Tag Archives: violence

Press Release for Tombs lecture on the Cross and Sexualized Violence

The Scandal of the Cross: Sexualised Violence, Silence and Crucifixion

SWARTHMORE – 20 November, 2013 – How contemporary reports of torture and sexualised violence can offer new understanding of the crucifixion will be explored at a public talk at Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania on Wednesday, November 20th, 2013 at 4:15 p.m. in the Scheuer Room of Kohlberg Hall.

Prof. David Tombs

In a lecture entitled The Scandal of the Cross: Sexualised Violence, Silence and Crucifixion, Dr David Tombs, Assistant Professor in Conflict Resolution and Reconciliation at Trinity’s cross-border campus in Northern Ireland, will use both ancient and modern sources to examine crucifixion as a form of state terror torture and sexualised violence.

Speaking in advance of the lecture, Dr Tombs commented: “St. Paul’s description of the cross as ‘a scandal’ (1 Cor. 1.23) is widely known. Christians around the world are familiar with it, and many recall it each year on Good Friday. But what exactly made the cross a scandal, and why is it relevant to a Christian response to sexualised violence in conflicts today?”

“In this lecture I will present 15 years of research on why the cross was so scandalous in the ancient world. I will look at why the most critical element in the scandal has been unspeakable for two millennia, and why this has profound relevance to a church concerned about sexualised violence in conflicts around the world today.

Crucifix “My research suggests that ‘the scandal of the cross’ is a scandal of sexualised violence, and it is also scandalous for theologians and churches to have been silent on this for so long. In in response to reports of widespread conflict-related sexualised violence (including Central America in the 1980s, Bosnia and Rwanda in the 1990s, and the Democratic Republic of Congo in the last decade) the central symbol of Christianity needs to be seen in a new way. The cross challenges theologians to break the silence and taboo of sexualised violence, and yet do so in a way that affirms the dignity of victims past and present. The lecture points to how this might be done in three areas of theological thought: the humanity of Christ; the unspoken memories of Eucharist; and the good news of resurrection.”

Co-sponsored by Peace & Conflict Studies, Department of Religion, Provost’s Office, Off-campus Study, The Northern Ireland Semester, Gender and Sexuality Studies

Tweeting on gun violence prevention

Students in the course PEAC 077 “Peace Studies and Action” partnered with the local gun violence reporting organization, guncrisis.org over the spring semester 2013. In the spirit of “process journalism” that guncrisis journalists employ, our class made announcements, shared resources, and offered comments on gun violence prevention over the course of the semester using a #swatpsa hashtag on Twitter.

Most of the tweets have been bundled together at Bundlr.com. Recenlty, Bundlr featured our bundled tweets in their Education and Science gallery.

GunCrisis.org: Seeking Solutions to Gun Violence in Philadelphia with Digital Journalism

A public lecture sponsored by our friends at the Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility

“GunCrisis.org: Seeking Solutions to Gun Violence in Philadelphia with Digital Journalism”

Tuesday, April 2nd, 2013

4:30-5:30 p.m.

Scheuer Room

Swarthmore College

Maps and Directions

Download a flyer

Jim MacMillan

Former Journalist-in-Residence for War News Radio and Manager of Media and Social Responsibility for the Lang Center, Founder, GunCrisis.org Current Assistant Director for the Center for Public Interest Journalism at Temple University

How do we address the epidemic of homicide by gunfire in America? What is the future and impact of journalism in response to epic changes in information delivery? How can social media be put to use for positive social change? On average, at least one person has been murdered in Philadelphia every day over the last 25 years, and more than three-quarters of them have been killed with a gun.

The Gun Crisis Reporting Project is a non-profit independent journalism organization intended to fill the gaps in gun violence reporting, and to help seek solutions.

Visit: GunCrisis.org.

Sponsored by the Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility.

Trauma and Violence in Postwar Central American Literature

The Spanish Program

Department of Modern Languages and Literatures

presents

SHE-DEVIL IN THE MIRROR: TRAUMA AND VIOLENCE IN POSTWAR CENTRAL AMERICAN LITERATURE

A Lecture by

Nanci Buiza

Ph.D. Candidate in Spanish, Emory University

Monday, January 28, 2013

4:30 – 5:30 p.m.

Kohlberg 116

All lectures will be given in English, by a candidate for the tenure-track position in Spanish

View or download a flyer.

Amelia Hoover Green ’03 on Preventing Wartime Violence Against Civilians

How Swarthmore Built My Dataset

by Amelia Hoover Green ’03

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.

Prof Jim MacMillan launches guncrisis.org

Many of you will know or will have taken “Peace and Conflict Journalism” with Visiting Assistant Professor, Jim MacMillan, who teaches Peace and Conflict Journalism and serves as the Journalist in Residence for War News Radio, Lodge6.org, and the Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility. Jim is turning his decades of experience as a journalist to help fight rampant gun violence in Philadelphia with a new project to shine as much journalistic light on the problem as possible. Visit guncrisis.org and follow on facebook and Twitter @guncrisisnews

Philadelphia Weekly: How Two Photojournalists Are Taking on the City’s Gun Crisis

By Tara Murtha

Midnight comes and goes. For the first time in 11 nights, the city of Philadelphia has gone a full day and night without a homicide. The relief doesn’t last long. Just before 1 a.m., the scanner resting in photojournalist Joe “Kaz” Kaczmarek’s lap crackles to life: report of shots fired at 40th Street and Girard Avenue.

