UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Mark Brennan, professor in the College of Agricultural Sciences at Penn State, was recently awarded the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Janusz Korczak Jubilee Medal at a special ceremony in Poland.
The medal honors individuals and institutions most involved with human rights, youth rights, and education for peace. It was awarded this year to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the founding of the UNESCO Chair named after Dr. Janusz Korczak, a Polish pediatrician, educator and early children's rights advocate.
Troy Ott, dean of the College of Agricultural Sciences, said he was pleased to see Brennan’s work recognized.
“Mark’s work focuses on community action, civic engagement, youth development, locally based natural resource management, economic development and social justice,” Ott said. “These are topics of critical importance here and around the world. I congratulate Dr. Brennan on being an excellent example of the community impact we strive for at Penn State.”
Brennan has been the UNESCO Chair in Community, Leadership, and Youth Development (recently renamed by UNESCO in 2023 as the UNESCO Chair on Global Citizenship Education for Sustainable Peace through Youth and Community Engagement) since 2012.
“This medal brings with it a tremendous responsibility to serve Janusz Korczak’s legacy through our research and programming around children, youth and peace building,” Brennan said. “It also calls upon us to challenge the evils within our world and society that led to his death and the loss of millions of others. These haven’t gone away, and we need forever to be guarding against them and defending peace.”
The award committee said they nominated Brennan for the medal in recognition of his efforts working with youth and communities, as well as his work researching and promoting empathy, peace and global citizenship in education.
Brennan said it was an honor to be awarded a medal named after Korczak, who was a global leader in children and youth development during the first half of the 20th century and during World War II was in charge of a series of orphanages in the Warsaw Ghetto. Despite being offered time to escape, he refused to leave the children in his charge and was transported with them to the Treblinka extermination camp in 1942, where they all eventually died.
“His entire story is one of love, care, citizenship and the ideas we all aspire to,” Brennan said. “We’re also working on a documentary about him with UNESCO and others that shares his story but also applies his work to facing the challenges in our modern world.”
Brennan said that recently and moving forward, he and his colleagues have started incorporating new topics into their work with youth development, such as peace building and education about past violence, such the Holocaust and other genocides.
“We are partnering with the UNESCO’s Holocaust education team, but also with the educational programs offices in places like Auschwitz and Treblinka,” Brennan said. “We are seeking to empower our youth to be agents of change for peace and the establishment of stable and civil local communities.”
As part of his trip to Warsaw to accept the medal, Brennan said he and his colleagues also traveled to Treblinka, where they had the opportunity to pay their respects and to plant eight trees in the Korczak Memorial Forest.