Carter School Political Leadership Academy

Finding opportunities for peace in today's American political context

Colleen Rich — Mon, 28 Nov 2022 18:09:22 +0000

Finding opportunities for peace in today's American political context Colleen Rich Mon, 11/28/2022 - 13:09

In This Story

The Political Leadership Academy (PLA) at the Carter School hosted recently re-elected Congressman Don Beyer on November 19 for a brunch with about 50 members of the local community including several alumni of the PLA and locally elected political leadership. The event highlighted the achievements of local, state and national impact of the academy and the Carter School more broadly and was highlighted by a conversation between Dean Alp Özerdem and the Congressman as they discussed opportunities for peace and conflict resolution in today's American political context, with a special emphasis on local and federal contexts and how members of the community can get involved in the political conversation and make an impact on the Northern Virginia area. Learn more about the Carter School.

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An unusual prison encounter inspired this alum to open doors for peacebuilding

Mariam Aburdeineh — Thu, 14 Oct 2021 16:08:58 +0000

An unusual prison encounter inspired this alum to open doors for peacebuilding Mariam Aburdeineh Thu, 10/14/2021 - 12:08

In This Story

Agnieszka Paczyńska

Susan Allen

Charles Davidson

Charles Davidson being airlifted by the United Nations in the Congo in 2019, after the region came under attack from militia groups in the area. Photo provided.

A cultural immersion trip in 2008 brought Charles Davidson (PhD ’19) inside the walls of San Pedro prison in La Paz, Bolivia. What he saw there not only changed his life, he said, but ignited a spark of inspiration that led to peacebuilding efforts around the world.

“At the time, children were living in the prison with their incarcerated parents because there was nowhere else for them to go,” said Davidson, research faculty and alumnus of ��AV’s Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution. “I felt so deeply this reality that children were paying the price of their parents’ crimes, and I felt there was more to be done to address issues in war-torn countries, especially as a person of faith.”

From that moment, Davidson said he decided to dedicate his life to breaking cycles of violence.

“I came back to the United States and started reading everything I could about what it meant to be a professional peacebuilder,” the Arkansas native said. “I wrote down names of different war-torn countries I wanted to affect change in and nailed [the paper] to my doorframe.”

His dream wasn’t fleeting. Davidson said he spent his early 20s traveling to and living in conflict-ridden countries, including Colombia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Honduras and Uganda, to learn as much as he could about conflicts and peacebuilding.

When he returned home in 2009, he founded the nonprofit, Innovations in Peacebuilding International (formerly ForgottenSong), which has launched or supported 16 peacebuilding projects in five war-torn countries.

“A mountaintop moment for us has been working directly with the demobilization of child combatants [in the Congo],” Davidson said.

In partnership with a Congolese-led organization that works to demobilize young people engaged with militias, Davidson’s group helps offer sustainable futures and peaceful alternatives to children, when and if they choose to leave those militias. That could mean helping fund their education, or supporting their start in agriculture, entrepreneurship, or pursuit of a technical skill, Davidson said.

From left to right: David Bubasha, Charles Davidson, and the late Thierry Shabani. Bubasha and Shabani were former child soldiers who left militias to start AJDC, an organization that works to demobilize child combatants in the Congo, and partners with IPI. 2019. Photo provided.

“What has always impressed me about Charles is his infectious enthusiasm and passion for his work, research, family and friends, and especially for making the world a better place,” said Professor Agnieszka Paczynska. “He does this incredibly important work while remaining modest and humble.”

Davidson said the Carter School, with its reputation for being a leader in peacebuilding, was his dream PhD program.

Davidson and his wife, Abby, in Andorra in 2018. “[Abby] has always backed my ideas, and been the breadwinner for so long as I charged through school,” Davidson said. "I no way would be able to have done any of this [work] without her moral and all other types of support.”

“I got to learn the dynamics about what it means to be a peacebuilder from many different angles, read the great minds, be around great thinkers, attend conferences and meet my scholarly heroes,” Davidson said, adding that what he learned continues to influence his work.

“[The Carter School] helped me respect the agency and identity of people involved with conflict,” he said. “Thereby, it equipped me to go searching for peace in the minds of those who were experienced in the conflict, rather than thinking I possessed all the answers.”

Davidson is also impacting the world, said Professor Susan Allen, as he leads Mason’s Political Leadership Academy, which encourages participants to embrace conflict in healthy ways.

“I really hope that, domestically and internationally, my life and career will amount to people knowing how to think about conflict differently,” Davidson said. “If people are willing to meet one another on the field of their humanity, with kindness, love and respect, in spite of—or even through—their conflicts, I know I’ll have done my job.”

