Kim Arrow’s videography MOCEAN received an award for the “Most Creative” category from films selected to be screened for Earth Hour 2010 on March 27th in Cairns, Australia. Sponsors include World Wildlife Fund, Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, Cairns Regional Council, and Ergon Energy.
Earth Hour was a global effort involving an estimated one billion people who came together with recognition of climate change by turning off their lights for one hour.
The award winning entries are now available to view on YouTube via the Earth Hour FNQ channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/EarthHourFNQ
IRRESISTIBLE FORCE (THE I. R. S.) MEETS IMMOVABLE OBJECT (CONSCIENTIOUS WAR TAX REFUSER): A Conversation on Taxes, Peace Making and Conscientious Objection to War
A Talk by Mr. Robin Harper
April 21st, 2010 (Wednesday)
7:30pm – 9pm
Science Center 199
Come hear from a man who has chosen not to pay the portion of income tax that goes to pay for war for the last 50 years and has instead directed these funds to charitable organizations around the world. Join us as Robin Harper shares his spiritual and legal journey as an engaged war tax refuser. Having twice prevailed in civil cases against the IRS in U. S. district court in Philadelphia, Mr. Harper will address among other things the following questions:
Why and how has he been successful in his tussle with the IRS?
What can we do to resist the conscription of our tax money to pay for weapons and war?
Sarah Brajtbord ’11 said her visit to Palestine after her freshman year made a dramatic impact on her.
“Going through the checkpoints [of the West Bank] as a privileged American, especially as a privileged Jewish American, was one of the most profound and emotional experiences of my life, and it’s really something that brought me to the level of activism and the commitment to [Israeli-Palestine relations] that I have today,” she said.
A leader of Students for Peace and Justice in Palestine, Brajtbord was instrumental in the planning and execution of this week’s “Three Days in Palestine,” which featured a screening of “Divine Intervention” on Tuesday, a discussion forum facilitated by Assistant Dean and Director of the Intercultural Center Rafael Zapata last night, and, most notably, a simulation of an Israeli checkpoint within the West Bank which divides Israel and Palestine. Read the rest of the story at The Phoenix.
SwatCambodia was founded two years ago by Jennifer Trinh ’11 (minor in Peace and Conflict Studies). Read more about SwatCambodia.
Cambodia Week Schedule
-Friday, April 9th, 1:00 PM to 3:00 PM:
Fruit Smoothies and Goodies on sale near Parrish Porch!
Fruit Smoothies will be $3 each, and we’ll have various different types (and you can choose vanilla ice cream or just ice to mix with them)! There will also be various silks, purses, dresses, and various other souvenirs from Cambodia on sale, so be sure to bring enough money!
-Tuesday, April 13th, 9:00 PM to 11:00 PM:
Sparklers and Sparkling Cider on Parrish Beach!
Happy Cambodian New Year! Pick up a sparkler and brighten up the night! Listen to traditional Cambodian music and enjoy some (non-Cambodian) sparkling juices.
George Lakey
-Wednesday, April 14th, 4:15 PM to 5:00 PM:
Cultivating Peace: George Lakey talks about his experiences in war-ravaged Cambodia in Sci 101.
Ever hear George Lakey speak? He’s quite the storyteller. This time, his stories will be about the work that he did in Cambodia during the 90s, when Cambodia was still reeling from the genocide. Snacks and drinks will be available.
-Thursday, April 15th, 7:00 PM – 8:30 PM:
New Year Baby Screening in Sci 199.
Join us in learning about the story of Socheata Poeuv, a woman who discovers that her family isn’t really all she thought it was, and who goes back to Cambodia to discover their true roots. Compelling and informative, this documentary will help you understand the horrors that the Cambodian people went through, from an emotional perspective rather than through seeing the raw brutality (as in The Killing Fields). Also, if you missed your chance to buy goodies on Friday with the smoothies, you can purchase goods at this movie screening as well!
-Saturday, April 17th, 9:00 PM:
Tropical Fruits Parlor Party in Shane Lounge.
Remember the lychee, the longan, the mango, the whole coconuts? We’re doing it again! Free tropical fruit available to give you a taste of Southeast Asia. Come early; the fruits ran out fast last year. And, you’ll have your last chance to buy goods from us before we “close shop” for the year.
Ken Conca from the University of Maryland is coming to campus on Monday, April 12th to give a talk entitled “Water, Violence, and Peacebuilding.” The talk provides a critical look at all the media “water wars” talk, looks at the potential role of water in civil conflict, stresses the real violence around water (structural violence of development projects, human rights issues, privatization controversies), and then looks at water and peacebuilding. Ken is the author of Governing Water (winner of two International Studies Association Awards), The Crisis of Global Environmental Governance, and a co-editor of Green Planet Blues. This talk is an Environmental Studies talk with co-sponsorship from the Department of Political Science and Peace & Conflict Studies.
Philobiblion’s annoucement describes the talk thus:
Rachel Buurma, Anna Levine, and Richard Li will talk about Early Novels Database (END), a bibliographic database of novels in English published between 1660 and 1830 based on the Collection of British and American Fiction held by the University of Pennsylvania’s Rare Book & Manuscript Library and developed by a collaboration between Swarthmore College faculty and students and Penn’s Van Pelt Library. By uniting twenty-first-century database and search technologies with the sensibility of eighteenth-century indexing practices, END allows users to access the collection of novels in a variety of innovative ways. It creates access to the terms, genres, and categories – from titles to indexes – by which the novels name and organize themselves, revealing the kinds of “book information” that allow users to let “the novel itself” speak, and allowing researchers to set this information alongside and against other kinds of bibliographic information. We will briefly demonstrate the beta version of the database, talk about some of the intellectual and practical challenges of creating a reference tool like END, and speak about the experience of participating in a cross-institutional humanities research project.
