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All sessions are held in either Kolenbrander-Harter Information Center (KHIC) 202, 203, 012, 013, or the North Reading Room. Plenaries and keynotes occur elsewhere as indicated. To see a campus map, check here

Thursday, October 13 

• 10:00am-4:00pm:

  • PJSA Board Meeting

  • Registration and King Hall Check-in – Giese Center for the Performing Arts lobby

  • Pre-Conference Self-Guided Activities: KSU Memorial, Haines House, Hale Farm, Football Hall of Fame, Rock & Roll Hall of Fame

• 4:00pm-5:00pm: PJSA Board meet and greet

• 5:00pm-7:00pm: PJSA Board dinner

• 7:00pm-9:00pm: PJSA Board reception (Haines House)

Friday, October 14 

• 9:00am-5:00pm Registration & King Hall Check-in – Giese Center for the Performing Arts lobby

• 9:00am-10:15am Shuttles from conference hotel to campus

• 10:30-12:00pm Concurrent Session #1

  • Panel 1A [available in-person and via Zoom]: Issues in Peace Education, (Chair: Laura Finley) – KHIC 202
    
    Teachers’ Use of Restorative Justice to Develop Staff Community in a K-8 School Environment (Michelle Bemiller, Walsh University)

    K-12 schools and workplaces have increased use of restorative processes in lieu of, or in addition to, traditional punitive practices with students and staff. This presentation draws attention to the use of teachers and staff members’ use of RJ processes in a K-8 school. The use of RJ in this case is innovative because the focus is on the teachers use or RJ with one another, rather than their use with students. The needs of the teachers as well as their reflections on the use of RJ in the school will be shared, as well as recommendations for ways for educators to use RJ in their work.

    Informal/Nonformal Peace Education and the Rationale/Design for a Baccalaureate High School Peace Education Program (Gregory Foisie, independent scholar)

    This session reviews an academic study of informal/nonformal Peace education efforts in the greater municipal region of Los Angeles, California between 2004 and 2022 and social trends, suggesting the need for formal Peace education at the secondary school level. Preliminary results from an IRB-approved survey document public support for formal high school Peace education. Curriculum rationale and descriptors are presented. Elements of a baccalaureate Peace education program design address the challenges to implementing such a program. The program’s attributes were developed to improve overall program attractiveness to school administrations, students, and their families and to nurture program success.

    Bringing a Peace and Justice Lens to Domestic Violence Education (Laura Finley, Barry University)

    Jewish Cubans, or Jewbans, as they are called, are a unique population. Most of the Jewish families in Cuba emigrated from Eastern Europe to flee the Holocaust. When Castro came to power, many Jewbans fled Cuba for the U.S and other countries. Each of these times, Jewish people had to learn a new culture, new language, new industry and adapt to different climates. This session will provide details from in-depth interviews with members of the Jewban diaspora, emphasizing themes in their lived experiences and how they are passing their culture to the current generation. These complex migratory patterns and people’s resilience in adapting to them will be of interest to peace and conflict studies scholars.

     

  • Panel 1B: Biographies of the Peacemakers Part  1, (Chair: Nathan Funk) – KHIC 203
    
    John Dewey’s Reconstructive Experience as Means to Liberation, (Chitranjan Greer-Travis University of Toledo)

    John Dewey’s (1938) philosophy of education places high emphasis on human development, growth, and experience. Throughout his body of work, Dewey sheds light on the political and experiential natures of education. Can Dewey’s philosophy stand up to authoritarian structures of power today that maintain the status quo? I argue that Dewey’s philosophy of democratic education is a plausible means for liberation. I also consider how Dewey’s work coheres with other philosophers of struggle and liberation. Finally, I offer a reflection on critical pedagogy. Dewey’s philosophy is indeed a timeless pragmatic philosophy of reform. The rise of authoritarian systems that limit education to corporate models of training is problematic. In response to oppressive systems, we should develop pedagogical models that cultivate growth and freedom of thought such as the Deweyan model. The Socratic model of education is also given credence. That is, we must critically examine ourselves and our environment through a kind of teaching that transgresses. The tradition of critical inquiry must continue to be developed if we hope to sustain what is left of our collective liberty and democracy.

    A Transformative Approach to International Relations: Abdul Aziz Said’s Contributions to Peace Studies (Nathan Funk, University of Waterloo)

    Known to many as American University’s “peace legend,” Abdul Aziz Said (1930-2021) led an academic career spanning nearly sixty years. A forward-looking thinker, he consistently sought to grapple with leading-edge issues, from the role of ethnicity in politics to Islamic-Western relations, locally rooted peacebuilding practices, and inclusive approaches to spirituality in peace work. Taken together, his extensive writings, innovative pedagogy, and practical pursuits offer a model for engaged scholarship. Based on a comprehensive reading of his works as well as on interviews and supplemental materials, this paper explores and interprets Abdul Aziz Said’s many contributions to peace studies.

    Quiet Tension: A Barbara Deming Podcast (Donna Eyestone, independent scholar)

    After working for a year as a private investigator for the defense in a murder case that ultimately sent a 17-year-old to prison for two life sentences, Donna began studying prisons, and the people we put in them. Through this reading, she discovered “Prison Notes,” and learned about civil disobedience and nonviolent resistance of lesbian activist Barbara Deming. Eyestone organized a 400-mile peace walk in Deming’s memory and become a convinced Quaker and activist for change. Come hear about the podcast series Donna is writing on the life of Deming that presents her ongoing commitment to nonviolent resistance and explores how nonviolent resistance continues to evolve in present-day struggles including Occupy, Black Lives Matter, and the women’s movement.

    Peacemaking through Storytelling: What I Learned from Suzanne Collins, Author of The Hunger Games (Nicole Plyler Fisk, University of South Carolina)

    Although Suzanne Collins is best known as the award-winning author of The Hunger Games series for young adults, she has published both a children’s picture book (The Year of the Jungle) and a middle-school series (The Underland Chronicles), both of which grapple with themes of war and implicitly ask readers to imagine peace. In interviews, Collins has expressed her belief that the only way we will achieve world peace is to educate our youngest generations early and often about the cost of war. In this interactive workshop, we will talk about how to do just that —i.e., how we utilize popular stories, like The Hunger Games books and/or films, as tools for connecting with others and discussing topics (e.g., poverty, refugees, and the myth of redemptive violence) that would otherwise be considered too political to bring to the proverbial dinner table? What, in essence, is the role of the writer as peacemaker and how do we, as readers, create a common language of shared stories to affect positive social change?

     

  • Roundtable 1A: Teaching and Learning Nonviolence through Being Nonviolent, (Chair: Rochelle Arms) – KHIC 012
    
    Details

    Teachers and students from the Peace and Social Justice Studies course “Voices of Nonviolence” in historic Berea College lead a discussion about nonviolent classroom culture as an essential bridge for understanding nonviolence philosophies and practices. They raise critiques of an ideas-only approach to learning about nonviolence and posit the classroom as a nonviolence-in-action space in which to contend with “nonviolence” curriculum. Students will engage attendees in a ”what if” scenario to help teachers and learners “transcend the page” into lived experience via the classroom community.
    

    • Rochelle Arms Almengor, Berea College
    • Cora Allison, Berea College
    • Madison Trusty, Berea College
    • Ei Zin Aung, Berea College
    • Elvira Barragan-Lopez, Berea College
    • Elizabeth Clay-Darden, Berea College
    • Ana Ursaru, Berea College

     

  • Roundtable 1B: Peace and Justice Journeys: Experiential Pilgrimages for Students – KHIC 013
    
    Dean Johnson, West Chester University

    Discussion about incorporating into classes local/regional locations and/or persons for peace and justice learning journeys to expand the use of experiential learning in courses. Injustice continues to challenge our moral integrity and threaten our democracy. One way for students to grow in their passion for justice is to be provided with a transformative experience. Let’s talk about how to create experiences rooted in the history/people of our home locations or what I am calling peace and justice learning journeys. These journeys are to a place with social justice or moral significance.

