Staying strong to its Brethren roots, Elizabethtown College places much emphasis on ideals of peace and nonviolence through classes and people on campus. For Dr. Jonathan “Jon” Rudy, he is the epitome of this tradition. A relatively new addition to the peace and conflict studies department as well as Center for Global Understanding and Peacemaking, Rudy serves the College under the title of peacemaker-in-residence.
Currently, Rudy is teaching a first-year seminar. “I teach one course a semester,” Rudy said. “It’s called Conflict Dynamics and Transformation. We look at human conflict and how to both conceptualize it and analyze it, then toward the last half of the class we make it practical and work on conflict intervention skills as well as communications skills.” According to Rudy, his overall goal is for his students to be more empowered to take on conflicts and be able to face them. “It fits with almost every discipline, anywhere we are,” he said. “Conflict comes at us and we’re involved in it. I really hope that my students feel empowered to not run away from conflict but to move toward it and help to resolve and transform it into something positive.”
Rudy not only works with both the peace and conflict studies department and the Center for Global Understanding and Peacemaking, but he also works with student life in any sort of work from training RAs to basic dorm life. “I’m still feeling my way into it,” he said. “I’m kind of an out there kind of a guy, a big-picture thinker, and what I brought to Etown was connections to Africa and Asia, and I’m learning how to translate that into a local college setting. It’s a work in progress.”
Rudy has had extensive experience in about 30 countries in Africa and Asia, such as Somaliland, Botswana, Kenya, Uganda, Afghanistan, Burma, the Philippines, Laos and Vietnam. His work started in 1983 with a trip to China for a study abroad opportunity, and then went abroad again to Somalia in 1987 with the Mennonite Central committee with his wife. “I’ve had my mind in Africa and Asia since then,” he said.
One of Rudy’s favorite and most enriching experiences deals with his work in Somaliland. “I’ve recently reconnected with Somaliland in the horn of Africa,” he said. “It’s been over 20 years since I’ve been back there. Since that was the first place my wife and I spent a significant amount of time, that’s really close to my heart.” He hopes to earn a grant for Somaliland to connect faculty and students to faculty and students in that area. “We left when the civil war started in 1988, and I left a piece of my heart there. Now to reengage with that and to bring those relationships to Etown, that’s really exciting to me.”
On Rudy’s shelf, a seemingly normal candleholder sits along with a few other mementos of his. “It’s kind of an ugly candle holder until you realize it’s a 105 millimeter Howitzer shell,” he said. “This is from a swords to plowshares project from a friend of mine in the Philippines. This shell was fired from anger in the seventies. It was collected and, through a community project, was made into art. I’m committed to nonviolence and transformation of violence into peaceful, robust, strong societies that can resist this urge towards destruction and violence.”
Another object he has is some spoons made from bomb casings that had been dropped on Laos. “These are another symbol of how we can change this very violent past into a better future,” Rudy said. “And that’s why I love teaching at Etown. I’m working with people who really are the future. The things you learn here, you can go out and change the world for the better. I see it in my students in the classroom. Part of my job is to explore and engage young people to discover those positive forces for change,” Rudy said. “How do we harness those? We do get discouraged and think that the ultimate is somebody’s threat to kill us, but there’s a lot of other power available beyond the threat of a bullet in our heads. In conflict transformation, you’ve just got to hang on for dear life and watch these things develop. You’ve got to move into new, hard space and think, ‘Am I going to contribute my own fear to the whole pall of fear that pervades at this time, or am I going to offer something different?’”
