Dear Members of the TC Community,
It is with a heavy heart that I inform you that Dr. Betty A. Reardon passed away on November 3, 2023. Dr. Reardon was an esteemed TC alumna as well as an internationally celebrated scholar and a towering figure in the movement for global peace and nuclear disarmament.
Dr. Reardon’s nearly life-long endeavor was to eliminate war by understanding it as an outgrowth of a social system – a social system that could be changed for the better through comprehensive education about peace. In the early 1980s, she established a peace education concentration within the program of International Educational Development at Teachers College. In 1982, in collaboration with several TC colleagues, she established the International Institute on Peace Education.
Her tireless commitment to peace education moved her to play a prominent role in the creation of nearly two dozen other institutions dedicated to peace studies. She co-founded the Global Campaign for Peace Education for the further development and dissemination of the field of peace education. In the 1990s, Teachers College established the Peace Education Center in an effort to expand and preserve Dr. Reardon’s research and advocacy in peace education.
Dr. Reardon earned an Ed.D. in International Educational Development from Teachers College in 1986 and held an M.A. in history from New York University, along with a B.A. in history from Wheaton College, Norton, MA. A prolific author, she published numerous articles and books including Comprehensive Peace Education (Teachers College Press, 1988), Educating for Global Responsibility (Teachers College Press, 1988), and her most celebrated work, Sexism and the War System (Syracuse University Press, 1996). In addition, she was the recipient of awards and accolades too numerous to list – among them, the Distinguished Alumna Award from Teachers College, Columbia University in 2004, and two nominations for the Nobel Prize for Peace.
Dr. Reardon’s work was empowered by her decades of practical experience in the international development of comprehensive peace education as well as her unwavering devotion to disarmament, political empowerment of women, and gender and racial equality. Her passing marks the loss of one the world’s most influential and irreplaceable voices for peace and peace education.
TC extends its heartfelt condolences to Dr. Reardon’s family and loved ones in their time of mourning, and we ask that our community join in celebrating her extraordinary life.
Warm regards,
KerryAnn O'Meara
Provost and Dean of the College
Professor of Higher Education
Teachers College, Columbia University
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