Davidson, and a team visiting the area to explore ideas for expanding peacemaking practices, gather with villagers from Minembwe in 2019, after the area came under attack from militia groups in the area. Photo provided.

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Faculty and Staff News

The Taliban as a long-term ‘government’ is unrealistic, Mason expert says. Here’s what needs to be done.

Mariam Aburdeineh — Wed, 25 Aug 2021 16:02:23 +0000

The Taliban as a long-term ‘government’ is unrealistic, Mason expert says. Here’s what needs to be done. Mariam Aburdeineh Wed, 08/25/2021 - 12:02

In This Story

Charles Davidson

Charles Davidson. Photo provided.

The Taliban’s reign in Afghanistan is not feasible long-term, said Charles Davidson, executive director of the Political Leadership Academy at ��AV’s Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution.

“The Taliban is a group of warlords…they are not a government, they are not politicians,” Davidson said. “History shows that when warlords fill a political vacuum, it’s only a matter of time until that system breaks down, if they’re not able and willing to allow people who can govern to do their jobs properly.”

Countering the Taliban’s aggressions and achieving a more peaceful outcome will take a multifaceted strategy, he said.

“We have to get people out who we promised we would get out,” Davidson said. “We have to hold to those commitments not only for the safety of our own citizens and the citizens that we worked with in Afghanistan, which is primary, but for the sustainability of our trustworthiness as a nation going forward in foreign policy and diplomatic relations.”

The next step is to promote and protect the safety and security of human rights activists, journalists and others who are likely to be targets of the Taliban-led government, Davidson said, adding protests are likely to increase. “We have to continue to shine a light on their voices so that they’re not lost, and, should they be violently oppressed, that that doesn’t go unnoticed,” he added.

Global awareness could be a gamechanger, he said.

“The reason why the Taliban was able to do what they did the first time around is that no one paid a whole lot of attention,” Davidson said. “We’re accompanying a generation of people who are now educated, who have ideas for their own future—possibilities that were afforded them through keeping oppressive regimes at bay.”

The situation is likely to get much worse before it gets better, Davidson said, which is why the global community needs to support efforts aimed at maintaining their human rights.

“One way the Taliban had other people play into their systems was choosing particular groups to oppress,” he said.

It’s much easier said than done, Davidson said, but if Afghans can stand up for those who are oppressed and work toward a sense of equality rather than playing into systems of hatred and oppression, particularly if they are the ones who benefit, then that is going to slow the systems of power the Taliban is trying to impose.

“The Taliban has made a lot of promises, especially about the economy and women’s rights,” Davidson said. “As they’ve shown, they’re not going to make good on those promises, so we have to make sure we’re making decisions based on what’s best for peace-loving Afghans.”

Charles Davidson is executive director of the Carter School’s Political Leadership Academy and President of the nonprofit ForgottenSong. He earned his PhD in Conflict Analysis and Resolution from Mason in 2019, with a focus in Middle East Conflict. Davidson lived in Afghanistan in 2008-09.

For more information, contact Mariam Aburdeineh at 703-993-9518 or maburdei@gmu.edu.

About George Mason

��AV is Virginia’s largest public research university. Located near Washington, D.C., Mason enrolls 39,000 students from 130 countries and all 50 states. Mason has grown rapidly over the past half-century and is recognized for its innovation and entrepreneurship, remarkable diversity and commitment to accessibility. Learn more at www2.gmu.edu.

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Tip Sheet

Alicia Jones

Nora Malatinsky — Fri, 23 Jul 2021 19:40:23 +0000

Alicia Jones Nora Malatinsky Fri, 07/23/2021 - 15:40

Executive Director, Challenging Racism

Biography

For over 20 years, Alicia has been a supporter and advocate for people of color (PoC) in her various roles. From working with Urban Enterprise Zones, chambers, local, regional and state agencies and departments, she has consistently been utilized as a resource for reaching and organizing in PoC community.

Currently, she is the Executive Director of Challenging Racism, an Arlington-based nonprofit with the mission “to disrupt racism wherever we find it.” Last fall, she led Challenging Racism in a partnership with Arlington County Government to develop and execute the program, Dialogues on Race and Equity (DRE). This project created a community conversation on race and racial equity in Arlington.

She is currently serving as the Chair of the Racial Equity Workgroup for the Maryland Humanities. During her tenure, she moderated the series,“Beyond the Statements,” a 3-session program with various Maryland leaders on operationalizing racial equity in their humanities organizations.

In each of her positions, she has continued to be a voice for PoC in the community and a representative and deep thinker on issues of race and racism. She continues to engage in social and racial justice in all areas of her life. She is the mother of 3 children with her partner, Terence, of over 20 years.

