The Peacemaker Project, a new student-led initiative designed to promote productive disagreements, kicked off its first campus event on Sept. 9.
The Peacemaker Project is an initiative that aims to help students of all backgrounds learn about habits of peacemaking from author Steven T. Collis. Founders and BYU students Alex and Mirabella Keogh said that such skills will be a theme of many events to help BYU students bridge political polarization this semester.
For the Keoghs, productive disagreement has been an important part of their lives since long before the Peacemaker Project came to fruition. Both students attributed that skill partially to high school debate, something Alex Keogh described as a “treasure hunt to find ... areas of common ground."
“I learned that even if there was someone who had an opinion that I disagreed with, usually they could change my mind about something, even if my mind wasn’t changed about this value I held,” Mirabella Keogh said.
For Mirabella, coming to college made her realize that she was putting people she disagreed with into two categories: people that were bad or people that must not understand the facts. However, she shared that a humbling conversation with a protestor at a political rally changed her feelings.
“(The protestor) became a real person to me, and even though my mind didn’t change about the topic, I realized that she had experiences ... that I didn’t have, and those things shaped her opinions,” Mirabella Keogh said. “Who was I to say that I knew better than her?”
The original idea for the Peacemaker Project came from President Nelson’s 2023 General Conference address “Peacemakers Needed,” a message that spoke deeply to the Keoghs.
“I think some people listened to the talk and heard the part about mutual respect and dignified dialogue but not the part about honest differences of opinion,” Alex Keogh said. “We found that disagreeing with ... those closest to you can actually strengthen your relationships rather than hurt them.”
In his talk, President Nelson noted that even the Church leaders he works with do not always see things the same way but can navigate disagreement with charity and love for each other. Therein lies an important distinction between peacekeeping and peacemaking, Mirabella said.
“You can be a peacekeeper in the sense that you stop all disagreements from happening and you avoid contention at all costs,” Mirabella Keogh said. “Or you can be a peacemaker where you look at a situation and say ... ‘How can we build a bridge between these two people?’”
These ideas are reflected in the Peacemaker Project’s vision statement to "envision a future in which the vast majority of students at BYU are eager to engage in productive disagreement based on mutual respect and dignified dialogue."
The full vision statement can be found on Instagram @byu.peacemakerproject.
“On BYU campus, there's a risk of being homogeneous because the majority of students at BYU belong to the same church and share a lot of background and life experiences with each other,” Alex Keogh said. “There's a really beautiful strength in our unity ... but at the same time, the risk ... is that people start to be afraid of an opinion that’s different than the majority.”
In recent years, leaders have emphasized that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is politically neutral. They have urged against, “merely voting a straight ticket or voting based on ‘tradition’, without careful study of the candidates and their positions on important issues,” as shown in a statement from the First Presidency in 2023.
Tentative plans for future events with the Peacemaker Project include a fireside chat with politicians who will model what a productive disagreement looks like, and across the aisle dinners to give students the opportunity to develop friendships with those of different beliefs.
With the presidential election coming up, the Keoghs expressed that the current focus is navigating political disagreements, but the project will eventually explore other avenues of peacemaking such as bridging cultural disagreements and interfaith dialogue.
“We want students to feel ... excited that by being a peacemaker and by engaging with people that they disagree with, they are joining this powerful social movement that can cause drastic change in the world,” Mirabella Keogh said.
Because the Peacemaker Project aims to model how to manage honest differences of opinion, a wide variety of viewpoints is vital to the Keoghs.
“We need all perspectives at the table in peacemaking,” Alex Keogh said. “Please believe us when we say we want to cast this net over all types of people on campus.”
Additional information about future events joining the initiative can be found on the Instagram account @byu.peacemakerproject.