The Martin Luther King Peace Committee is named after the US Baptist clergyman and civil rights leader who articulated a wider vision of peace that linked overcoming racial segregation in the US through nonviolence with a critique of the Cold War and injustices in the global economic system.
On the 13th of November, 1967, Newcastle University gave Dr Martin Luther King an honorary degree – the only UK university to do so during his lifetime. You can read more about his remarkable visit here.
The Peace Committee started as a collaboration between some Christian chaplains at Newcastle’s two universities and now draws in people from various walks of life in the city and region. Inspired by King’s vision, it seeks to ‘build cultures of peace.’ This website shows the main ways we are seeking to do this.
The Co-Convenors of the Peace Committee are Andii Bowsher and Nick Megoran. The core Committee is a group of people who meet monthly during term time to discuss and pray for peace, and to reflect on our activities. This Committee agrees on the broader activities of the group, and helps the Co-Convenors and other members implement them.
In the spirit of King’s own public engagement, our broader activities are conducted with sectors of the community including schools, activist groups, trade unions, churches, and mosques.
Institutionally, the Peace Committee has continuing links to Christian chaplains at Northumbria and Newcastle Universities. Some of the work of the Committee informs and is informed by work undertaken in Newcastle University's School of Geography/Politics/Sociology, and the Newcastle Institute for Social Renewal.