     

  • Workshop 1: Peacebuilding: What’s Love Got to Do with It – North Reading Room
    
    Amanda Byron Singer, Portland State University

    Love is commonly misunderstood in the contemporary world. In an era when we feel a great sense of entitlement to the experiences of comfort and ease, we mistake love as synonymous of both. This session will explore an understanding of love as something more robust than merely a greeting card sentiment, and more substantive than a sexualized or romanticized commodity. We will delve into the practical and mystical world of love, recognizing love as the very work of peacebuilding: encouraging engagement, fostering connection, and bridging our inevitable differences. This expanded understanding of love allows us to claim love as a practical — if not essential — tool in the work of peace and justice.

• 12:00-1:00pm Lunch (options here)

• 1:30-3:00pm Concurrent Session #2

  • Panel 2A [available in-person and via Zoom]: Biographies of the Peacemakers Part 2, (Chair: Dean Johnson) – KHIC 202
    
    Julia Grace Wales and the Vocation of Peace (Deborah Buffton, University of Wisconsin-La Crosse)

    Canadian educator and peace activist Julia Grace Wales (1881-1957), wrote “Continuous Mediation without Armistice,” a plan to bring peace in World War I that was adopted by the Women’s International Peace Conference at the Hague (1915), and sought to promote peace throughout Europe. Later she wrote extensively on creating an equitable economic system, the importance of education in maintaining democracy, the citizen’s role in the global world, and the importance of a strong spiritual foundation to achieve anything of value in life. This paper will explore how her entire life demonstrated her multi-faceted sense of a peace vocation and what peacemakers today can learn from her.

    Thich Nhat Hanh: Peace Is Every Step (Jessica Hitch, independent scholar)

    Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh is an outstanding example of living the life of a peacemaker. This presentation will outline his contributions to peace activism, including the development of engaged Buddhism with the School of Youth for Social Services and the Order of Interbeing in the mid-1960s, his anti-war lecture tour through the United States, and his prolific writings and worldwide meditation communities. Exiled by Vietnam for his peace work in 1966 and nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize by Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1967 for his work, Thich Nhat Hanh left a legacy of peace through his teachings. His 11 monastic practice centers and over 1,000 sanghas around the world follow Buddhist ideals and focus on generating loving kindness for all sentient beings. The FIve Mindfulness Trainings and Fourteen Mindfulness Trainings offer guidelines for ethical living in a time of climate change, and they address how to transform the world through our consumption, way of thinking, and actions. He passed away in January 2022, but leaves over 100 books written in multiple languages, including English, French, and Vietnamese.
    

    Menno Simons’ Call to Peacemaking: Situating Him In His Frisian Context (Stephen W. Minnema, independent scholar)

     That Menno Simons was called to peacemaking is well known
    but the circumstances and nature of his call are not.  Menno was an
    educated priest in Friesland in the early sixteenth century who
    surrendered his privileged position to serve the angry underclass
    Anabaptist movement recently shattered by its apocalyptic fiasco in
    Munster. This paper seeks to understand his call and his work as a
    response to realities at play in Friesland in the late Middle Ages.
    It looks at the challenges that context presented to him and thus the
    way it influenced his response. Final reflections will examine the
    ways in which one’s context influences the nature of one’s call to
    peacemaking.

    The Interfaith Journey of a Peacemaker (Swasti Bhattacharyya, Harvard Divinity School, Bernadette McNary-Zak, Rhodes College)

    Thomas Merton (1915-1968), a Roman Catholic monk, engaged and utilized Vinoba Bhave’s insights in Talks on the Gita. Vinoba (1895-1982) was M. K. Gandhi’s disciple, confidant, and spiritual successor. In reviewing Merton’s journals and correspondence, we demonstrate how this interfaith engagement facilitated Merton’s consideration of violence as connected to one’s svadharma (vocation). Merton’s experience affords us an opportunity to reflect upon a nuanced relationship between violence and peacemaking.

     

  • Panel 2B: Approaches to Conflict & Theory Part 1, (Chair: Jennie Barron) – KHIC 203
    
    What Are They Telling Us? (Wim Laven, Cuyahoga Community College)

    In doing research on the role of forgiveness in healing a divided America I have received a broad range of responses from students and young adults. These responses present interesting and nuanced understandings of the world we live in, the current political context within the US, and their ideas about the future. I believe that my generation has failed to solve the problems of the day, this presentation looks to what that has done to shape the next generation’s attitudes and behaviors in some interesting and surprising ways. Do they believe there will be another civil war? Do they believe it is possible to forgive and or move forward or reconcile the issues of the past? These and other questions like them will be answered in this presentation.

    Effects of Receiving Empathy on Social Conflict: A Theoretical Synthesis and Review of the Literature, (Joel Devonshire, University of Notre Dame)

    Theories of nonviolent conflict engagement and integrative bargaining suggest that empathy during conflict is useful for clarifying interests and needs, de-escalating tensions, and changing attitudes. Empirically, however, because most empathy research focuses on the sender of empathy rather than on the recipient, we know relatively little about the actual psychological effects of receiving empathy during conflict. In this paper, I review literature from different conflict domains to see if perceived empathy during conflict has predictable effects (e.g., attitude change, positive reciprocity), and I explore potential underlying mechanisms. I discuss the implications of these findings for future theoretical and empirical research.

    Problem Setting Trauma and Emotions in Conflict Transformation Processes: Trauma, Identity, and Victimhood (Jeremy A. Rinker, University of North Carolina-Greensboro)

    This first chapter of an ongoing book project, intended for the Rowman & Littlefield’s ACR Practitioner Guide Series, develops the role that victim identity narratives play in conflict processes by analyzing selective trauma narratives from anti-caste, anti-racism, and restorative justice practitioners and activists. While many disciplines have attempted to explore emotions and trauma, the field of conflict resolution has mostly failed to address these important social-psychological variables as collective social phenomena critical to the vocation of the peacemaker. In developing an appreciation for a close listening to victim narratives participants will learn to appreciate the interdependence of victim and perpetrator narratives in conflict.

    Courageous Dialogues: Moving Beyond the Polarization (Jennie Barron, Selkirk College)

    Courageous Dialogues: Moving Beyond Polarization is a multi-institutional applied research project taking place in British Columbia, Canada, led by the Mir Centre for Peace at Selkirk College, with partners Vancouver Community College and Capilano University (North Vancouver). With funding for three years from the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), the project aims to identify various capacities that can be nurtured within civil society to help transcend polarization; and then map out pathways and make available tools for transcending polarization in the public & community education sector. In this paper, I will share project activities and findings to date (one year into the project), including a literature review on the nature and drivers of polarization, and survey data from participating non-profit partner organizations.

     

  • Roundtable 2A: Learning Towards Justice: Pedagogies Challenging Intersectional Injustice, (Chair: Joy Meeker) – KHIC 012
    
    Details

    This panel will discuss opportunities and challenges when teaching toward intersectional justice. Danelle Woodman, a proud Diné youth practitioner, educator, and poet, will discuss her experiences when engaging Navajo epistemologies in hopes of Decolonizing youth development and learning. Krystalynn Westbrook will share her journey as a Vice Principal at a private high school in implementing an Equity, Diversity, and Accountability (EDA) coalition. Oscar Lopez will discuss the curriculum he developed for adult allies of Latino LGBTQ youth. PC Walker will speak to his experience of leading and instructing spaces of transformation in a Christian higher education context that is largely resistant to issues of social justice.

