The Davis Projects for Peace award successful recipients — individual students or groups of students — $10,000 to complete a creative, innovative and entrepreneurial project for peace in summer 2013. Funded by Kathryn W. Davis, a lifelong internationalist and philanthropist, the selection process is administered by the Lang Center in association with the Peace and Conflict Studies Program.
Carl Wilkens was the only American to remain in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide. Venturing out each day into streets crackling with mortars and gunfire, he worked his way through roadblocks of angry, bloodstained soldiers and civilians armed with machetes and assault rifles to bring food, water and medicine to groups of orphans trapped around the city. His actions saved the lives of hundreds.
Join activist Carl Wilkens, Professor Stephen O’Connell, Professor Timothy Burke, and STAND national student director Mickey Jackson for a panel discussion on
Thursday, December 6
7:00 p.m.
Science Center 101
Sponsored by STAND, Forum for Speech, The President’s Office, The Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility, Department of Economics , Department of History, and Department of Sociology & Anthropology.
It’s almost time for my ten-year Swarthmore reunion! When people ask me about having kids — a seemingly inevitable, if highly uncool, side effect of being a decade out of college — I will probably point them toward my only child (so far), the Armed Group Institutions Database (AGID; see our project page here: http://rkthb.co/11859 and watch the video at the bottom of this post). I’m currently an Assistant Professor at Drexel University, where I work on topics in human rights and armed conflict.
The AGID comes out of my sense that political science research has done a pretty lousy job integrating insights from other disciplines. My conviction that we ought to be better at interdisciplinarity is, as one of my Ph.D. advisors correctly stated, “such a Swat thing.” That’s certainly true — I don’t think I’d have read across so many fields without my liberal arts background. It’s equally true, though, that researchers who are stuck inside disciplinary boundaries often get the answers wrong — no matter where we went to college.
The particular set of findings that spurred the development of the AGID is from social psychology. I frequently summarize social psych findings on violent conflict (and violent behavior) as follows: War is bad for your brain. Armed conflict situations are full of stimuli that, experiments show, make people more prone to violence: fear, uncertainty, sleeplessness, general stress, insecurity, glorification of violence, alcohol, drugs, highly traditional masculinities — you name it, war’s got it. Looking at it from that perspective, the puzzling question isn’t “Why do armed groups commit so many human rights violations?” but rather “Why do some armed groups commit so few human rights violations?”
That’s where the AGID comes in. My work suggests (again, borrowing from researchers in psychology, sociology and behavioral economics) that groups that cultivate a strong positive identity around civilian protection, whether by informal methods or formal education, should commit more carefully controlled patterns of violence against civilians. Once complete, the AGID will allow us to test that theory (and along the way will provide a wealth of data about armed group structures that’s never been gathered in one place before).
Interested in getting involved with this research? There are lots of ways to do so. As you may have noticed from the project page (http://rkthb.co/11859), this project is partially crowd-funded, which means that we’re actively looking for help from folks who like science and/or human rights. (Honestly, who doesn’t like science and human rights?) $14 pays for an hour of my research assistant’s work; $110 pays for a whole day. If you don’t have money but you do have time (and you’re an undergraduate who wants to see how cutting-edge social science research works), try your hand at some volunteer data-gathering. Have questions? Just write me: ameliahoovergreen@drexel.edu.
Been listening to War News Radio recently? If not, get back in the groove with this month’s broadcast.
This month on War News Radio, “Back to Work “. First, we examine the problem of youth unemployment in Morocco. Then, we look into the persecution of physicians in Syria. Finally, we hear about a peace activist whose surprising devotion to the cause didn’t seem to match his flat personality.
Ben Kiernan is Professor of History, Professor of International and Area Studies, Director of the Genocide Studies Program, and Chair of the Coucil on Southeast Asian Studies at Yale University. He has done extensive research on the genocides in Cambodia and East Timor, and has published numerous books and articles on these subjects. He is the author of Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur (2007).
