recipient of it; the New York Dispute Resolution Association in Albany, N.Y. in 2003; and Prison Fellowship International in Toronto, Canada, in 2003.

Zehr earned a bachelor’s degree from Morehouse College (the first white to graduate from this historically African American university), a masters from the University of Chicago and a doctorate from Rutgers University.

Before coming to EMU in 1996, Zehr served for 19 years as director of the office on crime and justice for the Mennonite Central Committee. A former professional photojournalist, Zehr often uses photography and interviews for his documentary work on restorative justice topics.

Zehr will participate in a panel discussion at Hamline University on Oct. 6 (see www.hamline.edu/law/jlr/Symposium) and be the keynote speaker at the Community of Christ Temple in Independence, Missouri, on Oct. 27 (see www.cofchrist.org/peaceaward).

— article by: Bonnie Price Lofton; posted September 22, 2006