Tag Archives: education

Film Screening: Angels are Made of Light

Wednesday, March 3
4:15-6:30 p.m.
Science Center Room 199
Swarthmore College

Please join us for a screening of Angels are Made of Light, a documentary that traces the lives of young students and their teachers at a school in the old city of Kabul. The film interweaves the modern history of Afghanistan with present-day portraits, offering an intimate and nuanced view of Afghan society in Kabul. The screening will be followed by a discussion facilitated by Peace & Conflict Studies Professor Amy Kapit.

Pizza will be served!

Sponsored by Peace & Conflict Studies, the Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility, and Asian Studies

Dr. Amy Kapit to Join Faculty in Peace and Conflict Studies

We are delighted to announce that Dr. Amy Kapit will join the Peace and Conflict Studies program, starting Fall 2019.

Professor Kapit will offer a range of exciting new courses:!

Humanitarianism: Education and Conflict
Afghanistan: Where Central and South Asia Meet
Peace Education
Senior Capstone Seminar

(Scroll down to the bottom of this post for course descriptions!)

Dr. Amy Kapit

Dr. Kapit graduated from New York University’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development with a Ph.D. in International Education in 2016. She holds a B.A. in Religion and Peace and Conflict Studies from Swarthmore College.

Dr. Kapit’s research, scholarship, and teaching focuses on the relationships between education and conflict, and on the field of education in emergencies—the provision of education as a form of humanitarian aid. Most recently, she has worked as the Research Director of the Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack (GCPEA) and as an Adjunct Assistant Professor in International Education at NYU Steinhardt, where she has taught courses on Politics, Education, and Conflict and Qualitative Research Methods. As GCPEA Research Director, she has developed the organization’s research agenda related to monitoring and reporting violence committed against students, educators, and educational facilities in areas of armed conflict and political violence. She was the lead author of the report Education under Attack 2018.

During her graduate and post-graduate career, Dr. Kapit has conducted research on education in emergencies in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and in Afghanistan. From 2014 to 2016, she was the Research Director of the Assessment of Learning Outcomes and Social Effects of Community-Based Education in Afghanistan. The study, led by professors at New York University and the University of California—Berkeley, examined a community-based education program being implemented by two NGOs in approximately 200 villages in Afghanistan.

In addition, Dr. Kapit has studied the origins of the global movement to protect education from attack and how that new international advocacy network has—or has not—shaped efforts to address violence, harassment, and threats against students, teachers, and educational facilities in places where these attacks occur. Specifically, she has conducted research on the humanitarian community’s efforts to protect students, teachers, and schools in the Middle East.

Dr. Kapit has previously worked on projects with numerous organizations focusing on education, child protection, and children’s rights, including Human Rights Watch, Education Above All, the Inter-Agency Network for Education in Emergencies (INEE), Save the Children, the Scholars at Risk Network, and UNESCO.

We look forward to having such a remarkable scholar and teacher join our program!

New courses by Prof. Amy Kapit:

PEA 072 Humanitarianism: Education and Conflict
(Fall 2019, Fall 2020)

This course will introduce students to the theory and practice of humanitarianism and, specifically, the provision of education as a humanitarian intervention—what practitioners call “education in emergencies.” The course will delve into the foundations and history of humanitarianism and track how humanitarian intervention evolved over the course of the 20^th century, broadening and deepening in scope. It will explore continuing debates over the appropriateness of education as a humanitarian intervention and examine what types of educational interventions are prioritized by humanitarian agencies, as well as the goals that those interventions are trying to achieve. For example, what is the relationship between education and conflict and how do education in emergencies providers intervene to alter that relationship? Students will have the opportunity to study specific examples of education in emergencies programming in countries such as Afghanistan, Colombia, Nepal, Sierra Leone, and Syria, and to hear from guest speakers working in the field of education in emergencies. The course will encourage students to apply what they have learned to policy-oriented exercises.

PEAC 052 Afghanistan: Where Central and South Asia Meet
(Fall 2019, Fall 2020)

This course examines conflict, politics, culture, and daily life in present day Afghanistan. Occupying a historic crossroads in Asia, Afghanistan is a place of regional, ethnic, and cultural diversity. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, internal and external actors, including the British Empire, Pashtun dynasties, the Soviet Union, the Taliban, the United States and its allies, and the Islamic State, have battled for control of Afghanistan. Today, as conflict continues, the international community exerts significant influence on Afghanistan’s politics, security, economy, and social institutions. This course will explore themes related to conflict, peacemaking, statebuilding, and international intervention, and their intersection with cultural and ethnic diversity, religion, gender norms, and the lived experiences of Afghan people. Students will read memoirs, literature, and scholarly work from various disciplines.