The Lecture:
The lecture “The Global History of Genocide” will provide a survey of genocide from ancient times to the twenty-first century. It will include substantial parts on the Holocaust, Cambodia, and East Timor. It would bring out a number of commonly recurring themes in a range of historical cases of genocide that make possible advance detection of future cases, and it would illustrate new technology for tracking genocide in real time.
Scheuer Room
Monday, November 26, 2012 at 4.30pm
Swarthmore College
(A different kind of) snacks will be provided.
Presented by Southeast Asian Student Association (SEASA).
Funded by Peace and Conflict Studies Program, Department of History, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Department of Political Science, and Forum for Free Speech (FFS).
Please join Swarthmore Students this Saturday, Nov. 17, 2012 for a One Million Bones bone-making workshop!
One Million Bones is a large-scale social arts practice, which uses art making to raise awareness of genocides and atrocities going on around the world. The goal is to collect 1 million bones to create a mass grave in the National Mall in Washington, D.C. this spring. The installation will serve to remember victims and survivors, and to raise awareness of the issue.
The Bezos Family Foundation has generously pledged to donate $1 per bone made, so please help us try to make as many bones as possible! The donations go directly to two CARE International Schools in DR Congo and Somalia.
For more information about the One Million Bones campaign, please visit: www.onemillionbones.org
So join us:
When: Saturday, November 17th
Where: Scheuer Room
Time: 3:00-5:00 pm
Come when you can, leave when you must. Food will be provided!!
Advising week is here, and we know you are planning your spring schedules. Our upper-level Peace and Conflict Studies course, “Peace Studies and Action” PEAC 077, will be offered by Prof. Lee Smithey during the spring semester.
Peace Studies and Action aims to bridge the gaps between peace research, theory, and implementation by encouraging students to move between each as we study nonviolent ways of conducting conflict and the challenges of developing and sustaining peace work. Emphasis will be placed on getting close to the experience of peacemakers and activists by reading autobiographical writings, visiting local peace organizations, and dialogue with invited guests. As a class, we will seek an opportunity to contribute to the work of a local organization. Discussion about the readings and exploration of peace studies literature will also be emphasized. This course will encourage collaboration and active participation in delivering the content of the course.
“Education without social action is a one-sided value because it has no true power potential. Social action without education is a weak expression of pure energy. Deeds uninformed by educated thought can take false directions. When we go into action and confront our adversaries, we must be as armed with knowledge as they. Our policies should have the strength of deep analysis beneath them to be able to challenge the clever sophistries of our opponents.”
– Martin Luther King, Jr. Where Do We Go from here: Chaos or Community? (p. 155)
The class will meet on Tuesdays 1:15-4:00 in the Lang Center Seminar Room (#106).
(“Introduction to Peace and Conflict Studies” is a pre-requisite for this course.)
In honor of Dr. Denise Crossan’s arrival in Swarthmore today, we’re launching a new promotional video presentation about the Northern Ireland Semester. Watch it here or at https://vimeo.com/52799720
Dr. Crossan is the Regional Director of the Swarthmore College Northern Ireland Semester Programme. Visit http://northernireland.swarthmore.edu If you are even vaguely interested in the Northern Ireland Semester, please contact Rosa Bernard (rbernar1) in the Off Campus Study office TODAY to see if you can arrange to meet with Denise Crossan about the possibility of studying in Northern Ireland. You don’t have to commit to the program to chat and imagine what your semester in Northern Ireland might look like. There will also be a general information session about the program on Tuesday at noon in Sharples Room 6, which you are welcome to attend.
“Education without social action is a one-sided value because it has no true power potential. Social action without education is a weak expression of pure energy. Deeds uninformed by educated thought can take false directions. When we go into action and confront our adversaries, we must be as armed with knowledge as they. Our policies should have the strength of deep analysis beneath them to be able to challenge the clever sophistries of our opponents.” 