Author Archives: Lee Smithey

King, Women’s March, Swarthmore College, and Quakers

A message from Chris Densmore, Curator of the Friends Historical Library at Swarthmore College:

A few years ago, I was looking for documentation of Martin Luther King Jr. and the early days of the Civil Rights Movement in the records of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Society of Friends. It seemed like something for the Race Relations Committee to handle, but there was nothing there. A little more digging located the records I was seeking in the Peace Committee and more specifically in a subcommittee on non-violence.

This week began with commemorations of Dr. King. On Saturday, there will be a Women’s March in Washington, DC, and Sister Marches worldwide. I was both pleased and a bit surprised to read their statement of “Guiding Principles” on their website which was explicitly based on Martin Luther King Jr., and the principles of non-violence. It also strikes me that these principles and this approach to conflict comes close to how some people understand Swarthmore College’s heritage of Quaker values. It is not just a strategy for confronting the evils of the day, but a strategy for daily living. It is what King and others referred to as the Beloved Community.

— Christopher Densmore, Curator, Friends Historical Library.

State Failure and War in the Middle East: A Conflict of Our Times

From our friends in the Political Science Department:

“State Failure and War in the Middle East: A Conflict of Our Times”

Wednesday 18th January
11:45 AM – 12:45 PM
Trotter 303
Swarthmore College

*Sandwiches will be provided

Please join us for a lunchtime talk with William Reno, Professor of Political Science & Director, Program of African Studies, Northwestern University. Professor Reno will speak about his ongoing research in the Middle East. A leading expert on political violence, the organization and behavior of insurgent groups and the politics of authoritarian regimes, Professor Reno is the author of Corruption and State Politics in Sierra Leone (Cambridge University Press, 1995), Warlord Politics and African States (Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1998) and Warfare in Independent Africa (Cambridge University Press, 2011). He visits Swarthmore from Iraq.

Architects as Activists, Activists as Architects: Building Equality in the Civil Rights Movement

From our friends in the Art Department:

“Architects as Activists, Activists as Architects: Building Equality in the Civil Rights Movement”

Brian Goldstein
Assistant Professor
School of Architecture and Planning
University of New Mexico

Date: Monday, January 30th
Time: 4:15-5:00
Location: Beardsley 316, Swarthmore College

This talk will consider the crucial role that architecture and planning played in the broader battles for justice and equality that defined the Civil Rights Movement. More than a site in which this social movement unfolded, the built environment also served as a key medium through which activists pursued their vision of a better world. Specifically, the talk will focus on examples from Harlem, New York, where residents experimented ambitiously with design and construction in order to gain control over the future of their community.

Haverford Peace, Justice, and Human Rights Alum Career Panel and Dinner

Peace, Justice, and Human Rights Alum Career Panel and Dinner

Thursday, Jan. 26, 2017
Panel and conversation in Chase Auditorium at Haverford College

4:15 PM tea and refreshments
4:30 PM event

Featuring:

Angelique Bradford ’14
(Jesuit Volunteer Corps, criminal justice/restorative justice)
Tamar Hoffman ’16
(Haverford House Fellow, paralegal at Community Legal Services’ Housing Unit)
Leah Hollander ’15
( New York State Department of Health AIDS Institute)
Nora Landis-Shack ’13
(Public Health/Sociomedical Sciences at Columbia University, tech solutions and social justice/community empowerment)

Dinner in DC 118 (Bryn Mawr Room) following the panel, at 6:00 PM. If you wish to attend the dinner, please RSVP to Adam Rosenblatt

All are welcome; you do not need to be enrolled in the PJHR Concentration to attend this event.

West Virginia Statesman, Author Ken Hechler ’35 dies at 102

December 12th, 2016
Swarthmore News and Information

Washington Post: Ken Hechler, W.Va. congressman and author of ‘Bridge at Remagen,’ dies at 102

Ken Hechler, an urbane historian who carpetbagged his way into West Virginia’s gritty politics, where he battled destructive coal-industry practices, unsafe mining conditions and felonious county officials, died Dec. 10 at his home in Romney, W.Va. He was 102. …

During 18 years as a Democratic congressman, 16 more as West Virginia secretary of state, and a final act as a do-gooder without portfolio, Dr. Hechler never tired of crusades.

“I used to be an agitator, then an activist,” he wrote at age 94, in 2009. “Now I am a hellraiser.” This was soon after he was arrested while protesting mountaintop removal.

Read the full article.

In 2001, Hechler received an honorary degree from Swarthmore. He sang his acceptance speech to the tune of the College’s alma mater, which he rewrote for the occasion (lyrics below). Hechler last spoke on campus in 2011 about mountaintop removal coal mining and the struggles of Appalachian communities to stop the practice.

As we leave old Swarthmore College
and this campus fair;
Join the fight for racial justice,
show the world you care!

You will be remembered one day,
not for wealth or power;
But your work for all the people,
that’s your finest hour.

There’s a need for more crusaders,
give your heart and soul;
Fight against the special interests,
that should be your goal.

We must get along together,
with all peoples too;
Differences should be respected,
and their points of view.

Mother Earth needs conservation,
can’t you hear her cry?
We must work for preservation,
or the earth will die.

Peace and freedom for all nations;
feed and house the poor.
Hail to thee, our Alma Mater;
Hail, All Hail, Swarthmore!

Dr. Sa’ed Atshan takes up tenure track position in Swarthmore’s Peace and Conflict Studies program

We are thrilled to announce that Dr. Sa’ed Atshan’s visiting position in the Peace and Conflict Studies program has been converted into the program’s first full-time tenure-track position.