    • Joy Meeker, Saybrook University
    • PC Walker, Saybrook University [joining via Zoom]
    • Krystalynn Westbrook, Saybrook University
    • Danelle Woodman, Saybrook University

     

  • Roundtable 2B: Networking and Social Change: Platforms for Advocacy and Peacebuilding, (Chair: Emily Welty) – KHIC 013
    
    Details

    Internet platforms have a remarkable capacity to enhance networking for social change but do not inevitably or uniformly work to advance peace and justice. How can we configure and utilize social media technologies and platforms in ways that optimize potential for constructive forms of engagement, to enable and sustain peace work over time? This roundtable will discuss current approaches to social media engagement for peace, with attention both to an effort to create a global peace network platform, and to other experiences to using social media for peace advocacy and campaigning. Attendees will be invited to share their experiences.

    • Nathan Funk, University of Waterloo
    • Emily Welty, Pace University
    • Stephen Zunes, University of San Francisco [joining via Zoom]

     

  • Workshop 2: Picturing Justice: Using Photovoice To Advance Justice – North Reading Room
    
    AJ Segneri, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

    As a community-based participatory research method, photovoice centers community participants and organizations to address issues that affect the local level as a creative outlet. Utilizing this method for community members gives them the power to enhance their narratives to local policymakers and community leaders to shift their attention to local matters through their perspective. In this workshop, participants will understand how to conduct photovoice projects, build trust with community members, and secure community members’ identities during a project.

     

• 3:30-5:00pm Concurrent Session #3

  • Panel 3A [available in-person and via Zoom]: Approaches to Conflict & Theory Part 2, (Chair: Dean Johnson) – KHIC 202
    
    Egg in a Box; Understanding the Layers and Sides of a Conflict, (Michael Chadukiewicz, Yale Program for Recovery and Community Health)

    “There are two sides to every conflict” is an understatement. Conflict is more aptly described as a phenomenon that has multiple layers and many sides, often involving several actors representing a myriad of needs. Egg in a Box is a flexible model used to understand the multifaceted nature of conflict. In this session, participants will be introduced to the basic structure of the model and shown how the model was applied to understanding a community conflict. Participants will then modify the model and apply it to a conflict they seek to gain a greater understanding of.

    An Intersubjective, Dialogical Conception of Moral Reasoning as the Rational Basis of Justice (Dale Snauwaert, University of Toledo)

    This presentation will explore the idea of justice as the public extension of love (Martin Luther King Jr. and Cornel West) as a means of understanding peacebuilding as a response to the call of the other. Extending love to justice calls us to stretch beyond ourselves to intersubjectively embrace respect and concern for others. Justice calls us to generate, coordinate, and sustain relationships that are dialogical and resilient. Moreover, following Paulo Freire, the pursuit of justice can be understood as central to the “ontological vocation to become more fully human”. Lessons will be drawn from four examples: UN civil society lobbying, Occupy Wall Street, the World Tribunal on Iraq, and small conscious-raising groups.

    A Peace Modeling Program, (Laurent M Chaudron, Theorik Lab) [joining via Zoom]

    Peace could be simply defined as a concept of societal friendship and harmony in the absence of hostility and violence. Many studies have been carried on the peace-building-and-keeping actions under the coordination of the United Nations. By reversing a generic modeling of conflicts, we pursued a formal approach to provide a theoretical framework of Peace as a vivid paradigm combined with a pragmatic ‘Serious Fight For Fake’ methodology so as to promote a Peace Engineering Program (PEP). The PEP offers both theory and practice of though the concept of trust as a social fluid.

     

  • Panel 3B: Civil Resistance, Protective Accompaniment, and Social Change, (Chair: Sara Koopman) – KHIC 203
    
    Negotiations of Power Between Nonviolent Protesters and the Nation-State: The Idiosyncratic Case of Jordan’s 2018 Tax Law Demonstrations (Jamil Wekhian, Kent State University)

    This study looked into the Hirak- nonviolent movement- in Jordan and it’s role in shaping a new approach of pressure to change the country’s status quo

    Market women: Agency and peacebuilding in Northern Nigeria, (Gloria Ogundare, Kent State University)

    During violent conflict, women have utilized informal networks to protect themselves and people in . These informal networks are usually in the form of grassroots organizations, informal diplomacy and direct action. However, what other strategies are utilized by women during conflict? Do women utilize alternative economies as means of security and passage out of violent zones?

    Mapping Memories, Opening Dialogue: Challenges to Complicating Kent State (Sara Koopman, Kent State University)

    At Kent State University in Kent, Ohio, USA on May 4, 1970, 28 National Guard troops turned in unison and fired 67 shots in 13 seconds at student peace protesters, killing four and wounding nine, leaving one paralyzed. This event is often remembered as that moment, at that site. The dialogic digital memorial at MappingMay4.kent.edu complicates that narrative, collecting segments of oral histories tied to other related physical spaces as a way of opening social space for understanding and dialogue. We have geolocated stories in the rich oral history collection held by the Kent State library and mapped many versions of what happened in mundane spots across campus and town and across those days, and how it affected different people. We are also collecting stories and comments that we hope will connect people across difference and time through their connection to these particular places. We will talk about the challenges of this project, the technological hurdles in creating the map and curating the stories, and the successes we’ve had in opening up dialogues.

     

  • Roundtable 3: Educating for Peace While Confronting Structured Injustice, the Decolonial Imperative, and Climate Disruption – KHIC 012
    
    Details

    What does it mean to educate toward a culture of peace at the university level? How does such an education build on and prepare students for the unique challenges of our times? Each of the members of this round table has worked to address these questions by rethinking and transforming concepts of power in the classroom, integrating concern with the sustainable and equitable use of resources across the curriculum, and reshaping relationships between the academy and the communities in which it is embedded. We envision an open discussion addressing the preparation of students and society for the challenges to come.

    • Sean Duffy, Quinnipiac University
    • Margaret A. Goralski, Quinnipiac University
    • Erin Sabato, Quinnipiac University
    • JT Torres, Quinnipiac University

     

  • Workshop 3: Skillful Communication for a ‘Calling In” Culture – North Reading Room
    
    Janet C. Gerson, International Institute on Peace Education

    Regardless of how we understand the world, and the tactics and strategies we may want to use to bring about change, we know it will involve skillful communication and dialogue with others, especially those who share some common values. Given that we are at a moment of profound challenges, how do we best engage with others, and with whom do we decide to engage? This workshop draws upon the work of Loretta Ross, African American feminist and anti-racist activist, and on SURJ, Showing Up for Racial Justice, being part of a ‘Calling In’ rather than a ‘Calling Out’ culture.

     
  • Film Screening: “BOYCOTT: How anti-boycott laws are quashing dissent across the US” – KHIC 013
    
    Daniel Nerenberg, Just Vision & Berea College

    Over the past six years, unbeknownst to most Americans, 33 states passed laws intending to silence boycotts and other nonviolent measures aimed at pressuring Israel on its human rights record. These dangerous bills remove the legal protection that has been awarded to boycotts for generations, granting governments the power to condition jobs on political viewpoints. As this wave of anti-boycott legislation has swept through the country, so has a counter-wave in defense of freedom of speech. Everyday Americans are challenging these laws for their constitutionality in a nation-wide battle likely to go all the way to the Supreme Court. With full access to the plaintiffs and in revelatory moments with elected officials, Boycott chronicles one of the most consequential First Amendment battles of the past few decades and investigates the question – how did we get here?