New academy at the Carter School helps future leaders navigate political conflicts

Colleen Rich — Tue, 10 Nov 2020 10:00:16 +0000

New academy at the Carter School helps future leaders navigate political conflicts Colleen Rich Tue, 11/10/2020 - 05:00

As division and partisanship are increasingly emphasized in American politics, it is easy for conflicts to escalate. ��AV’s Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution believes disagreements can be beneficial, when they’re approached the right way. That’s why they created the Political Leadership Academy (PLA) in partnership with the Bipartisan Leadership Project.

“The space for bi-partisan or nonpartisan political decision-making is increasingly constrained,” said Carter School Dean Alpaslan Özerdem. “At the Carter School, we wanted to address this challenge by focusing on the interface between political decision making and conflict resolution.”

The academy will be one of the school’s primary means of outreach to policy-making circles and a direct contribution toward bi-partisan decision making in our country, Özerdem said.

Charles Davidson, research faculty and a 2019 PhD alumnus of the Carter School, is director of the academy.

“We understand that conflict will always be present in our political system,” Davidson said, adding that differing opinions support a healthy democracy. “It’s not our goal to eliminate conflict, but rather to help people be effective through conflict.”

The inaugural cohort included 39 students who met for three weeks this semester over Zoom. The academy will also be held in future semesters.

“We’ve had everybody from college freshmen all the way up to elected officials and everybody in between,” Davidson said.

The cohort, which Davidson said comprised both conservatives and liberals, heard from a range of distinguished speakers, including Virginia State Senator Barbara Favola, U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, former candidate for Virginia’s 1st District Qasim Rashid, former mayor of Alexandria Allison Silberberg, Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs Paul Ray, and Carter School faculty.

“The professors and practitioners we heard from were absolutely incredible and very well versed in their field,” said academy student Aidan Dunning, a government affairs associate with Rock Central.

The cohort also had the chance to connect during weekly networking sessions, which Dunning described as “top tier.”

“I was blown away by the thoughtfulness and intelligence of my fellow cohort, and I developed some relationships that I hope to carry on for years,” he said.

“Regardless if you see your professional career revolving around running for office or supporting a member of an elected position, the basic life skills that this course can teach you around conflict resolution and maintaining that ability to understand perspective are valuable and incredibly insightful for anybody,” Dunning added.

Those skills may be needed now more than ever.

“Conflict has reshaped itself into something that is much more based on identity, it’s more personal,” Davidson said. “If we can help to restructure people’s approach to American political conflict, we can help to re-guide the way conflict is approached both between acting politicians and our citizenry to make a stronger country.”

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Mason’s Carter School prevails in pandemic. Here’s what is on the horizon for its first year.

Mariam Aburdeineh — Fri, 18 Sep 2020 05:00:00 +0000

Mason’s Carter School prevails in pandemic. Here’s what is on the horizon for its first year. Mariam Aburdeineh Fri, 09/18/2020 - 01:00

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Solon Simmons

admin_alpha — Tue, 20 Oct 2015 23:30:01 +0000

Solon Simmons admin_alpha Tue, 10/20/2015 - 19:30

Professor at the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution, Carter School

Contact Information

Email: ssimmon5@gmu.edu

Phone: 703-993-3781
Campus: Arlington
Building: Arlington: Vernon Smith Hall
Room 5104
Mail Stop: 4D3

Biography

Solon Simmons is full professor and the director of The Narrative Transformation Lab (TNT Lab) at ��AV’s Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution. A sociologist by training, he is the author many books and articles on narrative and storytelling in peace and politics, including Conflict Resolution after the Pandemic Building Peace, Pursuing Justice (2021), Root Narrative Theory and Conflict Resolution; Power, Justice and Values (2020), and The Eclipse of Equality: Arguing America on Meet the Press (2013), and most recently, Narrating Peace: How to Tell a Conflict Story (2024) and The Handbook of Social and Political Conflict (coming 2025). At The Narrative Transformation Lab, Solon is leading efforts to develop cutting-edge narrative tools for use in practical applications in both adversarial struggles for justice and collaborative journeys toward peace. Solon served as interim dean for the Carter School in 2013, and Vice President for Global Strategy for George Mason from 2014-2017, and is current President of the Faculty Senate. He teaches classes on the craft of peace writing, conflict theory, narrative, media, discourse and conflict, human rights, quantitative and qualitative methodology, global conflict, and critical theory.

Books

Root Narrative Theory and Conflict Resolution: Power, Justice, and Conflict Resolution

2020

This book introduces Root Narrative Theory, a new approach for narrative analysis, decoding moral politics, and for building respect and understanding in conditions of radical disagreement.

Learn More

Eclipse of Equality: Arguing America on Meet the Press

To understand American politics, it is essential to understand our disparate political tendencies as they have played out in public debate. Uncovering how and why certain arguments have been persuasive over the last decades—as set forth on Meet the Press, the longest running political roundtable—Simmons chronicles the defining political debates of the 20th century.

