From the Development Director
Promontory, just down river from the beloved Mt. Vernon home of our first president, bounded on one side by the glittering waters of Belmont Bay and protected on the other by natural wetlands. It is a quiet place, a place of peace.
At this time of year, the slanting autumn sun explodes bright white off the bark of birches against the dark waters of the bay. While the drums of war begin their deadly beat across the river, the leaves here turn golden and brittle before falling earthward. A beaver waddles into the shallow waters of the wetlands to reinforce his dam before the winter’s ice. A resident eagle circles silently overhead, scanning the shore water for the bright fish flashes that will bring sustenance. Deer emerge from the evening woods to graze the grass and break bark together.
The animals are welcome here. They gather in this safe space, seeking the peace of the moment and a respite from an uncertain future. Soon they will be joined by others—humans seeking the solace of the place as they search for solutions to the all-too-human problems of violence and war. Through the generosity of the Lynch family, ICAR and the GMU Foundation will build a world-class Center for Conflict Analysis and Resolution in this tranquil location. The center will host major conferences, seminars, training, and research.
The design of the center will preserve and protect the natural beauty of the place by dispersing small outbuildings throughout the woods and meadows to house visiting scholars and other important guests. Some will serve as meeting rooms. Others may provide space for reflection and study. A larger meeting hall will accommodate an auditorium, library, dining room, and a communications center featuring state-of-the-art technology for global conferencing.
Reflecting the worldwide concern for resolving conflicts nonviolently, the center will attract participants from all nations, all religions, and all races. These participants will examine many issues, ranging from business and economic conflicts, to environmental and domestic conflicts, to international relations.
To honor the roles so many countries have played in forging peaceful alliances across years of war and oppression, ICAR will be seeking funds from numerous countries and regions. Buildings will be furnished and decorated in the style of the culture represented and named after each contributing country’s most revered peacemakers, whether they be political leaders, artists, novelists, religious leaders, poets, or citizen activists. The end result will be a center bringing the world community together in a way that honors the noblest achievements of courageous people of peace and inspires the hard work necessary to tackle the dangerous conflicts ahead.
It is most fitting that this center be built in the Commonwealth of Virginia, home of Thomas Jefferson. He was one of the country’s first great statesmen. As minister to France, as the first secretary of state, and as the third president of the United States, he was a tireless advocate of peace. He believed that rational dialogue rather than brute force, and self-determination rather than imperial domination, produced the most enduring and just solutions to national conflicts and human aspirations. Peace for Jefferson’s young republic meant progress and enlightenment. Peace promised prosperity, happiness, and the moral improvement of humankind. Peace allowed for the cultivation of all that was noble in human nature and the suppression of all that was brutish and benighted. Peace reflected the victory of rationality; war, the triumph of unreason. Peace was the hallmark of civilization; violence, a vestige of barbarism.
Jefferson’s hopes for an enlightened world order have been sorely disappointed. Reflecting on the last one hundred years of war and genocide, the carnage appears almost incomprehensible. But reflect on it we must because the world today is a violent landscape scarred by civil strife, ethnic hatreds, arms races, and persistent struggles for liberation and self-expression. During the last decade alone, more than four million people around the globe have been killed in violent conflicts. Approximately 1 in every 200 persons in the world today is a refugee. Countless others suffer under oppressive political regimes that deny fundamental rights to the individual. Millions of people remain victims of undeclared wars, vicious rivalries, and traditional patterns of racism and ethnic hatred.
In the post-Cold War era, as regional and cultural conflicts abound, we must not allow our interest in peace, stability, and human liberation to wane. We must not allow ourselves to become indifferent to the suffering of fellow human beings engulfed by war, famine, and ethnic hatred. As recent events in the former Yugoslavia and the Middle East illustrate, local conflicts are not without international ramifications. We must not forget that domestic peace is closely linked to world peace and that today’s regional conflagration can easily become tomorrow’s international crisis.
But military intervention must not be our first, nor our last resort. The threat of force may bring combatants to the bargaining table. Lasting peace, however, requires dialogue and the construction of norms and rules for more rational national behavior. Consequently, we need to try to understand the sources of national conflict, as well as the reasons for ethnic and racial strife, arms races, and institutionalized violence. But we must also go beyond analysis of past events. Historical understanding is not enough. Our real challenge is to imagine and then create enduring solutions. This center will present such an opportunity.
This center will host many brave men and women coming from conflict situations in the United States and abroad—men and women who have not flinched in the face of adversity, cruelty, prejudice, and senseless violence, and who seek sensible alternatives to violence. Their presence will catalyze interest in the study of conflict, the pursuit of peace, and the quest for human dignity. The center at which they learn and teach will demonstrate our conviction that we must educate ourselves to understand the language, the sources, and the meanings of peace and human reconciliation if we are to avoid the horrors of war and the degradation of the human spirit. This place of peace will also remind us that peace is itself a learning process, an ongoing struggle for understanding and for enlightenment. It will be a place of peace, a place for exploring different points of view.
If you would like to consider one of the many ways you can include a gift to ICAR in your estate planning, please feel free to call me at (703) 993-1312.