• 5:00pm-6:30pm Dinner on your own (options here)

• 7:00pm-8:30pm  Conference Welcome & Opening Keynote/Wolf Lecture: “Writing Poetry and Asking Questions: The Journey of an African American writer,” featuring E. Ethelbert Miller – Brush Theatre

• 8:30pm Dessert Reception, book signing

• 8:30pm-9:30pm Shuttles from campus to conference hotel

  Saturday, October 15 

• 8:00am-9:00am Shuttles from conference hotel to campus

• 9:00-10:30am Concurrent Session #4

  • Panel 4A [availble in-person and via Zoom]: Inter-cultural, Inter-Faith, and Diasporic Realities, (Chair: Laura Finley) – KHIC 202
    
    Exploring the Experiences of the Jewban Diaspora (Laura Finley, Barry University)

    Jewish Cubans, or Jewbans, as they are called, are a unique population. Most of the Jewish families in Cuba emigrated from Eastern Europe to flee the Holocaust. When Castro came to power, many Jewbans fled Cuba for the U.S and other countries. Each of these times, Jewish people had to learn a new culture, new language, new industry and adapt to different climates. This session will provide details from in-depth interviews with members of the Jewban diaspora, emphasizing themes in their lived experiences and how they are passing their culture to the current generation. These complex migratory patterns and people’s resilience in adapting to them will be of interest to peace and conflict studies scholars.

    What Can Refugees Teach Us about Collaboration and Conflict Resolution? A Case Study on Resettled Communities of Akron, Ohio (Anuj Gurung, Manchester University)

    This paper examines the complex relation between the host society of Akron (Ohio) and resettled refugees, with an emphasis on community-centered conflict resolution. In Akron, the injection of refugee labor and capital are well-received, but the refugee-host society relation remains unequal and uncomfortable. This paper argues that this is a result of A) economic constraints imposed by the host society, B) restricted capacity of support agencies, and C) failure to meet various refugee needs. This work articulates how national-level narratives on immigration contribute to conflict, but also showcases collaboration of refugees and locals to resolve common problems. This paper underlines the deficiencies of the US resettlement policy, and proposes a grassroots-based, culturally appropriate approach to serve resettled refugees and the host community.

    Partnering with God: Vocation and Peace-Building, (Xavier L. Johnson, Earlham School of Religion)

    A reflection on the works of Desmond Tutu, Martin Luther King, Jr., Howard Thurman, and Amy L. Sherman, this paper will explore what it means to understand one’s individual calling and vocation as an invitation to partner with God in the work of justice and peace-building in the world, while also deepening our collective understanding of calling and formation.

    Freedom Church of the Poor: Nurturing the Call of Peacemakers, (Colleen Wessel-McCoy, Earlham School of Religion)

    Martin Luther King Jr. referred to the abolitionist tradition when he called the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign a “freedom church of the poor.” He was calling together a grassroots leadership to address the triple evils of racism, poverty, and war. For two years a community has gathered as the Freedom Church of the Poor with the purpose of becoming, “a spiritual home for movement leaders and a place to help nurture moral leadership for the struggle to end poverty, systemic racism, ecological devastation, militarism, and the false moral narrative of Christian nationalism.” Drawing from the Freedom Church of the Poor model, this paper explores the role of spirituality and community in the formation of the vocation of peacemakers.

     

  • Panel 4B: Peace Scholars as Models for Peacebuilding on College Campuses, (Chair: Elizabeth Buttil) – KHIC 203
    
    Details

    Our five Peace Scholars will discuss their involvement in the ACN and the opportunities for leadership the program has allowed them. Each has started separate initiatives on campus, ranging from a Social Justice Book Club to a student led mentoring program in a local intermediate school.

    • Elizabeth Buttil, Ashland Center for Nonviolence
    • Jocelyn Brown, Ashland Center for Nonviolence
    • Carolina Amparo, Ashland Center for Nonviolence
    • Konrad Hodgman, Ashland Center for Nonviolence
    • Tyler Easton, Ashland Center for Nonviolence

     

  • Panel 4C: Peacemakers’ Call to Address Historical Injustices: From Enslavement to Incarceration, (Chair: Roy Tamashiro) – KHIC 012
    
    Details

    Panel members spotlight the “call” of peacemakers at memorials and museums that address examples of historical injustices Including institutionalized racial terror, the culture of sexual slavery, and the inhumanness of mass incarceration. ELIZABETH LAWRENCE highlights the diplomat-peacemakers who mediated between the military and the local Japanese American community in Hawaii to ensure humane treatment of Japanese POWs and the Japanese Americans incarcerated in internment camps. JANE JOO HYEON LEE discusses the peacemaker-calling of museums for peace worldwide in facilitating constructive dialogue about Japanese military sexual enslavement system while being a target of the Japanese right-wing, historical revisionists and denialists who aim to erase the memory of this violent history. ROY TAMASHIRO explains how The National Memorial for Peace and Justice and The Legacy Museum in Montgomery (Alabama) stand as sacred spaces for witnessing, truth-telling, memorialization, and reflection about the history and legacy of enslaved black people. C. HOLLY DENNING describes examples of collaborative Restorative Justice (RJ) processes in recent projects to address historical and environmental injustices. KATHLEEN COGAN reports on witnessing the suppressed history of sexual enslavement at Nazi concentration camps.
    

    • Roy Tamashiro, Webster University
    • Jane Joo Hyeon Lee, Northwestern Pritzker School of Law
    • Elizabeth Lawrence, Augustana College
    • Kathleen Cogan, independent scholar

     

  • Roundtable 4: A Writing Reflection on the Self: What Do We See in a Tree? – KHIC 013
    
    Vanessa Meng, California Institute of Integral Studies

    What we see in a tree is what we see in ourselves. We will begin by discussing the power of writing and the expressive arts. What can we find ourselves through creations ? I will then share poetry and writings created by my students that reflect their understanding of the world today to show how through writing they began to deepen their understanding of themselves and the environment around them. Then I will share the idea of how Darwinism, which views nature as competitive, with a colonial purpose and hierarchical, guides our visions of how life functions. This directly relates to our modern capitalist world. We will end with a guided writing exercise to observe a tree. We will then share and discuss how we view our own lives and finally we will reflect on our own selves to see if there are any ways we can invite more space for joy, freedom, and happiness in how we see trees and therefore the purpose of life, for perhaps the leaf basks in the sunlight because it feels wonderful.
    

     

  •  Workshop 4: For Love of the World: Can We Together Create Hannah Arendt’s New Thing in an Old World? – North Reading Room
    
    Details

    Our session will include the following interactive topics for roundtable participants to consider, via engagement in deep listening, discussion, debate, problem solving and, most critically, in taking this roundtable as a point of departure, an adventure in the contingencies of collective work. Our starter topics will be: the politics of possibility, the worlds that matter which are the spaces between people, the art and science of initiating and sustaining a meaningful empathy. Our session will enable, in workshop fashion, participants to engage in exercises of world making (that new thing in old world). To do this, we will utilize select quotes from Hannah Arendt, Vaclav Havel, Linda Zerilli and many others. This practicum, we are naming, “Rebooting our calling.” The heart of our session is captured in this quote from Arendt: “Education is the point at which we decide whether we love the world enough to assume responsibility for it and by the same token save it from that ruin which, except for renewal, except for the coming of the new and young, would be inevitable.” (Hannah Arendt, The Crisis in Education)

    • Sheryl Holt, University of Mount Union
    • Suzanne L. Holt, Kent State University

• 11:00-12:30pm Concurrent Session #5

  • Panel 5A [available in-person and via Zoom]: On the Colonial, Postcolonial, and Decolonial, (Chair: Michelle Collins-Sibley) – KHIC 202
    
    The Transformation of Power in Cross-Communal Anti-Colonial Struggles: Relational potentiality of non-Indigenous involvement in Palestine and Sápmi (Florian Carl & Federica Stagni, Centre on Social Movement Studies)

