Prize Laureates
2010 Laureate
Colman McCarthy is a journalist and teacher in the field of peace education. In 1982, he began teaching peace studies as a volunteer at two public high schools. Currently, he teaches eight classes at six Washington, DC area schools: the Georgetown University Law Center, American University, the University of Maryland, the Washington Center for Internships, and Bethesda-Chevy Chase and Wilson high schools.
He has taught and mentored over 8,000 students. In 1985, he and his wife Mavourneen founded the Center for Teaching Peace, a Washington non-profit organization that works with schools to create peace studies programs.
Mr. McCarthy, who was a columnist for the Washington Post from 1969 to 1997, has also written for The National Catholic Reporter, The Nation, The Progressive, and The New Yorker. Choosing to be a peace correspondent rather than a war correspondent, he went to the front lines of peacemaking to bring to his classrooms such risk-takers as Nobel Peace Prize Laureates Adolfo Perez Esquivel, Muhammad Yunus, and Maired Corrigan, as well as Sargent Shriver, Joan Baez and Howard Zinn.
His books include I’d Rather Teach Peace, All of One Peace, Inner Companions, Involvements and At Rest with the Animals. He is also the editor of two anthologies—“Solutions to Violence” and “Strength Through Peace”—that are used in peace education programs at many colleges and high schools. Mr. McCarthy has three sons, all involved in social justice work.
2009 Laureate
Dr. Mary Elizabeth King is professor of peace and conflict studies at the United Nations-affiliated University for Peace, which has its main campus in Costa Rica, and distinguished scholar with the Center for Global Peace at American University in Washington, DC. She is also a Rothermere American Institute Fellow at the University of Oxford, in Britain. Priorities of her work include peace education and nonviolent civil resistance.
Among Dr. King’s many publications, she is the author of the highly acclaimed, A Quiet Revolution: The First Palestinian Intifada and Nonviolent Resistance, released in 2007. Her most recent book is, The New York Times on Emerging Democracies in Eastern Europe (2009), chronicling the peaceful transitions from Soviet rule that occurred in Poland, Hungary, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, the Baltic States, Serbia, Georgia, and Ukraine.
Dr. King has worked with President Jimmy Carter as a special advisor since the early 1970s, including working closely with him on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As a presidential appointee in the Carter Administration, she had worldwide oversight for the Peace Corps and other U.S. volunteer service corps programs. In the U.S. civil rights movement, she worked alongside the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, an experience that defined her life. In addition to her work in the field of peace education, she has been a practitioner of international relations for 35 years—requiring personal contact with heads of state and government ministers of more than 120 developing countries.
Dr. King earned a doctorate in international politics from the University of Wales at Aberystwyth in the United Kingdom.
Congratulatory Letter from former President Jimmy Carter
2008 Laureate
The El-Hibri Charitable Foundation and the El-Hibri family wish to congratulate Scott Kennedy, the second recipient of the El-Hibri Peace Education Prize. Scott Kennedy has been a Peace Educator for 40 years. He was instrumental in pioneering educational delegations to conflict zones, now a widely practiced form of peace education. He has personally led more than three dozen delegations to the Middle East since 1979. He also helped establish Witness for Peace, which brought thousands of US citizens to Nicaragua on short term educational delegations.
He co-founded the Resource Center for Nonviolence in Santa Cruz, California which is one of the most active community-based peace education centers in the U.S. The Center has been host to countless speakers, workshops, and programs focusing on the peaceful and just resolution of conflicts locally and around the world. Scott has actively served on the boards of many organizations that teach and exemplify peace and empowerment, including the Fellowship of Reconciliation, Middle East Witness, Refuser Solidarity Network, Middle East Advisory Committee of the American Friends Service Committee, Isla Vista Youth Project, Isla Vista Children's Center, Thomas Merton Unity (Nonviolence) Center, the Isla Vista People's Life Fund, California Youth Advocate Program, National Youth Advocate Program, and the Interfaith Peace-Builders.
Scott is a former mayor of Santa Cruz, California where he resides with his wife Kristin. They have 3 grown children.
Congratulatory Congressional Record Citation by Hon. Sam Farr
2007 Laureate
The El-Hibri Peace Education Prize committee wishes to congratulate Professor Abdul Aziz Said, the First Laureate of this award.
He serves as the Mohammed Said Farsi Chair of Islamic Peace at American University in Washington, DC, and receives this honor in recognition of his dedication to the causes of peace, his preeminent role in educating about peace and Islam, and his 50 years as a faculty mentor and teacher at American University.
Congratulatory Letter to Abdul Aziz Said from Phi Epsilon Pi Fraternity
“... life is a path of learning where we are each constantly called upon to awaken ourselves and each other to search for freedom, truth, beauty, creativity, and above all, justice.”
-- Abdul Aziz Said