Monthly Archives: February 2009

Lang Professor George Lakey Receives Martin Luther King, Jr. Peace Prize

This announcement is belated but nonetheless exciting! This past summer, Prof. George Lakey was awarded the Martin Luther King, Jr. Peace Prize by the Fellowship of Reconiliation. Here is the college’s press release:

Lang Professor George Lakey

Receives Martin Luther King, Jr. Peace Prize

by Alisa Giardinelli

06/27/2008

Lifelong nonviolent activist and educator George Lakey is the recipient of the 2008 Martin Luther King, Jr. Peace Prize from the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR). For 50 years, Lakey has led social change campaigns on local, national, and international levels, and over 1500 workshops on five continents.

George LakeyGeorge Lakey

“Though I never met him personally, Dr. King was a mentor to me in a sense,” says Lakey, who will begin an unprecedented third year as the College’s Eugene M. Lang Visiting Professor for Issues in Social Change this fall. ?”I hung on his every word.”

Lakey will receive the award when he gives the keynote address at FOR’s 50th annual conference in Seabeck, Wash., on July 4. He will be honored at a second ceremony at FOR’s New York headquarters in September.

As Lang Professor, Lakey advises students, conducts research, and leads workshops at Swarthmore, as well as at Haverford and Bryn Mawr Colleges, the University of Pennsylvania, and in Chester, Pa. This year, he gave a campus-wide address as part of the College’s King Day celebration. Next spring, he will repeat his popular course, “Nonviolent Responses to Terrorism,” as part of the College’s offerings in Peace and Conflict Studies.

Lakey is the author of seven books and his work has been translated into at least six languages. His first arrest was for a civil rights sit-in in Chester and he co-authored A Manual for Direct Action, which was widely used in the South in the 1960s. Other titles include Powerful Peacemaking: A Strategy for a Living Revolution and Grassroots and Nonprofit Leadership: A Guide for Organizations in Changing Times. He previously received the Paul Robeson Award for Social Justice from the Bread and Roses Community Fund and the national Giraffe Award for “sticking his neck out for the public good.” Two of his public talks,?Swarthmore’s 2008 Baccalaureate address and his lecture “Making Nonviolent Struggle More Powerful: Framing Strategies,” are available at www.swarthmore.edu.

Since 1915, FOR, a national pacifist organization in which Dr. King was active, has conducted programs and educational projects concerned with domestic and international peace and justice, nonviolent alternatives to conflict, and the rights of conscience. A part of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation, it established the King Peace Prize in 1979?to honor those who make a significant contribution to the furtherance of Dr. King’s non-violent approach to transforming racial, economic, and social injustices.

Daily Gazette Preview of ABOUT FACE: MARKING THE UNMARKED by Stephen Graf 09

Marking Whiteness in About Face

Stephen Graf ’09’s Honors Solo Performance Thesis, About Face: Marking the Unmarked is a challenging piece for performer and viewer that treads the fine lines of race-relations from a specifically white “lens”. In this original work, Graf ’09 uses the lens of “whiteness” in order to explore its possible definitions. What it means to be white is explored against many of the stereotypes, histories, and responses to race-relations in contemporary America.

Influenced by the work of playwright Joseph Chaikin, Graf has designed the performance to be made up of a series of scenes that focus on how race-relations are understood from a white perspective. “For me the complication and the intricacy does not come from a particular scene,” explains Graf. “The way the scenes kind of mesh together, the interstices, is where the complexity of it comes in.”

Though not exclusively a one-man play–Graf is supported by the performances of Carmella Ollero ’09 and Jackie Vitale ’09–the performance is centered around Graf’s shifting portrayals that paint a range from sharp, stylized parody to intimate, sometimes brutal honesty.

The play’s form, in consequence, is a continually shifting combination of approaches. As in Chaikin’s work, various media and found material has been incorporated into the production a touch that Graf feels appropriately echoes his own process. Film, music, pop cultural references, poetry, and speeches are a few of the examples that thread their way into each scene.

