Author Archives: Lee Smithey

“Stop Telling Women to Smile” with artist Tatyana Fazlalizadeh

“Stop Telling Women to Smile” with artist Tatyana Fazlalizadeh November 19th and 20th, 2014

Join the Womyn’s Resource Center and artist Tatyana Fazlalizadeh in conversation around street harassment and art in activism.

“Stop Telling Women to Smile” is an art series by Tatyana Fazlalizadeh. The work attempts to address gender based street harassment by placing drawn portraits of women, composed with captions that speak directly to offenders, outside in public spaces.

Street harassment is a serious issue that affects women world wide. This project takes women’s voices, and faces, and puts them in the street – creating a bold presence for women in an environment where they are so often made to feel uncomfortable and unsafe.

Poster installation with the artist
November 19th 1:00 pm – 3:00 pm
meet in Kohlberg coffee bar at 1pm

Artist’s lecture and reception
November 19th 7:00 pm – 8:30pm
Science Center 101

Catered Lunch and Discussion
November 20th 12:00 pm – 2:00 pm
Scheuer Room
limited space, please RSVP at http://goo.gl/forms/TEmOqYPnaC
++open only to women and trans folks++

Sponsored by: Forum for Free Speech, the Serendipity Fund, Interpretation Theory, Department of Political Science, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Art Department, Peace and Conflict Studies, Department of History, and Dean Henry’s Office.

http://stoptellingwomentosmile.com/
https://www.facebook.com/events/1559189750979291

Global Nonviolent Action Database research seminar offered Spring 2015

We are thrilled to celebrate the fact that the Global Nonviolent Action Database, housed here in the Peace and Conflict Studies Program at Swarthmore College, reached 1,000 cases this summer!

Even more, we can announce that PEAC 071B. Research Seminar: Strategy and Nonviolent Struggle (Cross-listed as SOAN 071B) will be offered during the Spring Semester 2015.

Professor Smithey will be instructing the course, and Professor Lakey will return in a supporting role during the beginning of the semester. (Professor Smithey’s course, Gun Violence Prevention, will unfortunately not be offered in the spring).

This one-credit research seminar involves working and updating the Global Nonviolent Action Database which can be accessed by activists and scholars worldwide at http://nvdatabase.swarthmore.edu. The database was built at Swarthmore College and includes cases of “people power” drawn from dozens of countries. The database contains crucial information on campaigns for human rights, democracy, environmental sustainability, economic justice, national/ethnic identity, and peace.

Students will be expected to research a series of cases and write them up in two ways: within a template of fields (the database proper) and also as a 2-3 page narrative that describes the unfolding struggle. In addition to research/writing methods, students will also draw on theories in the field. Strategic implications for today will be drawn from theory and from what the group learns from the documented cases of wins and losses experienced by people’s struggles.

This writing (W) course has a limited enrollment of 12 students.

You can learn more by visiting a collection of posts about the database in the Peace and Conflict Studies blog.

In this video, Professor Lakey introduced the launch of the database in 2011.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRfjprMiySI

Premiere of Peace Talks for Chorus and Orchestra by James Matheson ’92

Founders Day Concert with the Swarthmore College Chorus and the Swarthmore College Orchestra

December 5, 2014; 8:00 p.m.
Lang Music Building
Swarthmore College (directions)
(Universal moment of silence at 8:00 PM EDT)

Featuring the premiere of Peace Talks for Chorus and Orchestra by James Matheson ’92, commissioned for the Swarthmore Sesquicentennial

James_Matheson_Peace_Talks

The program will also include works for orchestra by Sibelius and Fauré, and choral works from a variety of American composers and traditions.

This event is one of several planned during the 2014 calendar year to celebrate Swarthmore’s Sesquicentennial

Peace drama performed 100 years ago on campus

This story in The Phoenix, Swarthmore College’s student newspaper, from October 27, 1914, only three months after the start of World War I, was brought to our attention this week.

The clipping below reports on the performance of a Founders’ Day “peace drama” about one soldiers’ struggle with the horrors of war, his return home, and a vision for “an era of peace, unsullied by the sword.”

Swarthmore is celebrating its sesquicentennial this year.