PEAC 022 Peace Education
(Spring 2020, Spring 2021)

In this introductory course, students will explore the historical, ethical, and theoretical foundations of peace education, a subfield of peace and conflict studies. Students will consider different approaches towards peace education: should peace education be oriented towards eliminating physical violence? Facilitating co-existence and understanding? Teaching human rights or citizenship? Empowering the dispossessed and eliminating inequality and injustice? Is peace education best integrated in the existing schooling system, an extracurricular activity, or should it be distinct from schooling? Using case studies, students will critically examine different types of peace education and explore existing research on how they do—or do not—work.

Historically Black Colleges and the Struggle for Citizenship in America

“Historically Black Colleges and the Struggle for Citizenship in America”

Professor Cally Waite (Columbia University)
National Director, Mellon Mays Graduate Initiatives Program, Social Science Research Council

Thursday, March 16, 2017
4:30pm
Kohlberg Hall Room 228
Swarthmore College

Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos recently described historically black colleges and universities as “pioneers” of the school choice movement, with HBCU leaders from across the United States meeting with President Trump.

How do we contextualize these developments? What is at stake for the historic struggle of Black Americans for citizenship and social justice?

Organized by Peace and Conflict Studies, Sponsored by the Black Cultural Center, the Intercultural Center, Black Studies, Education, History, Sociology & Anthropology, Political Science, and the Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility.

Decolonizing Education

From our friends in Educational Studies and the Native American Students Association

Discussion: Decolonizing Education

Educational Studies and the Native American Students Association present a discussion between Professor Edwin Mayorga and Dr. Sandy Grande on the role of education in colonialism and the process of decolonizing the education system.

November 19, 4:30-6PM, SCI 101.

Weblinks here: http://critedupolicy.swarthmore.edu/decolonizing-education/ or http://bit.ly/1Skb83V

Sandy Grande is an Associate professor and Chair of the Education Department and the Director of the Center for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity (CCSRE) at Connecticut College. Her research and teaching are profoundly inter- and cross-disciplinary, interfacing critical Indigenous theories with the concerns of education. Her book, Red Pedagogy: Native American Social and Political Thought (Rowman and Littlefield, 2004) is currently being published in a 10th anniversary edition. She has also published several book chapters and articles including: “Accumulation of the Primitive: The Limits of Liberalism and the Politics of Occupy Wall Street,” The Journal of Settler Colonial Studies. ”Confessions of a Fulltime Indian,” The Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy, “American Indian Geographies of Identity and Power: At the Crossroads of Indigena and Mestizaje,” Harvard Educational Review; and, “Red-ding the Word and the World” In, Paulo Freire’s Intellectual Roots: Toward Historicity in Praxis. Bloomsbury Academic. New York, New York. Eds. Robert Lake & T. Kress. (2013).

Edwin Mayorga is an Instructor in the Educational Studies Department and Latin American and Latino Studies (LALS) program at Swarthmore College. His research focuses on cultural political economy, U.S. Latinos and urban education & policy, racial/ethnic studies, teacher-lead social movements, and teaching for social justice. Much of his energies are focused on the Education in our Barrios Project, a digital, critical participatory action research (D+CPAR) project that centers on working alongside youth in Latino core communities in Philadelphia and New York City. He is co-editor of the book: What’s Race Got to Do with It? How Current School Reform Maintains Racial and Economic Inequality (Peter Lang; 2015; co-edited with B. Picower). At Swarthmore he is also co-leading the Critical Education Policy Studies group. Prior to Swarthmore, he was an elementary school teacher in New York City and was a member of the educator-activist group, the New York Collective of Radical Educators (NYCoRE).

Dee Craig’s latest mural in Northern Ireland

Lee Smithey had the opportunity to meet up in Belfast, Northern Ireland with Dee Craig a couple of weeks ago. Dee is the artist who painted the mural on the Science Center here at Swarthmore. (See photos, video, and more.)

Here is his latest piece on the Newtownards Road in East Belfast!

Dee sends warm greetings to all of his friends at Swarthmore!

