Betty Reardon

Dr. Betty A. Reardon is a feminist peace educator and civil society activist with decades of practical experience in the international development of comprehensive peace education. Her teaching experience spans the levels of formal education from middle to graduate school. She has taught at various universities in the US and other countries.  She founded the original Peace Education Program at Teachers College Columbia University in 1982, the International Institute on Peace Education (also in 1982) to facilitate worldwide cooperation among peace educators, and the Global Campaign for Peace Education for the further development and dissemination of the field of peace education. Her civil society activism has been devoted to disarmament, political empowerment of women, and gender and racial equality and justice. She was among the initiators of the NGO campaign that resulted in UNSCR 1325. Prominent among her books is Sexism and the War System, 1985. In 2015, Dr. Reardon sat down with the Ikeda Center for an in-depth video interview on key topics from her long career. In 2017 and 2018 she shared her wisdom with a team of Boston-area university students who engaged in a sustained nuclear weapons abolition project framed as an “experiment in alternative thinking about global issues.” It culminated with student-led event called called “Nuclear Abolition: Claiming Your Right to Live.”