Science and Compassion: John W. Thompson’s Trajectory From Swarthmore to the Nuremberg Trials

Science and Compassion: John W. Thompson’s Trajectory From Swarthmore to the Nuremberg Trials

A lecture by Paul Weindling

Wednesday, November 12, 2014 4:30 PM – 6:00 PM

Kohlberg Hall, Scheuer Room

Swarthmore College (directions)

John W. Thompson taught as professor of Physiology and Anatomy from 1929 to 1932.

Paul Weindling’s lecture will focus on his research contained in his new book, John W. Thompson: Psychiatrist in the Shadow of the Holocaust (University of Rochester Press) is the biography of a doctor whose revulsion at Nazi human experiments prompted him to seek a humane basis for physician-patient relations. As a military-scientific intelligence officer in 1945, Thompson was the first to name “medical war crimes” as a category for prosecution. His investigations laid the groundwork for the Nuremberg medical trials and for the novel idea of “informed consent.” Yet, Thompson has remained a little-known figure, despite his many scientific, literary, and religious connections. Thompson has a connection to Swarthmore College having taught as professor of Physiology and Anatomy from 1929 to 1932.

Paul Weindling is Wellcome Trust Research Professor for the History of Medicine at the Centre for Medical Humanities at Oxford Brookes University, UK. He has served on historical commissions on Nazi science including the Max Planck Society’s Presidential Commission for the Kaiser Wilhelm Society under National Socialism, and is a Trustee of the Council for At-Risk Academics (CARA) which originally rescued many scientists from Nazi persecution.

Sponsors: Sesquicentennial Events, Peace and Conflict Studies, Department of Biology

Holocaust survivor to tell his story

All are welcome to hear David Tuck tell his story about surviving the Holocaust.

November 18, 4:15 PM, Science Center 101

David was born in Poland in 1929. Life drastically changed on September 1, 1939 when Germany invaded Poland. David and his family were deported to the Lodz ghetto, and then David was sent to Posen, a labor camp in Poland; after Posen, David was sent to Auschwitz, where he worked in a sub-camp building anti-aircraft guns, and eventually to Güsen II, an underground factory to build German aircraft.

On May 5, 1945 the Americans liberated Güsen II; David weighed 78 pounds. David then spent the next several months recuperating in refugee camps and then immigrated to the United States in 1950, where he has lectured widely about his experience as a Holocaust survivor.

A reception will follow.

Sponsored by the Department of Religion.

Interreligious Dialogue in Israel and the Middle East

“The Other Peace Process: The Role of Interreligious Dialogue in Israel and the Middle East”

Sunday, October 26
4:00 pm
Kohlberg 116, Swarthmore College
Featuring Rabbi Dr. Ron Kronish

Founder and Director of the Interreligious Coordinating Council in Israel (ICCI) since 1992, Ron Kronish is also a noted rabbi, educator, author, lecturer and speaker. He has lived in Jerusalem for the past 35 years, serving as Director of the Israel Office of the American Jewish Committee, Director of Staff Development and later Co-Director for the Melitz Centers for Jewish Zionist Education, and lecturer in education at Tel Aviv University and at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Dr. Kronish lectures to a wide variety of groups in Israel, including synagogue groups, Jewish community missions and Jewish, Christian and interreligious groups. In addition, he has been a scholar-in-residence in universities, synagogues and communities across the United States, Canada and Europe and in the Far East.

Educated at Brandeis University (BA), Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion in New York (MHL, rabbinic ordination) and the Harvard Graduate School of Education (doctorate in philosophy and history of education), Dr. Kronish has published articles and essays on Jewish politics, faith communities and the peace process, as well as education, culture and contemporary issues in America and Israel. He has represented ICCI at the Vatican and at many international conferences, and is frequently consulted by media representatives for background information and briefings. In addition, he blogs regularly for the Times of Israel and the Huffington Post.

Dr. Kronish is the editor of a new book,: Coexistence and Reconciliation in Israel: Voices for Interreligious Dialogue (2015). In addition, he has edited: Towards the Twenty-first Century: Judaism and the Jewish People in Israel and America, an anthology in memory of his beloved father, Rabbi Leon Kronish, Toward the Third Millennium and Pilgrimage in a New Millennium. He lives in Jerusalem with his wife Amy and is the proud father of 3 wonderful daughters (and 3 wonderful sons-in-law) and the even prouder grandfather of 4 fabulous grandchildren.