Learn More

Degrees

PhD, Sociology , University of Wisconsin-Madison
MA, Sociology, University of Wisconsin-Madison
BA, History, University of Chicago

Tehama Lopez Bunyasi

admin_alpha — Tue, 20 Oct 2015 23:24:01 +0000

Tehama Lopez Bunyasi admin_alpha Tue, 10/20/2015 - 19:24

Associate Professor of Conflict Analysis and Resolution, Carter School

Contact Information

Email: tlopezbu@gmu.edu

Phone: 703-993-9363
Campus: Arlington
Building: Arlington: Vernon Smith Hall
Room 5090
Mail Stop: 4D3

Biography

Tehama Lopez Bunyasi is Associate Professor at the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution at ��AV. A political scientist by training, her scholarship is broadly concerned with matters of race, racism and antiracism in the United States, with specializations in structural inequality, racial attitudes and ideologies, racial marginalization, and the politics of whiteness.

In her book Stay Woke: A People's Guide to Making All Black Lives Matter (NYU Press, 2019), she and co-author Candis Watts Smith illuminate lessons from the current Movement for Black Lives to equip people to become effective racial justice advocates and antiracists. Blending together a wealth of scholarly work with critical reflections from popular culture, Stay Woke sheds light on the precarious nature of Black lives in the United States by unmasking structural racism and explaining how even well-meaning people can reproduce racial inequality. Created as a toolkit and written in accessible language, Stay Woke empowers its readers to become more knowledgeable participants in public dialogue, activism, and American politics.

Lopez Bunyasi's second book project Breaking the Racial Contract: Conscious Egalitarianism and the Politics of Whiteness (under contract with NYU Press) utilizes nationwide survey data and in-depth interviews with antiracist activists to explore the relationship between whites' perceptions of racial privilege and support for racially egalitarian policies and practices. In redirecting the study of racial attitudes to address the under-articulated side of racial inequality—racial advantage—this book maps out a constellation of critical resistance to the hierarchical racial order and brings attention to the not-fully-realized potential of privilege-cognizant politics.

Her article-length peer-reviewed research has been published in a number of academic journals, including Perspectives on Politics; Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics; Politics, Groups, and Identities; Polity; Sociology of Race and Ethnicity; The Black Scholar; Chicana/o Latina/o Law Review; and Radical Teacher.

Dr. Lopez Bunyasi engages a broader audience on matters of American politics, racial disparities and racial violence by contributing commentary to a variety of national and international media outlets, including PBS, The New York Times, C-SPAN, NBC News, Voice of America, and the Scene on Radio podcast.

Prior to joining the Carter School, Dr. Lopez Bunyasi was a faculty member at Ohio University, and held the Samuel DuBois Cook Postdoctoral Fellowship at Duke University's Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity, and Gender in the Social Sciences. She is a recipient of the Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship and a supportive alumna of the Ralph Bunche Summer Institute. Most recently, she received the Career Enhancement Fellowship from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation & Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation. She has a B.A. in American Government from the University of Virginia and a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Chicago.

In the News

Latino voters aren't apathetic, Sanders' Nevada win shows. Stop blaming them for low turnout.
Published on February 24, 2020
Full article
Excerpts from Stay Woke featured in Yes! Magazine article "The Language of Antiracism" for special issue, The World We Want: Solutions We Love
Published on February 18, 2020
Full article
Discussing "White America and the Racial Divide"
Published on February 19, 2018
Full article
Role of University Presses in American Society
Published on November 6, 2019
Full article
'Trump Supremacy': Mason professor discusses equivocator-in-chief's lack of moral leadership
Published on August 15, 2017
Full article
Book launch for Stay Woke: A People's Guide to Making All Black Lives Matter
Published on September 26, 2019
Full article
Entering College? Latino Professors Share Some Great Advice for 2016
Published on August 25, 2016
Full article
How Did Democratic Candidates Do? Our Latino Panel Weighs In
Published on October 12, 2015
Full article
Charleston Shootings: The Intersection Of Race And Gender
Published on July 6, 2015
Full article
For Economic Growth, Repeal Drug Laws and Rehabilitate Ex-Cons
Published on October 18, 2012
Full article

Presentations and Performances

Elections 2016: Could America Go Fascist? And What Can We Do About It?
Feb 28 2016 | Washington DC
Civil Rights Event Series: Understanding Privilege
Jan 19 2016 | Arlington Campus
Colorblindness and unconscious racism
Jan 21 2015 | Metropolitan Building

Degrees

PhD, Political Science, University of Chicago
MA, Political Science, University of Chicago
BA, American Government, University of Virginia