A Back to Black Film Festival Presentation

Taking Root: The Vision of Wangari Maathai

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

7:00 p.m.

Science Center 199

Swarthmore College

Taking Root tells the inspiring story of the Green Belt Movement of Kenya and its unstoppable founder, Wangari Maathai, who, in 2004, became the first environmentalist and first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

Taking Root illustrates the development of Maathai’s holistic worldview and model for sustainable development.  Maathai discovered the core of her life’s work when she turned her attention to the rural women with whom she had grown up in Kenya’s central highlands.  Daily life was intolerable: walking exhaustive distances for firewood, clean water was scarce, the soil was eroding, and their children suffered from malnutrition. One hundred years of colonialism and neocolonialism had devastated the forests they’d lived with for centuries.  “Why not plant trees?” Maathai thought and marked the beginning of the Green Belt Movement in Kenya.

Through chilling first person accounts and TV-news footage, Taking Root documents the Green Belt Movement’s dramatic political confrontations of the 1980s and ’90s, a time when Maathai and other Kenyan women endured violent suppression, hunger strike, and risked personal injury. Taking Root also chronicles the women?s successful political action in 2002 that helped to bring down Daniel Arap Moi, dictator of Kenya for 24 years.  Faculty Discussant:  Mark Wallace, Professor of Religion

Sponsored by: Black Studies, Environmental Studies, and the Swarthmore College Library

Eyes Wide Open Exhibit

Followed by a talk with George Lakey on

Parrish Parlors at 7:00 pm

Eyes Wide Open, created by the American Friends Service Committee, is an exhibit and a memorial to inform the public and remember those lost in the Iraq war.  Combat boots and shoes represent individual soldiers and civilians killed, and act as a physical reminder of the immense human cost of war.

The Eyes Wide Open exhibit will visit Swarthmore College on Monday, March 22, 2010 to commemorate the March 20th anniversary of the start of the Iraq war in 2003.  The exhibit will be located in McCabe Library and is free and open to the public.

This event is co-sponsored by Students for a Democratic Society and the Swarthmore Peace and Conflict Studies.

Directions to Swarthmore College

Contact: hbrilli1@swarthmore.edu

This new blog entry by Sigma Chang begins to compile a list of annual meetings with Peace Studies content. (http://bit.ly/a91ATA)  Attending meetings is a great way to learn more about the latest developments and meet others in the field.

On Thursday, February 18, 2010, Lester Kurtz, Professor of Sociology at George Mason University, presented a webinar lecture on a paper co-authored with Lee Smithey (Sociology and Peace and Conflict Studies at Swarthmore College).  You can view the presentation, “When Repression Backfires,” via You Tube by following these links:

• Part One
• Part Two
• Part Three
• Part Four
• Part Five
• Part Six

THIS EVENT HAS BEEN RESCHEDULED FOR: Friday, April 2, 2010, 5 to 7 pm, and Saturday and Sunday April 3-4, 4 to 6pm

Dorothy Marder was a peace activist, feminist, and gay rights advocate. Her freelance photography offers a glimpse into activism during the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s.

At the Kitao Gallery

Friday, April 2, 2010, 5 to 7 pm, and Saturday and Sunday April 3-4, 4 to 6pm

The Kitao Gallery is a student gallery located on the Swarthmore College campus between Sharples dining hall and Olde Club.

(see campus map) (pdf map) (Google map) (directions)

Hosted by Swarthmore College Peace Collection, Peace and Conflict Studies, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Kitao Gallery

contact: Elizabeth Matlock

Upcoming events of interest at Haverford College:

From the Laws of War to Humanitarian Law

March 31 at 4:30PM in KINSC Hilles 109

Adam Thurschwell, Professor of Law at Cleveland-Marshall College of Law and author of Capital Punishment and Political Sovereignty (Routledge 2008), currently working as defense lawyer for prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. Thurschwell will give a public talk about the workings of the tribunal system at Guantanamo. He will also visit my Levinas/ethics seminar.

Dialogue key to Israeli-Palestinian cooperation

Published February 4, 2010

The deeper I sank into the morass of literature on the Israeli-Arab conflict, the more I realized it is impossible to truly know anything about it.

