BOSTON, Sept. 4 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- America must take a major role in finding peaceful and equitable solutions to violence in the world, says Ira Magaziner, chair of the William J. Clinton Foundation policy board and former Senior White House Advisor for Policy Development in the Clinton administration, who will be the keynote speaker at a conference at Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology (MSPP) on Septembe 19 and 20, 2008.
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Joining him as major presenters at the conference -- "Healing Communities: Using Peace Psychology to Transform Violence" -- will be world-renowned pioneers in the peace psychology movement, Dr. Paula Green, founder and director of the Karuna Center for Peacebuilding (www.karunacenter.org) and of CONTACT (Conflict Transformation Across Cultures), and Dr. Kaethe Weingarten, founder and director of the Witnessing Project (www.witnessingproject.org) and associate clinical professor of psychology at Harvard Medical School and director of the Program in Family, Trauma, and Resilience at The Family Institute of Cambridge.
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Among the topics to be addressed at the two day conference will be ethnic conflicts around the world; intervening in neighborhoods hurt by gang-related violence; achieving goals of peace in the world's most conflict ravaged areas and nurturing dialogues between groups in conflict.
*A special highlight of the two days will be the display of art produced by partnerships of Israeli and Palestinian teenagers at Artsbridge, a program that uses art and guided reflective diaglogue to bridge the gap between cultures and individuals (www.artsbridgecamp.org).
-- What: Healing Communities: Using Peace Psychology to Transform -Violence
-- Sponsors:The Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology, the Karuna Center for Peacebuilding, The Witnessing Project, Public Conversations Project, Louise Diamond Consulting, and the Tikkun Institute
-- Who: Ira Magaziner, Paula Green, PhD, Kaethe Weingarten, PhD, and other leaders in peace psychology
-- Where: MSPP, 221 Rivermoor Road, West Roxbury
-- When: 8:30 am to 4:30 pm, September 19 and 20
Magaziner will discuss how, based on his national and global experiences, he views the importance of America's role, at this time in history, in achieving peaceful and equitable solutions to local, regional and world-wide problems. His talk, titled "Our Common Humanity," will have implications for mental health professionals, community workers and the lay public as to how they might contribute to changing society in a constructive direction. (The William J. Clinton Foundation is dedicated to strengthening the capacity of people in the United States and throughout the world to meet the challenges of global interdependence.)
"Our survival depends on a significant portion of the human race accomplishing a change in worldview, from one of patriotic and tribal loyalties to loyalty to life itself," says Green," who will present "Reconciliation and forgiveness in divided societies: A psychologist's reflections from the field."
Green who established the Karuna Center in the mid-90s to address the growing global challenges of ethnic, religious and political conflict in the world, is also a professor at the School of International Training Graduate Institute in Brattleboro VT, where she founded and directs CONTACT, (Conflict Transformation Across Cultures), an annual Summer Training Program for international peacebuilders.
In her speech, Green will describe the work she does with nations (at their invitation) to encourage the practice of forgiveness to bring people and societies together. One example will be villagers in Nepal who had to start living again wit
