About

The Notre Dame Leadership Seminars are a competitive, fully funded 10-day residential program for academically talented rising seniors, running July 18–29, 2026. Students select one of six seminar tracks, each taught by Notre Dame faculty and culminating in one transferable college credit. Approximately 150 students are admitted across all tracks each year. Global Issues: Violence and Peace in the Modern Age examines the roots and dynamics of contemporary political violence — from wars and mass atrocities to the refugee crisis and climate-driven instability — and then turns to the practice of peacebuilding across international, national, and community levels. The seminar is co-taught by Atalia Omer, Professor of Religion, Conflict, and Peace Studies at Notre Dame's Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, and Ernesto Verdeja, Associate Professor of Political Science and Peace Studies and Director of Undergraduate Peace Studies — two faculty whose research specializations in political violence, transitional justice, and religion and peacebuilding directly shape the curriculum.

The seminar proceeds in two halves. The first focuses on three regional case studies — the Middle East, central Africa, and the United States — examining how extremist nationalism and dehumanizing ideology generate mass atrocities, systemic discrimination, and entrenched poverty. The second pivots to peacebuilding: how international institutions like the United Nations promote the rule of law, how nonviolent social movements advance justice, and how restorative justice practices reduce community conflict. The seminar concludes with a field trip to community peacebuilding organizations in Chicago, where students engage directly with practitioners working on violence reduction and neighborhood resilience — an applied capstone that distinguishes this track from purely classroom-based seminars.

Notre Dame's Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies is one of the most respected centers for peace studies research in the world, and this seminar draws directly on its faculty and intellectual framework. For students seriously interested in international relations, political violence, human rights, or conflict resolution — and prepared to engage both empirical and normative dimensions of these problems at a demanding level — the Global Issues seminar offers full funding, expert instruction from active researchers, and a residential intellectual community at one of the most distinctive institutional homes for this subject matter in American higher education.