Peacock

    Center for International Development and Conflict Management       •       College of Behavioral and Social Sciences       •       University of Maryland

About Us — Chair History

Institutional Setting

Since it was formally inaugurated in 1993, the Bahá'í Chair for World Peace has been affiliated with the Center for International Development and Conflict Management (CIDCM). Founded in 1981 on the campus of the University of Maryland by the late Lebanese-American scholar Edward Azar, CIDCM is a pioneer of "Track-II" (non-official) diplomacy and policy-relevant, empirical research on the causes and consequences of protracted conflicts among states, groups, and individuals.

The Search for Alternative Approaches to Building Peace

In the early 1980s, Professor Azar served briefly as a political counselor to the president of Lebanon. In this capacity, Professor Azar came into contact with Professor Suheil Bushrui, a scholar of Arabic and English literature at the American University of Beirut and also a cultural adviser to the Lebanese president. At this time, Lebanese society was deeply fragmented as a result of intermingled cycles of internal conflict and external intervention. Political violence in Lebanon often intersected with communal conflict based on religious identity.

Professor Azar, a political scientist, and Professor Bushrui, a poet, became colleagues laboring side by side on efforts to mediate conflict and promote reconciliation in Lebanon. For his contributions to conflict resolution and inter-cultural dialogue, Professor Bushrui was subsequently awarded the Lebanese National Order of Merit.

Azar and Bushrui parted ways when the former returned to the University of Maryland and the latter took a professorship at Oxford University. Before long, however, Azar contacted Bushrui and extended an invitation: “What we couldn't do in Lebanon,” he said, “let's try to accomplish in America.” And so in 1985 Bushrui joined CIDCM's faculty to study the relationship between culture, values, and peace.

Deeply affected by the physical destruction and social upheaval wrought by the war in Lebanon, Professor Azar was determined to explore alternative and innovative approaches to peace building. In particular, he was anxious to develop initiatives which examined and utilized the ethical, spiritual, and cultural dimensions of conflict resolution. As a result, in 1988 he addressed a letter to the Bahá’í community that read, in part:

"Given the mission at our center, your ideas on world peace, and the willingness of the University to proudly invite Bahá’ís to explore and discuss the Bahá’í point of view in a scholarly and objective manner and to disseminate these ideas to students, scholars and government officials in Washington and elsewhere in the world, I propose…we establish a Chair and a program…at this Center."

Founding: A Collaborative Effort

The Bahá'í Chair for World Peace was the institutional embodiment of a collaborative effort undertaken by senior representatives of the Bahá'í community in the United States and internationally, CIDCM, the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences (CIDCM's parent institution), and the University of Maryland.

Following lengthy consultations on the structure and mandate of a potential Bahá'í Chair, in January 1990 a Memorandum of Understanding was signed on behalf of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá'ís of the United States and the University of Maryland.

After an initial period of fundraising, Dr. Bushrui was selected to fill the Bahá'í Chair professorship. He began a vigorous campaign to complete the Chair's endowment, and once this task was completed the Chair was formally inaugurated in a ceremony which took place in January 1993. Addressing the inaugural ceremony, Dr. William Kirwan, then president of the University of Maryland, said:

"To the members of the Bahá’í Faith, let me say how mindful we at the university are of the enormous honor you have bestowed upon the institution in allowing us to create a Chair in your name at this institution. We feel a deep sense of responsibility to you."

Consolidation: More Than a Decade of Activity

As holder of the Bahá'í Chair for World Peace from 1993 through 2005, Professor Bushrui undertook a broad range of teaching, research, and outreach initiatives to establish the Chair as a vital presence on the University of Maryland campus. Professor Bushrui's Chair Annual Reports are available on this Web site.

Among these initiatives was an undergraduate course taught by the Chair and offered through the University of Maryland's Honors Program. Entitled "The Spiritual Heritage of the Human Race," the course surveyed divine and non-divine spiritual traditions, presenting each in its own right as an independent spiritual system of ideas and practices. “The Spiritual Heritage of the Human Race” was honored with the first Interfaith Education Award granted by The Temple of Understanding, a leading interfaith organization. Course materials served as the basis for a forthcoming undergraduate textbook of the same name.

The Chair disseminated ideas and concepts to wider academic and non-academic audiences by means of an active outreach campaign involving, for example, a series of Annual Lectures delivered by speakers of international stature on major global issues. The last Annual Lecture held under Professor Bushrui's tenure was delivered in November 2005 by Dr. Robert C. Henderson. Dr. Henderson’s speech was entitled "More Than Words: Harnessing the Power to Reorder Society."

The 2005 Lecture was a milestone in the history of the Chair, in part, thanks to the presence of the entire nine-member National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá'ís of the United States. On this occasion, the National Spiritual Assembly reaffirmed its strong material and moral support of the Chair, including a generous monetary donation to be furnished over a five-year period.

Between Annual Lectures, Professor Bushrui conducted extensive lecture tours in the United States, Europe, and the Middle East. He delivered major addresses at such distinguished forums as the House of Lords in London, the European Parliament in Brussels, and the Department of State in Washington, D.C.

Over the years, the Bahá’í Chair's spiritually and culturally derived approach to peacemaking gained recognition and support from influential nongovernmental, interfaith, and policymaking organizations. The Chair collaborated on intercultural initiatives with a number of such organizations, including The Prince of Wales's Foundation (Britain), the Tannenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding (New York), The Temenos Academy (London), and the Arab International Women’s Forum (Egypt).

Perhaps Professor Bushrui’s greatest intellectual contribution as holder of the Chair was placing questions of ethics, spirituality, and interfaith dialogue on the academic agenda. Many in academia recognized the importance of these subjects only after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Years earlier, Professor Bushrui had warned that “a clash of civilizations” between the East and the West could only be avoided if both sides sought a deeper understanding of the other based on their commonalities, most importantly their shared spiritual values. Since its inception, the Chair has directed its efforts towards this end.

Professor Bushrui explored the theme of interfaith dialogue in The Spiritual Foundation of Human Rights (a monograph published by the Chair in 1998) and "World Peace and Interreligious Understanding" (an essay published in the 1999 UNESCO book Peace Education: Contexts and Values). Among the intercultural initiatives of the Chair were two collections of aphorisms, literature, and poetry entitled The Wisdom of the Arabs and The Wisdom of the Irish.

As holder of the Bahá’í Chair for World Peace, Professor Bushrui summed up his approach peace building when he stated:

"Beyond pragmatic political and economic arrangements for security and coexistence, there remains the fact that peace springs from a spiritual or moral attitude that must be cultivated, in part, through education."

Future Directions under a New Incumbent

In January 2006, Professor John Grayzel succeeded Professor Bushrui as the holder of the Bahá’í Chair for Peace. A lawyer and anthropologist, Professor Grayzel served for 27 years with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), holding senior positions in Washington, D.C., and abroad.

As holder of the Chair, Professor Grayzel is developing plans for programs and projects that will build on the solid record of accomplishment achieved by his predecessor while further expanding the scope of the Chair's activities.

Due in large part to the generosity of its community of supporters and the vision of its first incumbent, today the Bahá'í Chair for World Peace is a dynamic organization, well positioned to make substantive contributions to issues of peace, human security, and economic justice.

Although Professor Azar did not live to see the full realization of his vision (he passed away in 1991), the Bahá’í Chair continues to honor his memory and acknowledges a debt of gratitude to his ideas about, and commitment to, the cause of peace.