After a while, I developed the only kind of “balanced opinion” one can have on such a contentious subject: an amalgamation of polarizing tidbits. It became an assortment of equally-weighted opposing blurbs, dictated by two different national narratives. My conversations became quite ambivalent, often starting with “Well, it’s clear that…” soon to be followed by “But, on the other hand…”

The truth is, there are enough facts, figures and well thought-out arguments on all sides that you can believe whatever you want to believe. There is no “getting to the bottom of it.” Anyone who tries to convince you otherwise is selling something. Sage advice for the real world, Swatties: Beware the zealots who pass out leaflets on the sidewalk. There will be many. … [read the full article in The Phoenix]

Jessa is a senior. She can be reached at jdeutsc1@swarthmore.edu.

An upcoming event of interest:

Diplomat in Residence Program at Lasalle University

presents

Peace in the Middle East: A Just Peace or Just Any Peace?

Featuring Hanan Ashrawi, Ph.D.

Hanan Ashrawi, Ph.D., will discuss her distinguished work for Palestinian national rights. Ashrawi is the Diana Tamari Sabbagh Fellow in Middle Eastern Studies at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University. Ashrawi was official spokeswoman for the Palestinian delegation to the Middle East peace process during the 1991 Madrid peace conference. She was appointed the Palestinian Authority Minister of Higher Education and Research in 1996, and she was elected in 2006 to the Palestinian Legislative Council and in 2009 to the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). She founded and serves on the executive committees of the Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy and the National Coalition for Accountability and Integrity. Ashrawi is the recipient of the 2005 Mahatma Gandhi International Award for Peace and Reconciliation, the 2003 Sydney Peace Prize, and the 2002 Olof Palme Prize. Her book, This Side of Peace (Simon & Schuster, 1995), earned worldwide recognition.

The lecture is supported by the Theodore E. Morrow Memorial Fund, the Fulbright Association of Philadelphia/Delaware Valley, and the Office of the Provost. Theodore Eggleston Morrow (1928–2004) was a linguist, translator, and biblical scholar. The Theodore E. Morrow Memorial Fund is dedicated to promoting intercultural and interreligious dialogue and advancing belief in the inherent dignity and common purpose of all human life.

Event is free and open to the public.

For details, please contact Cornelia Tsakiridou

at 215.951.1558, 215.951.1015, or tsakirid@lasalle.edu.

pdf flyer

Black Power Panel

“Black power represents one of the most enduring and controversial stories of racial tumult, social protest, and political upheaval of our time, complete with a cast of tragic and heroic historical characters: Black Muslims, FBI agents, Martin Luther King Jr., Black Panthers, Carmichael, Lyndon B. Johnson, the New Left, and Fidel Castro all play major and minor parts in the era this movement helped define. Black power’s reach was global, spanning continents and crossing oceans.”

– Peniel Joseph,

The Chronicle Review 2006

Panel Participants:

• Prof. Robyn Spencer, History, Lehman College
  • The Black Panther Party’s Evolution in Oakland (work in progress)
• Prof. Christopher Strain, American Studies, Florida Atlantic University
  • Pure Fire: Self?Defense as Activism in the Civil Rights Era
• Prof. Rhonda Williams, History, Case Western Reserve University, The
  • Politics of Public Housing: Black Women’s Struggles Against Urban Inequality
• Prof. Yohuru Williams, African American History, Fairfield University,
  • Black Politics/White Power: Civil Rights, Black Power and Black Panthers in New Haven

pdf flyer

Sponsored by Black Studies, Peace and Conflict Studies, Department of Political Science, the Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility, the Black Cultural Center, and the Dean’s Office for Multicultural Affairs

contact:  Anna Everetts, Programs Office, Swarthmore College, aeveret1@swarthmore.edu

To honor the resilience of millions of women survivors of war around the world, Women for Women International is hosting a global campaign called Join me on the Bridge on and before International Women’s Day: March 6- 8, 2010.

Sunday, March 7, 2010; 1pm to 3pm

Swarthmore Train Station

On March 8, 2010 we will bring women from Rwanda and Congo together in peace on a bridge between their two countries to demand an end to war and demonstrate that women can build bridges to peace and development. At the same time and during the preceding weekend, we will bring women (and men!) together throughout the world, creating a global movement that says NO to war and YES to peace and hope.

For more information contact Jill.Whitcraft@gmail.com

or Satya.renay@gmail.com