2011 Max Hayman Award Recipient

Dr. James Garbarino

James Garbarino, PhD, is the Maude C. Clark Chair in Humanistic Psychology and Director of the Center for the Human Rights of Children at Loyola University of Chicago. Dr. Garbarino was honored for distinction in efforts directed toward the elimination of genocide and the amelioration of its effects.  Perhaps more than any other contemporary scholar or commentator, Dr. Garbarino has educated both the general public and human service professionals about the nature of social toxicity and its meaning and consequences for children, adolescents, and their families.  In a program of scholarship that has spanned three decades,  Dr. Garbarino has illuminated the powerful relationship between community well-being and child safety — work that has served as the basis for neighborhood-level efforts to change norms of parental care and family support so that children will be safer, both in their own homes and across the community. Dr. Garbarino's concern for children's personal security has also long been at a societal level.  In landmark books beginning in the late 1990s, he has presented compelling stories of the situation for children amid armed conflict in some of the world's poorest countries and amid gang warfare in some of our nation's cities. The list of venues for Dr. Garbarino's research is a litany of some of the most horrific settings for children in recent decades.

He has told the stories of child survivors of political violence in Bosnia, Croatia, El Salvador, Iraq, Kuwait, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Palestine, Sudan, and Vietnam.  Even in those contexts, Dr. Garbarino has focused on personal and social transformation through the integration of spirituality and democratic values.  He has given new attention to the importance of meaning in the lives of young people, including his own students.  In so doing, he has shown the psychological, theological, and ethical foundations for human rights — childhood experiences of being treated like somebody!

2010 Max Hayman Award Recipient

Don Coyhis

Don Coyhis is a member of the Mohican Nation and is the founder and president of White Bison, Inc., an American Indian non-profit corporation that seeks to bring healing to Native American communities. Through the leadership of White Bison, programs, trainings, and resources have been developed based upon principles, values and laws found in the Teachings of the Native American Elders and the principles and values of the 12 Step program. This Wellbriety Movement has taken a prominent role in the recovery of many Native Americans and their communities. For the past few years, Don has been called upon to provide technical assistance by national policy organizations such as the White House Office of Drug Control Policy, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and national recovery organizations such as the National Association for Children of Alcoholics to develop prevention campaign materials and prevention and recovery programs for Native American communities. Mr. Coyhis was honored for his visionary leadership in the application of traditional values and principles to foster a social movement toward Wellbriety. Mr. Coyhis relies on elders’ stories to strengthen sense of community and therefore to embrace those who have suffered most from historical trauma. He prods communities to look within themselves for values that can undergird lasting change and, in so doing, transform individuals, families, and society itself. As a teacher and advocate, he has spread a message of reconciliation and healing, person to person and people to people, across North America.

2009 Max Hayman Award Recipient

African Refuge
International Trauma Studies Program
Columbia University

African Refuge is a volunteer and community driven center that develops crucial linkages between the African community and social service providers in Staten Island. The director of African Refuge is Jacob D. Massaquoi, II.  It  is an initiative of the International Trauma Studies Program at Columbia University, directed by Jack Saul.  African Refuge was honored for exemplary humanitarian service to African refugees and immigrants on Staten Island, African Refuge is a grassroots center of community for people of diverse cultures. African Refuge provides a safe haven for recovery from the atrocities that occurred in civil wars and other political violence in Liberia and other West African countries.Promoting a climate of mutual assistance and respect, the leaders of African Refuge have drawn creatively on linkages with the broader community.  Both using and expanding community assets, African Refuge offers a variety of activities designed to enhance refugees’ and immigrants’ adaptation to the practical requirements of life in a vastly different society.  In so doing, African Refuge has made important contributions to the quality of participants’ daily lives — their safety, education, employment, recreation, cultural experience, family life, and physical and mental health. 

2006 Max Hayman Award Recipient

Ervin Staub, PhD

Ervin Staub, PhD is Professor of Psychology at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.  Dr. Staub was honored for his profound scholarship on the momentous question of the roots of good and evil.  Building on his experience as a survivor of the Holocaust, Dr. Staub has made important contributions to research on altruism and helping behavior and, by contrast, genocide and collective violence.  A prolific researcher on the causes of genocide, Dr. Staub has applied this work in action research on forgiveness and reconciliation, notably among community groups in Rwanda.  The founder of an innovative program of doctoral study on the Psychology of Peace and the Prevention of Violence and a past president of the Society of Peace, Conflict, and Violence, a division of the American Psychological Association, Dr. Staub has been a leader in stimulating and integrating professional contributions to the resolution of some of the most vexing problems of the human condition.

2005 Max Hayman Award Recipient

Ferid Agani, MD, MA
Member of Parliament, Kosovo

Ferid Agani, MD, PhD candidate, is a Lecturer of Psychodynamics and Assistant Professor of Neuropsychiatry at the University of Prishtina. He is a former member of the Parliament of Kosovo, the former Director of the Department for Strategic Management at the Ministry of Health of Kosovo and World Health Organization Mental Health Consultant.Dr. Agani was honored for his sensitivity, courage, and vision in building a system of mental health services to facilitate the recovery of people traumatized during the armed conflict in Kosovo.  Sometimes at significant risk to their own safety, Dr. Agani and his family have been dedicated exemplars of the righteous—humanitarians who seek to end or, better, prevent injustice and, in the meantime, to heal those who are wounded by it.  As a practicing psychiatrist during the war and as a mental health administrator and legislator thereafter, Dr. Agani has led the development of a comprehensive family-oriented and community-focused mental health system in Kosovo.  He has helped to focus attention on the mental health needs not only of Kosovars who were subjected to atrocities within the country but also of those who fled elsewhere in Europe.  Looking ahead, Dr. Agani is now a leader down the long path to reconciliation between Albanian and Serbian ethnic groups in Kosovo.