Professorship in conflict resolution coming to ASU

American parks and squares feature plenty of statues of generals and war heroes.

Ann Hardt wonders where are the pantheons for champions of peace?

The Quaker, who taught 22 years at Arizona State University, is reveling in the newly announced creation of a faculty chair in peace studies at ASU. It is named for her and her late husband, Anthony "Tony" Nickachos. They were the major donors to get it established.

A search will begin for a scholar for the Hardt-Nickachos Chair in Peace Studies, who will oversee research and instruction working toward sustainable peace. The faculty chair will be at ASU's Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict, one of the first initiatives at ASU after President Michael Crow took the helm in 2002. It is the culmination of years of effort by Hardt, who strived to develop ways peace could be part of the academic landscape.

The former president of ASU's emeritus professors association taught 1968 to 1990 in the ASU College of Education. She led classes in such areas as multicultural education, school and society, peace and conflict, and cooperative learning. "I taught some classes on peace and conflict studies, but I didn't see much happening along the lines anywhere on campus, or in other places," she said. "Many universities and colleges had the program."

Hardt, a longtime Quaker representative on the Arizona Ecumenical Council, has worked well over 50 years from the local to the international level in numerous dimensions of peace, reconciliation and multicultural understanding.

The daughter of a Methodist pastor, Hardt served six years on the national board of Fellowship of Reconciliation, four years as president of Church Women United in Arizona, worked for the International Peace Research Association, was presider of the Tempe Friends Meeting and has served law courts in family counseling and reconciliation.

During her years on the faculty, Hardt initiated programs and conferences to stimulate peace. She directed conferences on "Alternatives to Violence" and "The Meaning and Control of Conflict." She launched the Initiative in Religion, Conflict and Peace Studies and made a number of trips to the Middle East in peace work, including developing religious education plans for the Friends School of Ramallah on the Palestinian West Bank.

"I was born in the mission field, and my parents kept thinking, 'what is the church doing about peace?' ... They didn't see much being done," said Hardt, who holds a doctorate in social and philosophical foundations of education from the University of Texas. Years ago, she set up the Southwest Texas Conference of the United Methodist Church Peace Fund to generate income for peace work.

Hardt and Nickachos, a retired U.S. Navy lieutenant commander and former Roosevelt School District teacher, had been close friends for 35 years. They were married in a hospital in Athens, Greece, about six weeks before he died on Sept. 30, 2006, from an aortic aneurism at age 86. She calls him the "man in my life" who talked to her every night at 10 p.m. on issues that mattered.

"We had grown very close together," Hardt said, "even though we had been opposites in nearly every way. He was military and I was working for peace. He was Republican, I was a Democrat. He considered himself agnostic ... I was Methodist and became a Quaker." Through the years, Hardt fostered a growing interest in Nickachos for her peace passion. Nickachos would donate $25,000 for a three-year lecture series and for student scholarships. One student, for example, researched the Hamas movement in the Middle East, while another examined the peace work of President Jimmy Carter. They also funded a symposium last spring called "The Rhetoric for Peace," which brought together faculty from a host of ASU departments. One goal would be to develop an interdisciplinary program leading to issuing a certificate in peace studies.

Hardt's lifetime of peace advocacy was saluted by Terri Mansfield, executive director and co-founder of the Arizona Department of Peace Campaign.

"In the United States alone, there are over 300 university and college programs on peace studies," she noted. Some have four-year and graduate degrees, she said.

"What I would like to see happening is bringing the professors who focus on mediation and resolution, restorative justice, truth and reconciliation and all those focuses going on globally," she said. Mansfield sits on the advisory board seeking to create a National Peace Academy as an alternative to military academies. Arizona could be the right place for it, she said.

"I would actually like to see Arizona be the leader in the country for mediation and conflict resolution at the college level," she said.

Linell Cady, director of the Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict, said the Hardt-Nickachos chair gives new dimension to the center. "We have always been interested in the containment of conflict, for its minimization," she said. With the gift, the center will search and find someone "who really comes at the issue of religion and violence from the perspective of peace, and that is a different angle," Cady said. She hopes someone is in place by next fall after a thorough search. A scholar with skills in reconciliation, restorative justice and repairing societies after conflict will be sought.

In its five years of operations, the center has hosted two or three lectures, featuring national voices and attracting about 400 each time, plus numerous conferences.

It will be launching an undergraduate certificate program in religion and conflict. "As we move forward with peace studies, we hope to include that in the curriculum, too," Cady said. It will be helped by a Ford Foundation grant that has been renewed for two years.