    Colonization is intricately linked to concepts of power that emphasize dominion or oppression. This has significant impacts on the forming of cross-communal relationships, both in consideration of those groups who support colonization, those who oppose it, and bystanders. Instead of relying on established modes of conceptualizing power within social sciences, we consider insights from literature and empirical examples related to the colonization of Palestine and Sápmi. Both cases exhibit the interplay between oppressive structures, power inequalities, and the commitment of the involved actors to bring about social change by nurturing relations differently. The operationalization of these dynamics can be understood by looking at concrete strategies and decision-making processes in the moment of joint action on the ground. By contrast, established approaches concerned with cross-communal relations, like multicultural liberalism, take for granted that equal representation does automatically create power symmetries. Moreover, such attempts render invisible how colonial structures impact the basis of involvement by different actors. Research on cross-communal relationality has to challenge attempts that impose “a time and space of the post” (King 2015) or attempts that ground “critical theory in difference and consequently stabilizes the settler identity insofar as it seeks reform from within—a ‘within’ that is both embodied and institutionalized” (Belcourt 2015: 2). To unravel how colonial frameworks echo within the mainstream modes of studying “diversity”, this text emphasizes the actors’ concrete experiences of “power management” and resource diversion. Our intention with this shift of understanding is, to tease out the potential of non-Indigenous actors’ involvement in decolonial struggles as strongly dependent on the transformation and redefinition of power relations. Utilizing abductive theory-building, the paper builds on extended ethnographic research in these two contentious fields in combination with in-depth semi-structured interviews with activists of the different communities.

    Decolonizing the Classroom: Lessons for Peace Educators (Pushpa Iyer, Center for Conflict Studies)

    In Spring 2022, I taught a class on decolonizing knowledge and decided, together with my students, to decolonize the classroom – pedagogy, and curriculum. Our experiment took us on a journey of self-reflection that resulted in deep discomfort. However, given that we were all in different stages of the decolonizing our minds journey, there were tensions, enlightening moments, and questions that went answered. In this presentation, I highlight our findings and pose questions for those of us who are peace educators on how we might adjust our own thinking, values, and beliefs in knowledge acquisition, transference, management, and dissemination.

    How Modern Consumer Capitalism Become a New Type of Colonialism in the Conflict Zones: Palestinian Crony Capitalism as a Case Study (Eleyan Sawafta, University of North Carolina-Greensboro)

    This study is based on a number of axes, first comes the conceptual framing of the crony capitalism in the Palestinian case since concepts have dimensions that are closely related to reality. Second, the study presents the features of Palestinian capitalism which emerged after the “peace process” in the neoliberal era. The study then analyzes the dialectic of interaction between Palestinian capitalism with the political considerations of Israeli Settler Colonialism, and how Israeli Settler Colonialism framed Palestinian capitalism to become a control system for the Palestinian society. Also, this study uncovers the origin of the relationship between the Palestinian political class and the economic class which thrived away from free enterprise. In addition, the illustrating the role of the economic-political development paradigm based on the imperatives of national liberalism in liberating the Palestinian society. It finally sets the results and conclusions of the study.

    ‘Amageddon It Been In Effect’: Public Enemy, Ursula Le Guin & N.K. Jemisin In Conversation (Michelle Collins-Sibley, University of Mount Union)

    Public Enemy invite N.K. Jemisin, Ursula Le Guin & Sarah Pinsker to dinner. What do they talk about? This paper evolves from a thought experiment conducted in Building Community, Building Peace during the pandemic year(s): wow to construct sustainable peaceful, just communities in which hierarchies of human value and anthropocentrism are distant memories?

     

  • Panel 5B: Reflections on Identity and Racial justice, (Chair: Stellan Vinthagen) – KHIC 203
    
    How do young black men respond to anti-Black racism? (Cody Jackson, Kennesaw State University)

    This session will be discussing key findings, themes, and analyses of survey results from young black men in the in the State of Georgia that focuses on their lived experiences with anti-blackness. Additionally, this session will briefly discuss some implications for policy/practice for community development workers serving black communities.

    Personal Transformation as Resistance to Internalized Domination (Stellan Vinthagen, University of Massachusetts-Amherst)

    This paper outlines how “personal transformation” or “care of self” can be a form of resistance to dominant power. Personal transformation, or “inner” development and change, has for a long time been the exclusive domain of religious movements and secular therapists, but has lately been coopted by corporate firms, New Age gurus, neoliberal enthusiasts, and personal trainers. Changing yourself can obviously mean very different things, most commonly an individualistic improvement of your marketable personality and CV, or an ascetic, disciplined religious disciple trying to “purify” your soul, mind and body. This paper, however, is trying to trace a marginalized, yet detectable, tradition of personal transformation that is an accompaniment of radical social change movements (anarchists, feminists, Indigenous, Black consciousness, anti-colonialism, etc.), where “the personal is political” and “the political is personal”. Through the work of Michel Foucault on “techniques of the self” and the “engaged Buddhism” and “mindfulness” of Thich Nhat Hanh, the paper is trying to examine variations of personal transformation that resist internalized domination, exploitation, colonialism and violence.

    Community Mediators, Compassion Fatigue, Burnout, and Self-care (Caroline Harmon-Darrow, University of Maryland)

    Community-based mediation is a peacemaking intervention within and as an alternative to the civil, family, and criminal legal systems. Little is known about the cost in secondary trauma, compassion fatigue, and burnout for high-responsibility volunteers, such as community mediators. An online survey of 53 community mediators examined the relationship between self-care behaviors, self-care barriers, compassion satisfaction, and burnout. Regression results showed self-care is an important correlate to ongoing compassion satisfaction and lower burnout among volunteer community mediators. Unlike in research on paid workers, compassion satisfaction is not significantly hampered by structural barriers to self-care, so self-care opportunities could be successful without broader structural change.

     

  • Panel 5C: Climate Crisis and Environmental Social Movements, (Chair: Joel Federman) – KHIC 012
    
    Why Not to Blow Up A Pipeline: Perspectives on Environmental (Non)Violence (Garrett FitzGerald, Pace University)

    Andreas Malm’s “How to Blow Up a Pipeline” (2021) reinvigorated debates about the strategic value of violence (especially property damage and industrial sabotage) to accelerate decarbonization and avert the worst consequences of human-induced climate change. However, Malm problematically analogizes between violent climate activism and the social and political movements he cites as exemplars, and pays insufficient attention to how violent resistance to carbon-emitting industries might impact already-marginalized communities. Using an intersectional conceptualization of environmental violence, this paper shows how Malm’s proposal would actually exacerbate direct and structural violence experienced by marginalized communities along intersecting racial, gender, and class lines.

    Solidarity Across Movements for Democracy, Human Rights, Peace, and Climate Justice (Joel Federman, Saybrook University)

    This presentation will explore efforts at creating cross-movement solidarity among movements for peace, democracy, human rights, peace and climate justice. The presentation will review some of the historical and contemporary ways that activists within socially marginalized and other groups have reached across societal dividing lines to form intersectional forms of solidarity and alliance, including social movements for economic and racial justice, democracy, LBGTQ rights, and human rights. It will provide an overview of intersecting issues of racism, climate change, xenophobia, and authoritarian politics, and efforts to organize local and transnational solidarity toward a more just, sustainable, democratic and multicultural world. It will examine emergent global social movements for social justice, environmental sustainability, peace, and human rights, including gender and sexual orientation rights, and discuss strategies that such movements have and can use to amplify their effectiveness at achieving societal change.

    Constructing a Climate Security Industrial Complex (William French, Loyola University of Chicago)

    We need a mobilization to push solar, wind and geothermal power capacity and cut our carbon emissions. Many note that a Green New Deal can both promote climate security and job creation. Eisenhower was right in 1961 to draw attention to the policy distortions caused by the greed of the “military industrial complex.” But it must be remembered that the “military industrial complex” in 1943-43 was critical in helping to win the war. We today need a climate security industrial mobilization on a scale of our effort in World War II. That effort was a big government and big corporate achievement that used the profit mechanism to incentivize rapid corporate buy-in and good salaries to get labor on board. These lessons offer guidance for the mobilization needed today for the Green New Deal.

