On 9/11’s 25th Anniversary, a Call to Treat Peace as a Practice
By Richard Ren / LAPost
LOS ANGELES （September 11, 2026) — Twenty-five years after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the anniversary remains marked by remembrance — of the nearly 3,000 people who were killed, of the first responders and ordinary people who risked their lives to help others, and of families and survivors who have carried the consequences for a quarter-century.
But this year’s anniversary also arrives amid wars and political violence that continue to displace families, threaten children and deepen divisions around the world.
It is against that backdrop that two Los Angeles-area authors are asking a question that is both ambitious and deceptively simple: What would it take for humanity to become better at living with conflict without resorting to violence?
Their answer is the subject of Embracing Peace: A Call to Humanity’s Maturity, a recently published book by Earth and space scientist Jonathan H. Jiang and Michael Cortrite, a retired law enforcement officer and educator.
Rather than treating peace as an abstract ideal, the authors argue that it should be understood as a practice — one requiring education, accountability, empathy and the willingness to question assumptions about people on the other side of a conflict.
“Peace is not naivete. It is discipline. It is the sustained practice of listening, accountability, and shared responsibility,” the authors write in the book’s preface.
That premise brings together two careers that might initially seem far apart.
Jiang, an Earth and space scientist, has worked in areas including satellite observations, climate research and questions concerning humanity’s long-term future. A Fellow of the American Meteorological Society, he is also a recipient of the NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal.
Cortrite spent 32 years in law enforcement with a Los Angeles-area police department. After retiring, he earned a doctorate in educational leadership from UCLA and went on to teach and conduct research on leadership. He has also been involved in educational programs at Los Angeles’ Museum of Tolerance.
The book grew from a collaboration introduced by Ping (Penny) Li, who wrote its foreword. Li describes the partnership as an intersection of scientific inquiry and practical experience — two perspectives focused on a common question about how societies can avoid repeating cycles of violence.
Across six chapters, Jiang and Cortrite examine conflict through historical, psychological and ethical lenses. They discuss the ways fear, identity, prejudice, inequality and struggles for power can turn differences into divisions, while also considering newer forces such as environmental change, misinformation and unequal access to technology.
Their definition of security is broader than military protection.
The authors advocate a concept of human security in which safety also means having access to health care and education, being able to live without fear and retaining a basic sense of dignity. Diplomacy, arms control and international cooperation remain important, they argue, but so are the social conditions that allow people to trust one another and resolve disagreements without violence.
Technology, too, is presented as neither inherently beneficial nor harmful.
Digital platforms can connect people across borders and cultures, but they can also accelerate misinformation and reinforce existing suspicions. The challenge, the authors suggest, is not simply developing more powerful technologies, but developing the judgment and responsibility to use them wisely.
That emphasis on individual responsibility becomes more pronounced in the latter part of the book.
Peacebuilding, the authors argue, cannot be left entirely to presidents, diplomats or international organizations. Educators can help young people encounter perspectives different from their own. Families can teach children to question stereotypes. Community leaders can create spaces where disagreement does not automatically become hostility. Individuals can learn to distinguish information from manipulation and listen before reaching judgment.
The approach does not ask people to ignore injustice or deny harm. Instead, it seeks to hold compassion, truth and accountability together.
That distinction is particularly relevant on an anniversary such as Sept. 11, when remembrance can easily become separated from reflection about what follows from it.
“The future of humanity will not be determined by leaders alone. It will be shaped by all of us,” Li writes in the foreword.
For Jiang and Cortrite, that responsibility begins with a recognition that technological and economic progress do not necessarily amount to moral or social progress. Humanity may possess unprecedented scientific and technological power, but the ability to use that power responsibly depends on something less tangible: judgment, empathy and a willingness to see the humanity of people with whom we disagree.
Read on the 25th anniversary of Sept. 11, Embracing Peace places remembrance alongside responsibility. Its argument is not that humanity can erase the wounds of the past, but that those wounds can become a reason to develop better ways of confronting fear, disagreement and conflict.
The measure of peace, in that sense, is not simply the absence of war. It is whether individuals and societies can learn to live with differences without turning them into violence — and whether each generation can pass that capacity on to the next.
Embracing Peace: A Call to Humanity’s Maturity is available through Amazon.
