Guide to Specialists

David J. Smith
Senior Program Officer, Education and Training Center/Domestic

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Phone: (202) 429-4709

E-mail: dsmith@usip.org

David J. Smith is a senior program officer in the Institute’s Education and Training Center/Domestic, where he focuses on secondary and higher education in conflict resolution and peace studies. He has primary responsibility for community college initiatives as well as issues related to youth and violent conflict.

His experience before joining the Institute in 2005 focused extensively on teaching at the college and university level, and he applied conflict resolution as a practicing mediator. From 1992 to 2005 he taught legal studies and peace and conflict studies at Harford Community College. At Harford, he served as chair of the faculty and developed an anger management program for the public school system. He also helped establish the Harford County Community Mediation Program, serving as a county executive–appointed commissioner from 1996 to 2005.

As a Fulbright scholar in 2003–2004, Smith taught peace studies and alternative dispute resolution at the University of Tartu in Tartu, Estonia. He has also taught peace studies at Goucher College, was on the faculties of Towson University and Villa Julie College, and has lectured on American mediator practice at Uppsala University in Sweden and the University of Jammu, in India.

Smith holds a B.A. in political science and urban affairs from American University and a J.D. from the University of Baltimore. He is in the Ph.D. program at the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University.

Publications:

• "Global peace, conflict and security: approaches taken by American community colleges," Journal of Peace Education, Vol. 5, Issue 1, pgs 63-78 (March 2008).
• "How Community Colleges Can Work for World Peace," The Chronicle of Higher Education (October 2007).
• "A Map of Peace and Conflict Studies in U.S. Undergraduate Colleges and Universities," Conflict Resolution Quarterly vol. 25, no. 1 (Fall 2007).
• Peace and Conflict Resolution Programs at the Undergraduate Level: Fostering the Next Generation of Peacemakers (ACResolution, Spring 2007).
• "Teaching Conflict Resolution in Estonia," ACResolution (Winter 2005).
• "Teaching Gandhi in Estonia," Online Journal of Peace and Conflict Resolution (2003).
• "New Europe, Old Europe," The Baltic Times (November 2003).
• "Goodbye Russia, Hello Europe," The International Herald Tribune (October 2003).
• "The Community College in Peace and War," Conflict Management in Higher Education Report (February 2003).

Presentations:

• "Peace Studies Approaches in Undergraduate Education in the U.S.," Virginia Tech Center for Peace Studies and Violence Prevention, October 23, 2008.