Documentary Screening
organized by Students for Peace and Justice in Palestine (SPJP)
Friday, October 29, 2010
7:00-9:00 pm
Science Center 199
Swarthmore College (maps and directions)
A brief discussion will follow the movie.
**Palestinian Food will be served**
SAC Funded
We are looking forward to a visit and guest lecture by David Hartsough, a Quaker peace and civil rights activist, former Swattie, and Co-Founder of Nonviolent Peaceforce, an unarmed civilian peacekeeping organization with projects in Sri Lanka, the Philippines, and Sudan.
Please join us on Tuesday, November 2, 2010 at 4:15 p.m. in the Scheuer Room of Kohlberg Hall
Maps and directions to campus are available.
A flyer is available for download.
Read more about David Hartsough and his work in this 2004 interview in the New Internationalist magazine.
Photo: David Hartsough (seated at right end of counter) with fellow students at a lunchtime sit-in Arlington, Virginia – circa 1960
Sponsored by Peace and Conflict Studies, Sociology and Anthropology, Political Science, and the Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility
Contact:
Lee Smithey or Anna Everetts
Peace and Conflict Studies Program
610-690-2064
peacestudies@swarthmore.edu
Photo Credit: Allegra Pocinki
To celebrate the International Day of Peace on September 21, Students for a Democratic Society organized a human peace sign on Parrish Beach.
Kathleen Malley-Morrison, Ed.D.
Department of Psychology
Boston University
“Thinking about State Aggression and the Right to Peace”
The Group on International Perspectives on Governmental Aggression and Peace (GIPGAP) has been collecting qualitative responses to the Personal and Institutional Rights to Aggression and Peace Survey (PAIRTAPS) from ordinary people around the world for approximately five years. The survey includes both rating scale and open-ended items designed to assess people’s views concerning such issues as the extent to which governments have a right to invade another country, torture prisoners in times of war, and disobey international laws and agreements. The survey also includes items asking whether individuals have the right to protest against war and in favor of peace, and whether they and their children have the right to live in a world of peace. Thousands of participants from every continent except Antarctica have responded to the survey. In coding their qualitative responses we have been particularly interested in how they frame justifications for war and torture as well as how they frame rejection of government-sponsored aggression. We have found George Lakoff’s work on framing to be quite useful, along with Albert Bandura’s work on moral disengagement and engagement.
In this talk, I will focus on insights from these theoretical approaches, and the extent to which they help us understand the level of tolerance for inhumane behavior that we often find in U.S. responses as compared with those from many other nations.
Wednesday, November 3rd, 4:15 p.m.
Science Center 101. Swarthmore College.
(maps and directions to campus are available)
Co-sponsored by Dept. of Psychology, Intercultural Center, the Alumni Relations, Dept. of Political Science, Dept. of Religion, Educational Studies, and Peace & Conflict Studies
Contact:
Etsuko Hoshino-Browne, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of Psychology
Papazian 224
610-957-6127
Quakers and Slavery, 1657-1865
An International Interdisciplinary Conference
November 4-6
November 5, All day at Swarthmore College
More than two dozen scholars will participate in this conference, which aims to examine the history, literature, and culture of the Quaker relationship with slavery, from the Society of Friends’ origins in the English Civil War to the end of the American Civil War.
In 1657, George Fox wrote to “Friends beyond sea, that have Blacks and Indian Slaves” to remind them that Quakers who owned slaves should be merciful and should remember that God “hath made all Nations of one Blood.” His argument may seem far from radical today, but it initiated more than two centuries of Quaker debate and activism over the problem of slavery that would ultimately see Friends taking key roles in abolition and emancipation movements on both sides of the Atlantic and beyond.
It was, however, by no means inevitable that Quakers would embrace antislavery. In the 17th century and most of the 18th century, Quakers were divided on the issue–particularly in the British American colonies–with some denouncing slavery and others owning slaves. In the 19th century, Quakers were more unified in their opposition to slavery but encountered a range of spiritual, political, and personal challenges while taking their antislavery message to a wider world.
Keynote Speakers: Gary B. Nash, University of California??os Angeles, J. William Frost, Swarthmore College James Walvin, University of York. Conference Details:
The event is free and open to the public. See the conference website for registration details.
In 1657, George Fox wrote to “Friends beyond sea, that have Blacks and Indian Slaves” to remind them that Quakers who owned slaves should be merciful and should remember that God “hath made all Nations of one Blood.” His argument may seem far from radical today, but it initiated more than two centuries of Quaker debate and activism over the problem of slavery that would ultimately see Friends taking key roles in abolition and emancipation movements on both sides of the Atlantic and beyond.
