In advance of a day-long faculty retreat in late summer 2012, Kroc Institute Director Scott Appleby asked four members of the faculty to present and comment on definitions of the interdisciplinary field of peace studies. This is the fourth in a series of posts reflecting the conversation, led by professors Atalia Omer, Ernesto Verdeja, Jason Springs, and Larissa Fast.

The self-critical nature of peace studies  Jason Springs, assistant professor of religion, ethics and peace studies

My task is to reflect on the claim that “peace studies interrogates its own presuppositions.”

Peace studies as a field of inquiry:  I’ll paraphrase the philosopher Alasdaire MacIntyre’s conception of a “tradition” as a historically extended, socially embodied argument — an argument, largely, about the nature and basis of the very goods around which the tradition organizes and orients itself (After Virtue). In the case of peace studies, the operative sense of tradition would be of a “tradition of discourse.” To use this framing for reflection upon peace studies as a “self-interrogating” interdisciplinary complex brings to light both strengths and risks.

First, a risk:  the emphasis upon “argument” could easily lend itself to a factionalized and fragmented exchange between competing camps, in which the participants argue incessantly and unproductively, and, perhaps “past each other,” from the opposing and incommensurable theoretical and methodological presuppositions associated with (or rooted in) their home disciplines. And yet, if we qualify MacIntyre’s reference to “argument” as an “unfolding, critical conversation,” then his definition actually illuminates many examples of the way that peace studies and peace research has, in fact, unfolded over the past several decades through processes of contesting and interrogating its organizing concepts, insights, and objectives.

Some examples:

1) The exchange between Johann Galtung and Kenneth Boulding that unfolded across the pages of the Journal of Peace Research over several decades about the conception of “violence” that peace studies would need to take up in order to actually address the causes, conditions, results of violent conflict, and to promote and build sustainable peace (often characterized as the debate over “negative” vs “positive” conceptions of peace.) Galtung argued that is was dangerously narrow to view peace as “the opposite of war,” and thus to “limit peace studies to war-avoidance studies, and more particularly avoidance of big wars or super-wars (defined as wars between big powers or superpowers), and even more particularly to the limitation, abolition, or control of super-weapons. Important interconnections among types of violence are left out…”

2) Emerging from these debates over positive and negative peace was recognition of the need for a multi-focal analytical lenses for identifying and assessing different forms of violence, and in particular the ways that “one type of violence may be reduced or controlled at the expense of increase or maintenance of the another.” To this end, Galtung devised and developed the concept of “structural violence” (in contrast to “direct violence”), and further on, confronted the need to develop a concept of “cultural violence.”

These concepts emerged from the critical conversation of peace studies and provide another example of the fruitfulness of conceiving of peace studies as an interdisciplinary complex persistently unfolding as a critical conversation constituted, in part, by the interrogation of the central concepts and values that orient and inform the conversation itself.

3) The reconceptualization of “conflict” in the conflict transformation literature, from that which is the opposite of peace — and thus which needs to be resolved — to re-framing conflict as a natural and inevitable part of inter-relationality that can be engaged in more or less healthy ways and which might be engaged transformatively — as an engine for positive change — rather than as something to be rooted out.

4) The still unfolding critical conversations about the kinds of justice that peace studies ought to be concerned with: retributive/restorative; reconciliation/forgiveness; distributive justice vis-a-vis impact of political economy and globalization upon the conditions and causes of violence in all its forms, and the promotion of justice, as indispensible elements for “justpeace.”

5) The dichotomy of “international/domestic” as it frames and guides our projects and curriculum, and especially in so far as there might be a tacit hierarchy between these terms.

Peace studies as based upon disciplinary humility

If we conceptualize the peace studies tradition of discourse as an unfolding argument about such central concepts as these, then the fruitfulness and utility of our reflective conversations will depend upon disciplinary humility. To speak of disciplinary humility is to speak of openness to the possibility, indeed the inevitability, that other cross-disciplinary vantage-points can, and will, illuminate blind-spots, enrich, and perhaps supplant the work, tools, and insights available in my own training and home discipline. It is to speak of flexibility and abiding sense of fallibilism.

