Professor teaches power to forgive

He has developed K-12 curriculum

Robert Enright was studying justice for 10 years when he hit a wall.

He wanted to do something greater to help people. Something that had more meaning.

To continue down his re-

search path, the University of Wisconsin-Madison professor said, would feel like “academic death.”

“I threw it all over an academic cliff and I’ve never gone back.”

Instead of focusing on justice, he decided to focus on injustice, and how people learn to move on.

And so, Enright went down the path of forgiveness.

Researching, analyzing and coaching forgiveness was considered radical; the idea was met with resistance, even anger. But Enright forged ahead and is now considered a pioneer in the scientific study of forgiveness, which claims thousands of researchers worldwide.

Enright’s work is in the spotlight more than ever because he focuses on issues that seem to have taken center stage in our culture: bullying and genderbased violence; poverty and trauma, particularly among children; entire groups that feel marginalized or mistreated.

He’s trying to turn around the perception that forgiveness is somehow equated with weakness and get people to see it as a virtue — an active virtue — like compassion or patience. He’s also trying to show that in the long run, it’s a better answer than, “I will never forgive, I will fight and overpower.”

Enright has developed a K-12 curriculum on forgiveness used in more than 30 countries, done by regular teachers, in regular classrooms. The results, he said, are the equivalent of sending the students to professional therapists. Enright is now beginning a process with the United Nations of implementing forgiveness therapy within schools in war zones.

“I’m stubborn and we hung in despite the criticism

and it’s gotten really, really big,” Enright said. “I would’ve thought it would have died a quick death when I started.”

The foundations

Enright emphasizes that forgiveness is a process, something a person has to choose to do.

From that, the building blocks of forgiveness center on three questions: What is forgiveness? How do you go about forgiving? And what are the benefits of forgiving?

First, someone must acknowledge the injustice and begin peeling back the layers of their pain and begin understanding their emotional hurt and anger. Then comes the decision to forgive and to start seeing the humanity of the other person, and showing them some compassion. After that, people can begin to stand up to the pain and start to truly heal.

“It doesn’t ask you to be unfair to yourself,” Enright said. “It paradoxically asks you to be good to those that aren’t good to you.”

And that’s really a key, he said: Trying to understand the other person or group more broadly in terms of their own confusion and weakness. Trying to understand why they did what they did. It means understanding that what happened was wrong, is wrong and always will be wrong, Enright said, but that maybe there’s a better response than lashing out or covering up.

“You realize that when you forgive you don’t excuse, you don’t necessarily reconcile and you don’t get rid of justice,” Enright said. “You forgive and seek justice at the same time.”

People aren’t exactly keen on this therapy initially, according to Enright. “It looks like you’re giving up a lot, but you’re actually gaining a lot.”

Neither Enright nor his students expected their theories to become global phenomena. But Enright pointed out that even though the concept is rarely discussed in daily life, for more than 3,000 years, all types of religions have recognized its value.

“All we’ve done is apply the science method to that wisdom,” Enright said. And the alternative?. “When people are treated brutally unfairly by others, you know who they don’t end up liking? Themselves,” Enright said. “I wish the world didn’t work that way, but it does.”

Broken hearts

In 2002, Enright got the idea to equip children to respond to the inevitable injustices in their lives.

“What’s the purpose of education? Isn’t it to help us adapt to adulthood?” Enright said. “Shouldn’t then part of that schooling be adapting to the effects of unjust treatment that can be traumatic? Shouldn’t we be giving them a tool to help them do that?”

He created a curriculum for K-12 students that was launched in Belfast, Ireland, and Milwaukee, two cities half a world apart that have challenges with poverty, violence and trauma, and the social ills they foster.

In a group of Milwaukee Catholic and charter schools, kids in first, third and fifth grade worked through books teaching themes of forgiveness.

The results? Children showed a decreased level of anger after the program. Enright considered it a large accomplishment, considering he was alarmed at how many showed symptoms of anger.

‘Fascinated with the power’

Five years ago, Geoffery Thompson, assistant dean and director of the Lawton Undergraduate Retention Grant at UW-Madison, approached Enright.

He wanted Enright to teach a class on forgiveness to first-generation college students.

Most times, firstgeneration and students of minority face a significant amount of adversity. Thompson wanted to help those students who might be carrying excess baggage with them to school.

One of the students Thompson encouraged to take the class was Taiyani Hennings, an African-American who didn’t feel comfortable in her university surroundings.

She wasn’t convinced. How can you possibly teach someone to forgive, she thought to herself?

But by the end of her first class, she was sold.

“I was fascinated with the power of forgiveness to not only make others comfortable with the issue they encountered, but also with yourself,” Hennings said.

As students go through the class, they learn they can stand up to their pain. Generally, Enright sees a reduction in anger, depression and anxiety and a boosted self-esteem.

Hennings, set to graduate next spring, is a communications major with a pre-law track. She got a middle school in north Milwaukee to let her teach a once a week program to a group of middle school students. Both faculty and parents bought into the idea.

“It’s a time where a lot of changes are going on for them (middle school students) and a lot of change they don’t understand,” Hennings said. “Maybe if they were able to embark on this journey (of forgiveness) maybe it would be a little bit more settling for them.”

Implementing lessons

Maria Gambaro also is implementing Enright’s lessons.

There was a time when she sat in his office, questioning if she’d be shunned from the psychology field if she focused on forgiveness.

Gambaro now works at the Columbia Correctional Institution as a psychologist. And she has brought the forgiveness program to the maximum security prison.

Originally, Gambaro didn’t think the forgiveness curriculum would be appropriate. But a chaplain found out that she knew the practice and got the ball rolling to offer it.

Her primary goal is to reduce the chances of inmates returning to the facility and help them prepare to immerse back in society.

“When you look at a population of inmates, 95 percent of them are released back in community,” Gambaro said. “No matter what you think of inmates, they could be your neighbor, someone on the road, or someone at the gas station. Our goals as a psychologist ... is to help them reimburse in society so they don’t re-incarcerate.

In addition, with the help of Enright, she is launching a study with several maximum security prisons. So far, it appears that inmates who go through the program are able to be moved to less secure conditions, but Gambaro wants to attain real data to quantify any success.

And for Enright, he said he has something in common with the ancient Greeks.

“There was no word for boredom,” he said. “I haven’t had a boring day since I started studying this.”