I am in Northern Ireland for the next three weeks as part of the Lilly Fellows Program Summer Seminar on "Teaching Peace and Reconciliation: Theory and Practice in Northern Ireland." We are staying at the Corrymeela Centre for Peace and Reconciliation in Ballycastle. Corrymeela has been around for a few decades trying to bring Catholics and Protestants together. It sees itself as an open Christian community committed to reconciliation.
While I am here, I hope to learn a lot about the Troubles as well as the peace process that led to its "resolution." My family is from Ireland, not Northern Ireland, but this is the first time that I've been to either. It'll will be an opportunity to learn some new things and to better incorporate Northern Ireland into my Comparative Civil Wars course.
I also hope that my time here will help me to think a little differently about truth, justice, reconciliation, and forgiveness in the Central American nations of which I am more familiar. That should help with the blog, research, and teaching. I also run the University of Scranton's Education for Justice Program and this program is already giving me a number of ideas.
However, that probably means that I won't be posting much here over the next few weeks. So, if anyone with a background in Central or South America would like to submit a guest post, please send it a long and I will get them up.
Mike