In recent years at Kroc, we have sustained a series of conversations together in this vein for some time now. In such venues as: workshops in which we have shared and collaboratively developed syllabi; panel discussions and break-out sessions at the annual Summer Institute for Faculty in Peace Studies Program Development; various faculty and project meetings, usually oriented by the integrative intentions of strategic peacebuilding. To my mind, this points to the indispensibility of further such conversations to the life and health — and overall effectiveness — of the peace institute, and as much, if not more so, to peace studies itself.

In this vein of the notion of humility as a central virtue for purposes of multi- and inter-disciplinary conversation, I’ll read a passage from William James’ essay of 1907, entitled “What Pragmatism Means” (his second lecture from Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking, 1906-7). James is here describing a sensibility he ascribes to pragmatism as an approach to inquiry and criticism, but I think his insights apply equally to the multi- and inter-disciplinary character of peace studies as well. I’ll make some small adjustments to the passage and ask you to think of “peace studies” where I read the term “pragmatism.”

I’d say that this passage exemplifies virtues and interdisciplinary sensibilities that we at Kroc, at our best, seek to acquire and sustain. Need I say that, in my judgment, we ought to go striving for it in our work and in what we model for our students?

James:

“If you follow the pragmatic method, you cannot look at any [theory or method] as closing your quest. You must bring out of each . . . its practical cash-value, set it at work within the stream of your experience. It appears less as a solution, then, than as a program for more work, and more particularly as an indication of the ways in which existing realities may be changed. Theories thus become instruments, not answers to enigmas, in which we can rest. We don’t lie back upon them, we move forward, and on occasion, make nature over again by their aid. Pragmatism unstiffens our theories, limbers them up and sets each one at work. Being nothing essentially new, it agrees with nominalism for instance, in always appealing to particulars; with utilitarianism in emphasizing practical aspects; with positivism in its disdain for verbal solution, useless questions and metaphysical abstractions . . . . [Pragmatism] has no dogmas, and no doctrines, save its approach. . . . [It] lies in the midst of our theories, like a corridor in a hotel. Innumerable chambers open out of it. In one you may find a man writing an atheistic volume; in the next someone on his knees praying for faith and strength; in a third a chemist investigating the body’s properties. In a fourth system of idealistic metaphysics is being excogitated; in a fifth the impossibility of metaphysics is being shown. But they all own the corridor, and all must pass through it if they want a practicable way of getting into or out of their respective rooms.” (510)

Surely this is not the only way of thinking about the practice-oriented, inter- and multi-disciplinarity of peace studies, but I’ll admit that this passage comes to my own mind quite often as I walk down the hallways of the Kroc Institute.

In advance of a day-long faculty retreat in late summer 2012, Kroc Institute Director Scott Appleby asked four members of the faculty to present and comment on definitions of the interdisciplinary field of peace studies. This is the third in a series of posts reflecting the conversation, led by professors Atalia Omer, Ernesto Verdeja, Jason Springs, and Larissa Fast.

The Theory-Practice Dimension of Peace Studies  Larissa Fast, assistant professor of conflict resolution

Whereas conflict studies focuses on conflict, but not so much on the conditions for peace, peace studies addresses the causes of conflict, war and other forms of violence as well as approaches to constructive transformation.

Peace studies also emphasizes the stories of individuals caught in conflict in ways that some other disciplines do not. As mentioned, this implies an unwavering focus on real problems, real people, real issues as they unfold on the ground, amidst conflict. However, the complex causes of conflict and violence at home, not just elsewhere, challenge us to think about the hierarchy that exists between those that examine/work on conflict and violence elsewhere and those who work on conflict and violence domestically. This is a special challenge for an international institute, where conflicts elsewhere may seem to be privileged.

In the Kroc master’s program, we promote the notion of reflective practice which we see as necessary to developing scholar-practitioners who must examine what we do and why. For example, we must evaluate the effectiveness of particular interventions; promote methods of self-reflection and growth as scholars and practitioners, through which experience in the field results in continual learning; and constantly ask what works and why. Examining our assumptions about the way we think intervention might work, for example, is an ongoing process.

