John Marks: The Evolution of an Optimist

John Marks ’65 has spent the past four-plus decades addressing some of the world’s most intractable conflicts through his nongovernmental organization (NGO), Search for Common Ground. In conversation with Andrew Karolyi,  Charles Field Knight Dean of the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business, Marks discussed insights reflected in his book, From Vision to Action: Remaking the World Through Social Entrepreneurship (Columbia University Press, 2024), at the Statler Amphitheater on October 7 for an in-person and online audience. Event sponsors included Entrepreneurship at Cornell, the Cornell Entrepreneur Network, and the SC Johnson College.

From apparatchik to provocateur to peacemaker

Marks majored in government at Cornell University’s College of Arts and Sciences (Mario Einaudi was his faculty advisor), and then worked for the U.S. State Department in Vietnam. “I’m the only member of my generation who went to Vietnam to avoid the draft,” he quipped. While campaigning “to win the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese people,” he said, “I saw that [our] policy wasn’t working very well, that things could be improved. And then I thought, even if they were improved, the whole thing was wrong.” Resigning in protest after the invasion of Cambodia in 1970, Marks went on to work for antiwar Senator Clifford Case of New Jersey to cut Vietnam funding.

During this time, Marks was writing cultural critiques like Search for the Manchurian Candidate: The CIA and Mind Control. “I was pretty much against the system,” he recalled. “I was adversarial to my core.” But this changed. “I saw that the work I was doing was defined by what I was against. I wanted to build a new system, work for something. … It was in that spirit that I started Search for Common Ground.”

There was no organization exactly like Marks envisioned yet, and his path to launching Search for Common Ground was meandering. He worked at the Harvard Negotiation Project, and then for Roger Fisher (author of Getting to Yes) “but I wanted to do applied transformation,” he said. “I didn’t want to just think about it and write about it.” Then, with his dynamic wife, Susan Collin Marks, he began to create diplomatic efforts using their combined contacts and creativity.

Expect the unexpected

Marks’s book teems with accounts of bold responses to unexpected circumstances. He and his Search for Common Ground team were working in Burundi to prevent genocide when a coup d’état broke out. The US Agency for International Development (USAID), the team’s funder, called them home, as per protocol in such situations. But Marks wrote a Hail Mary petition to stay. Not only was it granted, but the team received the funding that other U.S. groups could no longer use. “This could have been a disaster, but we were agile enough to make it into a breakthrough,” Marks said.

Marks’s program in Burundi, Working with Killers, brought militia youth (“kids who were killing for a dollar or two a day”) together for a two-day workshop, but neither side would go to sleep; the organizers hadn’t anticipated that sworn enemies would be unable to rest under the same roof. Pleading and promises got everyone to bed finally, and in the morning, work was done. “I won’t say they made peace,” he said. But they found common ground: “Both sides felt they were being exploited by political leaders to be killers.

“That was the kind of work that was really important to our organization,” said Marks. “And it wasn’t in the original plans.”

Storytelling for peacebuilding

John and Susan Marks used art and media to develop hundreds of Search for Common Ground projects that reshaped divisive narratives to humanize opposing sides. Their radio dramas, music competitions, soap operas, television programs, and reality shows reached millions and helped facilitate dialogue in polarized environments. One television show brought NRA lobbyist Wayne LaPierre together with an activist who had lost a son to gun violence. Employing active listening, they identified about eight points of agreement … even if they still refused to share a cab to the airport. “We didn’t change who they were or what they were doing, but we found immense areas of common ground.” (Marks later pitched this format to CNN, which replied, he said, that agreement “was boring to viewers.”)

The Team was one television and radio series Marks and his team produced that aired in over 20 countries. Each version was localized to reflect specific tensions, but the core message persisted: When individuals from opposing sides work toward a common goal, they can find common ground. Whether it was tackling corruption in Kenya or addressing ethnic divides in Nepal, The Team used the universal language of sports to create relatable stories that fostered empathy.

The long game of social change

Marks testified to the importance of taking a long view of social change, slowly transforming volatile situations by cultivating relationships, building trust, and fostering dialogue over time. Spiritual Aikido—redirecting conflict energy rather than confronting it head-on—has been crucial to his success. “If you can shift the dynamics by just 10 or 20 degrees, you can start moving in a more positive direction.”

Despite the entrenched conflicts he has witnessed, Marks believes in humanity’s capacity to evolve. His advice to future changemakers: Embrace the tools of media and communication, prioritize early intervention, and approach problems with patience and persistence. Recalling a music competition in Burundi that united ethnically divided communities, he added, “It’s about finding those universal connectors and leveraging them to build a narrative of peace. Understand the differences and act on the commonalities.”