Amy Kapit ’06 studies education in situations of armed conflict

The website of the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development at New York University shares information about Amy Kapit’s (peace and conflict studies minor class of 2006) work on education in situations of armed conflict. We excerpt some of it here. Read More.

Why did you choose to pursue a Doctoral degree in International Education?

After graduating from Swarthmore College, where I majored in religion and peace and conflict studies, I worked for a couple years on educational advocacy relating to the Israeli and Palestinian conflict. During this time, I became particularly interested in the way that education can shape historical narratives, social identities, and political opinions. I decided that I wanted to contribute to knowledge and research on the subject, focusing on the role of education in situations of armed conflict: how conflict affects education and how education affects conflict, potentially serving to either mitigate and exacerbate it.

Research focus:

I look at how the humanitarian community is addressing the problem of attacks on education (violence, harassment, and threats against students, teachers, and schools in areas of armed conflict). More specifically, I focus on the work of humanitarian actors in the occupied Palestinian territory and the linkages between what is occurring there and global advocacy efforts.

Publications:

Kapit-Spitalny, Amy and Burde, Dana (2011). Annex 1: Prioritizing the Agenda for Research for the Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack: Why Evidence is Important, What We Know, and How to Learn More. In Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack. Report from the Knowledge Roundtable on Programmatic Measures in Prevention, Intervention and Response to Attacks on EducationNovember 8-11, 2011 Phuket, Thailand. New York, NY: GCPEA, pp. 29-46.
Burde, Dana, Kapit-Spitalny, Amy, Wahl, Rachel, and Guven, Ozen (2011). Education and Conflict Mitigation: What the Aid Workers Say. Washington, DC: USAID.
Guven, Ozen, Kapit-Spitalny, Amy, and Burde, Dana (contracted and submitted, 2011). The Education of Former Child Soldiers: Finding a Way Back to Civilian Identity. Education Above All.
Burde, Dana, Kapit-Spitalny, Amy, Wahl, Rachel, and Guven, Ozen (contracted and submitted, 2010). Education in Emergencies: A Literature Review of What Works, What Does Not, and Why. Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation.
Miller-Idriss, Cynthia and Kapit, Amy (2009). Book Review: Promoting Conflict or Peace Through Identity by Nikki Slocum-Bradley (Ed.). Journal of Intercultural Studies, 30(4), pp. 431-433.

What are your career goals?

I want to work for an international humanitarian agency on issues relating to education in emergencies, using my knowledge and research experience to inform programming and advocacy.

Extended article on Elowyn Corby’s 2013 PJSA Thesis Award

Many thanks to Swarthmore’s News and Information Office for this piece that has appeared on the College’s webpage. Congratulations again to Elowyn Corby!

Elowyn Corby ’13 Wins Peace and Justice Studies Thesis Award

by Jenni Lu ’16

October 21, 2013

Elowyn Corby (class of 2013) Special Major in Peace Education

Elowyn Corby ’13 presented her winning thesis at the Peace and Justice Studies Association’s awards banquet this past weekend.

If you want to be heard, speak up. It’s a basic concept that has driven the progression of democracy, the rise of cohesive communities, and now, Elowyn Corby’s [’13] thesis research, which recently caught the attention of the Peace and Justice Studies Association (PJSA).

Titled “Training for Change: Moving from Theory to Practice in Adult Education for Empowerment,” Corby’s thesis garnered her the association’s 2013 Undergraduate Student Thesis Award. Corby, a peace education and political science major with a minor in conflict studies from Santa Cruz, Calif., accepted the award and presented her work this past weekend at PJSA’s annual meeting in Waterloo, Ontario.

Participation supports both the individual and the collective, according to Corby. It allows for the formation of social trust and social connection between people and within a society, and prevents communities from becoming too insular and controlling. However, participation has always been unevenly distributed.

“What we see is certain people getting heard a lot, often because they tend to participate a lot,” she says. “The government listens to those who participate. My question was, how does education tie into this? We know we need democratic skills and participatory skills. How do we get there? Is that something that can be trained?”

Corby’s hope was to determine whether activism training could reduce the inequalities that typically arise out of the most common way people develop activism skills: in the workplace.

“The experience that you accrue in the workplace is very biased along racial and socioeconomic lines,” she explains. “So if you’re developing leadership experience in the workplace, it’s much more likely that you’re a white male from a privileged socioeconomic background than you’re a person of color, or a woman, from a working class background.”

