The Center for Peacemaking is an academic center at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin that fosters research and action for the promotion of peace, human dignity, and justice.

The center's programs provide students opportunities to develop peacemaking skills and faculty avenues to research nonviolence. The center's impact reaches near and far beyond campus—through social action projects based in Milwaukee to international partnerships in Afghanistan, El Salvador, and India.

Our Mission

The Marquette University Center for Peacemaking strives to empower the university and wider community to explore together the necessary skills to become informed, spiritually centered, nonviolent peacemakers. Rooted in the Ignatian charism, the center works with a spirit of confidence and joy to achieve an awakening to the complementary relationship of scholarship, spirituality, nonviolent living, and the active struggle for peace and justice.

Our History

In Fall 2006, Dr. Terry and Sally Rynne proposed an audacious vision: What if every student at Marquette learned how to work nonviolently for the promotion of peace before they graduated?

This question captured the imaginations of co-founder Dr. Michael Duffey and founding director Rev. G. Simon Harak, S.J., who galvanized support among students, faculty, and staff. The Center for Peacemaking opened on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, January 15, 2008.

What started as a small experiment has grown into one of Marquette's most robust academic centers. Students are graduating with peace studies degrees, faculty are producing scholarship on nonviolence, and peacemaking initiatives are engaging and transforming communities.

In Spring 2019, the National Catholic Reporter and Milwaukee Journal Sentinel published profiles on the center.

Catholic and Jesuit

The center's work is mutually informed by the rich traditions of Catholic social thought, gospel nonviolence and the Jesuit mission of reconciliation and working for peace.

As a Jesuit social center, we understand that when knowledge creation and informed action is directed toward solving pressing community needs, social transformation occurs. This is the essence of Jesuit education and praxis.

Diversity and Inclusion

The center's offices are filled with the vibrancy, energy and joy that our staff, students, faculty and community members bring to our shared work of building a more just world. As a space dedicated to learning and growth, we welcome all people and encourage the discussion, debate, and exchange of ideas with the goal of seeking truth.

The Center for Peacemaking endorses Marquette's Statement on Human Dignity and Diversity to cherish the dignity of each individual regardless of age, culture, faith, ethnicity, race, gender, sexual orientation, language, disability or social class.