The stage of the Frear has been simply but gracefully established with a few basic props, including a central white block. The space is shared with the audience and the performances are often carved out through specific lighting choices. The flexibility of these choices sets audience and actor on an equal plain, making the impact of each invitation and confrontation more immediate and intense.

The work has been created in collaboration with Jackie Vitale ’09, who has served as production dramaturge for the project as her own honors dramaturgy project. Her position, which she describes as “making sure that the core of the piece is met in all of the details of the performance,” has been particularly exciting as it has given her the opportunity to work with the playwright.

For Vitale, who has simultaneously begun work on her directing project, this spring’s production of Macbeth, part of the excitement of About Face has been in working on a play that is still in development rather than an established text. “We’re working on the play and we don’t know what it is yet. It’s much more of an adventure.”

The movements in About Face dance across both heavy and humorous territory with a thoughtful effort to explore and allow the audience to develop their own conclusions. The content is certainly intellectual but it is Graf’s emotionally protean performance, from his opening prayer, halfway between poetic invocation and plea for mercy, that holds the audience in thrall.

About Face is directed by Maria Moller; lighting by Maria Shaplin, assisted by Cara Arcuni ’09; Dan Perelstein ’09 is sound engineer; props mistress is Tanya Alvarez ’09. The performance will be held in Frear Ensemble Theater at 8pm on Friday and Saturday, 2pm on Sunday.

Israeli-Palestinian conflict sparks discussion

“When Students for a Free Palestine held a discussion last week about recent violence in Gaza, its members admitted that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a historically complicated issue, riddled with emotion and politics.

But the group’s leaders said that that was not what they wanted to talk about.

Although SFP is a pro-Palestine activist group, its members wanted to have a dialogue open to all students to discuss the recent violence in Gaza as well as what many see as severe human rights violations resulting from this violence…”

See the full story in The Phoenix

Zunes talk: After the Gaza War: Human Rights, International Law, and U.S. Policy toward Israel and Palestine

Dr. Stephen ZunesStephen Zunes, Professor of Politics and International Studies at the University of San Francisco will deliver a talk, “After the Gaza War: Human Rights, International Law, and U.S. Policy toward Israel and Palestine,” on February 19, 2009 at 4:15 in Upper Tarble (Clothier). (flyer)

Dr. Stephen Zunes is a Professor of Politics and International Studies at the University of San Francisco, where he chairs the program in Middle Eastern Studies. He serves as a senior policy analyst for the Foreign Policy in Focus project of the Institute for Policy Studies, an associate editor of Peace Review, and chair of the academic advisory committee for the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict. Zunes is the principal editor of Nonviolent Social Movements (Blackwell Publishers, 1999), the author of the highly-acclaimed Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism (Common Courage Press, 2003) and co-author (with Jacob Mundy) of the forthcoming Western Sahara: Nationalism, Conflict, and International Accountability (Syracuse University Press.) more information

Join us for the Faculty Dance Concert, Saturday, February 14th!

Please join us as the Department of Music and Dance presents the Faculty Dance Concert on Saturday, February 14, 2009 at 8 pm in Pearson-Hall Theatre, Lang Performing Arts Center. This year’s concert features new work by faculty Pallabi Chakravorty, Dolores Luis Gmitter, Isaburoh Hanayagi, Sally Hess, Lisa Kraus, C. Kemal Nance, R. Jeannine Osayande, Jumatatu Poe, and Stephen Welsh. In keeping with the Dance Department’s mission to educate about the global diversity of dance styles, and the relationships between dance, embodiment and social change, a wide variety of dance styles are represented: Kathak, a North Indian classical form of dance; traditional Japanese dance; modern and traditional African dance; flamenco; abstract and theatrical contemporary dance; and even yoga asana.

The performance is free and open to the public without advance reservations.? For more information contact Liza Clark at lclark1@swarthmore.edu or call (610) 328-8260.

Join us for the Faculty Dance Concert, Saturday, February 14th!

