About Us
The Moakley Chair seeks to address the tragic crisis of fractured societies around the world and reinforce the commitment to principles of peace and reconciliation among all the participants in the process.
Central to the mission of the Moakley Chair will be providing MGS students real policy and peacemaking experience by making them central participants in the chair’s work and research.
The Primary Premises of the chair’s work:
- People from divided societies are in the best position to help people in other divided societies. Former protagonists are best equipped to share their difficult journeys to abandon violence as the instrument to achieve their political aims and open the gateways to recovery, reconstruction, and reconciliation.
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People from divided societies share behavioral, political, social, and psychological traits not seen in people in more “normal” societies, traits that predispose them to see things through a prism that is different from the prism through which more mature societies would perceive the same events.
- Securing the initially established peace can be fostered by citizens of divided cities working together in jointly sponsored, sustainable development and environmental restoration projects that directly benefit the citizenry and build a foundation of cooperation for the future, i.e., they can do together what they cannot do individually.