Kaz has been driving around the city with journalist and fellow crime-scene vet Jim MacMillan for hours when the call comes in….

Back in the car, MacMillan is already iPhone-editing video he shot of pulling up to the scene. In a few days, he’ll post the video to GunCrisis.org, an “open-source journalism experiment” he launched last month that aims to explore the city’s homicide-by-gun epidemic and possible solutions while carefully, purposefully, avoiding slipping down the rabbit holes of the gun-policy debate.

“The gun debate has been around as long as I’ve been alive,” says MacMillan, 51. “I’m looking for new solutions. I’m not interested in the gun rights debate from either side or blaming the police, or the mayor, or city budget. I want to know what we haven’t talked about and I want to know who is doing things that work. I just want to know what’s going to work.”

MacMillan doesn’t know what solutions will curb the gunfire crisis in Philadelphia, and he doesn’t yet know how to financially sustain the independent, new-media project he envisions, either. What he does know is that murder by gun is the most important story in Philadelphia-in national newspapers, it’s the story of Philadelphia-and that it needs to be explored intensely, from every angle, with every journalistic resource in the city.

“First thing I’m trying to do is build a community of like-minded people and start to gather information on all the other individuals and organizations in the city working on it,” says MacMillan, a Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist and 17-year veteran of the Daily News. “It’s open-ended. I don’t know how it’s going to play out but I want everyone to participate.”…

After returning from Iraq, MacMillan grew increasingly interested in the intersection of journalism and trauma and new-media models. While he wasn’t sure of the exact direction of impactful, sustainable journalism, he was pretty sure it wasn’t happening at 400 N. Broad St. In 2007, he took an early buyout.

He spent the last few years studying the impact of violence on communities and exploring the impact media could have on reducing that violence. In 2007, he was an Ochberg fellow at the Dart Center. He taught classes in “Journalism and Psychological Trauma” at Temple University; “Multimedia and Social Media Journalism” at the University of Missouri; and “Peace and Conflict Journalism” at Swarthmore College, where he is currently the journalist-in-residence at the Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility. Meanwhile, he built his own indie-journalism following online. Today, he has more than 79,000 Twitter followers and more than 43,000 subscribers on Facebook….

Photo by Joe Kaczmarek. More: http://joekaczmarek.blogspot.com/

David Kennedy ’80 to speak on violence prison and race

David Kennedy ’80, author of Don’t Shoot: One Man, a Street Fellowship, and the End of Violence in Inner-City America, will give a public lecture, free and open to the public:

“From Swarthmore to the Streets: Learning to Understand and Undo America’s Worst Problems of Violence, Prison, and Race”

Wednesday, April 18th, 7 p.m., Science Center 101

A book signing will follow the talk —

Some of you might recall David Kennedy’s talk at Commencement last year, when the College awarded him an honorary Doctor of Laws degree. He is one of the country’s most well-known criminologists, credited with creating the “Boston Miracle,” through which gun violence among people under the age of 24 was reduced by 60 percent. He accomplished this by staging what was essentially a giant intervention, bringing together beat cops, gang members, families, and community members who all demanded with one voice that the violence stop. He has gone on to advise dozens of cities, both nationally and internationally, as well as senators, the Department of Justice, and Presidents Clinton and Bush. More complete biographical information follows.

Sponsored by the President’s Office, Communications Office, and the Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility.

ABOUT DAVID KENNEDY ‘80

David Kennedy is changing the way cities police, dispense justice, and prevent crime. A criminologist, teacher and activist, David is an expert in gun violence, neighborhood revitalization, and deterrence theory. In the 1990s he directed the Boston Gun Project, a groundbreaking initiative aimed at reducing youth violence; and he implemented Operation Ceasefire, which resulted in a 60 percent reduction in violence among people under age 24. His work in that city came to be known as the “Boston Miracle.” He has since helped other cities successfully implement similar programs, and become an advisor to national and international leaders.

David is the author of several books, including the most recent Don’t Shoot: One Man, a Street Fellowship, and the End of Violence in Inner-City America, an autobiographical account of public policy. An earlier book, Deterrence and Crime Prevention: Reconsidering the Prospect of Sanction, was called “a landmark rethinking of public policy” and “a primer on 21st-century policing.” He has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Boston Globe and has published numerous case studies in policing and public policy.

David was profiled in The New Yorker and Newsweek and interviewed by NPR and 60 Minutes . He has won numerous awards including two Webber Seavey Awards from the International Association of Chiefs of Police, two Innovations in American Government Awards, a Herman Goldstein Award for Excellence in Problem-Oriented Policing, and the Hatfield Scholar Award for scholarship in the Public Interest.

David graduated from Swarthmore College in 1980 with high honors in philosophy and history. He worked as a case writer, lecturer and senior researcher in the Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. He is currently the director of the Center for Crime Prevention at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City and co-chair of the National Network for Safe Communities. In recognition of his creativity, innovation, and public service, Swarthmore awarded David an honorary Doctor of Laws in May 2011.