This commitment to self-reflection as scholars and practitioners is an important element in how we ground our master’s program. Examining when and how we are (and are not) effective spurs changes in our praxis. This is also what it means to focus on the transformative nature of peace studies.

A question before us that remains only partially addressed: How do we integrate the art of reflective practice more fully into the undergraduate and doctoral curricula?

In advance of a day-long faculty retreat in late summer 2012, Kroc Institute Director Scott Appleby asked four members of the faculty to present and comment on definitions of the interdisciplinary field of peace studies. This is the second in a series of posts reflecting the conversation, led by professors Atalia Omer, Ernesto Verdeja, Jason Springs, and Larissa Fast.

Inter-disciplinarity and Multi-disciplinarity   Atalia Omer, assistant professor of religion, conflict and peace studies

As someone who entered the conversations at the Kroc Institute with tools and disciplinary training in religious studies, social, political, and cultural theory, I found the conceptual framework underpinning the Strategies of Peace book especially constructive, imaginative, and expansive in its disciplinary scope.

Peacebuilding, according to Appleby and Lederach, is an interdisciplinary, comprehensive, and multi-local process aimed toward the achievement of constructive change, a process involving not only reduction and management of direct forms of violence but also the transformation of cultural and systemic forms of violence on various interconnected fields. Here there is a profound recognition of the need to situate the study of conflicts and peace within broader international and global discourses, power differentials, and histories.

Certainly, the transformative aim of peacebuilding is normatively oriented by justpeace, which is defined as “a dynamic state of affairs in which the reduction and management of violence and the achievement of social and economic justice are undertaken as mutual, reinforcing dimensions of constructive change.” While justpeace may challenge some of the presuppositions undergirding liberal peace, these two lenses do not need to be analyzed as antithetical. And yet, the lens of justpeace provides constructive elasticity that does not, and indeed cannot, emerge out of operating with a pre-determined telos.

So when Lederach and Appleby write that, “The relationship between the three distinct transformative processes at the heart of peacebuilding—striving for social justice, ending violent conflict, and building healthy cooperative relationships in conflict-ridden societies,” they suggest that ‘justice’ is thoroughly contextual and yet non-relativistic. To think transformatively, therefore, entails a strategic conceptualization that would depend on one’s ability to articulate the concurrent, interconnected, and multi-dimensional practices necessary for the transformation of conflict.

Hence, the notion of strategic peacebuilding “requires that research and practice employ a comprehensive perspective that does not restrict the inquiry/practice to the immediate presenting concern but embeds it in a systemic, encompassing analysis.” This embeddedness needs to be “time expansive” (another way of introducing an extensive historical analysis of memories, patterns of inclusion/exclusion, trauma); “systematically oriented” (aware of structural conditions); and “multidependent.”

Appleby and Lederach’s conceptualization of peacebuilding as holistic, comprehensive, interdependent, architectonic, sustainable, and integrative is inter-  and multi-disciplinary by default. In its multifaceted transformative aims, it addresses various forms of violence and conflict, and these transformative aims are not sequential but concurrent. While indispensible, the study of international norms and law, human rights activism, security studies, the effectiveness of sanctions, the use of force, patterns of violence, and so forth—are all but one part of a bigger picture.

Lederach and Appleby recommend to practitioners that “the cornerstone of strategic practice is the act of locating oneself within the wider system of conflict and change. Without a comprehensive vision of the landscape, it is impossible to see clearly your particular contribution, the importance of other sectors and initiatives, or the points of coordination and convergence that must be forged.”

The same goes for the kind of multi- and inter-disciplinarity we envision here at the Kroc Institute and more broadly in peace studies. It is critical for each of us to be able to articulate where we stand in terms of our scholarly work in relation to the much more comprehensive academic undertaking but also in relation to the transformative aims of peacebuilding. This mapping also involves interrogating the assumptions inherent in our own disciplines—after all, transforming real problems in the world, real sufferings surely cannot fall so easily within the rigid and at times arbitrary disciplinary divides.

In advance of a day-long faculty retreat in late summer 2012, Kroc Institute Director Scott Appleby asked four members of the faculty to present and comment on definitions of the interdisciplinary field of peace studies. This is the first in a series of posts reflecting the conversation, led by professors Atalia Omer, Ernesto Verdeja, Jason Springs, and Larissa Fast.

