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The longtime rector of Costa Rica’s UN-affiliated University for Peace has announced his resignation following a weeks-long leadership crisis triggered by sudden faculty terminations and a controversial course taught by a former International Criminal Court prosecutor.
Over 450 people have signed a 10 October petition accusing the rector, Francisco Rojas Aravena, of erratic behaviour, hostility toward students and faculty, circumvention of the university’s governance structures, and terminating key staff “based on personal animus rather than performance”.
The university, which brands itself as “the only institution in the UN system mandated exclusively for peace education”, could not fulfil its mission amid an environment of “authoritarianism, hostility, and opacity”, the petition said.
Established in 1980 by the UN General Assembly, the university, known as UPEACE, has around 75 students pursuing graduate degrees related to peace and conflict studies, international law, and development. It is separate from the Tokyo-based United Nations University. Its alumni include UN officials, activists, and politicians from across the Global South.
Rojas is serving his third five-year term since becoming rector in 2013. His tenure has included humanitarian and cooperation projects with the UN’s agencies for refugees (UNHCR) and migration (IOM), according to his resignation announcement. His resignation is effective 31 October.
The New Humanitarian spoke to current and former students and faculty members, including Rojas, as the dispute unfolded. Two current students spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid retaliation.
“While I’m obviously ecstatic that one of the foremost student demands has been met, I also know that this decision cannot and should not amount to the end of our advocacy,” one student said. “There still remain so many other important demands that the University needs to address before students regain trust in and respect for the whole institution.”
In an official response to the petition released alongside his resignation announcement, Rojas said the petition was full of false claims. The “erratic behaviour” described in the petition, he said, was syncope, or sudden fainting.
“It is striking that students who wish to learn about peace, resort to ‘traditional’ protest practices and are not open to learning new methods of dialogue and negotiation,” he wrote, adding that students’ alleged recording of conversations without authorisation and trespassing “could have legal consequences”.
Course cancellations
Complaints about Rojas’s leadership arose when incoming students arrived on campus in August for the new academic year and discovered that three resident faculty had been abruptly terminated in June.
The terminations resulted in the cancellation of courses in the Master’s programmes for Peace Education and Gender and Development.
According to the petition, “the university waited until students were on campus and had made initial tuition payments to announce drastic changes to their course schedule, causing panic and distress”.
Students staged a sit-in in Rojas’s office on 14 October and issued eight demands, including financial compensation for students affected by the sudden curriculum changes.
That day, Rojas told The New Humanitarian: “We are currently in dialogue with students from the affected programmes and are working to address the coordination challenges that have impacted their academic experience.”
Stephanie Knox, who previously coordinated the Peace Education programme, said in a recent LinkedIn post that her termination in June was attributed to budget concerns and restructuring, but the university then began recruiting her replacement.
“That UPEACE is now hiring someone for the same position only three months later raises serious questions that demand attention and scrutiny,” Knox wrote.
Rojas did not address the allegation that the terminations were personally driven.
Incomplete Council
The dispute between UPEACE’s students and administration follows a series of recent demands for management accountability across the UN system.
Since last year, employees of the UN Office for Project Services appealed to its Executive Board over alleged corruption, retaliation, and ineffective oversight. Staff representatives at the World Food Programme and UNAIDS raised concerns about opaque management decisions and the treatment of employees to their respective governing boards. Anonymous staff at IOM requested intervention by member states ahead of mass layoffs.
At UPEACE, however, students and faculty seeking independent oversight encountered an additional obstacle: The governing Council responsible for holding the rector accountable – whose membership includes UN Secretary-General António Guterres – is itself struggling to function.
Rojas said the Council last convened in June 2025, and there have been “difficulties in completing the composition of the Council and its Executive Committee”.
The UN Secretary-General and the Costa Rican government are responsible for appointing most of the Council’s members. Out of 15 members listed before 19 October, only four remain following an update to UPEACE’s website, including Rojas himself and Secretary-General Guterres.
“The composition of the UPEACE Council is undergoing a transition,” the website states.
In his resignation announcement, Rojas said the “incomplete composition of the University’s governing bodies” limited his ability to “make essential decisions concerning its operation and development”.
The Council’s inactivity also posed an obstacle to students, alumni, and faculty who sought to report grievances about Rojas.
