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Awarding-winning conflict resolution specialist to discuss 'Actual Peacemaking'


Najeeba Syeed-Miller
September 19, 2013

Is peace possible? Najeeba Syeed-Miller, director of the Center for Global Peacebuilding at Claremont Lincoln University, has addressed this question from the streets of Los Angeles to meeting rooms in such diverse locations as India, Afghanistan, Israel and Palestine.

Syeed-Miller will present a lecture titled "Actual Peacemaking," at 1:30 p.m., Sept. 26 at the University Club on ASU’s Tempe campus. The talk is part of the Hardt-Nickachos Lectures in Peace Studies organized by the Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict.

Known as a hands-on practitioner and inspiring educator, Syeed-Miller is widely recognized for her work conducting gang interventions, implementing diversity training, leading interreligious dialogues and training people from around the world in conflict resolution techniques.

“Creating dialogue and exchanging ideas with experienced peacemakers is a vital component of the Peace Studies initiative,” said Yasmin Saikia, the Hardt-Nickachos Chair in Peace Studies and professor of history in ASU’s School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies.

“We are excited to learn from Professor Syeed-Miller’s experiences as both a scholar and active practitioner in the field of peacemaking,” Saikia added.

Syeed-Miller’s published research has been on the intersections of law with religious minority communities, mediation between law enforcement and communities, and interfaith peacemaking. She also blogs regularly on these issues for the Huffington Post, Muslim Voices and Feminist.com.

She has chaired national conferences on Islam and Interfaith Peacebuilding, served as a mediator in cases ranging from gang interventions to diversity in the public schools and helped start mediation programs at the University of Southern California, as well as several middle and high schools.

Along with colleagues, she has developed training modules in Islamic conflict resolution and mediation that were presented at Harvard Law School and also serves as an advisor to local and federal agencies on interfaith dialogue, cooperation and public engagement.

Her work has been written about in the Los Angeles Times and she has been featured on NPR, PBS and the Tavis Smiley show.

Syeed-Miller is a 1995 graduate of Guilford College, where she received the Oexmann Fellowship for community-based mediation and was awarded the 2012 Young Alumni Achievement Award. She is a 2000 graduate of the Indiana University Maurer School of Law, where she was a teaching fellow in the area of mediation and ran the university’s mediation program.

Her lecture will draw on her experience as an engaged peacemaker and expert at conflict resolution, including a discussion of her model for intervention and its religious and secular sources.

The Hardt-Nickachos Lectures in Peace Studies are supported by the Hardt-Nickachos Peace Studies Endowment within the center to heighten faculty, student and community awareness of peace studies as an academic field of inquiry, and its significance for addressing some of the most challenging problems of our age. Past speakers in the series include Stanley Hauerwas, Sari Nusseibeh and Akeel Bilgrami.

For more information about the lecture, or to listen to podcasts of previous lectures, visit http://csrc.asu.edu

The Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict is an interdisciplinary research unit of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences that examines the role of religion as a driving force in human affairs.