Elements of Peace Studies  Ernesto Verdeja, assistant professor of political science and peace studies

Peace studies is concerned with the causes of war, violence and conflict, and approaches to the constructive transformation of social relations. Generally speaking there are four distinguishing elements of peace studies:

1. Peace Studies is critically reflective of its own assumptions and presuppositions, including its basic analytical concepts and categories (e.g.: the state, violence, peace, conflict, justice).  Part of the task of peace studies scholarship is to question and refine its basic theoretical frameworks (ontological, epistemological, etc.)
2. Peace Studies is explicitly normative: it is committed to positive normative ends, including the reduction of human suffering, and thus concerned with “real people.” However, all normative worldviews must remain open to critical scrutiny and interrogation, both internally (in terms of internal coherence and reasoned justifications) and externally (in terms of realistic possibility of realization)
3. Peace Studies rigorously employs a wide range of scholarly research methods (social scientific and humanistic, quantitative and qualitative, etc.). It is insufficient for Peace Studies research to have a positive normative agenda – it must use the best research methods available, and an important part of its legitimacy as scholarly work comes from this. Peace Studies is also “problem driven” rather than “method driven” – i.e., its intellectual point of departure is a concern with addressing “real world” problems. Because of the broad array of methods used by Peace Studies researchers (and the somewhat unsettled Peace Studies canon), Peace Studies requires some scholarly humility. Finally, the growth of Peace Studies over the past several decades points toward a change from multidisciplinarity to interdisciplinarity.
4. Peace Studies seeks to be transformative: it is not only concerned with an explicit normative commitment or sophisticated scholarly critiques and research, but must also show ways to change the world. In other words, Peace Studies is concerned with articulating:  practical ways of change, that are critically self-reflective, and imaginative (beyond the status quo).  Thus, it must show the link between analyses of the causes of war, violence and conflict, and approaches to constructive transformation.  This element of Peace Studies emphasizes the link between practice and theory (praxis).

Peter Wallensteen, a research professor at the Kroc Institute and a peace researcher from Uppsala University in Sweden, shares his thoughts on the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize winner. Earlier today, the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the prize to the 27-nation European Union. 

“The 2012 Peace Prize goes to an organization that definitely has played a role in cementing peaceful relations in Western Europe, and also by incorporating countries in Central Europe in the past decade. That is important to observe. Organizations such as the European Union, the United Nations and other international bodies are significant for cooperation between peoples and states.

At the same time, the European Union has not been particularly engaged in mediating armed conflicts within the Union, notably in Northern Ireland, Cyprus or the Basque region, nor has it played a primary role in outside situations, such as in the Middle East and Africa. It has a potential that has not been tapped. Let’s hope that the Prize serves to encourage such a commitment for the future.”

Rashied Omar, research scholar of Islamic studies and peacebuilding at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, is the coordinating imam of Claremont Main Road Mosque in Cape Town, South Africa. He issued this statement today from Cape Town, where he spends the fall semester each year. 

The Claremont Main Road Masjid joins the Libyan People and Muslims all over the world in unequivocally condemning the killing of U.S. Ambassador to Libya, J. Christopher Stevens, and three of his staff members. The sanctity of human life is a supreme value in Islam and nothing is worth the cost of a human life. Such heinous acts of murder and violence are dishonorable and betray any expression of faith in Islam.

Reports indicate that those who committed these atrocities did so using the pretext of an obscure YouTube film aimed at depicting the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) in a negative and profane manner. Although we agree that the video is hateful, bigoted, offensive and deliberately provocative, this could never be an excuse to commit any acts of violence whatsoever.

The Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) should be our example in everything we do, and even though he was repeatedly attacked and insulted many times throughout his life, he always reacted with compassion and forgiveness, never with revenge or violence. By choosing violence as a response, the embassy attackers ironically and tragically betray the legacy, spirit and wisdom of the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) who is described in the Qur’an as a source of “mercy, compassion and tenderness to the worlds” (Q21:107).

