Building Peace

This book fulfills a long-standing gap in the global literature on educating for peace. In documenting the reflections of the world’s leading teachers of peace, including some of the field’s founders, the book sheds light on both the process and the products that have brought the study of peace to its fifty-year mark. The examination of the dynamic connections between peacemaking, education, individual development, and widespread social change is chronicled through examples from the USA, Japan, China, India, Pakistan, Germany, Argentina, Colombia, Trinidad, New Zealand, Mexico and more, and charts the words and work of scholar-activists including the late Betty Reardon and the granddaughter of Mohandas Gandhi, South Africa’s Ela Gandhi. Together, the essays represent, in the words (from the Foreword) of United Nations University for Peace Rector Francisco Rojas Aravena, “a colossal instrument to reaffirm dialogue over force.”

Syed Sikander Mehdi was the first person to introduce courses on peace studies in the universities in Pakistan and served for over 30 years at the Department of International Relations of Karachi University. His writings have appeared in many journals and books, including Good Governance and Economic Development: Perspectives from Global North and Global South (Routledge, 2025).

Matt Meyer is an internationally noted historian, educator, and organizer, Secretary General Emeritus of the International Peace Research Association. The author/editor of over a dozen books on peace and human rights, he is Senior Editor of a new book series on Peace Studies from Africa and the Global South. Meyer’s primer that served as first installment of that series, launched at Oxford University in 2025, is Beyond Our Current Boundaries (Africa World Press, 2025).