On Tuesday, the Edwin Ginn Library at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University was filled with more than 200 students, alumni, faculty and staff who bore witness to what the School’s dean, Stephen Bosworth, described as a “marriage of sorts.”
The Fletcher community gathered to celebrate the 101st anniversary of the World Peace Foundation and the inauguration of the Foundation’s institutional affiliation with The Fletcher School.
“We are coming together in the spirit of creative enterprise,” announced Dean Bosworth. In his introductory remarks, the Dean took special note of the support received from descendants of the Ginn family, who were in attendance at the event.
The World Peace Foundation is the oldest secular initiative of its kind in the United States. Founded in 1910 by Boston-based philanthropist and Tufts alumnus, Edwin Ginn, the Foundation has sought to provide intellectual leadership on issues of peace, justice, and security. For a century now, the Foundation has supported research, teaching and advocacy critical to the challenges of making peace around the world.
It was only a matter of time before the Foundation, with its superlative legacy, found a home at the first graduate-only school of international affairs in the United States.
“The World Peace Foundation’s arrival will allow our faculty to work across boundaries,” suggested Peggy Newell, provost of Tufts University. Ms. Newell deemed it “fitting” that Tufts, with its strong international relations program, was playing host to the Foundation. Her remarks were echoed by Chair of the World Peace Foundation’s Board of Trustees, Philip Khoury, who expressed his “deep gratitude” to The Fletcher School for embracing the Foundation.
The World Peace Foundation’s move to Fletcher, Khoury observed, was in line with the vision of Edwin Ginn. “Ginn’s educational mission, his horror at the evils of war, and his conviction that the affairs of the world could be more peaceably ordered by means of international cooperation, are as relevant today as 100 years ago. And they are as relevant to the mission of Tufts University and especially The Fletcher School, as they are to the World Peace Foundation,” he said.
The Foundation was instituted with the objectives of “educating the people of all nations to a full knowledge of the waste and destructiveness of war and of preparation for war, its evil effects on present social conditions and on the wellbeing of future generations, and to promote international justice and the brotherhood of man, and generally by every practical means to promote peace and goodwill among all mankind.”
“We have,” said Khoury, “no intention of changing these objectives.”
The event was also an opportunity for the Fletcher community to be formally introduced to Alex de Waal as the executive director of the World Peace Foundation. De Waal, who assumed office in July last year, is one of the world’s leading experts on Sudan and the Horn of Africa, having spent nearly two decades engaging governments, humanitarian aid agencies and civil societies in the region. Under de Waal’s leadership, the Foundation has already pioneered a series of workshops and research programs, most notably, “How Mass Atrocities End.”
“A century ago, Edwin Ginn had a wonderfully straightforward vision of world peace: an international order in which the states of the world settled their differences by peaceful and legal means,” began de Waal. That the Foundation would succeed in furthering this objective, however, was far from being a foregone conclusion. Within a few years of the Foundation’s birth, as de Waal noted, the First World War broke out, only to be followed by another in the following decades. Yet, the Foundation has not only survived, but also flourished in its reach and activities over the years, and de Waal attributed its success to the “passion and intellectual leadership” of Edwin Ginn. “We are in great debt to his commitment, and I am privileged to inherit this position of responsibility,” he concluded.
De Waal also used the occasion to introduce Bridget Conley-Zilkic and Lisa Avery, the research and administrative executives of the World Peace Foundation, respectively. Conley-Zilkic is a research director for the Foundation, having previously held that title at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Committee on Conscience.
Following his remarks, de Waal and Jeff Kosokoff, director of the Ginn Library, proceeded to unveil the portrait of Edwin Ginn. The painting, which was hitherto on loan from the World Peace Foundation, was offered as a gift to the Library; clearly, the motif of the evening was one of ‘homecoming.’
The event, accompanied by a cocktail reception, concluded with a toast to the shared future of both institutions. Academic dean, Peter Uvin, raised a glass to “creative thinking and the power of giving,” in deference to the spirit of scientific temper and philanthropy that has and will continue to course through the veins of The Fletcher School and the World Peace Foundation.