The Sustained Dialogue Institute (SDI) will honor US. Supreme Court Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Thursday, November 17, 2016, at its annual National Dialogue Awards dinner. SDI President the Reverend Mark Farr and Professor Charles Ogletree ofHarvard Law School, will present Ms. Ginsburg with an award for her lifetime dedication to the highest ideals of cautious change and thoughtful jurisprudence.
“Ms. Ginsburg has shown a strong adherence to the values which we at SDI strongly support,” the Reverend Farr said.
Ambassador Andrew Young, Honorary Chair and Judith F Terra, Chair, host Committee for the gala, remarked that “Justice Ginsburg has used her special talent during her lifetime to the best of her ability and in the process, she has made things a little better for all of us by helping repair the tears in society. For this reason, we wish to honor her at our gala dinner with the 2016 National Dialogue Award.”
The award is annually bestowed on leading Americans who seek to heal our nation, transcend its current divisions and bring about equality and justice for all. “Some previous recipients of this award,” Farr said, “include legendary civil rights leader Congressman John Lewis of Georgia, Senator George Mitchell, former Majority Leader and Ireland's chief peace negotiator, and Michele Norris, the first African-American female host of National Public Radio.”
The First Global Peacemaker Award will also be presented that evening by Dr. James H. Billington, The Librarian of Congress Emeritus, to Susan E. Carmel (Lehrman), for her efforts towards greater cultural relations around the world, and in particular Russia..
SDI recognizes the increasing urgency to end the divide which our country and our world is currently facing. “Too many people have lost their capacity or their will to listen thoughtfully, to talk respectfully, and to relate constructively,” Farr said. “This, I believe, isdamaging our civic life, our personal interactions, and our learning processes.”
The awards are notable because the honorees are not only those whose lives have been spent in a noble cause, but also because of all the young people who have shown the promise of a life marked by thoughtful dialogue. “For these younger awardees,” Farr said, “we hope the awards are an encouragement to stay the course and promote dialogue between those of difference in the decades to come for the peace of our world.”
Sustained Dialogue Instituteis a national and international conflict transformation organization, whose mission is to create a world where people coexist peacefully, justly, and productively through dialogue across divides. It is currently working on three continents and has chapters in 50 college campuses where it interacts with young people. Hal Saunders, the founder of SDI, was the former Assistant Secretary of State under President Carter and the chief architect of the Camp David Peace Treaties between Israel & its neighbors. He once said, "Our world has never seemed more angrily divided as at this moment in our lifetime." During Saunder’s involvement in negotiations over the years, he observed an evolution of a recognizable pattern. It has led to two key conceptsthat serve as the foundations of SDI to this day. One is a concept of relationship that can be used to analyze and guide efforts for improving friendships, and the other is a five-stage process for leading participants from trust-building dialogue to community-changing action.SDI Advisory Board members include President Jimmy Carter, Henry Kissinger, James L Baker lll, Frank Carlucci, and Dorothy Cotton, among others.
Reverend Mark FARR, President, SDI, has more than 30 years of experience in political and public service in the United States and United Kingdom. Prior to joining SDI, he was the president of Faith and Politics Institute on Capitol Hill. This institute was responsible for organizing the annual Congressional Civil Rights Pilgrimage with John Lewis and overseeing both the Senate and House Chiefs of Staff meetings. Before that, he was senior director at former president George H.W. Bush’s Legacy Foundation, and he was the corporate director of Colin Powell’s America’s Promise. Reverend Farr is a qualified psychotherapist and priest.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg,US Supreme Court Associate Justice received her B.A. from Cornell University, attended Harvard Law School, and received her LL.B. from Columbia Law School. She served as a law clerk to the Honorable Edmund L. Palmieri, Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, from 1959–1961. She was a research associate and then associate director of the Columbia Law School Project on International Procedure from 1961–1963. She was a law professor at Rutgers University School of Law from 1963–1972, and Columbia Law School from 1972–1980, and a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in Stanford, California from 1977–1978. She co-founded the Women’s Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties Union in 1971, and served as the ACLU’s General Counsel from 1973–1980, where she was the National Board of Directors from 1974–1980. She served on the Board and Executive Committee of the American Bar Foundation from 1979-1989, on the Board of Editors of the American Bar Association Journal from 1972-1978, and on the Council of the American Law Institute from 1978-1993. She was appointed a Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 1980. And in 1993 President Clinton nominated her as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court.
Susan E. Carmel (Lehrman) is the President of RSJ Properties located in New York City, NY. Ms. Carmel is the Founder and Advisory Committee Chair of the Carmel Institute of Russian Culture and History at American University in Washington DC. Ms. Carmel has received multiple awards for her efforts towards greater cultural relations. The Russian Federation awarded Ms. Carmel the Medal of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for Contributions to International Cooperation. Ms. Carmel has also received the rank of Chevalier in France’s Legion d’honneur, the One to World Fulbright Award for Cultural Diplomacy, the Eurasia Center’s Lifetime Achievement Award, the Catherine the Great Award from the Russian Cultural Centre, the Woodrow Wilson Award for Public Service for contributions towards U.S. Russia Relations and American University’s Highest Honor, the President’s Award.