Rachel Sagner Buurma is Assistant Professor of English Literature at Swarthmore College. She has published articles on Victorian literature and print culture and teaches classes on the history of the novel, Victorian literature and culture, the history of the book, and literary criticism. She is currently finishing a book project about narrative omniscience and periodical writing in the nineteenth century and beginning a project that explores new models and methodologies for writing the history of the discipline of English literature.
Anna Tione Levine is a sophomore Honors English Major at Swarthmore College. Her current interests include exploring new ways for describing narrative voice in the eighteenth and nineteenth-century novel, Victorian reviewing practices, the genre of the periodical-published sermon, and Swarthmore’s Ultimate Frisbee team, which she captains.
Richard Li is a junior Honors English and Mathematics (with a specialty in statistics) at Swarthmore College. His current project, which seeks to develop a quantitative method for examining factors influencing the Victorian novel’s treatment of time, brings together his interests in Victorian literature and statistics.
ADL Announces 2010 Governor’s Holocaust Remembrance Program
Date: March 5, 2010
The Mountain States Office of the Anti-Defamation League announced that the 29th Annual Governor’s Holocaust Remembrance Program will take place on Wednesday, April 7, 2010, when Mark Hanis, the grandson of four Holocaust survivors, will tell his story of fighting genocide worldwide, and Gov. Bill Ritter, Jr., and the Colorado community will honor all those whose lives reflect the legacy of the Holocaust. Read the full story …
Dallaire’s talk will address genocide prevention in terms of “The Responsibility to Protect (R2P)” and a new initiative, “The Will To Intervene” (W2i).
Lieutenant General The Honourable Roméo A. Dallaire, (Ret’d), and Canadian Senator, has had a distinguished career in the Canadian military, achieving the rank of Lieutenant General and becoming Assistant Deputy Minister (Human Resources) in the Department of National Defence in 1998. In 1994, General Dallaire commanded the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR). His book on his experiences in Rwanda, entitled Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda, met with international acclaim as a statement on the need for enhanced powers for the UN and the international community in dealing with cases of genocide. … read more …
Sunday April 4, 7:30pm Sharpless Auditorium: Ghosts of Rwanda (2004)
A PBS Frontline/BBC documentary to mark the 10th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide — a state-sponsored massacre in which some 800,000 Rwandans were methodically hunted down and murdered by Hutu extremists as the U.S. and international community refused to intervene – examine the social, political and diplomatic failures that converged to enable the genocide to occur.
Wednesday, April 7, 7pm Chase Auditorium: Icyizere: Hope
Kenyan filmmaker Patrick Mureithi spent three years filming this documentary on the process of community reconciliation in Rwanda. The film focuses on a “Healing and Rebuilding our Communities” workshop (a Quaker initiated program run by the African Great Lakes Initiative), and was an official selection of the 2009 Rwanda Film Festival. This event brings Patrick Mureithi to Haverford’s campus to screen the film and hold a discussion on the themes of forgiveness, peacebuilding, justice and war. View film trailer.
Friday, April 9, 7:30 Stokes Multicultural Center: Hotel Rwanda
(2004, dir. Terry George, starring Don Cheadle, Sophie Okonedo, Nick Nolte – runtime 2hrs)
Some of the worst atrocities in the history of mankind took place in Rwanda and in an era of high-speed communication and round the clock news, the events went almost unnoticed by the rest of the world. In only three months, 800,000 people were brutally murdered. In the face of these unspeakable actions, inspired by his love for his family, an ordinary man summons extraordinary courage to save the lives of over a thousand helpless refugees, by granting them shelter in the hotel he manages. Please alert your students to this series of events that will enable them to learn and to reflect on one of the worst instances of genocide in recent history, and one that is prompting a reconsideration of the ways the international community reacts to conflicts across the globe.
On March 31, 2010, Matt Murphy (Political Science and member of the Peace and Conflict Studies committee) gave a faculty lunch talk on “Confronting the past in new democracies: Problems, tradeoffs, and opportunities”. Matt spoke in detail about the importance of the process of transitional justice efforts that is perhaps often overlooked in favor of more tangible outcomes, such as prosecutions. As it turns out, some states are better equipped to manage the process of considering cases of human rights violations and thus facilitating the public work of dealing with the past.
That same day, Dominic Tierney (Political Science and member of the Peace and Conflict Studies committee) spoke to the campus community about “The American Way of War” and in particular about the United States’ “allergic reaction” to democracy building efforts that tend to become difficult quagmires. Shorter more clearly-defined wars aimed at overthrowing opposing regimes are more popular and produce warrior heroes and opportunities to frame the nation in traditional ways. Some of the discussion after the talk revolved around how and why Americans tend to forget how allergic they are to militarized democracy building projects.
Ivan Boothe ’05 (special major in Peace and Conflict Studies) has become the new member of the board for the Peace and Justice Studies Association, of which our program is an institutional member. Congratulations Ivan!
Reply
Photo Credit: Olivia Natan | Phoenix Staff
