On April 2, former Guilford professor Mohammed Abu-Nimer gave a speech entitled “Reconciliation and Justice: What Can Guilford Do Now?” The Teach-In Committee and the peace and conflict studies “Fleming Lecture Series” sponsored the event. About 50 students, staff and Greensboro community members attended.

The main theme of the presentation, as the title indicated, was reconciliation. Abu-Nimer discussed the importance of dialogue, emotions, pride, action and transparency in reconciliation. He said that reconciliation, justice and peace are all connected with basic human needs such as security, equality and identity.

Abu-Nimer has worked around the world to dissipate inter-cultural and inter-ethnic conflict.

As a Palestinian from Israel, Abu-Nimer was inspired to work towards reconciliation and peace building for over a decade in the Middle East and is currently a professor at American University.

After being introduced by Vernie Davis, professor and director of the Conflict Resolution and Resource Center, Abu-Nimer asked the audience to accept that he was “talking from within” the community, after spending five years teaching at Guilford from 1993-1997.

He defined reconciliation as “the process required to restore relationships and equality in two or more groups.”

“There is no process that says ‘one, two, three, this is the way to reconciliation’; it’s messier than that,” Abu-Nimer said.

“Dialogue is necessary for reconciliation,” Abu-Nimer said. “It’s putting enemies together in a safe place, and it’s amazing to see what happens.”

He said that action is crucial to reconciliation as well

Eric Lewis, head coach of the women’s soccer team said, “I think the worst thing that could happen is if we all talk about this all day long and don’t actually do anything about it.”

The speaker said that addressing emotions is also a necessary aspect of reconciliation.

“Emotions must be healed in order to regain trust,” said Abu-Nimer.

“We are all looking for pride. We want the other side to recognize that our identity should be allowed to exist,” said Abu-Nimer. “You need to realize that my identity is just as good as your identity. You need to recognize that, and then we can have reconciliation.”

Abu-Nimer said that reconciliation can lead to finding common ground.

“We’re all different, uniquely and significantly . but that doesn’t mean we’re looking for different things . In the reconciliation process we realize we all have the same needs,” Abu-Nimer said.

“The issue of transparency is also crucial. A sophomore said to me today, ‘We don’t really know what the judicial board agreed on but we know they agreed.'”

“Too often people view forgiveness as the only way to reconciliation . it puts too much pressure on the victims and not enough emphasis on underlying problems,” said Jill Williams, former director of the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Committee and part-time lecturer in justice and policy studies.

Abu-Nimer concluded his speech with a reminder that there is a lot left to do to achieve reconciliation in our community.

“This is not a business for shortcuts. We can’t just sweep this under the rug and say, ‘Ok, we’ve dealt with this.’