‘To help others’: $1.72 million gift establishes professorship for peace

Jack Meagher ’63 was just 11 years old — the oldest of five siblings — when his father died from heart disease. That tragedy left his mother to raise the children on her own when the youngest was just 18 months.

She instilled in them a sense of gratitude for what they had, but as he grew, Meagher wanted to do more to help support his family. He thought he’d drop out of school and get a job. Mom — an orphan raised by the Sisters of Charity — had other ideas: He would finish high school and go to college.

“And you know why you’re going?” Meagher said she asked him. “You’re going because you’re going to send a message to your brothers and sisters. You’re gonna show them something. And I want you to go, somehow or another, to help others.”

Meagher (pronounced MAH-er) points to a life marked by loss and violence, including military service in Vietnam, as reasons why he feels compelled to sow peace. He also points to a lasting connection with the Marianists — from the brothers who ran his Brooklyn high school to professors at UD to the friendships he made with classmates like president emeritus Brother Ray Fitz, S.M. ’63, that still endure.

“The influence they had on me made all the difference in the world,” he said.

And so, Meagher decided long ago to make his own difference for the world.

Most recently, that includes a $1.72 million gift to establish a professorship in justice and human rights studies at UD to further peace.

“‘Peace’ is at the heart of who I am, given my life with loss and violence,” said Meagher, a retired Montgomery County (Ohio) common pleas court judge who employed mediation to settle disputes. “The impact violence and war had on me, the word ‘peace,’ and people being at peace is a significant part of this whole human experience. Establishing a fellowship here to bring in people to talk and think about it, and maybe take that out into the world, is what this is all about.”

The Judge John Meagher Endowed Assistant Professor in Transitional Justice and Human Rights will focus on helping societies confront, overcome and prevent violence, conflict, repression and divisions. Transitional justice transforms relationships among citizens and between citizens and the government after periods of human rights abuses.

This work involves peacebuilding strategies that can include research and education on truth commissions, criminal prosecutions, reparations, memorials and institutional reform.

Transitional justice has been integral to the work Meagher has been doing for more than three decades. This includes raising awareness about the Vietnam War’s enduring wounds — psychological as well as physical — and promoting healing for American veterans.

Meagher found himself in Vietnam by way of UD’s ROTC program. He graduated from UD as a commissioned officer in the U.S. Army, earned a law degree from the University of Cincinnati and was stationed overseas, first in Germany, and later — from 1967 to 1968 — in Vietnam.

“I made the difficult decision to go to Vietnam, and I have lived with that decision to this day,” he said in a 2020 interview.

Meagher went back to Vietnam in 1995 as part of the first delegation of Americans to travel there since the normalization of relations with the United States. He has volunteered with nonprofits to plant trees, remove landmines and build friendships. He studied with Thich Nhat Hanh, a Buddhist monk from Vietnam who was known for his commitment to nonviolence.

In 2019, Meagher made a gift to UD’s Human Rights Center to launch the Vietnam Legacies Project, which included education, research, dialogue and advocacy around the lasting consequences of the war within Vietnam and the United States.

Meagher and his wife, Kathy, have also established at UD the Ethel “Nanny” Meagher Scholarship to honor his mother and the John M. Meagher Human Rights Fellow in the UD Human Rights Center to support a postdoctoral scholar.

Fall semester, their gifts also helped support a fellowship for Romeha Mufti, an MBA student from Karachi, Pakistan, with an interest in project management and marketing. Her work in the Human Rights Center includes partnering with a local group to create a map of community assets, from libraries to food banks. She is also working to develop a path of study for undergraduate students that connects human rights, business and sustainability — the same connections she is now looking to pursue in her own profession. 

“Every night, I go to bed thinking that I’m doing something good for the community,” she said of her work. The fellowship, she said, showed her a path to connect her professional interests with her promotion of ethical values. “Because of [Meagher], I understand what I want to do in life, and what I will do in the future.”

The new endowed professorship will expand on the work of past gifts and create opportunities for even more students to discover peace studies and learn how human rights can transform professions into vocations.

“You hear more about violence, people disagreeing, not getting along and fighting, rather than living in peace,” Meagher said.

“We’re really going to try to academically open what the topic of peace is in human development — to learn the significance of peace, its history and what institutions we should build or strengthen to be a positive force in the world.”

The faculty member in the position, which will be filled in 2026, will lead public conversations on human rights and justice, build partnerships with experts and community leaders, and publish research on how societies and communities build peace after conflict. Along with teaching two courses each semester, this professor will mentor students in hands-on projects on conflict resolution and peacebuilding, and seek funding to support scholarship and community-engaged initiatives.

Meagher sees the position as enriching the lives of students and the academic community, but his goal is even wider — to uplift all people.

“It’s one of the most important things we as human beings can do — support other human beings,” he said.

That just may be the help his mother had in mind.