The Southeast Asian Student Association will be hosting the film screening of ” Mother, Daughter, Sister: Ama, Thamee, Ama.” This is a documentary on the weaponization of rape in the Myanmar Conflict. The film screening will also include a discussion with director Jeanne Hallacy. The event is co sponsored by Peace and Conflict Studies as well as Asian Studies. It will take place on Friday, May 3rd. Please come join us!
Here is a link to the facebook post to learn more information about the event:
This article was written by the Communications Office
at Swarthmore College.
Here is an additional link to the original article:
https://www.swarthmore.edu/news-events/reporter-donates-documents-infamous-1971-fbi-burglary-to-swarthmore-college-peace?fbclid=IwAR3UXy1x9wmA8uVfXZ-eSNnxa4lkeeAxBWEkObwgHuuY1vEf44DD25BlCnE
April 16th, 2019Investigative reporter Betty Medsger, who recently spoke at McCabe Library, donated approximately 70,000 documents used while researching her 2014 book The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover’s Secret FBI. (Photo courtesy of Delaware County Daily Times)
As recently noted in the Delaware County Daily Times, the Washington Post journalist who was the first to report on files stolen from a Delaware County FBI office almost 50 years ago donated her book research on the topic to the Swarthmore College Peace Collection.
The collection, housed in McCabe Library, accepted approximately 70,000 documents that investigative reporter Betty Medsger used in writing her 2014 book The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover’s Secret FBI. The documents include the 35,000 files she received from a Freedom of Information Act request that methodically detailed theillegal surveillance techniques conducted by the FBI to suppress dissenting speech and activities by people and organizations viewed as subversives.
“These were the documents that convinced Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee and publisher Katharine Graham to defy J. Edgar Hoover and Attorney General John Mitchell, and break the story that the FBI was spying on ordinary Americans who had committed no crimes,” says Wendy Chmielewski, George Cooley Curator of the Swarthmore College Peace Collection.
“The publication of the stolen records from the Media [Pa.] FBI office also directly influenced and encouraged the editor and publisher to go forward with publishing investigations of the well-known cases of Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers, and in the subsequent two years of investigations over Watergate,” says Chmielewski.
Some of the files detailed ways College staff members were used as informants for the FBI to keep an eye on certain professors or student groups through a program called COINTELPRO, which operated from 1965 to 1971.
“I’m in very good company,” Medsger said at an April 3 event at McCabe Library, noting her work’s inclusion with that of Nobel Prize laureate Jane Addams and documentary filmmaker Anthony Giacchino. “I’m glad my files will have good company and be valuable to people doing research.”
Since its founding in 1930, the Peace Collection has gathered and preserved for scholarly research the materials of people and organizations who have worked for nonviolent social change, disarmament, and conflict resolution between peoples and nations. The collection houses material on a wide variety of subjects, such as the history of the peace movement, pacifism, women and peace, conscientious objection, nonviolence and disarmament, internationalism, and civil disobedience. It also contains a large number of posters, photographs, and memorabilia, including the medal Jane Addams received when she became the first American woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize.
Conversation with Max Elbaum, longtime left organizer and author
of Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals Turn to Lenin, Mao and Che.
Tuesday April 16th, 7pm Kohlberg Hall, Scheuer Room Swarthmore College (free and open to the public).
The third edition of Revolutionin the Air was published in 2018 with a new forward by Alicia Garza, one of the co-founders of the Black Lives Matter movement. Garza writes: “We can use this book as a tool to begin charting a path towards what a vast, vibrant Left can and should look like in the United States.” And Elbaum says: “Today revolutionary sentiments are spreading once again as we face exceptional dangers from the white nationalist-driven Trump presidency. I look forward to working [to] do our best to defeat the racist, sexist and authoritarian right; strengthen mass movements for peace, social justice and a sustainable environment; and make revolutionary politics not just a sentiment filling the air but a powerful political force on the ground.” Max will give a short-ish talk on his book and its lessons for today’s activists, then open up for a Q&A.
Max Elbaum was a member of Students for a Democratic Society and a leader of one of the main new communist movement organizations. His writings have appeared in the Nation, the US Guardian, CrossRoads, and the Encyclopedia of the American Left. He lives in Oakland.
co-sponsored by the departments of Sociology & Anthropologyand Peace & Conflict Studies. Contact dlauris1@swarthmore.edu.
Peace and Conflict Studies is happy to co-sponsor this event!
