Julius Nam Presentation Summary:
In 2024-2025, I served as the acting deputy director, then acting director of the U.S. Department of Justice's Community Relations Service (CRS), a civil rights conflict resolution agency created by the 1964 Civil Rights Act. CRS has also been called the America's Peacemaker. From Selma in 1965 through post-George Floyd protests in 2020 and RNC and DNC in 2024--CRS helped prevented violence, de-escalated protests, trained law enforcement, schools, religious groups, and community organizations on conflict management, and provided conciliation and mediation among communities in conflict and between communities and governments. Nonetheless, in September 2025, the Justice Department issued termination notices to CRS, including me, and eliminated the agency the next month. Since October, 11 civil rights organizations have been litigating to restore CRS (a statutorily created agency that only Congress can close), but the litigation remains ongoing, CRS remains shuttered, and, even in the best-case scenario, DOJ will be required to keep CRS as a tiny unit of less than 10 within a prosecuting agency--which will fundamentally alter the nature of the agency and its conciliation services.
As protests are heating up in cities across the divided nation and the U.S. is taking unprecedented military actions outside its borders, the U.S. is without CRS and many other historical guardrails for the first time in six decades
The need for active peacemaking and conflict resolution work cannot be greater today. Followers of Jesus, the Prince of Peace and Repairer of the Breach, are called not only to bear prophetic witness to the divided world, but also to overcome the world with peace. What does that mean for Christians, Seventh-day Adventists in particular, and peacemakers of the world? Could Adventists and other Christians fill the void left by the dismantling of CRS?
References:
- CRS Restoration Project website: https://www.americaspeacemakers.com/ (This is a website that I created with some CRS alums to support the effort to restore CRS. The site has a page with highlights of CRS's historical work.)
- Trump killed DOJ 'peacemaker' unit used to defuse tense protests USA Today Jan. 10, 2026 (The "Media Reports" page of the website lists many other news articles re CRS from the past year.)
- The Fight to Save America's Peacemakers with Julius Nam RaceClass Podcast Jan. 17, 2026 (a 75-minute interview conducted by Jonathan Feingold, professor of law at Boston University School of Law)
Sabbath Seminars
Room 3208
Centennial Complex of Loma Linda University Sabbath Morning 10:30-12:30