Furthermore, the Qur’an lays down an ethical standard for how one is to respond to evil, and the command is clear: “Respond to evil with good deeds” (Q41:34). No matter how offensive the video about the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) is, Muslims should not condone acts of revenge, especially when motivated by anger and rage. For the Qur’an (Q5:135) also teaches us, that we should not allow our dislike for others to make us swerve away from justice. We must always be cautious not to become as dehumanized as those we accuse of committing atrocities against us.

When the great Libyan anti-colonial liberation fighter, Omar Mukhtar protected two surviving Italian prisoners, saying: “we do not kill prisoners,” his fellow warrior says: “they do it to us.” Omar Mukhtar responded in these grave yet majestic words: “they are not our teachers.”  We extend our deepest sympathies and condolences to the families of those who were killed and we call on all Muslims, and all peace- and justice-loving people all over the world to unite in condemning all extremists and terrorists regardless of nationality or religious affiliation.

— Imam Dr. A. Rashied Omar

View Rashied Omar bio »

Professor Atalia Omer is teaching a new class this fall at Notre Dame called Jerusalem: Peace or Apocalypse? She first taught a similar class at Harvard, when she was a teaching assistant completing her doctorate. She’s clearly excited about bringing it to Notre Dame.

As a scholar, Atalia studies questions at the intersection of religion, nationalism, and peacebuilding. (Her book When Peace Is Not Enough: How the Israeli Peace Camp Thinks about Religion, Nationalism, and Justice, is forthcoming from University of Chicago Press.) She also grew up in Jerusalem, and her teaching goes to the heart of both her academic and personal passions.

“Jerusalem is a holy city for many reasons,” begins the syllabus. “It is believed to represent heavenly eternal peace but is also the source of earthly and historical violence. What are the sources of this contested legacy? What are the prospects for building peace with justice in such a volatile context?”

I attended the first class (that’s Atalia, above), alongside the dozen or so enrolled undergraduates. Among the students, primary majors included political science, history, finance, economics, anthropology, Africana Studies, accounting, and sociology. About half said they were also peace studies majors or minors (several had taken Atalia’s Introduction to Peace Studies class last year and were back for more).

I’m attending for two reasons:  as Kroc’s Communications Director, I follow closely the teaching and research of Kroc’s core faculty, and Atalia is one of “our” young crop of rising stars (which also includes Catherine Bolten, Larissa Fast, Jason Springs, and Ernesto Verdeja — all assistant professors on the tenure track). In addition, if all goes well, I’ll be living in Jerusalem (at Notre Dame’s Tantur Ecumenical Institute) for several months in 2014 (including working long distance for the Kroc Institute) while my husband, a Notre Dame literature prof, is teaching for a semester at Hebrew University. Having only experienced Jerusalem once before, for one intense week as a tourist last December, I’m eager to dig deeper into the city’s many layers before we head out.

The texts for the class (“there will be lots of reading…”) include a mix of academic texts and memoirs (not to mention the chapters and articles):

• Jerusalem: One City, Three Faiths, by Karen Armstrong
• The End of Days: Fundamentalism and the Struggle for the Temple Mount, by Gershom Gorenberg
• Jerusalem: How the Ancient City Ignited our Modern World, by James Carroll
• A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples, by Ilan Pappe
• Out of Place: A Memoir, by Edward Said
• A Tale of Love and Darkness, by Amos Oz

In the class, we are going to “explore the volatile and elastic meanings of sacred spaces,” as well as examine narratives of people whose worldviews and positions on Jerusalem are shaped by ideology, theology, politics and history. We also are going to seek to understand “how the struggle over Jerusalem constitutes but a microcosm of the broader Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” and to “imagine questions of justice outside of ideological constraints.”

I can’t wait to get started on my reading.

On May 21, Kroc Institute alumni director Anne Hayner addressed the graduating master’s class in international peace studies. The following are excerpts from her remarks.

Two years ago you came to us from Portland, Bethlehem, Montevideo, Ottawa, Kampong Cham City, Los Angeles, Belfast, and Pietermaritzburg.

This week you begin spreading out again, to Kampala, New York City, Chicago, Manitoba, Washington DC, and Kathmandu.