“This feels like a dictatorship,” said Jill Diamond, a former UPEACE student and current member of its alumni association board. “The Council is the oversight for the school. It’s supposed to be the oversight for the rector.”
The UN’s educational, scientific, and cultural organisation (UNESCO) is meant to consult on the Secretary-General’s Council appointments. A spokesperson said: “Following the recent resignation of the UPEACE Rector, UNESCO remains available to support the transition process within the limits of its role and responsibilities in the Council.”
The Secretary-General’s office did not respond to questions about its role in Council appointments in time for publication.
Class walkout
Students were further alarmed in September by a mandatory course titled “Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar Chair: New Approaches to Peace and World Order”.
The course is co-taught by former ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo and facilitators from The Art of Living Foundation, an education and humanitarian nonprofit that promotes meditation.
Moreno Ocampo was investigated by the ICC for sexual misconduct in the 2000s. The allegation was dismissed after the alleged victim came to his defence.
The Art of Living Foundation, according to a 2022 Financial Times profile, has faced allegations of financial mismanagement, cult-like practices, psychological harm, and land encroachment, all of which it has denied.
Its spiritual leader, Ravi Shankar, has defended Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi against criticism over his handling of deadly anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat when he was chief minister there in 2002. Students in India have protested Shankar’s allegedly “unscientific claims” about mental health.
Raúl Ortemberg, a representative of The Art of Living Foundation, said the group is non-religious and has worked with numerous UN entities. He said its collaboration with UPEACE was meant to promote discussion “on the gravest problems facing the world today – war and conflict – and on how to approach them from a perspective that supports peace and dialogue, inspired by the work of Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar”.
Students staged a mass walkout during the first lecture on 16 September after they were shown a video about Shankar’s views, which made some Indian students “immediately very uncomfortable”, a second student told The New Humanitarian.
The course was later made optional, and only two or three students elected to remain, according to internal correspondence The New Humanitarian has seen.
On 23 September, around 20 students joined a dialogue session with Moreno Ocampo to express concerns about the course. According to the two students, he explained his position on the sexual misconduct investigation he previously faced.
“He was extremely defensive,” one student told The New Humanitarian. “He did not really understand where we are coming from.”
The students said Moreno Ocampo initially offered to share a video recording of the discussion to allow them to provide feedback on his performance. But when they asked for it, he instead shared a transcript that omitted sections dealing with the misconduct investigation.
“I don’t see any reason to allow the dissemination of the details of a free sexual encounter between two adults without a professional relationship,” he told them in an email, provided to The New Humanitarian by a student.
The dispute over the recording prompted faculty intervention.
Mihir Kanade, UPEACE’s academic coordinator and a former UN rights expert, wrote to students on 12 October that Moreno Ocampo had breached “his recorded commitment during the session to share the full video recording”.
“[My] personal and professional view is that this course should not only be cancelled this year… but also that [Moreno Ocampo] should never be brought back or engaged with in any capacity by UPEACE in the future,” Kanade wrote.
Kanade added that the decision to make the course mandatory was made unilaterally by Rojas “because he felt strongly about it”.
Moreno Ocampo has accused Kanade and a student of harassing him by demanding the recording, according to emails The New Humanitarian has seen.
“I have years of experience teaching at Stanford, Harvard, and Yale University; at Hebrew University; and at Al [Quds] University, with Palestinian and Israeli students, but what is happening now, as I teach at the U Peace, is a unique experience,” he wrote to the student.
In a statement to The New Humanitarian, Moreno Ocampo said: “Regrettably, a defamation campaign and some internal problems at the University for Peace affected the course. I see those problems as an opportunity to learn respect and tolerance. An opportunity to transform the UN University for Peace into a place to discuss how to manage conflicts.”
Ortemberg said that the allegations against Moreno Ocampo “have no basis and they are part of a defamatory campaign”.
The students continue to demand the release of Moreno Ocampo’s recording.
According to Rojas’s resignation announcement, Vice-Rector Juan Carlos Sainz-Borgo will step in to manage the university. The 10 October petition also calls for the vice-rector’s resignation at the end of the current academic year “to allow for a fresh start”.
“We’re regrouping now… to negotiate the rest of our demands with new leadership,” one of the students told The New Humanitarian.
Edited by Andrew Gully.
