Buehler Earns Rotary Peace Fellowship
Matt Buehler was named as a 2026 Peace Fellow by Rotary International.
Matt Buehler, chair of Middle East Studies and associate professor in the Department of Political Science, was named a 2026 Peace Fellow by the Rotary International Foundation. Nominated by the Downtown Rotary Club of Knoxville, Buehler will serve as a Peace Fellow in spring 2026 at the Otto and Fran Walter Peace Center, Bahçeşehir University, in Istanbul, Turkey.
The Rotary Peace Fellowship, founded in 2002, is a highly competitive fellowship that provides a wide range of professionals with advanced training in peacebuilding techniques and strategies, culminating in a certificate in Peace and Development Studies. Rotary selects 40 Peace Fellows each year for this training in Istanbul. About 18 percent of peace fellows are university professors.
Buehler will receive training from officials from the United Nations Institute for Training and Research on a variety of topics related to peacebuilding in the context of the Middle East. These topics include competencies for psychosocial interventions in humanitarian situations, how to engage in negotiations and mediations for peace, and what it calls the conflict resolution module, which focuses on peacekeeping, peacemaking, peacebuilding, and reconciliation.
Besides overall training, each Peace Fellow works on an individual project—what Rotary terms a social change initiative—focused on peacebuilding in the Middle East and North Africa region.
For his project, Buehler will apply insight from the training to build a curriculum for UT graduate and doctoral students who want to enter careers related to international refugee aid and peacebuilding. The program will also help give students a more sophisticated understanding of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and paths toward peace and reconciliation.
“As a professor, there’s a lot I can’t do to promote peace,” said Buehler. “I can’t reshape US foreign policy; I can’t reshape what US military hardware is sold overseas. But I began thinking—what can I do? That’s when I came up with the idea of creating this new career-prep training program in peacebuilding. I can help train a new cadre of peacebuilding professionals committed to working in the Middle East.”
The program is scheduled to start in May 2026 in Amman, Jordan, with each student receiving a generous travel scholarship from the UT Experience Palestine Fund established by Knoxville’s oldest Arab American family, the Harb family. George Harb was the first individual of Palestinian descent to graduate from the University of Tennessee in 1952.
By Randall Brown