To: Incoming Kroc School Graduate Students
From: Professors Phil Gamaghelyan, Dustin Sharp and Necla Tschirgi
Re: Suggested Summer Reading for KROC 500 FOUNDATIONS: PEACE, JUSTICE & SOCIAL CHANGE
Date: June 14, 2021
As the three faculty members who will be teaching the KROC 500 course which is required for all incoming students, we look forward to your arrival. This course will provide a multidisciplinary examination of the critical issues relevant to all three of our graduate programs. The first half of this course will grapple with a series of “Big Questions”, exploring foundational ideas behind peace, justice, and social change; where they overlap, and where they are in tension. The second half of the course will focus on cross-cutting “Big Challenges” currently facing humanity, with a view to identifying common problems and successful interventions. Throughout the course, students will be challenged not simply to learn a spectrum of ideas and practices, but to understand how they fit together, where and how to learn more, and how to craft their own educational and professional trajectories so that they can be part of the change they want to see in the world. The foundations we will establish together in this course should be a stepping-stone to your degree program and individualized course of study at the Kroc School. Taken together, the Foundations class and the Kroc Portfolio should bookend your experience at the Kroc School. Much of the specific knowledge, skills, and experience will come from specialized courses, internships, and other opportunities. Our goal is to prepare you to approach these opportunities as thoughtfully and strategically as possible, and to best take advantage of the resources of the Kroc School. We’re excited to accompany you on this journey.
To give you a head start on the course, we recommend that you make time to read a few selected books over the summer. We will return to these books as assigned or recommended readings during the semester. More importantly, we hope that they will motivate you to start engaging critically with the key issues that will be covered in KROC 500. We encourage you to debate with these authors cited below, to challenge their ideas, and to formulate your own views. As you will see, each of these books offers a unique take on thinking about, engaging in and helping advance social change in pursuit of peace and justice.
Adam Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know (Viking, 2021)
Organizational psychologist Adam Grant investigates why “we don’t have to believe everything we think and internalize everything we feel”—inviting us to become lifelong learners.
Kizzy’s Books & more // Eso Won Books // Bookshop.org // Amazon
John Paul Lederach, The Moral Imagination: The Art and Soul of Building Peace (Oxford University Press, 2005)
One of the world’s foremost experts on peacebuilding and reconciliation, Lederach examines approaches to addressing cycles of violence and conflict based on his own experiences and insights.
Kizzy’s Books & more // Bookshop.org // Amazon
Duncan Green, How Change Happens (Oxford University Press, 2016)
Written by a development practitioner, this book offers a powerful analytical framework as well as a practical guide for activists who want to change the world for the better.
Free PDF version // Kizzy’s Books & more // Bookshop.org // Amazon
Zeynep Tufekci, Twitter and Tear Gas: The power and Fragility of Networked Protest (Yale University Press, 2017)
Combining personal stories and experiences with theory, Tufekci’s book deals with the role of social media in social movements and social protest, drawing from around the world and the US.
Kizzy Books & more // Bookshop.org // Amazon