People's Peace Fund
"Connecting Peoples"
International Advisory Board
Dr. Akbar Salahuddin Ahmed, Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies and professor of International Relations at American University in Washington DC.
For many years Dr. Ahmed has been actively involved in interfaith dialogue and study of global Islam and its impact on contemporary society. With Dr. Judea Pearl, father of slain Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, Dr. Ahmed has been engaged in public dialogues across the world.
According to the BBC, "Professor
Akbar Ahmed is probably the world's best-known scholar on contemporary Islam."
Born in Delhi, raised in Pakistan, Dr. Ahmed has been a High Commissioner (Ambassador) of Pakistan to Great Britain, a distinguished anthropologist and writer of many books, among them: Discovering Islam: Making Sense of Muslim History and Society, Postmodernism and Islam: Predicament and Promise, and Islam Today: A Short Introduction to the Muslim World. He is also the maker of a film on Muhamed Ali Jinnah, the founding father of Pakistan, which won numerous international awards.
Dr. Mosupyoe worked with the Anti-Apartheid Movement and was also the chair of the South African International Student Organization and a member of its national executive. She received some of her education in South Africa and her Masters and Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley.
After the death of her three-year-old son, Thamsanqa, and husband, Simmy, on the same day, and at the same time when she was expecting one of her daughters, Dr. Mosupyoe traveled to the United States. She continued to be involved in the anti-apartheid movement in the USA. She is currently also the Chair of Global Majority International Advisory Board.
Dr. Mosupyoe has received numerous awards that honor her contribution as a teacher, an author, a peace activist, and a community worker. To name but a few: she has been cited four times in Who's Who Among America's Teachers, received a 1999 Pierce College Outstanding Faculty of the Year award, and received the A Roland Weis Award for her contribution to promoting awareness against genocide.
Dr. Paul Arthur, from Northern Ireland is a Course Director of the Graduate Program in Peace and Conflict Studies Professor of Politics at the School of History and International Affairs, University of Ulster. He holds degrees from Queens University Belfast and National University of Ireland.
Growing up with later-to-be Sinn Fenn and IRA members, he was later instrumental in Track Two initiatives with British and Irish politicians and with civil society since 1990.
Dr. Arthur has authored five books - the latest being "Special Relationships: Britain, Ireland and the Northern Ireland problem" (2001) - and over seventy academic articles. He has been a Senior Fellow at the US Institute of Peace and a Fulbright scholar at Stanford University.
Dr. Alon Liel, Founder and Chairman of the Israel-Syria Peace Society, professor at Hebrew University, Tel Aviv University, Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya. In 2004 Liel united two football clubs of neighboring municipalities in Israel - one Arab, one Jewish - and acts as President of the united club.
Dr. Liel was the Director General of both the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Israeli Ministry of Economy and Planning. He served as Israel's Ambassador to South Africa and Turkey.
For over two years Dr. Liel engaged in secret unofficial negotiations with Syria. In 2007 the talks came out to open air. Since then Dr. Liel has become a popular media commentator on the ongoing negotiations between Syria and Israel.
Charles F. (Chic) Dambach, President and CEO of the Alliance for Peacebuilding. AfP is a network of private and public organizations dedicated to build sustainable peace and security worldwide. The organization facilitates collaboration and coordination among conflict prevention and resolution professionals, civil society, international organizations, and government agencies.
In 1998 Chic helped form and lead a team of returned Peace Corps Volunteers to work informally with the leaders of Eritrea and Ethiopia to help end their border war. The team also facilitated joint meetings among the leaders of the combatants in the Congo civil war and participated in the Inter-Congolese Dialogue leading to the formation of a coalition government and the election of the official government.
Chic is also a writer, lecturer and consultant on nonprofit governance. He is the North American representative to the Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict, board chair for the Coalition for American Leadership Abroad (COLEAD), and a member of the board of the J. William and Harriet Fulbright Center. He was CEO of the National Peace Corps Association, and of Operation Respect.
Elvir Duliman, President, Nansen Dialogue Center - Mostar, a non-profit, non-political and non-governmental association of citizens that encourages democratic practices and promotes dialogue among different ethnic, religious, political and interest groups, as a tool for prevention and resolution of conflicts in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Huda Abu Arqoub, Co-Executive Director, and Director of Vision Program at Abraham's Vision. One of twelve children, was born in Jerusalem and raised in Hebron. Her parents were both teachers and she chose to follow in their footsteps, obtaining her diploma in teaching English as a Second Language, a BA in Education and English Literature from Al-Quds Open University, and a Master's degree in Conflict Transformation from Eastern Mennonite University. Huda is active in grassroots Palestinian initiatives focusing on issues related to human rights and gender equality, and is a member of several local Palestinian organizations that work on empowering women to be more active in building a healthy society. Through her activities she has worked with organizations such as Doctors Without Borders, Save the Children International, United Religions Initiative (URI), and the Boston-based University of the Middle East Project (UME). She also worked as an educational consultant for the Palestinian Authority's Ministry of Education, and is also a Co-Executive Director and Co-Founder of the Center for Transformative Education.
Dr. Aaron Hahn Tapper, Co-Executive Director and Founder of Abraham's Vision was born and raised in Philadelphia. He is currently an Assistant Professor in the Theology and Religious Studies Department of the University of San Francisco, holding the Swig Chair of Judaic Studies, and is the founding Director of the Swig Program in Jewish Studies and Social Justice. He previously lived in the Middle East for five years—four years in Jerusalem and one year in Cairo—and traveled extensively in Jordan, Morocco, Lebanon, and Syria. Aaron holds a PhD in Comparative Religions from the University of California, Santa Barbara. His interdisciplinary research interests are comparative religions, the history of religions, the interplay between politics and religion, Judaism, Islam, nonviolence, and the relationship between power and religious authority. Since 1990 Aaron has been involved in Jewish education, shifting his focus towards Jewish-Arab, Jewish-Muslim, and Israeli-Palestinian education in 1998. Aaron is also a Co-Executive Director and Co-Founder of the Center for Transformative Education.
Dr. Tatsushi (Tats) Arai is an Assistant Professor of Conflict Transformation at the SIT Graduate Institute in Vermont, USA. Before Joining SIT in 2006, he taught at George Mason University in Virginia and the National University of Rwanda.
Tat's commitment to peace-building has evolved from his first encounter
with victims of radiation sickness in Hiroshima when he was fifteen. His
journey in conflict transformation took him to post-genocide Rwanda as an NGO
representative, to the Japanese branch of an international corporation as a
personnel specialist responsible for managing cross-cultural industrial
disputes, and to diverse settings of multi-track peacemaking, especially in the
Middle East, sub-Sahara Africa, the Asia-Pacific region, and North America. As
a trainer, mediator, and dialogue facilitator, he has led a number of
peacebuilding workshops for government officials, representatives of
international organizations, and civil society leaders from around the world.
Tats is a research
fellow of the Toda Institute for Global Peace and Policy Research, an
international advisory board member of Global Majority: Building Peace Through
Dialogue, and a member of TRANSCEND: An International Peace and Development
Network. He is a Japanese citizen married to
Yuchun Chen from Taiwan. They have a son, Justice.
