1. The centennial history of Eastern Mennonite University is Donald Kraybill’s current project.
2. Beard Cutting Attacks: In the fall of 2011 a string of beard-cutting attacks in eastern Ohio frightened that Amish community. The fact that the perpetrators were from the Bergholz Amish community generated an avalanche of television coverage and print and web stories worldwide about Amish-on-Amish violence as the bizarre story played out and the defendants were sentenced in February 2013. Kraybill assisted the federal prosecutors in understanding Amish culture and developing the case against the sixteen Bergholz defendants, and he served as an expert witness for five hours at the three-week federal trial in September 2012.
3. The Amish, a book co-authored with Steven Nolt and Karen Johnson-Weiner, was Kraybill’s recent major effort. The book, published by the Johns Hopkins University Press in the spring of 2013, provides a comprehensive description and analysis of Amish culture in North America in the twenty-first century. It results from a four-year collaborative research project supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities.
4. Research on Amish businesses resulted in two professional articles. “Amish Enterprise: The Collective Power of Ethnic Entrepreneurship” focuses on the collective power of the Amish community in supporting robust Amish-owned and -operated businesses. It It appeared in Global Business and Economics Review. “Sources of Enterprise Success in Amish Communities” explains the reasons for the remarkable success of Amish businesses. It appeared in The Journal of Enterprising Communities in 2011.