Please join us for a lecture followed by refreshments and a question-and-answer session.

Hosted by J Street U and the Israeli Cultural Society. Funded by the Forum for Free Speech and Peace and Conflict Studies.

Militant Buddhism, Nationalism, Ethnic Identity, and Politics in Sri Lanka

A Talk on Militant Buddhism, Nationalism, Ethnic Identity, and Politics in Sri Lanka

“The Politics and the Anti-politics of the Bodu Bala Sena in Sri Lanka”

A Talk by Tudor Silva
Senior Professor of Sociology
University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka

4:30 Thursday October 30 2014
Bond Memorial Hall
Swarthmore College

Professor Silva’s talk will focus on a group of Colombo-based militant Buddhist monks the Bodu Bala Sena (BBS), evolved in the aftermath of the military victory of the Government of Sri Lanka over the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in 2009. In the backdrop of the resulting Sinhala Buddhist nationalist triumph and the tendency of the ruling elite to by and large ignore minority concerns and demands, the BBS articulates a populist Sinhala-Buddhist majoritarian position vis-à-vis ethnic and religious minorities in the country, including certain Muslim and Christian groups who the BBS claims are all out to destabilize the “Sinhala-Buddhist nation.” The demographic clustering of ethnic minorities in urban Sri Lanka and their apparent economic domination and visible presence in trade and commerce as well as in the religious and cultural landscape have enabled BBS to target them in their various propaganda campaigns. The movement presents itself as free of and opposed to party politics in is effort to represent Sinhala-Buddhist interests but seeks to expose whatever it identifies as harmful to the cultural integrity and wellbeing the majority community. Employing a range of propaganda techniques including public rallies, mass media, face book and rumor, BBS has managed to influence a section of the Sinhala public, including youth, business lobbies and public sector employees, shaping their opinions, perceptions and sentiments. The mistrust so generated has been instrumental in some recent outbreaks of ethnic riots in small towns in the Western coastal belt in Sri Lanka. While the BBS shares a lot with earlier Sinhala Buddhist campaigns, the direct involvement of militant Buddhist monks as cultural border guards publicly inclined to take the law into their own hands represents a new development in post-war Sri Lanka. The presentation will explore the implications of BBS for social harmony, multicultural heritage, ethnic reconciliation and political developments in the country.

Kalinga Tudor Silva is a Senior Professor of Sociology at University of Peradeniya. He has regularly served as a member of the Intercollegiate Sri Lanka Education (ISLE) Program teaching faculty in Sri Lanka for over twenty-five years. Professor Silva has published more than a dozen books and over fifty articles and book chapters. His research interests include ethnicity, caste, economic development, and social aspects of health. His latest book Decolonization, Development and Disease: A Social History of Malaria in Sri Lanka was published by Orient Blackswan in March 2014.

Daniel Hirschel-Burns ’14 awarded PJSA thesis award

Last week, the annual meeting of the Peace and Justice Studies Association was held at the Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice at the University of San Diego.

At the closing banquet, Daniel Hirschel Burns ’14 was awarded the undergraduate thesis award. As Danny was unable to attend, Professor Smithey had the honor of accepting the award on his behalf.

We offer our congratulations again to Danny for his outstanding and now internationally-recognized work.

Prof. Lee Smithey received the 2014 Undergraduate Thesis Award from Randall Amster, Executive Director of the PJSA,, on behalf of Danny Hirschel-Burns ’14.

Daniel Hirschel-Burns, class of 2014

Another Philadelphian, Nico Amador, Co-Director of Training for Change, received the Peace Educator of the Year Award.

Nico Amador, Co-Director of Training for Change, received the Peace Educator of the Year Award

Sluiter to speak on theories of conflict resolution

From our friends in the Classics Department:

Please join us for the Annual Martin Ostwald Lecture

October 24th, 4:30 pm, Science Center 199, Swarthmore College

TOUGH WORDS, SOFT HEARTS
Ineke Sluiter, Leiden University

Sluiter will use theories of conflict resolution to examine ancient and modern debates on the right course of action and how they invoke arguments and rhetorical strategies derived from morality and self-interest. Examples will include Thucydides and the modern debate about the financial crisis in Greece.