Participant Reflections from our Educating for Peace Conference

In May 2025, the Ikeda Center, together with the Soka Institute for Global Solutions at Soka University of America, the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, and EdEthics at the Harvard Graduate School of Education hosted the first annual Educating for Peace Conference for middle and high school teachers. Read more about this inaugural event here. We are grateful to the participants from that conference for sharing their reflections with us.

Adam Leff, Gould Academy (2025 Participant)

Overall, how would you describe your experience at the 2025 conference?

The 2025 conference was a rare opportunity to step back from the pace of school life and spend time in conversation with scholars, educators, and practitioners who are thinking seriously about nuclear disarmament and peace. I valued being part of a community that approaches this issue not only as a policy challenge, but also as a moral and educational one. What stayed with me most was the emphasis on dialogue and the responsibility educators have to help young people grapple thoughtfully with difficult global questions. As a teacher working with high school students, I left the conference both encouraged and challenged to bring these conversations more intentionally into my classroom and into the broader life of our school.

What insight or idea from the conference has stayed with you the most?

One idea that has stayed with me is the understanding that nuclear disarmament ultimately depends on cultivating a culture of peace among younger generations. Policy and diplomacy clearly matter, but lasting change also grows out of education that helps students develop empathy, historical understanding, and a sense of shared human responsibility.

The conference also reinforced something I see in my own work with students: how powerful local conversations can be. When students, teachers, and community members engage seriously with questions of war, security, and peace, perspectives begin to shift. Those discussions often have a ripple effect, shaping how individuals think and how communities approach these issues more broadly. In that sense, peace education is not only about understanding global challenges, but also about helping young people see that their voices and actions can matter.

What action have you taken since the conference to teach about nuclear disarmament and peace in your classroom and/or school?

Since the conference, I have tried to bring these ideas more intentionally into both our curriculum and the life of our school community. This past International Peace Day, we focused our programming on nuclear disarmament, highlighted by a visit from Dr. Ira Helfand of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. His work and his conversations with students provided a powerful and deeply human perspective on the issue, and nearly all of our students had the opportunity to engage with him directly in classes and discussions during his visit.

That visit helped spark additional momentum on campus. This spring, students and faculty are establishing a school chapter of Students for Nuclear Disarmament (SND), creating a space where students can continue learning about and advocating for nuclear disarmament. It has been encouraging to see students take real ownership of these conversations and begin thinking about what responsible global citizenship might look like in practice.

In the classroom, we are also incorporating peacebuilding frameworks more intentionally into our history curriculum so that students examine conflict not only through the lens of power and geopolitics, but also through approaches that emphasize dialogue, reconciliation, and long-term peacebuilding. Building on this work, I am currently developing a course in Peacebuilding that we hope to offer as part of next year’s curriculum.