PhillyDeals: World peace: Papadakis' ultimate legacy?

The late Constantine "Taki" Papadakis took over a medical school, built a law school, doubled enrollment, and boosted Drexel University's profile from local also-ran to national contender.

If builder Richard Goodwin gets his wish, Papadakis' final legacy will extend to making peace in Jerusalem and other conflict zones.

Goodwin, a 1948 Drexel commerce-and-engineering graduate who got rich turning South Jersey orchards into suburbs, liked Papadakis and his expansive, business-oriented vision of what Drexel could become so much that Goodwin became one of its biggest financial supporters. Drexel's Goodwin College of Professional Studies is named for him.

"I can't believe he's gone," Goodwin told me on a call from Aspen, Colo., where he retired a decade ago.

In the weeks before Papadakis' death last week from complications of lung cancer, "Taki and I were working to create a Peace Institute in the Goodwin College," Goodwin said. Now, he wants to call it the Constantine Papadakis World Peace Institute.

"Many countries have war departments and defense departments. You don't hear much about peace departments. Peace is more difficult than war," Goodwin told me.

"The discussions with Taki about a peace institute started early last fall when he was visiting in Aspen. He talked about how, once we can get it started, he could connect it with other colleges and try to organize a cadre of peace institutes."

Goodwin said Papadakis endorsed a detailed proposal, with a $5 million price tag "that I can't meet myself. I'm a victim of the meltdown, as well as everyone else is," said Goodwin. "But I'm putting new energy in it because of all he's doing for my alma mater."

Drexel officials told me privately they are considering the plan, which could begin with an endowed professorship in Papadakis' name.

Goodwin Enterprises, which Goodwin started with his father, built "5,000 single-family, townhomes, and condos, and strip centers" in Cherry Hill, Mount Laurel, Haddon and Washington Townships and other Philadelphia suburbs. His Mount Holly home was a local showplace.

But at the height of his career, in the 1970s, Goodwin found a second vocation. "I'm of the Jewish persuasion," he said. "I'm not a religious Jew. I'd say I'm a political Jew.

"After the [Yom Kippur] war [1973] I looked around and saw that Israel had won four wars, but had no peace. I decided I was going to find out what is it about the enemies that cause them not to make peace." He concluded "it's a two-way street," and started reaching out.

"You know most of the schools are segregated in Israel? Jews, Arab Muslims and Arab Christians, each have their own. But I heard about a community in Israel where Jews and Arabs live together. They go to school together. They do workshops on issues, what each side calls the other. They try to be a beacon of light for a region that is in war and terrorism.

"I started supporting them."

He became development director for the U.S. support committee of that community, Neve Shalom/Wahat Salam - "Oasis of Peace."

Nine years ago, Goodwin started the Mount Laurel-based Middle East Peace Dialogue Network (www.mpdn.org), which helps finance mixed Jewish-Arab groups in Israel and other peace-oriented projects, because "peace is too important to be left to politicians," he says.

"The most important thing I have supported is the Geneva Initiative," Goodwin explained. It is a series of talks, which began in the early 2000s, between Israelis and Palestinians, with an Arab League representative, and help from the Swiss Embassy and the Aspen Institute. The initiative plans to draft a regional and comprehensive political proposal - "Something Israel can sign, if it's also supported by the 22 Arab governments," he said.

Goodwin acknowledges that many U.S.-based supporters of Israel consider peace talk naive. "A lot of people in Philadelphia, for example, have a strictly pro-military policy," Goodwin continued. "But everyone will come around. Peace is inevitable."

The peace institute he envisions would help rally other universities around the Geneva plan.

"Peace in the Middle East is not a contradiction. I know it's achievable," Goodwin said. "I'm ready to put more money on it. This Middle East peace plan is something Taki was very interested in and felt Drexel should be active in. He had a global view."