In this episode, we delve into the heart of campus activism sweeping across the United States, spotlighting the recent student protests in support of Gaza and calls to end violence. We connect with a faculty member from Yale to discuss the nuances of the current movement, and journey back to the spirited 1960s with a professor from Berkeley who once walked in similar protests. Join us as we explore how today's demonstrations resonate with the past, uncovering the threads that link generations...

Part of the fun of nonviolence is showing where alternative practices and systems already exist and to lift them up to inspire more of us to explore and adapt them to our own time, cultures and needs. Take mediation: We know that when practiced with the intent of healing divides, de-escalting violence, and restoring relationships, it works (and “works” if you know Michael Nagler’s “work” vs. work concept), and we don’t hear enough about it in the news. Everyday mediators across the world are...

This episode of Nonviolence Radio welcomes Dr. Craig Atwood, professor of theology at Moravian Theological Seminary and director of the Center for Moravian Studies. Together with Stephanie and Michael, Craig discusses his research and teaching on the history of Moravian thought and faith with special attention to medieval thinker, Peter Chelčický.  Identifying the central role of nonviolence in Moravian theology at that time illuminates its long historical roots, extending the community of...

As a Palestinian, Sami and his family have suffered directly under the long Israeli occupation and more acutely now, from the current war. Sami speaks candidly about the ways in which politicians and media harness fear and exploit unhealed traumas so that violence seems to be the only response to conflict. This, he insists, is a distortion – and one that must be actively resisted. Instead of accepting the simplistic binary categories of victim and victimizer, Palestinians can envision and...

On this episode of Nonviolence Radio philosophy professor, Jen Kling (University of Colorado at Colorado Springs), talks with Michael and Stephanie about refugees and the complex issue of resettling and caring for those who have had to leave their homes. Ensuring that people fleeing hardship at home can find a safe place to live, genuine opportunities to engage in school and meaningful work, to integrate and flourish in a new place is fraught with tensions, tensions which are often...

Topic Scans and Links: Tariq Habash, from the US Department of Education resigns over the war in Gaza. Good Shepherd Collective campaign called No Ceasefire, No Votes. 800 government employees from the US and other 12 nations published a letter protesting Israeli policies and stating that the leaders of their countries could be complicit in war crimes in Gaza. USAID, a thousand of their employees have released an open letter with the same concern. Hundreds of thousands of Germans...

This episode of NV Radio offers insight into the ways AI might be used to support peace and nonviolence. Stephanie and Michael welcome Dr. Heather Ashby of the US Institute of Peace, an expert on technology and its intersection with government and politics. Their discussion explores the ways AI might be used for both ill and for good in the public sphere. This dual possibility gives rise to the urgent need to understand how to orient it towards peace. Though aware of the dangers inherent in...

THE SEARCH FOR a better way to live will go on as long as unsatisfactory ways like ours are the norm, aka mainstream.  Therefore all experiments in alternative communities, economies, even cultures are interesting, especially those that succeed.  Like the Mondragón communes in the Basque region of northern Spain.  In a well-defined geography with a language all their own 𑁋 Basque is one of only five languages in present-day Europe not related to any other; what we call a ‘language isolate.’ ...

While many people encounter nonviolence as forms of protest and resistance, the constructive side of it, the part that aims to re-establish a sense of self-knowing and trust in one’s community that has been harmed through violence can be overlooked. But it is this kind of work that uplifts a community’s sense of self through a reclaiming of inner power (what we call at the Metta Center, Person Power) that offers a strong foundation for other forms of action. Constructive work on the human...

Over 5,000 actions listed for nonviolence during Campaign Nonviolence’s Action Days Nonviolence is happening all over, even if we don’t often or always read about it in the mass media. Rivera Sun joins Nonviolence Radio to share a recap of hope and energy from Campaign Nonviolence’s Action Days which ran from the International Day of Peace to the International Day of Nonviolence. 

“Everyone knows someone who was at the big party down south. Everyone knows someone who lives in one of the places that was destroyed. Every family has people who were called up. Earlier this week I built up the store of coffins for our cemetery.”

Knesset Member Ofer Cassif on Ending Violence as the Only Mutual Security for Israelis and Palestinians. In this episode we turn to the conflict in Israel-Palestine and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. We're joined by Dr. Ofer Cassif, a member of the Israeli Knesset with the Hadash-Ta’al coalition. He calls for an end to the occupation through peaceful means because he believes that the security of Israelis and Palestinians is interconnected and mutually dependent. One day after our...

