Peace Facilitator And Scholar J. Bonner Ritchie
To Present Last Class At UVU
13 APRIL 2012 NO COMMENT
April 12, 2012
For Immediate Release
University Marketing & Communications: Mike Rigert (801) 863-6807
Written by: Cheryl Kamenski (801) 863-6351
J. Bonner Ritchie, who has worked to make the world a more humane place through peace building and has become an institution in the field
of international organizational behavior, will hold his last class at Utah Valley University on April 17 at 6 p.m. in the Sorensen Student Center
Ragan Theater. The event is free and open to the public.
“Bonner is a master teacher. He has the ability to draw students into a dialogue that encourages them to think about, and evaluate, their ideas
and positions on relevant issues of the day,” said Ian Wilson, UVU vice president for academic affairs. “Students have benefitted from his vast
knowledge and experience with organizations both nationally and internationally. He has broadened their understanding of key international
issues and helped them to see different perspectives on complex problems.”
In 2001, Ritchie came out of retirement to help build UVU’s Woodbury School of Business, which is now the largest business school in the Utah
System of Higher Education. Many of UVU’s alumni and faculty can trace their academic history through Ritchie’s teachings in leadership,
conflict resolution and organizational philosophy.
“Bonner Ritchie represents the best that academia has to offer. He is a scholar-activist whose work has not only advanced the frontiers of
knowledge, but also moved the frontiers of practice. In so doing, Bonner has made the world a better place,” said Norman Wright, dean of the
Woodbury School of Business. “We have been extremely fortunate that, as one of the brightest minds of his generation of scholars, Bonner
decided to spend the last few years of his full time career assisting the Woodbury School of Business and UVU in growing into our role as an
increasingly serious institution of higher learning.”
The 2012 UVU Presidential Award recipient for lifetime service, Ritchie helped mediate peace negotiations between Israel and Palestine and
has served as a consultant to some of the world’s largest organizations in order to create positive change.
Ritchie called upon his leadership skills in 1989 when he went to work at the BYU Jerusalem Center in efforts to build bridges to the
Palestinians. Ritchie spent more than six years in the Middle East and helped change the paradigm of thinking about the world from an “all or
nothing strategy” to a “reasonable negotiation and compromise.”
Ritchie’s teachings of conflict resolution and negotiation skills at Middle Eastern universities and organizations helped influence today’s leaders
who are working to influence perspectives in the Arab world.
Each spring, UVU’s Peace & Justice Studies program hosts the J. Bonner Ritchie Dialogue on Peace and Justice. The conference was named
for Ritchie to honor him and his peace building efforts. Previous topics have included solutions to global calamities, international border issues
and history and prevention of genocide. Next year’s dialogue will be on the relationship between global climate change and violence.
Prior to joining UVU in 2001, Ritchie was on the faculty at BYU for 27 years and on the faculty at the University of Michigan for six years.
Before that he was involved in civil rights activism with several groups in Detroit.
A native of Heber City, Utah, Ritchie grew up in San Francisco and graduated from University of California, Berkeley with a bachelor’s degree
in economics and a doctorate in economics with an emphasis in labor issues on conflict negotiation and bargaining theory. He and his wife,
Lois, have been married for nearly 30 years and have four children and eight grandchildren.
J. Bonner Ritchie