Padraig O’Malley receives prestigious Dr. Jean Mayer Global Citizenship Award
by Nancy RIORDAN
8 December 2015

FCT director, Professor Padraig O’Malley  was awarded the Dr. Jean Mayer Global Citizenship Award from the Institute for Global Leadership (IGL) at Tufts University on December 8th 2015.

The Dr. Jean Mayer Global Citizenship Award was established in 1993 in honor of Jean Mayer, tenth President of Tufts University (1976-1993), and gives recognition to distinguished scholars and practitioners whose moral courage, personal integrity, and passion for scholarship resonates Mayer’s own dictum that: “Scholarship, research and teaching must be dedicated to solving the most pressing problems facing the world.”

IGL’s founding director, Sherman Teichman, introduced O’Malley as a “guiding light” who inspired the institute’s mission over a thirty year history and central to its creation, then as “somebody… intrepid in his scholarship and in his persona”, emphasizing O’Malley’s  distinguished published works on divided societies and his leadership of global peace initiatives including the Forum for Cities in Transition.  O’Malley replied, “You are the greatest teacher I have even known,” reciprocating admiration for Teichman’s own work that has been integral to reconciliation around the world, through the institute and the students he has mentored.

Prior to receiving the prestigious award, Professor O’Malley’s lecture titled: “Israel and Palestine: Is a Two-State Solution No Longer Feasible?” featured excerpts from his new book: The Two-State Delusion: Israel and Palestine, A Tale of Two Narratives:

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O’Malley told the audience that he did not begin writing his book based on whether or not a two state solution is still feasible – rather through research, “accumulated evidence, facts on the ground and in the mind, changing demographics between Israel and Palestine and within Israel itself, as well as the geopolitical shape and ongoing crisis in the region today,” led him to conclude that it is time for Israelis and Palestinians to seek a new way forward.