But in spite of appearances to the contrary, you are not actually leaving the Kroc Institute. As you graduate this weekend, you join a network of almost 500 graduates of the MA program and over 700 alumni of the undergraduate program who cover the globe, from Siberia to South Africa. Some examples:

• In London, Janet is an environmental lawyer building global regulatory and legal structures to address the threat of climate change.
• Joe teaches natural building and ecological design around the world; he co-founded Builders Without Borders.
• In Liberia, Samuel was recently appointed assistant minister of foreign affairs.
• Munah is a human rights officer with the United Nations-African Union Hybrid mission in Darfur.
• Adriana, from Colombia, manages the United Nations Trust Fund for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.
• Huong is deputy director of the Diplomatic Academy of Vietnam.
• Xiaomao is Assistant Counsel at the Singapore International Arbitration Center.
• In India, Kumar is leading what is described by one media source  “the largest, most important, anti-nuclear protest you don’t know about” – nine months so far of rotating communal fasts by over 10,000 people to protest proposed nuclear power plants.

There is an old-fashioned word that is not used as often as it used to be:  Vocation.  It comes from the Latin vocare, to call, and it means the work you are called to by God, by life. Frederick Buechner writes about vocation:

“There are all different kinds of voices calling you to all different kinds of work, and the problem is to find out which is the voice of God. The kind of work God usually calls you to is the kind of work (a) that you need most to do and (b) that the world most needs to have done….    

“Neither the hair shirt nor the soft berth will do.  The place [you are called to] is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”

The search for vocation, for the place to which we are called, is both a personal search and a common one. We are each gifted with unique skills, questions and passions to apply to our shared work of repairing the world, and our individual work affects that of each of the rest of us.

Welcome to the global network of peacebuilders that is the alumni of the Kroc Institute!

By Atalia Omer & Jason Springs

Johan Galtung, long ago dubbed the “father of peace studies,” became the topic of controversial headlines in early May 2012, after an interview with him appeared in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. With a combination of shock and ridicule, critics noted that Galtung appealed to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion as a plausible explanatory framework for analyzing the global financial crisis. (The Protocols was a document, fabricated in Russia in the late 19th century, which presents itself as minutes from a meeting of Jewish world leaders, detailing their blueprint for achieving world domination through control of the world economies by Jewish bankers, among other avenues)¹. While Galtung acknowledged the document as “fabricated hate literature” in his email exchange with Haaretz, he insisted nonetheless that it would behoove those who dismiss The Protocols on the grounds of its unequivocal anti-Semitism to read it and reflect on it. “It is impossible to [read it] today without thinking of [the Jewish-dominated] Goldman Sachs,” he wrote.

In our view, Galtung’s recommendation that, despite The Protocols’ unequivocal anti-Semitic content and patent inauthenticity, people should nonetheless read it prior to forming strong opinions about it, is akin to suggesting that people should read and digest Mein Kampf before forming strong opinions about its moral implications and recommendations for social order. (The salient difference between the two examples being that Mein Kampf is not a forgery, though Adolf Hitler did approvingly cite The Protocols in his text, and, in fact, The Protocols became compulsory reading in German schools after the Nazis rose to power in 1933).

Other comments by Galtung in the interview carried similar traces of anti-Semitism. Critics cited in horror his assertion that, without decisive evidence, the Israeli spy agency known as the Mossad should not be ruled out as having been behind the murder of more than 70 young Norwegian liberal political activists, in the summer of 2011, by an Islamophobe Norwegian, Anders Hans Breivik. Although Galtung writes in the exchange that he considers the Mossad connection “highly unlikely,” he also says, “it is illegitimate to eliminate it as an hypothesis with no evidence.” This hypothesis, like Galtung’s ambivalent affirmation of The Protocols, colludes (however inadvertently) in a tradition of conspiracy theories aimed at “the Jews.”

Defenders, including Galtung’s own organization TRANSCEND, stress that his words were unjustly wrenched out of context, thereby contributing to the renowned sociologist being labeled as anti-Semitic². To read Galtung’s account as charitably as possible would indeed be to accept his disclaimer. Yet it is difficult to see how Galtung’s retrieval of The Protocols (even held up as a cautionary tale — “a strong warning against getting others, individuals, whole countries into debt bondage”) — evades a troubling form of anti-Semitism.

