The World Peace Foundation this July made The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy its new home, naming Alex de Waal, a world leader in the field of peace studies, its new executive director.
The partnership — officially named the World Peace Foundation (WPF) Program at The Fletcher School — will bring intellectuals with expertise in peace studies to the school, where they will engage Tufts students in applied research and outreach programs, according to Peter Uvin, academic dean of The Fletcher School.
WPF has operated under the umbrella of the Harvard's Kennedy School of Government since 1993, but it chose to move to The Fletcher School with the retirement of WPF President Robert Rotberg.
"The core mission statement remains exactly the same: to provide intellectual leadership in the field of peace," de Waal said.
Founded in 1910 by textbook editor Edwin Ginn, the WPF is the oldest foundation in the country to focus on international affairs, according to Uvin.
"The foundation is thriving because it is 100 years old. We want to build it up and we hope Fletcher can help us do that," Phillip Khoury, chairman of the Board of Trustees for the new WPF program, said.
The WPF Board of Trustees chose The Fletcher School as its new partner because of the strong historical and emotional link between the two institutions, Uvin said.
"At Fletcher, they found there was a lot of intellectual capital on war and peace," Uvin noted.
"In my heart as chairman, I always thought if we could make the right connections with Tufts it would make the most sense," Khoury said.
According to Uvin, WPF first contacted The Fletcher School in March 2010, and the two organizations settled on an agreeable contract in April 2011. WPF will maintain a separate foundation with its own endowment. However, all of its resources will be devoted to the program managed by The Fletcher School.
De Waal and other WPF staff will be considered Fletcher faculty, and many will teach graduate classes at The Fletcher School. This semester, de Waal will be a guest lecturer for several classes.
Uvin expressed confidence in de Waal's ability to form a successful partnership between the WPF and The Fletcher School.
"We hired somebody who is a world leader in this field, and that means I am trusting him to lead," he said. "De Waal is an absolute first−class scholar."
Since completing his Ph.D. at Oxford in 1988 on Darfur, De Waal has devoted most of his life to peace studies and conflict resolution in northeast Africa.
De Waal was a Senior Fellow at the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, and he worked as part of a mediation team for the African Union in the Darfur peace agreement of 2008.
Most recently, de Waal worked as the program director of the Social Science Research Foundation in New York City, while continuing his work with the African Union in Sudan and Ethiopia.
De Waal and Uvin noted the program will offer students new research and networking opportunities in the field of peace and justice studies, including a number of seminars tackling the issues of peace, security and justice building.
"The biggest thing in the immediate is that it brings new researchers to the school," Uvin said.
Research initiatives under the new WPF program will include a partnership with the London School of Economics on justice and security in fragile states, as well as a project that will tackle the topic of how genocides end.
"This will be an opportunity for graduate and undergraduate students to work with leading experts," de Waal said.
De Waal hopes to continue his mediation support work in Africa, and he will involve WPF in his efforts. WPF will work with African leaders to create the Lake Tana Security Form, which will discuss high−level security issues facing Africa, he said.
De Waal sees the WPF's partnership with The Fletcher School as an opportunity to expand the foundation's work to match the needs of the 21st century and to work on creative long−term solutions to some of the world's most devastating conflicts.
"Fletcher is such a good fit because Fletcher is also developing the next generation of leaders," he said.