     

  • Panel 5D: Women’s Rights Under Authoritarian Regimes: Turkey, (Chair: Leanne Trapedo Sims) – KHIC 013
    
    Details

    Throughout the world, authoritarian regimes continue to oppress women’s rights and their meaningful participation at all levels of economic, social and political life. Such violations of human rights are channeled through cultural, religious and civil stereotypes and facilitated by socially constructed gender roles. Such undemocratic, authoritarian one-man regimes are restricting civil spaces of women and girls. This state behavior inevitably “normalizes” violence against women, gender-based killings and femicides. This panel will elaborate on the violation of women’s civil and political rights in
    Turkey in the last decades.

    • Hafza Girdap, Stony Brook University/Advocates of Silenced Turkey
    • Cemre Ulker, Journalists and Writers Foundation
    • Vonya Womack, Refugees Unknown Stories Untold

     

  • Roundtable 5: The Professor as Peacemaker: The Future of the Professoriate in the Neoliberal University – North Reading Room
    
    Jeremy A. Rinker, University of North Carolina-Greensboro

    The traditional caricature of the University professor is of an absent-minded egghead so absorbed in esoteric research that s/he is oblivious to the brewing social/economic storms. Such a trope originated in a bygone era in which the majority of faculty were on the tenure track and academic freedom was a forgone conclusion. The most recent IPEDS data shows that 73% of US faculty are in positions that lie outside the tenure track and increasingly academic freedom is being challenged by politicized state legislators (see the recent 2022 AAUP report on the UNC System as prime example). The mythological trope of privileged faculty is invoked by conservatives to wage what Giroux (2014) calls the neoliberal “war” on higher education. This roundtable discussion aims to question what Arthur Levine and Scott Van Pelt (2021) call “just-in-time education” as a market-driven response to the changing landscape of higher education. Bringing together PJSA scholars, from all ranks of the U.S. University ecosystem, I will facilitate a dialogue about building an equitable higher education system in the post-covid world.

• 12:30-1:30pm Lunch (options here) & Membership meeting – North Reading Room

  * PJSA members are invited to get their lunch and join us to discuss Association matters and to learn about ongoing initiatives. We will begin around 1pm.

• 2:00-4:00pm Optional Wellness Time at the Nature Center

* During this time the conference team will transport attendees to the Nature Center where individuals can engage in hiking, guided walking meditation, a labrynth, and a bird room at no cost. If you decide to not join us at the Center, please use this time to rest, relax, and renew.

• 4:00-5:30pm Concurrent Session #6

  • Panel 6A [available in-person and via Zoom]: Exploring Gender, Sex, and Sexuality, (Chair: Sheheranzade Jafari) – KHIC 202
    
    Policing Queerness: The Danger of New Anti-Trans Legislation and Abolitionist Interventions (Camille Tinnin & Caraline Feairheller, Kent State University)

    As awareness of injustice in policing and the school-to-prison pipeline expands, a movement to remove police officers from schools has emerged. At the same time, legislation targeting transgender youth by forcing educators and school staff to act as gender police or risk their own criminalization is being introduced. While some places are removing police officers from schools, others are forcibly deputizing educators and staff as gender police. This session will discuss the school as a site of policing that targets queer bodies and abolitionist interventions to ensure that young people can learn and grow as their authentic selves in a safe environment.

    A Gender-Inclusive Approach to Religion and Peacebuilding (Sheherazade Jafari, practitioner-independent scholar)

    This presentation draws on the upcoming publication, Gender and Religion in Conflict and Peacebuilding (USIP Press), an action guide that provides practical guidance on how faith-based actors, resources, and approaches can be helpful in designing, implementing, and supporting more inclusive peacebuilding projects and processes that are responsive to people of all genders. In particular, the guide explains how to take a gender-inclusive approach where religious issues or identities are important to the community in conflict. This presentation will define four foundational steps to strengthen one’s understanding of gender and religious dynamics and to prepare for diverse contexts. It will draw on stories and case studies to illustrate key ideas, and define strategies for facing resistance to this work.

    Promoting Peace in the realm of the Transgender Community and Healthcare (Connor McCauley and Gracyn Sage, University of Mount Union)

    Those in marginalized communities are greatly affected by health care and their ability to live in healthy lifestyles. Transgender individuals, or those whose gender identity or gender expression differs than the sex they were assigned at birth, are at high risk for health disparities. Besides the discrimination, violence, economic challenges, and stigmas surrounding transgender individuals, they also face several mental, physical, and emotional difficulties related to health care. Statistically, these individuals are at higher risk for HIV/AIDS, mental illness, sexual and physical illness, and substance abuse. There are also several factors that lead to difficulty in accessing health care and proper health insurance, including Ohio-specific legislation that directly effects these individuals. As nursing students, it is important for us to recognize these disparities, propose solutions, and provide recommendations for a better future for the transgender community. We will conduct research on the background of transgender individuals, we will analyze data from local hospitals that are relevant to our research, and we will propose our own solutions to the several disparities that people of this community experience.

    LBGTQIA+ Nonprofits and the Work of Allyship (Jamie Capuzza and Adelina Cooper, University of Mount Union)

    This project contributes to the body of Peace Communication research about allyship by focusing on what LBGTQIA+ nonprofit advocacy organizations believe to be the primary communication problems they face when interacting with allies and how best to address those problems. More specifically, this study explores the research question: What communication guidelines do LBGTQIA+ nonprofit advocacy organizations provide people about how to be an effective ally? The data for this thematic analysis comprised publications produced by 12 different nonprofits which were aimed specifically at allies. Allies can play an essential role in peace building and social justice efforts, including those related to LBGTQIA+ rights, but only if these communication obstacles are overcome.

     

  • Panel 6B: “Justice is What Love Looks Like in Public”: Responding to the Call of the Other as Peace Activism, (Chair: Dale Snauwaert) – KHIC 203
    
    Details

    This presentation will explore the idea of justice as the public extension of love (Martin Luther King Jr. and Cornel West) as a means of understanding peacebuilding as a response to the call of the other. Extending love to justice calls us to stretch beyond our selves to intersubjectively embrace respect and concern for others. Justice calls us to generate, coordinate, and sustain relationships that are dialogical and resilient. Moreover, following Paulo Freire, the pursuit of justice can be understood as central to the “ontological vocation to become more fully human”. Lessons will be drawn from four examples: UN civil society lobbying, Occupy Wall Street, the World Tribunal on Iraq, and small conscious-raising groups.

    • • Dale Snauwaert, University of Toledo
      • Janet Gerson, International Institute on Peace Education
      • Jeff Warnke, Walsh University

     

  • Panel 6C: Peace Building and Humanizing Critical Issues, (Chair: Milena Wahl) – KHIC 012
    
    Details

    This Panel aims to discuss how lobbying is a tool for peace building and humanizing critical issues by way of storytelling. The Friends Committee on National Legislation is a nonpartisan Quaker organization that works to activate the lobbyist in everyone. The approach this organization takes is primarily through the sharing of lived experiences people have with policymakers. It brings people of different backgrounds together in their faith and humanity to uplift the human impact of U.S. policies and shift narratives. Our panel will provide insight from a staffer working at FCNL and the experiences of college students who will discuss their personal lessons learned from working with FCNL, such as relationship building across the aisle, how educating our representatives and their staffers is important through the sharing of lived experience, awareness of different issues that threaten peace and justice.

