Bio:

Arthur Romano is an Associate Professor at the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution, and The Elise Boulding Scholar Practitioner for the National Peace Academy. He is the founder of the Program on Urban Peacebuilding at the Carter School and has over 25 years of experience creating innovative and participatory education models with communities affected by conflict and violence. His research interests include peacebuilding in urban settings, nonviolent social movements, grassroots truth-telling processes, restorative justice, and experiential education. His recent book, Racial Justice and Nonviolence Education: Building the Beloved Community, One Block at a Time, examines the role that community-based educators in violence-affected cities play in building capacity to disrupt and transform cycles of violence.

Dr. Romano regularly consults and collaborates with diverse stakeholders, including policymakers, youth, activists, and artists, to co-create knowledge through action research. He has also served as a founding advisor and established long-term partnerships with organizations working on urban peacebuilding and violence prevention, such as the Connecticut Center for Nonviolence (CTCN) and the Truthtelling Project (TTP). CTCN offers high impact community-led educational programs in violence-affected neighborhoods in the state of Connecticut.  TTP supports community members who experience police violence and was recognized as a pioneering national organization for its racial justice and reparations work.

Dr. Romano’s international work focuses on peace education and citizen diplomacy. He has developed conflict resolution workshops for hip hop artists from around the world through the U.S. State Department-funded Next Level Program. He has facilitated nonviolence trainings for former rebel fighters from the Niger Delta as part of the Nigerian Presidential Amnesty Program. In East Asia, he has published on peace education in Hiroshima, Japan and contributed to problem-solving workshops in South Korea with North Korean defectors, national and international organizations interested in people-to-people peacebuilding. Dr. Romano co-leads the Peacelearner website with his colleague Daryn Cambridge which offers free resources on peace education to visitors from over 100 countries.

Programs:

Martin Luther King’s Radical Vision for Saving the Planet

When Dr. King is put on a pedestal as a saint, with little explanation of how he developed his militant approach to social change we erase the analysis that drove him to champion radical social change to challenge white supremacy, militarism, and economic exploitation, and how he developed courage over time and handled the violent resistance that he and others faced at every turn.

In this interactive program, Dr. Romano introduces the key principles and deeper ideas that are often missed in celebrations of King. Drawing on his extensive study of nonviolence under the guidance of Civil Right Legend Bernard Lafayette and his time studying nonviolence in India, he breaks down those ideas in ways that can help us think about taking action today.

To get a better sense of Dr. Romano’s thinking on this topic check out: https://wagingnonviolence.org/2021/01/martin-luther-king-world-house/

 Book Launch: Building the Beloved Community, One Block at a Time. 

 Check out this exclusive offer by Conscious Campus to have a personal book reading and social justice workshops at your school. This will include signed copies of the new book by Dr. Romano as we well as personalized program for your students aimed at supporting them in stepping into their leadership as future peacebuilders. This program will be available starting January 2022.

Call To Conscience: Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration
International peace-worker Arthur Romano honors the legacy and struggle of Rev Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. by bringing his teachings to life and demonstrating how King’s message is inspiring a new generation of peace-builders around the world today.

Civility and Difference: Sustaining Conversations that Matter on Campus
Is it possible to have passionate and contentious conversations on campus without resorting to negativity, nastiness and name calling? How can we be honest and not sugar coat things while also respecting others? This lecture explores the critical role that meaningful dialogue can play in addressing issues of difference on campus.

Courageous Leadership in Turbulent Times

When we think of courage, famous people such as spokespersons, celebrities, athletes, military generals, or highly recognizable leaders tend to come to mind. Popular discourse about leaders often leaves little room to explore the relevance of courageous action in our lives. When discussing courage in our society, we omit the social conditions that support the development of courageous qualities in people. Instead, courageous leaders are often thought of as somehow having the “it factor” of courage. They may be born that way, have a natural proclivity toward taking risks, a higher threshold for pain, or are innately adept at making wise choices when faced with seemingly insurmountable odds. This is far from the truth however, as people are not born courageous but instead become courageous, as they become bolder with the support of key people around them.

In this program, Dr. Arthur Romano, explores how we all can deepen our study and practice of courageous leadership. He draws on extensive research of people that have successfully navigated the challenges of conflict and violence and risen up to take compassionate and strategic action when others thought it was impossible. He grounds his work in nonviolence principles and key ideas that animated the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr and provide a clear path to action. In this talk, participants explore their attitudes and approaches toward conflict and inequality and engage with practical models that support navigating change, dealing with conflict and developing organizational models that can withstand and even thrive in the face of increasing uncertainty.

Conflict Resolution after the Pandemic:
The Pandemic taught us some very difficult but potentially transformative lessons. Those lessons include that we are profoundly interconnected in a global world and that our safety is deeply dependent on the health of others. This should radically reorient how we think of ourselves in the world. When it comes to safety, our billion dollar military was left largely on the sidelines as hundreds of thousands of people became ill and health care workers, teachers, social workers, farmers and many people in service oriented jobs fought to keep people alive. In this workshop Professor Romano, shares insights about what we need to learn from the pandemic and how a generation of people committed to social and ecological justice will need to step up to create a more equitable and sustainable world.

Diversity Matters Now!
More than a lecture, Diversity Matters Now! Is a transformative workshop that uses interactive activities to address diversity issues, enhance leadership qualities and increase capacity to build connections and community across lines of difference.