Tag Archives: foreign policy

Dr. Wendy Chmielewski Awarded 2023 Anna K. Nelson Award for Archival Excellence

We would like to congratulate our colleague, the former Curator of the Swarthmore College Peace Collection, Dr. Wendy Chmielewski, for receiving the 2023 Anna K. Nelson Award for Archival Excellence from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR). Dr. Nelson, a historian and expert on archival preservation and open public access to presidential and government records served on the U.S. Public Documents Commission. Nelson helped write the report that led to the passage of the Presidential Records Act.

George Fujii explains in the SHAFR blog that “The 2023 Anna K. Nelson Prize for Archival Excellence honors an archivist who has demonstrated both exemplary expertise as well as outstanding and dedicated service over time to the community of scholars of the history of U.S. foreign relations and international history.” Dr. Chmielewski helped co-found the Peace and Conflict Studies Program at Swarthmore College in 1991 and served on its faculty committee until her retirement in 2021.

Fujii writes of Dr. Chmielewski, “A scholar of women’s history and peace movements, Dr. Chmielewski is honored for her leadership as the George R. Cooley Curator of the Swarthmore College Peace Collection for over twenty years. In that role, she oversaw the expansion the collection’s records, made detailed finding aids for many of them available on the internet, highlighted many of its print and graphic materials on its website, and added a public history component to this archival repository. In these ways and others, she has been a driving force in making the Swarthmore College Peace Collection (SCPC) an indispensable resource for scholars of the American peace movement and the history of U.S. foreign relations more broadly. Beyond the peace collection at Swarthmore, Dr. Chmielewski has also been a member of the advisory committee of the American Museum for Peace, the Jane Addams Papers Project at Ramapo College, and the Centre for Peace History at the University of Sheffield. SHAFR recognizes her for this work and her multiple contributions to the study of U.S. foreign relations.”

Reflecting on the award, Dr. Chmielewski graciously offered, “As my work for the Peace Collection was always a collaborative effort with other SCPC staff members over many years, I think this award really belongs to the SCPC.”

We are thrilled for Wendy and her colleagues, and we join SHAFR in acknowledging and honoring her work.

Carl Wilkens on The Future of U.S. Policy Toward Africa

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.

Carl Wilkens

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.

Recap: Sanger, Awad, and Alwadi

We have had a busy and engaging couple of weeks in Peace and Conflict Studies with events on nonviolent resistance in the Middle East, U.S. foreign policy, mountaintop removal, and women and violence in the Congo.

Here are some pictures and video offered as a brief recap:

(click on the thumbnails below for larger images)

David Sanger

David Sanger addressed the college on October 27, 2011

Mubarak Awad

Prof. Mubarak Awad addressed the college and local community on November 7, 2011. Stay tuned for the video of Prof. Awad’s talk, which we will post here on the blog.

Nada Alwadi

Bahraini journalist, Nada Alwadi, spoke on November 8, 2011. She visited with John Meyer of Pendle Hill after the event and posed for a picture with (L to R) Lee Smithey, Jim MacMillan, and Brahim El Guabli. After her appearance at Swarthmore, she moved on to address the International House of Philadelphia on November 11, 2011.

If you missed Nada Alwadi’s talk, you can hear her online. You can see her webinar with the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict.

Ms. Alwadi was also interviewed by Marty Moss-Coane on WHYY’s Radio Times on the morning following her presentation at Swarthmore. You can listen to the interview here.