    • Milena Wahl, Wilmington College
    • Martina Starkey, University of Mount Union
    • Ursala Knudsen-Latta, Friends Committee on National Legislation

     

  • Roundtable 6: What is the Role of Resistance for Peace and Conflict Studies? – KHIC 013
    
    Details

    This roundtable gather some peace scholars that reflect on the role of “resistance” and “resistance movements” for our understanding of peace, conflict, war and social justice. Historically the peaceful resistance of the anticolonial movement in India, the civil disobedience of the civil rights movement, the anti-racism of Black Power, the feminism of the women’s movement of the 1960s, among others, played a key role in inspiring the academic institutionalization of peace and conflict studies. Today, most of that is forgotten, and mainstream peace studies is having trouble to connect to contemporary movements. Yet, revolutionary unarmed uprisings are transforming world orders and international relations. How can peace and conflict studies become relevant through making “resistance” more of a focus?

    • Stellan Vinthagen, University of Massachusetts-Amherst
    • Matt Meyer, International Peace Research Association [joining via Zoom]
    • Polly Walker, Juniata College [joining via Zoom]
    • Majken Jul Sørensen, Østfold University College

     

  • Workshop 6: Rationale for Establishing a Baccalaureate High School Peace Education Program – North Reading Room
    
    Greg Foisie, independent scholar

    Given the state of formal secondary Peace education in the US, a rationale for creating a formal baccalaureate high school Peace education program will be presented. Current and historical events affecting the decision to establish such a program will be briefly reviewed, including some social and institutional obstacles challenging successful program implementation. A proposed baccalaureate high school Peace education program curriculum and its acquired resources will be posited for the region. These will include the curriculum’s organization, parameters and components; academic and advocate sources; organizing and outreach tools; program safeguards; and a program development time frame along with incentives incorporated into the program to overcome aforementioned obstacles.

     

• 6:30-8:30pm Awards Banquet & Plenary: “Queering Our Vocations as Peacemakers,” featuring Geoffrey Bateman – Kresge Dining Commons

  • *In order to keep registration prices low for attendees, we will offer meal tickets available for purchase at the door for $13 which allows guests to enjoy a multi-site buffet with options including a salad bar, wood-fired pizza, grilled food, various entrees, pasta, and dessert, including vegan, and gluten-free options.
  • * Doors open at 6:15 for dinner seating.

• 8:30pm-9:00pm Shuttles from campus to conference hotel

  Sunday, October 16 

• 8:00am-9:00am Shuttles from conference hotel to campus

• 9:00-10:30am Concurrent Session #7

  • Panel 7A [available in-person and via Zoom]: Emergent Issues in Today’s Social Movements, (Chair: Lee A. Smithey) – KHIC 202
    
    Engaged Scholarship and the Development of the Delaware County (PA) Homicide Database (Lee A. Smithey, Swarthmore College)

    Between 2014 and 2021, Prof. Lee Smithey and students in the Swarthmore College course, “Gun Violence Prevention: Peace Studies and Action” partnered with Delaware County United for Sensible Gun Policy (Delco United). Having identified a widespread need among advocates of gun violence prevention efforts for accessible, reliable, publicly-available information, students across multiple sections of the course developed the Delaware County Homicide Database (PA), which was launched in October 2022 (see https://www.swarthmore.edu/delcohomicides). Engagement with a variety of stakeholders led to iterative modifications of prototype online dashboards and has informed plans for further improvements. The author proposes that similar engaged teaching and learning projects could be replicated at other colleges and universities.

    Economic Justice as a Human Right: What Might Researchers and Practitioners of Nonviolent Action Learn from the Political Philosophy of Anarchism (Majken Jul Sørensen, Østfold University College)

    Recent research on nonviolent action has had a strong focus on how unarmed populations can topple dictators in political revolutions. Frequently this includes an implicit acceptance of capitalism and its inevitable economic inequality. In this paper, we investigate what nonviolent researchers might learn from anarchism, a political philosophy rejecting both the state and capitalism. Historically some practitioners of nonviolence, most prominently Gandhi, have been inspired by anarchism and advocated some form of anarcho-pacifism, but much has happened in the fields of both nonviolence and anarchism since then. We draw on recent anarchist theory to explore today’s potential for nonviolent action that goes beyond taking state power and relying on representative government to implement change.

    Interfaith Leadership:  A Crucial Peace Vocation in the 21st Century (George F. Pickens, Messiah University)

    This paper argues that effective interfaith leadership is necessary for fostering global peace in the 21st century. Given the increase in religiosity, religious diversity, and religious-based violence around the world, the rich peacemaking potential of the world’s religions must be more effectively utilized. The emerging discipline of Interfaith Leadership focuses on qualities, skills and resources for equipping religious leaders to be interfaith peacemakers. Interfaith leadership as a peace vocation and its crucial necessity in the contemporary world are explained, and drawing on past and present examples, the paper identifies specific contributions the vocation of interfaith leadership can offer to local and global peace.

    We Protect Us: Digital antifascism, Persistent Engagement, and dual-use knowledge (Michael Loadenthal, University of Cincinnati)

    Since the 2017 deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, there has been a notable growth in self-empowered, vigilante, civilian sleuths working online to identify, and expose members of the far-right—to publicize their names, in the hopes that online racisms equate to offline consequences. These initiatives received another boost following the January 6, 2021, attack of the US Capitol. This siege by elements of the far-right, and the resulting crowd-sourced policing efforts popularized by projects such as Sedition Hunters raised the profile of similar projects. For their part, Hunters’ intelligence products have been used in 70+ prosecutions, exhibiting the clear marriage between the civilian and judicial sectors. The growth of such counter-rightist intelligence efforts has not come without challenging ethical and political questions. For one, as many counter-rightist researchers seek to operate outside the bounds of law enforcement, what do unintentional collaborative efforts between anti-carceral, abolitionist leftists and intelligence officers, police, and prosecutors look like? Secondly, with a growing litany of examples showing federal prosecutors openly utilizing leftist discoveries as lynchpins within their evidentiary and prosecutorial records, where does the line exist between working in parallel with, and outright cooperation and collaboration between leftist researchers and the State? Finally, in light of the US’s professed 2018-present cyber strategy known as Persistent Engagement, how can this framework be used to critically examine and interrogate these blurred borders and amorphous boundaries? The proactive, ‘defend forward’ approach advocated by the Persistent Engagement doctrine shares striking resemblance to the embodied strategies of today’s digital deplatformers, and it is through this doctrinal frame that their techniques, tactics, and procedures can be examined. In the end, this inquiry seeks to pose critical, uncomfortable, and challenging questions to researchers seeking to disrupt the far-right, and to ask, are deplatforming efforts outside the State even possible?

     

  • Panel 7B: Humanities Perspectives in Peace Education: Re-Engaging the Heart of Peace Studies, (Chair: Niki Johnson) – KHIC 203
    
    Details

    This session presents our collective work to highlight the critical importance of the humanities in comprehensive peace education. Six of the 7 chapter contributors to the volume will briefly discuss their “deep-dive” into their respective fields to mine the unique contents, methodologies, and pedagogies that contribute to a broader and deeper engagement with the field of peace studies. The book is a culmination of earlier and ongoing conversations over the years at the PJSA annual conference.

    • Niki Johnson, University of Mount Union
    • Michelle Collins-Sibley, University of Mount Union
    • Jamie Capuzza, University of Mount Union
    • Grant Cook, University of Mount Union
    • Terry Davis, University of Mount Union
    • Scott Gravlee, University of Mount Union

     

  • Panel 7C: Political Economy of Palestine: Critical, Interdisciplinary, Decolonial Perspectives, (Chair: Timothy Seidel) – KHIC 012
    
    Details

    This presentation explores the political economy of occupied Palestine through critical, interdisciplinary, and decolonial perspectives, underscoring that an approach to economics that does not consider the political – de-politicized economics – is inadequate to understanding the situation in occupied Palestine. It will highlight key features of our recently edited volume, outlining a critical interdisciplinary approach that challenges prevailing neoliberal logic and structures that reproduce racial capitalism. We will explore how the political economy of occupied Palestine is shaped by processes of accumulation by exploitation and dispossession from both Israel and global business, as well as from Palestinian elites. We also explore a decolonial approach that foregrounds struggles against neoliberal and settler colonial policies and institutions and aids in the de-fragmentation of Palestinian life, land, and political economy that the Oslo Accords perpetuated, but whose histories of de-development over all of Palestine can be traced back for over a century.