For her research, Corby chose to focus on Training for Change, an activism training organization that she had been in contact with since her freshman year at Swarthmore. Using them as a case study, she conducted 278 surveys and seven long-form interviews over the span of a year and a half.

“Statistically, Training for Change does increase [participants’] democratic confidence and how much they can engage in issues they care about across the board,” Corby says. “They engage more frequently, they attend more meetings, they run more meetings.”

However, Corby also stumbled upon a second discovery. Not only did Training for Change equalize the participatory playing field, it did so by exponentially increasing activism skills among people of color.

“Training for Change is not only increasing democratic participatory skills,” she says, “but it’s also doing it in a way that disproportionately affects communities that are much more likely to be silenced by our current democratic system. So it’s combating larger social inequalities.”

Corby’s findings have solidified her staunch belief that anyone can become an activist, and hopes that her research can compel more people to consider the inequalities found in current activist participation in a new light. It’s just a matter of channeling your passion and honing your skills.

“I think one of the things that holds activism training back is that it’s not understood very well,” she says. “It’s not seen as something that’s actually viable for facilitating and catalyzing social change. So there’s a lot of need for activism training.”

Corby credits her advisers, Associate Professor of Educational Studies Diane Anderson and Associate Professor of Sociology Lee Smithey, with providing support and encouragement. “Lee in particular spent hours and hours with me going over the data and number crunching,” Corby says. “I feel strange taking credit for this because it was all of us.”

Education course at Bryn Mawr supports Tri-Co Peace, Conflict, and Social Justice Studies

Prof. Jody Cohen at Bryn Mawr has revised EDUC 260 Multicultural Education to support Tri-Co Peace, Conflict, and Social Justice Studies this spring. The Tri-co Course Guide includes this description:

An investigation of education as a cultural event that engages issues of identity, difference, and power. The course explores a set of key tensions in the contested areas of multiculturalism and multicultural education: identity and difference; peace and conflict; dialogue and silence; and culture and the individual psyche. Students will apply theory and practice to global as well as specific, localized situations — communities and schools that contend with significant challenges in terms of equity and places where educators, students, and parents are trying out ways of educating for diversity and social justice. Fieldwork of two to three hours per week.

Prof. Cohen explains that the course emphasizes multiculturalism and the study of power as central to education, peace, and justice.

The course is structured to recognize and explore a set of key tensions within and surrounding the contested areas of multicultural and peace and conflict education:

identity/sameness and diversity/difference

dialogue and silence

peace and conflict

culture and the individual psyche

We examine these tensions in terms of a range of conceptual frameworks which point to such matters as the issue of power in pedagogy and curriculum; the role and problematics of dialogue in teaching and learning; and the challenges and promise of addressing conflict, e.g. ethnic and religious tensions, and promoting peace via education. We apply theoretical constructs to broad as well as specific, localized situations — communities and schools that contend with significant challenges in terms of equity and where educators, students, and parents trying out ways of educating for diversity and social justice.

The class meets Monday / Wednesday 2:30pm-4:00pm.

[Note: Enrollment is limited to 25 students with priority given to students pursuing certification, the Bi-Co minor in Educational Studies, or the Tri-Co Peace, Conflict, and Social Justice Studies concentration.]

Spring PEAC course partners with guncrisis.org

In the wake of the Newtown, CT shootings and a renewed national conversation over gun control, “Peace Studies and Action” PEAC 077 will partner this spring with GunCrisis.org, an open source reporting community developed to address the epidemic of homicide by gunfire in Philadelphia through online journalism and social media.

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 effective peace work, like GunCrisis.org. Emphasis is placed on getting close to the experience of peacemakers and activists by reading autobiographical writings, visiting local peace organizations, and/or dialogue with invited guests. As a class, we will collaborate with GunCrisis.org to contribute to the work of the organization while developing our own research skills.

Discussion over course 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.

The spring semester begins on Martin Luther King day, and as on many topics, Dr. King illuminates peace studies with his vision for education:

Rev. Martin Luther King “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).

The pre-requisite of PEAC 015 Introduction to Peace and Conflict Studies has been suspended, so the course is open to all students.

For a brief introduction to the problem of gun violence in Philadelphia, view this short video by Jim MacMillan, a founder of GunCrisis.org and Journalist in Residence at Swarthmore.