Anthropology Through Comics: The Making of Lissa, an EthnoGRAPHIC Story
Tuesday, April 9th, 4:15 – 5:45 PM, in Kohlberg Hall, Scheuer Room
A guest lecture by Sherine Hamdy, Associate Professor of Anthropology,
University of California, Irvine, & Lissa’s co-creator. She is also the Series Editor for University of Toronto Press’ ethnoGRAPHIC series
Sherine Hamdy will discuss her move from medical anthropological research to working on creating a graphic novel, featuring women from extraordinarily different circumstances each facing a medical decision the other can’t understand. Lissa, which takes place against the backdrop of Egypt’s popular uprisings, is informed by Hamdy’s ethnographic research in Egypt on the vulnerabilities that expose people to kidney and liver disease, and the difficulties of accessing proper treatment. The work also draws on Coleman Nye’s research in the U.S. on the social and political calculus of managing genetic risk for breast and ovarian cancer within a commercial healthcare system.
“Symbolic and Material Boundary Drawing in the Syrian Refugee Crises: Excluding Muslim Men from Germany”
Dr. GokceYurdakul
Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University
Department of Diversity and Social Conflict, Humboldt University
Tuesday, April 16, 2019
4:30-6:00pm
Kohlberg 228
Co-Organized by German Studies and Peace and Conflict Studies and Co-Sponsored by Gender and Sexuality Studies, Islamic Studies, Political Science, Sociology and Anthropology, and the Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility
We excited to announce this event coming next week to Swarthmore!
SarahSchulman, Distinguished Professor of the Humanities from the College of Staten Island and City University of New York will be doing a lecture titled, “Conflict is Not Abuse: Overstating Harm, Community Responsibility, and the Duty of Repair.”
Thursday, April 11, 2019
4:30-6:00pm
Kohlberg 228
Organized by Peace and Conflict Studies and Co-Sponsored by Gender and Sexuality Studies, Political Science, Sociology and Anthropology, the Intercultural Center, the Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility, the President’s Office, and the Sager Fund
Check out the Fall 2019 Peace and Conflict Courses – including new classes from our new Professor Amy Kapit, from Prof. Nanci Buiza, and from Prof. Denise Crossan!
Peace and Conflict Studies is co-sponsoring this awesome event tomorrow!
“How the 1971 Burglary of the Media, PA, FBI Office Changed History”
Round table discussion with: Keith Forsyth, antiwar activist and burglar, auto worker, optical engineer and jazz guitarist; Bonnie Raines, anti-war activist and burglar, civil rights activist and advocate for the needs of children;
and Betty Medsger, former Washington Post reporter, professor of journalism, and author of The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover’s Secret FBI
McCabe Library Atrium
Swarthmore College
7 p.m., April 3, 2019
Open to the public
The Swarthmore Campus & Community Store will provide books for purchase and signing during the reception to follow
Co-sponsored by
Swarthmore College Peace Collection Black Studies Black Cultural Center Lang Center for Social Responsibility Peace and Conflict Studies Political Science
Peace, Justice, and Human Rights-Haverford College
This event will also recognize Betty Medsger’s donation of her papers to the Peace Collection
Check out the video below for a background on the original event:
Nationalism, Class, and Activism in Lebanon in the Shadow of Syrian Civil War
Yasemin Ipek, Assistant Professor in the Global Affairs Program, George Mason University
Monday, April 1, 2019, 4:30-6 p.m.
Scheuer Room, Kohlberg Hall
Between 2011 and 2014, more than a million registered Syrian refugees came to Lebanon, making the tiny country host to the largest refugee population per capita in the world. Based on ethnographic research in Beirut between 2012 and 2015 with a wide-ranging set of actors such as unemployed NGO volunteers, middle-class social entrepreneurs, advocacy activists, the returning Lebanese diaspora, and Western aid workers, this talk examines the reconfigurations of Lebanese nationalism and sectarianism in the aftermath of the Syrian civil war. The Lebanese experience of activism, which has been transformed in the context of the Syrian civil war and the refugee crisis, questions the common theorizing that tends to romanticize activism as inherently subversive. The talk suggests that local framings of activism cannot be understood only through lenses of the liberal human rights discourse or neoliberalism, but are also tied to diverse postcolonial aspirations and practices related to national identity.
Co-sponsored by the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Islamic Studies, Global Studies, the Arabic section and Peace and Conflict Studies
Friends Historical Library is presenting a lecture on The Quaker Peace Testimony in the 20th Century on Thursday, April 11, 2019, 4:30 PM, in the McCabe Library Atrium. The speaker is David Harrington Watt, the Douglas and Dorothy Steere Professor of Quaker Studies at Haverford College.
Over the centuries, Quakers have thought about coercion, violence and war in many different ways. This talk will examine the ways in which Henry J. Cadbury (1883-1974)—one of the more prominent figures in the history of modern Quakerism — thought about those issues. In 1919, Haverford’s Board of Mangers accepted Henry Cadbury’s resignation from the college’s faculty. The resignation grew out a controversy connected to Cadbury’s vociferous advocacy of peace. This talk will examine Cadbury’s views on peace, coercion, and war and about what hose views tell use about the history of the Quaker “Peace Testimony.”
