This book examines the role that community-based educators in violence-affected cities play in advancing Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s radical nonviolent vision for racial and social justice. This work argues that nonviolence education can help communities build capacity to disrupt and transform cycles of violence by recognizing that people impacted by violence are effective educators and vital knowledge producers who develop unique insights into racial oppression and other forms of systemic harm. This book focuses on informal education that takes place beyond school walls, a type of education that too often remains invisible and undervalued in both civil society and scholarly research. It draws on thousands of hours of work with the Connecticut Center for Nonviolence (CTCN), a grassroots organization that presents an ideal case study of the implementation of King’s core principles of nonviolence in 21st-century urban communities. Stories of educators’ life-changing educational encounters, their successes and failures, and their understanding of the six principles of Kingian nonviolence animate the text. Each chapter delves into one of the six principles by introducing the reader to the lives of these educators, providing a rich analysis of how educators teach each principle, and sharing academic resources for thinking more deeply about each principle. Against the backdrop of today’s educational system, in which reductive and caricatured treatments of King are often presented within the formal classroom, CTCN’s work outside of the classroom takes a fundamentally different approach, connecting King’s thinking around nonviolence principles to working for racial justice in cities deeply impacted by violence. This book will be of much interest to students of conflict resolution, race studies, politics and education studies, as well as to practitioners in the field.

"Born in 1934 in South Africa, where he was subject to the daily injustices of apartheid, and raised in a family dedicated to nonviolent social reform, Dr. Gandhi writes with rare authority and insight. His narrative draws primarily upon the experiences as a youth in India, where he lived with his grandfather during the last eighteen months of the Mahatma's life.

This book addresses positive peace. In his introduction, Arun Gandhi , fifth grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, asks, "For generations human beings have strived to attain peace, but with little or no success. Why is peace so illusive?" Twelve philosophers and educators suggest creatively and pragmatically that peace education has a large part of play in meeting the challenge. --Book Jacket.

Rev. James M. Lawson Jr. first shook hands with Martin Luther King Jr. on February 6, 1957, at Oberlin College in Ohio. Their conversation compelled Lawson to move to the South to join the emerging struggle for justice and dignity. On the eve of his assassination, King called Lawson "the leading theorist and strategist of nonviolence in the world."Lawson's first nonviolent direct action campaign was in Nashville, where he led the series of lunch-counter sit-ins that successfully challenged segregation. The workshops that Lawson held in the philosophy and strategy of nonviolence trained a new generation of activists who subsequently organized path-breaking campaigns throughout the South, including the Freedom Rides. In California, Lawson has worked with hotel workers, janitors, home care workers, and undocumented immigrant youth to embrace nonviolence in historic organizing victories.This is the first book that captures Lawson's teachings. Five powerful case studies explore how individual acts of conscience can lead to collective action and how the practice of nonviolence can build a powerful movement for social change. This publication emerged from a class taught by James Lawson, Kent Wong, Kelly Lytle Hernandez, and Ana Luz González at UCLA, and it was written by students who were inspired by the class.

Teaching Peace carries the discussion of nonviolence beyond ethics and into the rest of the academic curriculum. This book isn't just for religion or philosophy teachers--it is for all educators.

In current global politics, which positions China as a competitor to American leadership, in-depth understandings of transnational mutual engagement are much needed for cultivating nonviolent relations. Exploring American and Chinese professors’ experiences at the intersection of the individual, society, and history, and weaving the autobiographical and the global, this book furthers understanding of their cross-cultural personal awareness and educational work at universities in both countries. While focusing on life histories, it also draws on both American and Chinese intellectual traditions such as American nonviolence activism, Taoism, and Buddhism to formulate a vision of nonviolence in curriculum studies. Centering cross-cultural education and pedagogy about, for, and through nonviolence, this volume contributes to internationalizing curriculum studies and introduces curriculum theorizing at the level of higher education. Hongyu Wang brings together stories, dialogues, and juxtapositions of cross-cultural pathways and pedagogies in a powerful case for theorizing and performing nonviolence education as visionary work in the internationalization of curriculum studies.