Urbana University, a branch campus of Franklin University, will host Paul K. Chappell April 2-4. The three-day Peace Literacy Program is sponsored by the Alicia Titus Memorial Peace Fund. The program will focus on how we can best address the root causes of trauma and our many societal challenges, including today’s social media and tomorrow’s technological disruptions, to create communities that will survive and thrive in the 21st century.
The answer, according to West Point grad, former Army captain in Iraq and international peace educator Paul K. Chappell, can be found in the new frameworks and skill sets of Peace Literacy. He will bring this vision of a peaceful revolution when he speaks at Urbana University. Events include a public lecture, a one-day workshop for first responders, and a one-day workshop for educators.
The multi-racial Chappell was raised in a violent household in Alabama, the son of a Korean mother and a half-black and half-white father who suffered extreme war trauma from combat roles in the Korean and Vietnam wars. These experiences were part of what compelled Chappell to forge a new understanding of war, peace, rage, trauma, and our shared humanity.
Recognizing that humanity is facing new challenges that require us to become as well-trained in waging peace as soldiers are in waging war, Chappell created Peace Literacy to help students and adults from all backgrounds work toward their full potential and a more peaceful world. Peace Literacy empowers us to create peace that is realistic, resilient, and sustainable, while helping us develop our full capacity for empathy, conscience, reason, and realistic hope.
As Peace Literacy director of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, Chappell lectures internationally, teaches college courses and workshops on Peace Literacy and Peace Leadership, and leads a curricular development team for k-12 and higher education. His six books in his seven-part Road to Peace series show how positive change happens at the global and personal levels.
At Urbana, Chappell will also discuss why nonviolence is more strategically powerful than violence, and why the most dangerous weapons in the 21st century are not bullets and bombs, but the weaponization of mistrust, alienation, rage, helplessness, cynicism and disillusionment, which are being used to attack societies on a much deeper level. Digital technology has provided new ways to turn mistrust, alienation, rage, etc., into weapons. He will also discuss the new technology paradigm (virtual reality and augmented reality) that will replace smartphones and the social media platforms of today, how this escalation of our technology will require us to escalate our ethical evolution through Peace Literacy, and reasons to have realistic hope.
Chappell is helping to lead the campaign to have education in Peace Literacy recognized as a universal human right, similar to how education in reading and writing literacy is recognized as a universal human right. He reminds us, “Peace Literacy is the human right that empowers us to protect all of our other human rights.”
3 UU Peace Literacy events
– “PEACE LITERACY: Building Strong Communities, Healing Trauma, & Navigating Technology’s Future,” Thursday, April 2, 6:30-8:30 pm. Open to all community members and university students, doctors, nurses, EMTs, veterans, pastors, ministers, care givers, law enforcement, firefighters, educators, survivors of abuse, counselors, anyone healing from trauma, physical or mental and addictions. Please join the conversation at Urbana University Student Center in the Sara Landess Room.
– “PEACE LITERACY: From the Classroom to the Courthouse. Using Nonviolence to Combat Conflict and Aggression,” Friday, April 3, 10:00 am – 4:00 pm. One-day workshop for First Responders. Lunch provided. Honda Lecture Hall @ Urbana University.
– “PEACE LITERACY in the Classroom: Survival Skills for the 21st Century,” Saturday, April 4, 10:00 am – 5:00 pm. One day workshop for Educators. Lunch provided. Honda Lecture Hall @ Urbana University.
Co-facilitating these events will be Sharyn Clough, Peace Literacy Curriculum Coordinator and Professor of Philosophy at Oregon State University.
All Peace Literacy events at Urbana University are sponsored by the Alicia Titus Memorial Peace Fund and Urbana University. To register for both the April 3 and April 4 workshops, please call Stephani Islam @ 937-772-9292 or email at [email protected]. Space is limited. Workshop enrollment is free to residents of Champaign County. Non-residents may give a donation to the Alicia Titus Memorial Peace Fund.
For more information on all events, please contact Bev Titus at [email protected].
About Peace Literacy
Peace Literacy is an initiative of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation whose mission is to educate and train people of all ages and backgrounds to solve the most dangerous technological, social, and psychological issues of our time, and to survive and thrive in the 21st century. The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation is a non-partisan, non-profit organization with consultative status to the United Nations. For more information, visit wagingpeace.org and peaceliteracy.org.
