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An Exploration of Peace
Friends Community Celebrates Peace Week 2017
The Friends community explored the Quaker testimony of Peace during its annual weeklong Peace Week celebration from February 6 through 10. This year’s Peace Week theme, “The New America: Listening Across the Divides,” called the community to reflect on the divisions that fracture our country.
During this week, the school community was asked to consider how they could pursue conversations and relationships that honor difference and, in so doing, diminish the divides. Friends’ Center for Peace, Equity, and Justice facilitated divisional assemblies and community conversations on empathic listening that culminated in a series of student-led podcasts using the StoryCorps platform. Student interviews amplified the stories of those most impacted by political divides based on race, gender, economics, culture, and morality.
In addition to student work in the classrooms throughout the week, the greater community participated in the week’s festivities during an evening with George Packer, staff writer at The New Yorker and author of The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America, on February 8. In the Meetinghouse, Mr. Packer shared his insights on the seismic shifts that have helped create, in a single generation, a country whose citizenry is adrift.
Previous Peace Week Themes and Speakers
Peace Week 2016
Peace Week 2016
Let Your Life Speak | Chelsea Clinton
Peace Week 2015
A Path Appears: Transforming Lives, Creating Opportunites | Nicholas Kristof and Maro Chermayeff
Peace Week 2014
Legacies of Peace: Choosing to Use the Gift of our Livesto Make the World a Better Place | Maggie Doyne, Neil Blumenthal ‘98 and Dr. Oliver Rothschild ‘98
Peace Week 2013
Building Bridges: Peace Through Understanding | Teri McLuhan
Peace Week 2012
Peace Like a River: Water as Matter and Metaphor | Michael Arad
Peace Week 2011
Educating for Peace: Friends Seminaryand 225 Years of Quaker Education | Steve Emerson Irene McHenry Bruce Stewart
Peace Week 2010
Beyond the Numbers: The Economics of Peace | Jeffrey Sachs
Peace Week 2009
In the Presence of Justice: The Politics of Peace | Mary Robinson
Peace Week 2008
War Letters: Both Said and Sung | Ethan Hawke, Julianne Moore, Elizabeth Palmedo and Crystal Sikora
Peace Week 2007
Environmental Stewardship – A Pathway to Peace | James Turrell
Peace Week 2006
Nonviolence in the Age of Terrorism | Arun Gandhi
Peace Week 2005
The Diplomat, the Activist and the Academic | Pierre Schori, Susan Sarandon and Jessica Tuchman Mathews
Friends Seminary actively promotes diversity, equity, inclusion, and anti-racism in all its programs and operations, including admissions, financial aid, hiring, and all facets of the educational experience. To form a community which strives to reflect the world’s diversity, we do not discriminate on the basis of race or color, religion, nationality, ethnicity, economic background, physical ability, sex, gender identity or expression, or sexual orientation. Friends Seminary is an equal opportunity employer.
Friends Seminary — the oldest continuously operated, coeducational school in NYC — serves college-bound day students in Kindergarten-Grade 12.