In his first year-and-a-half at the College, Prof. Atshan has made a tremendous impact both in the program and at the College. His dynamic teaching has drawn students across all cohorts into new and regular courses:

PEAC 003 Crisis Resolution in the Middle East
PEAC 015 Introduction to Peace and Conflict
PEAC 023 First Year Seminar: Global Responses to Violence
PEAC 043 Gender, Sexuality, and Social Change
PEAC 053 Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
PEAC 103 Humanitarianism: Anthropological Approaches

Dr. Atshan has also provided important programming. He has brought a steady stream of outstanding speakers and sponsored two film festivals in conjunction with his Israeli-Palestinian Conflict course. That course also includes an exceptional 10-day trip to the region.

Dr. Atshan graduated from Harvard University in 2013 with a Ph.D. in Anthropology and Middle Eastern Studies. He holds an M.A. in Social Anthropology from Harvard, an MPP from the Harvard Kennedy School, and a B.A. in Political Science and Middle Eastern Studies from Swarthmore College. Before taking up a visiting position last year, Prof. Atshan held a post-doctoral fellowship at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University.

While a graduate student, regularly taught “Introduction to Peace and Justice Studies” in the Peace and Justice Studies Program at Tufts University, where he also taught courses on “The Arab Spring and Nonviolent Strategic Action” and “Gender, Sexuality, and Human Rights in the Middle East.”

Dr. Atshan designed and taught courses at Harvard and Brown on social movements in the Middle East and the Arab Spring, among other topics. He earned four of Harvard’s excellence in undergraduate teaching awards along the way.

Sa’ed has been the recipient of multiple awards and fellowships from important organizations that include the National Science Foundation, the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, Social Science Research Council, and the Paul and Daisy Soros Foundation, and in 2009, he was awarded a Kathryn Davis Fellowship for Peace.

In addition to his work on humanitarian politics and aid intervention, Atshan has conducted research into nonviolent Israeli and Palestinian social movements, countering old characterizations of nonviolence as foreign to the region. Instead he discovers and reveals “co-resistance” or coalition and joint struggles for social justice between Israeli and Palestinian activists.

Professor Atshan has worked with a range of organizations that include Human Rights Watch, the American Civil Liberties Union, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Seeds of Peace International Camp, the Palestinian Negotiations Affairs Department, and Medical Aid for Palestinians, all indicating his commitment to the practical pursuit of peace and justice to which our field aspires.

The creation of Prof. Atshan’s position is truly a historic moment for the Peace and Conflict Studies Program and for Swarthmore College, where the first peace studies course in higher education was taught in 1888.

Law as a Tool for Social Justice and Conflict Resolution

Law as a Tool for Social Justice and Conflict Resolution

Mark Schwartz ‘75

Tuesday, December 6th, 2016
4:30-6:00 p.m.
Kohlberg Hall, Room 228
Swarthmore College (directions)

This talk and discussion will feature a Swarthmore alum who has run his own private law practice for decades in service of social justice.

Mark Schwartz will discuss how the law can also be used as a tool for conflict resolution. Whether supporting the gay community in responding to discrimination, women facing workplace harassment, racist policies that
marginalize people of color, or whistleblowers exposing corruption in the public and private sectors, Schwartz works tirelessly to ensure that justice is served and that conflict is resolved fairly.

Sponsored by Peace and Conflict Studies, the Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, and the Office of the Swarthmore Pre-Law Advisor

Diversity and Inclusion: Disabilities on Campus

From our friends in Global Neighbors:

Diversity and Inclusion: Considering the Role of Disabilities on Campus

Thursday, November 17, 4:30pm in the Scheuer Room

What is diversity and why have we been engaging with it predominantly through the lenses of race, gender, and class? Why is it that even though 25% of students on campus have a documented disability, disability is still left out of most conversations? What has Swarthmore done to accommodate for their needs? Are there still issues of accessibility and accommodation that students with disabilities face?

Join Global Neighbors and panelists Dean Shá Duncan Smith, Susan Smythe (ADA Coordinator), Leslie Hempling (Director of Student Disability Services), Donna Jo Napoli (Linguistics Department), Max Weinstein ‘19, and Lauren Knudson ‘19 as we engage in this discussion on how to broaden our ideas of diversity and inclusion.

Race, War, and Police Power in the American Century

Nikhil Pal Singh
(New York University)
Tuesday, November 15th
4:15 pm Sci 101

Drawing on his forthcoming book Exceptional Empire: Race, War and Sovereignty in U.S. Globalism (Harvard University Press 2017), Nikhil Singh will speak on the topic of race, war and police power in the ‘American Century.’

Dr. Singh is Associate Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis and History at New York University, where he also directs the NYU Prison Education Program. He is the author of Black is a Country: Race and the Unfinished Struggle for Democracy (Harvard UP, 2004), which won several prizes, including the Liberty Legacy Foundation Award for the best book in civil rights history from the Organization of American Historians in 2005.

He is the editor of Climbin’ Jacob’s Ladder: the Black Freedom Movement Writings of Jack O’Dell (University of California Press, 2010). Author of numerous essays on race, empire and U.S. liberalism, he is a member of the editorial board of the American Crossroads Book Series at the University of California Press.

Sponsored by the Department of Political Science, Black Studies Program, Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility, English Literature, Peace and Conflict Studies, and Sociology and Anthropology

Contact: obalkan1