It was, however, by no means inevitable that Quakers would embrace antislavery. In the 17th century and most of the 18th century, Quakers were divided on the issue??articularly in the British American colonies??ith some denouncing slavery and others owning slaves. In the 19th century, Quakers were more unified in their opposition to slavery but encountered a range of spiritual, political, and personal challenges while taking their antislavery message to a wider world.
Keynote Speakers: Gary B. Nash, University of California??os Angeles, J. William Frost, Swarthmore College James Walvin, University of York. Conference Details:
The International Day of Peace falls on September 21 each year. This year, as the UN’s International Decade for a Culture of Peace and Non-violence for the Children of the World draws to a close, thousands of events are being planned around the world to signal a global yearning for peace and an intention to advance constructive human and environmental relations. The Millenium Development Goals will feature prominently in this year’s celebrations. You can follow unprecedented live coverage of Peace Day events here on the Peace and Conflict Studies website or at www.peaceday.tv September 17-21. You may preview the broadcast now.
This is a quick follow up on a previous blog post announcing:
Reina Chano ‘09, an honors minor in Peace and Conflict Studies (History major), has been awarded the Elise M. Boulding Undergraduate Student Paper Award by the Peace, War, and Social Conflict Section (PWSC) of the American Sociological Association (ASA) for a paper, “Youth in Northern Ireland: The Role of Narratives in Promoting Reconciliation,” adapted from her interdisciplinary honors Peace and Conflict Studies thesis: Historical Education as Reconciliation: Teaching History in Northern Ireland.
Reina attended the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association in Atlanta, and on August 14, 2010 the award was presented to her by Dr. Morten Ender (USMA, West Point) during the PWSC section business meeting. Congratulations Reina!
A new report on developing a career in International Peace and Conflict Resolution has been released by the Alliance for Conflict Transformation. Read more about it at the Peace and Collaborative Development Network.
Sudharshan Seneviratne
Sudharshan Seneviratne, whose interest in the use of archaeology in building national and ethnic identities has led to innovative programs in conflict resolution and peace studies, is this year’s Cornell Visiting Professor. Currently a professor and chair of archaeology at the University of Peradeniya, Seneviratnes is also director general of the Central Cultural Fund of Sri Lanka, the custodian organization of the country’s UNESCO-declared World Heritage sites.
“My research work is directed towards utilizing history and archaeology for human rights activity, conflict resolution, and peace studies, with special reference to school children and village communities,” he says. “In addition, my current work also involves environmental protection, especially UNESCO-prescribed intangible heritage, sustainable management of the environment through heritage initiatives, and revitalizing traditional craft communities.”
Hosted in the Department of Religion, this fall Seneviratne will teach Buddhist Ideology and Social Response, an examination of the functional role of Buddhism in response to urbanism and empire systems in North India, mercantilism in central and south India, monastic feudalism in Sri Lanka, and colonialism and post-colonial nationalism of South Asia. Next semester, he will teach Politics of the Past, a study of the sophisticated and widespread contemporary political use of cultural material from historical and archaeological sources.
For more than 30 years, Seneviratne has explored Sri Lankan and Indian archaeological sites and developed research methodologies in interpretative and theoretical archaeology. In 2002, he received the Distinguished Leadership Award from the American Bibliographic Institute for his contributions to archaeology and history and was inducted as a Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences in Sri Lanka. He is the first Sri Lankan to receive both an M.A. and Ph.D from Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi.
Swatties will recognize this 2003 picture, which appears in our program’s promotional materials. Some students in the program will recall reading Art Gish’s book, Hebron Journal.
Sadly, Art Gish perished in a farming accident on Wednesday. Gish is a life-long peace activist who had an insatiable intellectual curiosity and was deeply humble, committed, and authentic about the pursuit of peace.
Both Art and his wife, Peggy, have been involved in nonviolent peacebuilding and third-party nonviolent intervention in the Middle East. In fact, Peggy is currently in Iraq. Art began working with Christian Peacemaker Teams in 1995, and in Hebron Journal, Gish describes his personal experiences in trying to use nonviolent tactics to “get in the way” (to use CPT’s slogan) and stand with Palestinians while building relationships with settlers, police, and others across deep political, psychological, and emotional divides.
Our thoughts go out to Peggy Gish and the rest of Art’s family and friends.