Zeiad Shamrouch, Executive Director of MECA, discusses the assault on Gaza and shares stories from friends on the ground. In this episode, we speak with Zeiad Shamrouch. He’s the Executive Director of the Middle East Children’s Alliance and he speaks to us about the work out they’re doing in Gaza, about the humanitarian and conflict crisis taking place within Gaza, as well as within Israel-Palestine and how people can get involved and support their work in Gaza. 

Neuroanatomist and author, Jill Bolte Taylor, comes to Nonviolence Radio to talk about her understanding of the brain, consciousness and what we are as humans. She explores the nature of experience, both a kind of transcendent oneness revealing the interconnectedness of all things and the more familiar everyday sense of being in this particular body, at this spot in the world, as an individual. Jill insists that we all have the potential to cultivate our capacity to feel the kind of beautiful...

Jasper Van Assche, a professor at the University of Gantt in Belgium, comes to Nonviolence Radio to talk to Michael and Stephanie about his research on the power of contact – direct and indirect – to decrease prejudice and cultivate tolerance and social cohesion within diverse and potentially antagonized groups. ‘Contact theory’ has been shown to lead to harmony and an enlarged sense of a common good, even when there are limited resources and competing interests. In short, genuine and...

On this episode of Nonviolence Radio, Stephanie and Michael welcome Cary Donham, the first and to date, only student to leave West Point as a conscientious objector. Cory speaks about his experience in his memoir,A Wrinkle in the Long Grey Line: When Conscience and Convention Collided, and here shares more about why he came to this decision, how it led him to diverge from a path that initially seemed right, and what some of the repercussions have been.  "… in the Old Testament, there’s a...

This episode of Nonviolence Radio welcomes @hellaJinsella from the UK peace organization, DeMilitarise Education (dED/ ). Jinsella has been actively working to raise awareness about the ties between higher education and the military. As these relationships have not generally been made public, military funding, and the accompanying environmental degradation the arms industry entails, has been able to thrive within universities without sustained challenge. DeMilitarise Education seeks to bring...

In this episode --  SchoolofNonviolence.org  Nonviolent Peaceforce in Sudan   Article by Miki Kashtan   Mother Pelican Blog   Break Through   Popular Resistance – School   Israeli Reservists Protest   Bronx Anti-War Coalition   Cop City   Illegal Pipeline in Yaqui Community   Line 5 Pipeline Trespass   Campaign Nonviolence Action Week   Black Prisoners Caucus   Code Pink

It seems there is a cultural myth that union organizing is inherently nonviolent. On the one hand, any demonstration of the power of “people” versus greed and corruption in the workplace seems to tick the box in our cultural imagination about what nonviolence looks like. Images of warehouse workers from Amazon or coffee baristas advocating for better work conditions and better pay are poignant and tell a story of The People fighting against exploitation.  Cultural memories of the Farm Workers...

This week, journalist and biographer, Jonathan Eig, joins Stephanie and Michael on Nonviolence Radio to talk about his new book, King: A Life. His new biography of Martin Luther King Jr. draws on sources that have only now been recovered (perhaps most notably, transcriptions of conversations recorded by the FBI). Jonathan speaks candidly about how important it is to remember King all his human complexity: his personal doubts and struggles, his admiration for figures he’s often remembered in...

Quaker Pastor Parfaite Ntahuba joins Stephanie and Michael on this episode of Nonviolent Radio to discuss her wide-ranging and inspiring work cultivating and spreading nonviolence, both within her community in Burundi and across the globe. From an early age, Pastor Ntahuba had firsthand experience with both domestic and political violence and has spent her life trying to ensure that the terror and violence she endured will not be the fate of others. She identifies the insidious power of...

 In this special episode of Nonviolence Radio, Stephanie and Michael return to an interview from 2017 with Arun Gandhi, Mahatma Gandhi’s grandson, who died at the age of 89 earlier this year. In what follows, we get to revisit some special moments from that program. We hear Arun speak about how his grandfather taught him about the broad and inclusive nature of nonviolence, about the power of anger (properly used) and about Gandhi’s promotion of the charkha (spinning wheel) as a key tool for...

In this fascinating interview with distinguished anthropologist, Brian Ferguson, who has made a deep study of this critical question we learn much about how anthropology is done, about how easy it is to think we're seeing signs of warfare when we're not, and most importantly how we're justified in concluding that war is NOT inevitable and we can learn to avoid it.

In this episode of Nonviolence Radio, we take time to focus on news from around the movement, while jumping right into the Nonviolence Report. In the later part of the show, we have some fun answering questions from some of our listeners from around the world.