I'm just back from Kaduna, Nigeria where the McCormack Graduate School convened the Forum for Cities in Transition, our fourth international peace conference for divided cities.

I'm so proud of scholar/activist Padraig O'Malley, our John Joseph Moakley Chair of Peace and Reconciliation who facilitated the conference attended by 90 delegates from conflict cities around the world including Ramallah, Kirkuk, Baghdad, Tripoli, Mitrovica, Belfast, Sarajevo, Srebrenica and Derry/Londonderry. I can't imagine anyone, anywhere, having the credibility and courage to pull off this important learning opportunity for leaders from some of the most dangerous and traumatized cities across the globe.  A huge congratulation is in order for our incomparable, irrepressible McCormack peacemaker.

I'm proud, too, of the work of our colleague, Associate Professor Darren Kew, the director of McCormack's Center for Peace, Democracy, and Development. Through his ongoing reconciliation work with the Christian pastor and Muslim imam at the Interfaith Mediation Center there, Darren is quietly and effectively by their side every step of the unpredictable path toward peace and reconciliation among deeply divided, mistrustful, and fearful Christians and Moslems. Only Darren could have facilitated this location as host city and supplied the on-the-ground credibility to help Padraig and the Forum to develop the trust of a very divided people and to build out a new Kaduna-based Africa hub for the Forum for Cities in Transitions. He's the one who took Charlie Sennott of the Global Post and me to Kafanchan to witness the burned out mosques and churches and to meet with the victims, which you can read about here.  

Padraig and Darren - what a dynamic and effective duo! I can't imagine any other university with the guts and the relationships necessary to make either the Forum or the Interfaith Mediation Center work as well as they do.  And I can't imagine a more important place to do this work than on the front lines of conflict and potential civil war in Northern Nigeria.

McCormack staffers Nancy Riordan and Candyce Carragher, a graduate student of conflict resolution, should take a big bow for their herculean efforts to support such a successful conference in a chaotic, hectic, and sometimes dangerous place!

I had the privilege of watching McCormack's peacemakers in action. All in all, they are a remarkable team of McCormack rock stars doing incredibly impactful work on the frontlines of some of the most intractable problems of our time.

 Yours,