Carter Center Official to Oversee
Kroc Peace Institute

A top official from the Carter Center in Atlanta will become the first director of the Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace & Justice at the University of San Diego.

Joyce Neu, a conflict resolution specialist who has led high-level mediation efforts in countries including Bosnia, Sudan and Uganda, will oversee the Kroc institute’s efforts to promote world peace and social justice. She will assume her new post on Sept. 15.

Construction on the institute, funded by a $25 million gift from philanthropist Joan B. Kroc, began last month and is well underway. Rudolph & Sletten Inc. is the contractor. Completion of the 90,000-square-foot facility on the west end of the campus overlooking the San Diego and Mission bays is expected by the fall of 2001.

"With construction started and a director selected, we are well on our way to seeing the vision of the Kroc institute become a reality," said USD President Alice B. Hayes. "We are delighted that our national search for a director brought us someone with the impressive background and talents of Joyce Neu."

At the center named in honor of former President Jimmy Carter, Neu is the Senior Associate Director of its Conflict Resolution Program. She joined the center in 31992 and has worked to prevent and end conflicts in many parts of this world and advise the former president on his peace-making activities for the past several months. This month, she has traveled to Africa as part of an effort to negotiate an end to disputes between the nations of Uganda and Sudan, Somalia. This spring she will receive a Peacemaker/Peacebuilder Award from the National Peace Foundation in Washington, D.C. for her pioneering work in the field and in Sudan.

A native of Southern California, Neu holds a doctorate in linguistics from the University of Southern California. She is an adjunct professor of anthropology at Emory University in Georgia. A former Peace Corps volunteer, she has lectured and taught at Penn State University, the University of California at Irvine and USC.

She was also a Fulbright Senior Lecturer in Poland. Neu has also created and taught courses at Emory and has consulted on conflict resolution for the Environmental Protection Agency, the Voice of America, and the U.S. Department of Treasury. She sits on the boards of the Consortium for Conflict Resolution and Negotiation, the International Institute for Mediation and Conflict Resolution, and NeXus, a journal on conflict resolution. She has published on negotiations and intercultural communication.

"I want to thank Mrs. Kroc for her generous gift to USD," said Neu. "As a native Southern Californian, I'm pleased to see an institute dedicated to peace and justice in San Diego. It’s time that California and Southern California in particular, with its large immigrant population and ties to Mexico and the Pacific Rim, was given the chance to draw on its unique heritage to contribute to our knowledge and practice of peace-making, justice and conflict resolution.

"I welcome the opportunity to help the university develop an institute that will put it on the map as a nationally and internationally recognized center for peace and justice studies and peacemaking," Neu added.