Conference Speakers
Linda Biehl
LINDA BIEHL and the late Peter Biehl co-founded the Amy Biehl Foundation in the U.S. and the Amy Biehl Foundation Trust in South Africa. The genesis of these foundations is grounded in the life and death of their daughter Amy Biehl. Amy was a dynamic, 26 year-old Stanford graduate who in 1993 was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to study the role of women and gender rights during South Africa’s transition from the apartheid regime to a free multiracial democracy. Just days before she was due home, Amy was killed in an act of political violence.
The remarkable story of Amy and her parents have been a subject of many articles and a recent book, Amy Biehl's Last Home by Steven Gish (Ohio State Univ Press, 2018). The story have been featured in world-wide media, including ABC’s “Turning Point,” and Oprah Winfrey shows; CBS “60 Minutes” and “60 Minutes II;” NBC’S “Today Show; ” CNN’s Paula Zahn, and Anderson Cooper shows; and focus of award winning documentary, Long Night’s Journey into Day.
The four men, convicted of killing Amy, applied in 1997 for amnesty to South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). Instead of opposing their amnesty, the Biehls supported the TRC, offered their support to these young men, and invited them to link arms to continue Amy’s work.
Restorative rather than retributive justice continues to be the focus of Linda Biehl’s message of peace and reconciliation. In 2008 Linda Biehl was awarded the highest honor given to a non-South African, the Companions of O. R. Tambo. In that year, she was also honored by the inaugural Greeley Scholar for Peace Award by the UMASS at Lowell. She has been featured speaker in numerous programs.
Jose Zapata Calderon
JOSE ZAPATA CALDERON is Emeritus Professor in Sociology and Chican@ Latino@ Studies at Pitzer College and President of the Latino and Latina Roundtable of the San Gabriel and Pomona Valley. As the son of immigrant farm workers from Mexico, he has had a long history of connecting his organizing and academic work with community-based teaching, participatory action research, critical pedagogy, and engagement. From 2013 – 2015, he served on the Los Angeles County Board of Education and is presently on the steering committee of the College for all Coalition, composed of over 50 diverse organizations that is leading the implementation of historic education legislation (SB-1050) to improve college access and readiness for all students.
Dr. Calderon's TedX presentation , Finding Cesar Chavez: A Transformative Moment,” was chosen as an Editor’s Pick nationally. As a community-based public intellectual, he has published over sixty articles and studies including the books: Lessons from an Activist Intellectual: Teaching, Research, and Organizing for Social Change, and Race, Poverty, and Social Justice: Multidisciplinary Perspectives Through Service Learning.
Chitra Golestani
CHITRA GOLESTANI is a faculty member at the Valparaiso University and the Institute for Humane Education in a hybrid Master of Education program. She is a co-founder of the Paulo Freire Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) where she is a research associate and lecturer. Dr. Golestani serves on the editorial board for Global Commons Review, a new magazine published by the Paulo Freire Institute and produced by the UNESCO-UCLA Chair on Global Learning and Global Citizenship Education. She holds a Ph.D. in Social Science and Comparative Education from UCLA and a Master’s in Education from University of California, Santa Barbara.
Her areas of interest, lectures and research include Human Rights, Social Justice and Global Citizenship Education, Conflict Resolution and Restorative Justice, Youth Activism in Extended Education, Conscious Living and Social Action. Her work is inspired by her lived experience with persecution in the country of her birth, Iran, where members of the Baha'i Faith are not allowed to practice, are prohibited from accessing higher education, and denied other civil rights. While still a young child, her family escaped this marginalization and fled to the US in search of religious freedom, equality between women and men and human rights. Currently, Dr. Golestani is engaged in numerous grass-roots programs aimed at raising human capacity, locally and globally, to work towards a more just, united, and sustainable planet.
Bernard Lafayette Jr.
BERNARD LAFAYETTE JR. is a Civil Rights Icon, who played a leading role in many campaigns during the Civil Rights Movement, including. Nashville (1960), the Freedom Rides (1961), and the Selma (1965). He co-founded the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in 1960 and directed the Alabama Voter Registration Project (1962). He was appointed by Martin Luther King, Jr. the National Program Administrator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and National Coordinator of the 1968 Poor Peoples’ campaign.
He has held a Peace Chair at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota, while serving as Director of the Nonviolence Peace Education Center. He served on the faculties of Columbia Theological Seminary in Atlanta; and Alabama State University in Montgomery, where he was Dean of the Graduate School. Dr. LaFayette has served as Director of Justice and Peace in Latin America, Chairperson of the Consortium on Peace Research, Education, and Development. For many years he held the position of Distinguished Senior Scholar in Residence at the Candler School of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, where he founded the Emory Center for Advancing Nonviolence (ECAN). He currently holds the position of Chairman of the Board of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), chairs the International Nonviolence Executive Planning Board, and is a faculty member at Auburn University, Auburn, AL.
He has published numerous books and manuals on the pedgogies of peace and nonviolence. His recent book, In Peace and Freedom: My Journey in Selma, (with Kathryn Lee Johnson) received the 2014 Lillian Smith Book Award. He is editor of The Chicago Freedom Movement: Martin Luther King, Jr. and Civil Rights Activism in the North, published in 2016.
Recently, he was awarded The Mahatma Gandhi International Award for Reconciliation and Peace by the Gandhi Development Trust in Durban, South Africa. He has been featured in a number of documentaries focusing on nonviolence and the civil rights campaigns. Dr. LaFayette earned his B.A. from the American Baptist Theological Seminary in Nashville, Tennessee, and his Ed.M. and Ed.D from Harvard University.