Please join us as the Department of Music and Dance presents the Faculty Dance Concert on Saturday, February 14, 2009 at 8 pm in Pearson-Hall Theatre, Lang Performing Arts Center. This year’s concert features new work by faculty Pallabi Chakravorty, Dolores Luis Gmitter, Isaburoh Hanayagi, Sally Hess, Lisa Kraus, C. Kemal Nance, R. Jeannine Osayande, Jumatatu Poe, and Stephen Welsh. In keeping with the Dance Department’s mission to educate about the global diversity of dance styles, and the relationships between dance, embodiment and social change, a wide variety of dance styles are represented: Kathak, a North Indian classical form of dance; traditional Japanese dance; modern and traditional African dance; flamenco; abstract and theatrical contemporary dance; and even yoga asana.

The performance is free and open to the public without advance reservations.? For more information contact Liza Clark at lclark1@swarthmore.edu or call (610) 328-8260.

Swarthmore Students for a Democratic Society attend the the annual vigil to close the School of the Americas

Father Roy Bourgeois, Dennis Kucinich and others at the School of Americas vigilIn November 2008, Swarthmore Students for a Democratic Society joined peace activists from across the country at the annual vigil to close the School of the Americas, a purported training academy for mercenary armies serving repressive regimes in Latin America, at Fort Benning, Ga. You can view a video covering their trip.

Peace and Conflict Studies lectures at Haverford College

Several upcoming talks at our sister college, Haverford, may be of interest:

Thursday, January 29, 2009

Jill Stauffer

??Human Rights:? What is in the Law, Who is the Subject???

4:30PM Gest Center 101

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Keith Brown

“The sum of tiny things: Fieldwork, democracy and The Ugly American in post-conflict Macedonia, 2001-2008”

4:30 pm Gest 101

Thursday, February 5, 2009

Leslie Dwyer

“Post-Traumatic Politics: Humanitarianism and the Negotiation of Political Subjectivity in Indonesia”

4:30 pm Gest 101

Tuesday, Feb 10

Rosellen Roche

“‘It keeps it peaceful, if ye know what I mean’: perceptions of paramilitary control in ‘post-conflict’ Northern Ireland”

Gest 101; 4:30 pm

Thursday, Feb 12

Elizabeth Drexler

“Securing the Insecure State: Corrupt Histories, Imagined Enemies and Impunity”

Gest 101; 4:30 pm

Prof. Ellen Ross, Quakers, and the Friends Historical Library

The following is excerpted from @library.edu: The Newsletter of the Swarthmore College Library. Spring 2009. Vol. 11, no. 2. Professor Ross’ course, “Living in the Light: Quakers Past and Present” (Religion 23) counts toward a Peace and Conflict Studies minor.

Ellen Ross: Living in the Light: Quakers Past and Present

Some assignments take advantage of the rich special collections available on campus. In Living in the Light: Quakers Past and Present (Religion 23), taught by Ellen Ross, students are invited to use the Friends Historical Library and the Peace Collection to complete their final research paper. The assignment is open-ended, on any topic related to the Quakers, and students work closely with Professor Ross to craft their topics and discover their sources. For example, when a student wrote about 19th century Quaker women and peace efforts, Professor Ross and the student deciphered the flowery script of letters from the Peace Collection written by Lucy Biddle Lewis, who was active in Quaker postwar relief work and was the national Chairman of the Women??s International League for Peace and Freedom.

Other students were immersing themselves in diaries and journals that bring the past to life or deriving inspiration from the experience of working in an archive. One student said, “After talking to the librarians in special collections, I changed my topic. It helped me to get more focused on what I like.”

This personal investment in the research process is one of Professor Ross’s goals for the assignment. Not only does it allow students to explore world-class collections, but it also entices many of them into the library to engage in research and writing on a topic that sparks their interest. As Professor Ross notes, “Some students never darken the doors of the library,” but the guest book at FHL is filled with her students’ names.