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Lewis University offers both a Bachelor of Arts and a minor in Peace and Justice Studies (PJS). In the PJS major, students will develop their capacity to have an impact on advancing just peace through critical awareness of injustices and the vision and ability to transform them. PJS majors and minors will cultivate knowledge and skills that work toward conflict transformation, civic interfaith leadership, nonviolent strategic action, and peacebuilding through focusing the just peace lens while engaging with diverse communities.

CURRICULUM

Peace and Justice Studies is an interdisciplinary field that draws on areas of study such as political science, sociology, history, theology, psychology, philosophy, and others. In the Lewis University program, core courses – 18 credits for the major and 10 credits for the minor – provide a foundation for the skills and art of just peacebuilding while integrating interfaith studies. Students will choose an area of specialization from five flexible pathways based on personal interests and career goals to complete their degree.

PATHWAYS

Five different pathways are available for students to pursue based on personal interests and career goals. The pathways are:

Conflict Transformation – Aims to transform negative destructive conflict into positive constructive conflict in order to foster human thriving and enact just systems. (modified from definition by the Berghof Foundation)

Restorative/Transformative Justice – Regards crime as a harm to those impacted by it and seeks to heal the harm experienced by actors, survivors and community members, rather than punishing and silencing those involved.

Human Rights and Equitable Development – Explores the conditions and systems which deprive persons of their freedoms, proper agency and rights, and then seeks to study and create ways to ensure access and full exercise of those rights to participate fully in human community.

Women and Gender Equity and Inclusion – Examines gender as a social and cultural construction and draws on feminist lenses and methods to examine local and global systems of privilege and oppression, and relationships between power and gender as they intersect with other identities such as race, sexual orientation, socio-economic class, and diverse-ability. (modified from Shaw & Lee, 2014).

Interfaith and Intercultural Bridgebuilding – Connects persons and communities across religious traditions and cultural contexts to work side-by-side toward mutually identified goals that prosper the common good.

SAMPLE CLASSES

International Human Rights

Multicultural Issues in Criminal Justice

Sustainable Communities

Psychology of Minority Experience

Violence and Peace

Global Educational Systems

CAREER AREAS

Graduates of the Peace and Justice Studies degree will be prepared for a wide variety of careers. A few of the many possibilities follow.

Diversity, equity and inclusion officer

educator

negotiator

mediator

lawyer

human rights advocate

environmental conservationist

community organizer

restorative justice practitioner