The Jill Knox Humor for Peace Fellowship is intended to contribute to peace through humor by providing peace studies students and faculty with the opportunity to engage in professional development through AATH’s Humor Academy program.
Will we learn now that militarized security systems do not and cannot provide human security? Will peace educators take up the opportunity to explore the alternative security systems that this crisis demands we consider?
Maureen Kushner – an innovative and creative teacher from New York – had taken her project The Art and Soul of Peace Through Humor to more than 180 cities in the US and Canada and to well over a dozen countries in Europe, as well as to the Knesset. The project was developed as a result of an invitation by the Education Ministry, and many of its showings were sponsored by the Foreign Ministry’s cultural division.
It all started when Kushner was teaching a graduate course on peace education at Bank Street College of Education in New York City. She mentioned to her students that in order to have peace, you need a sense of humor. Quoting John Dewey, the great American educator, she told them, “To be serious and funny at the same time is the ideal mental condition.” They asked her to elaborate on that concept, and the rest is history.