    • Timothy Seidel, Eastern Mennonite University
    • Ibrahim Shikaki, Trinity College

     

  • Roundtable 7: Beyond Ourselves: Making Peace with the Future – KHIC 013
    
    Randall Amster, Georgetown University

    The task of peacemaking in a present world marked by extreme polarization and a rapidly destabilizing biosphere is challenging enough to demand our full attention. Yet if we truncate our work temporally to prioritize current crises, we may be missing critical perspectives and an opportunity to connect theories, actions, and visions. This interactive session will consider issues including resource distribution and the impacts of climate change, urging a perspective on future-oriented peacemaking that accounts for the eventualities of mass displacement, food and water shortages, and increasing militarization. Despite the plausibility of such scenarios, it is incumbent upon us to co-create another set of potentials grounded in the promising practices of peace educators, activists, scholars, and visionaries. This is our urgent work.

• 11:00-12:30pm Concurrent Session #8

  • Panel 8A [ZOOM ONLY]: Intervening, Transforming, Studying and Teaching War, Peace, and Violent Conflict, (Chair: Zerihune Kinat) – KHIC 202
    
    Deconstructing Epistemic Violence: An African Perspective on the Discussions of the Local vs International Peacebuilding Approaches (Zerihune Kinate, University of Waterloo)  [joining via Zoom]

    The paper challenges the epistemic violence that the Wester-dominated discussion and conceptualization of peace and justice entails. There are movements to make peacebuilding local-oriented and inclusive of restorative practices of African and other indigenous communities. However, the scholarship and research of the discussions are unfairly dominated by western scholars. This has resulted in the reinforcement of the hegemonization of this epistemic violence of by the Eurocentric worldview. Decoloniality and liberation of the peace education and intellectual discourse as well as making the ‘local’ to be the critical actor is essential. To this end, the paper proposes a locally owned educational and training of peace and justice practices recognizing the facilitation role of international practices and actors. Also diverse voices in the international peacebuilding field. It also advocates a more inclusive and nuanced wording of the terms in the vocation given the history and the issue of power and language.

    “Russia, Ukraine, and the International Peace Community” (Stephen Zunes, University of San Francisco) [joining via Zoom]

    Peace activists in the West have been challenged by Russian invasion in Ukraine, appalled by Russian aggression yet skeptical of Western narratives. There has been a tendency among some to engage in a kind of “Westplaining”—focusing on great power politics in a way that has minimized agency of the Ukrainians, such as viewing the popular 2014 Maidan uprising as a “U.S. coup” or blaming NATO for the Russian invasion. Many in the academic left who saw the Soviet Union as a relatively progressive force in the international arena in challenging Western imperialism are having a hard time recognizing the decidedly reactionary role of the current leadership in Moscow. On the other hand, some others have resigned themselves to the mainstream narrative dismissing diplomatic and other nonviolent alternatives and have reluctantly accepted a perceived need to escalate the conflict through massive arms shipments, despite the serious risks involved. This paper seeks to examine and critique these tendencies and offer ways in which peace scholars can figure out how to address the Ukraine tragedy and the broader implications of Russian ultra-nationalism and militarism.

    Between Indoctrination and False Neutrality: Pedagogy Under Occupation (Irfan Khawaja, independent scholar) [joining via Zoom]

    In this presentation, I draw on my experiences teaching political philosophy to Palestinian students at Al Quds University in Abu Dis, a small town in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The most difficult challenge I faced was to make the course material relevant to non-Western students under occupation by a Western power. The solution I adopted was explicitly to teach the class as a form of resistance to the occupation. In this paper, I describe how I did so, with some general observations about the challenges of engaging in peace-and-justice pedagogy under conditions of war.

    How Some Oral Traditions Teach for Peace (Fatima Ahmed, Lakehead University) [joining via Zoom]

    The abstract of the literature review that informs this research project is as follows: I acknowledge that cognitive imperialism exists against and within Indigenous populations. It is this cognitive imperialism that discounts Revealed knowledge as a legitimate source of knowledge. I argue that both Islamic and Inuit knowledges are based on Revealed knowledge, and that within this knowledge are principles of peacekeeping and peacemaking. The first principle of peacemaking within both these traditions is self-temperance, or starting peace with oneself.

    • Note: This panel will be made up of all remote presenters. To join click here.

     

  • Panel 8B: The Efficacy of Advocacy: Right Sizing Your Volume in Order to be Heard in a Loud World, (Chair: Jennifer Sensor) – KHIC 203
    
    Details

    Scholars, practitioners, teachers, and advocates have a moral, and sometimes legal, responsibility to critique their world and advocate for change. The authors will discuss the ethic of critique and its place within the ethical codes of various professions. They will expand into a description of the processes that create change in our modern world and describe various tactics, strategies, and modalities have been used to advocate for change. The presentation will continue into a discussion of the situational use of these modalities and how to utilize each to its best effect depending upon the characteristics of the advocate’s cause. The audience will be asked to share stories of success and failures in their attempts at advocacy, and an exchange of information and advice will be encouraged.

    • Jennifer Sensor, University of Mount Union
    • Amanda Waltz, University of Mount Union
    • Mark J. Carroll, University of Mount Union

     

  • Roundtable 8A: Deconstructing “Neutrality” Through the Lenses of Gender, Anti-Racism, and Cultural Humility – KHIC 012
    
    Details

    This roundtable discussion seeks to interrogate and deconstruct the concept of “neutrality” in peacemaking through the lenses of gender, anti-racism, and cultural humility. Although many within the peace and justice field are critical of the idea that one can or should be neutral as a peacemaker, there remains an underlying assumption or expectation of neutrality within many roles—whether as a third-party negotiator or mediator, frontline peacebuilder, facilitator, or peace educator. This session seeks to engage our collective thinking on what it really means to be neutral and who gets to define the parameters of neutrality, raising questions on power dynamics, context, and how we can ultimately follow our vocation with authenticity and humility.

    • Sheherazade Jafari, practitioner-independent scholar
    • Swasti Bhattacharyya, Harvard Divinity School
    • Pushpa Iyer, Center for Conflict Studies

     

  • Roundtable 8B: When Academics and Non-Profits Collaborate – Innovative Peacebuilding Beyond the Classroom – KHIC 013
    
    Details

    This Roundtable presents a collaborative project between Adelphi University Innovation Center (IC), an Adelphi University Introduction to Peace Studies class, and an outside non-profit organization, World BEYOND War (WBW).  We will present the pedagogy and objectives behind this collaboration, along with a summary of the final projects students presented to both the class and World BEYOND War staff.  In the course, students learned about peacemakers and peacebuilding; then engaged in peacebuilding themselves. This collaborative teaching model is a win-win-win for academics, for industry partners, and most importantly, for students learning to bridge theory and practice in Peace Studies.

    • Susan Cushman, Nassau Community College/State University of New York
    • Phill Gittins, World Beyond War [joining via Zoom]
    • Ash Carter, Adelphi University [joining via Zoom]

• 1:00pm Closing Plenary with Lunch Provided: “Peace is Everybody’s Business,” featuring Bryson Davis, Kimberly Stanley & Erica Glover – Kresge Dining Commons

  • *The cost of lunch is included in all attendees’ registration.

• 2:30pm-3:30pm Shuttles from university to conference hotel