Friends Celebrates Peace Week 2013

In celebration of Friends Seminary’s ninth annual Peace Week (Feb. 4-8), the School welcomed filmmaker Teri McLuhan and author Patricia McCormick to its campus.

 

On February 7, a screening of Teri McLuhan’s The Frontier Gandhi: Badshah Khan, A Torch For Peace followed by a question and answer session with the filmmaker was held in the Meetinghouse.

 

The Frontier Gandhi tells the surprisingly seldom-told story of the Pashtun Muslim peacemaker, Badshah Khan. In close partnership with Mahatma Ghandi, Khan united Muslims, Hindus, Christians, Parsees, Sikhs, and Buddhists of Afghanistan and India in peaceful protest against British colonial rule. Twenty years in the making, the film brings together rare historical footage, interviews with world leaders, and testimonies from nonviolent warriors.

 

During a school assembly on February 6, Patricia McCormick, a journalist, novelist and two-time National Book Award finalist discussed Never Fall Down, her novel based on the true story of 11-year-old Arn-Chorn Pond, who survived the Killing Fields of Cambodia by playing music for members of Khmer Rouge regime. Never Fall Down was selected as a best book of the year by iTunes, The Huffington Post, the Chicago Public Library and Atlantic.com. McCormick’s visit will also be a homecoming of sorts as she is the mother of a Friends alumnus.

Following the assembly, students, faculty and staff joined representatives from Amnesty International and The Human Rights Watch in the cafeteria for some refreshments and continued discussion. Students also learned more about current human rights campaigns and participated in an advocacy service project sponsored by the Amnesty Club at Friends.