CAS CONNECT 2017

Dambach now teaches at Johns Hopkins Universi ty. He is the former president of the Nat ional Peace Corps Associat ion. PHOTO COURTESY CHIC DAMBACH “[I] discovered what a disaster [the Vietnam War] was,” he says. “It was based totally on a misunder- standing on what was happening in Vietnam, false pretenses in the Gulf of Tonkin, and I realized that people were killing and being killed over a stupid mistake. You just can’t justify that.” As he researched more wars and other conflicts, he concluded that most wars are “colossal mistakes.” “I just started thinking through the whole concept of using violent force to resolve differences,” he says. “I’m not a total pacifist; I am willing to defend myself and this country when we are legitimately threatened. All too often, we get war when we are not threatened. There are peaceful ways of resolving these differences.” Dambach’s path to the Nobel nomination began with two young African men he mentored: Maikel Nabil, an Egyptian blogger, activist and political 29 prisoner; and Victor Ochen, a Ugandan peace activist and founder of the African Youth Initiative Network. Both men have also been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Ochen holds the current record as sub- Sahara Africa’s youngest nominee and Uganda’s first. Ochen has also been named one of the 10 most powerful people in Africa by Forbes magazine. “Maikel was one of the key leaders of the youth uprising in Egypt in 2011. … Victor was born and raised in a displaced persons camp in northern Uganda, and was attacked by Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army,” Dambach says. “These two young men went to members of Congress to convince them to nominate me for the prize.” The final vote on the 2017 Peace Prize recipients will take place in October, with the awards being presented in December in Oslo, Norway.