PSA and COPRED Focus on Strategic Nonviolence

By Gordon Fellman

Chair, Peace and Conflict Studies Program, Brandeis University

In April of this year, Siena College hosted the annual peace conferences of the Peace Studies Association (PSA) and the Consortium for Peace Research, Education, and Development (COPRED), respectively titled, "Case Studies in Peace Making: Interpersonal to International" and "Transforming Violent Conflicts."

Two international crisis areas received exceptional attention: Iraq and the Balkans. A 34-minute video presented the 1997 trip that former Attorney General Ramsey Clark made to Iraq during which he and others brought large amounts of medicine and medical supplies to a people deprived of them by the U.S. embargo. The video showed children dying when as little as 50 cents worth of some simple remedies might have saved them. It also showed doctors explaining how inadequate their medical supplies are. In a memorable shot, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright responded to an interviewer's question this way about how she justified the deaths of half a million Iraqi children in the wake of the U.S. destruction of Baghdad's infrastructure and the continuing embargo: "That is a price we are willing to pay." The irony of saying that we are willing to pay such a price was apparent to everyone.

In another moving testimonial, a U.S. nurse who was in the military as both a truck driver and a nurse in 1991 spoke about her discovery of the use of depleted uranium in the Gulf War and her struggles with a number of cancers. The government has been unwilling to acknowledge her discoveries or to assist her in her medical travails.

In the Balkans discussion, Doug Hostetter of the Fellowship of Reconciliation described the Balkans Student Project, which has placed a number of Balkan students in U.S. colleges and universities; Daniel Hallock, author of Hell, Healing, and Resistance: Veterans Speak, addressed the personal costs of war; Ted Herman, retired chair of peace studies at Colgate University, provided an overview of issues relevant to any discussion of the Balkans; and Tufts undergraduate Kristin Cibelli presented her research on the War Crimes Tribunal in the Balkans.

During the parallel conferences, PSA presented Gene Sharp, a Gandhi expert and one of the world's leading scholars of nonviolence, an award for his many contributions to peacemaking. His address on strategic nonviolence was a high point of the program.

Other conference speakers during the four-day sessions included Irish peace activist Kate Fearon of the Northern Ireland Women's Coalition, who stood in for Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams, unable to attend because of ongoing peace negotiations in Ireland. Jonathan Schell joined Malkia M'buzi Moore and Tom Roderick in a discussion of nuclear weapons.

In the dozens of PSA and COPRED sessions, topics ranged from strategic nonviolence to the narratives of Palestinian and Israeli women, to the subject of families and world peace, to alternative forms of diplomacy, to the question of how to raise student consciousness about exploited workers, to death squads, to the teaching of peace studies. At the conclusion of such conferences one moves with hope: There is a thriving community of scholars and activists around the nation--and beyond--which is trying to understand and act in a knowledgeable manner on diverse and complex conflicts which cry out for nonviolent solutions.

For information on membership in PSA and/or COPRED, contact PSA at psa@earlham.edu ; or COPRED at copred@gmu.edu.