Galtung’s remarks present a teachable moment in the history of peace research and peace activism. Peacebuilders and peace researchers may be implicated in webs of cultural and symbolic violence that they themselves, often under the influence of their scientific and/or moral commitments, cannot see. No analyst is a neutral and impartial observer who stands apart from (and over against) the object of analysis. Even the best-intentioned peace activists could (occasionally out of sincerest benevolence, occasionally out of ulterior agenda or naivete) silence histories in pursuit of justice. In so doing, peace activism and research can, despite their explicit opposition to such things, participate in forms of symbolic and cultural violence.

The explicit nature of Galtung’s remarks and the shocking collision of anti-Semitic images and conspiracy theories with the rational self-righteousness of a career-long peacebuilder and researcher have generated profound dissonance. His remarks are symptomatic of a broader Palestine activism that, despite conscious efforts to dissociate anti-Zionism from anti-Semitism, silences and qualifies the validity of the experience of near total extermination of the Jews of Europe. Criticism of Israel, these activists underscore, is not a personal attack on Jews, but rather a general attack on state power, colonialism, neo-liberalism, and other evils³.  Yet in counteracting the overwhelming silencing of Palestinian displacement and enduring suffering under Israeli repression, Palestine peace activists often gloss over the Jewish meanings of Israel and the authentic historical experiences of European Jews. Defenders of Israel characteristically interpret any critique of Israeli policies as anti-Semitic by default. Unfortunately, remarks such as Galtung’s confirm their worst fears. They stop conversation before it can begin.

Galtung’s anti-Semitism, even if we accept it as inadvertent, commits the same kind of cultural violence that enabled, in the aftermath of the attacks of September 11, Islamophobic substantiation of the infamous “clash of civilizations” popularized by the late Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington⁴. Islamophobia rose so quickly in the aftermath of these tragic events because of deep-seated and unrecognized assumptions that construed Islam as innately violent and intolerant and “good” civilization as “Judeo-Christian.”

The dynamics of cultural violence that facilitated the emergence of the “clash” as an apparently plausible, and even powerful, framework also lace Galtung’s appeal to the explanatory value of The Protocols.  In both cases, the results perpetuate the very thing they aim to combat.

It is crucial for peace researchers and activists to avail themselves of the tools of cultural critique in order to supplement peacebuilding’s constructive impulses and normative compass. Such tools are indispensable for scrutinizing the presuppositions that may implicate peacebuilding efforts in modes of structural and cultural violence, thus keeping them locked in counter-productive relationships⁵.  The key for peacebuilding is not only to identify these multiple modes of violence, but also to facilitate their transformation.

Atalia Omer is assistant professor of religion, conflict and peace studies, and Jason Springs is assistant professor of religion, ethics and peace studies, at Notre Dame’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies.

On May 7, Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., president of the University of Notre Dame, gave the commencement address to the 2012 graduates of Wesley Theological Seminary. Speaking at Washington National Cathedral, Fr. Jenkins presented a message about the state of national discourse that goes straight to the heart of peacebuilding. This is the full text of his speech (emphases are mine).

Commencement is always a joyful time, and I find your graduation today especially inspiring. There is no law of motion in the physical universe that guaranteed that you would end up where you are today. More likely, the many demands of life were pushing you in other directions, and you pushed back. Even if the Spirit called you here, the world did not make it easy to arrive.

You fought your way here out of conviction born of faith.

Conviction. It is indispensable to every good deed. It defies the forces of inertia — the prevailing winds and currents that fight to keep everything the way it is, or worse. Without conviction, there would be no hope.

Conviction, however, is not all good. It can easily be corrupted by pride and greed and lead to hatred and division.

Last year, here in Washington, D.C., our elected officials nearly shut down the government in April, nearly defaulted on the debt in August, nearly shut down the government over disaster relief in September, failed to reach an accord for debt reduction in November, and forced another showdown over the payroll tax in December.

These stalemates proved that our political leaders don’t suffer from a lack of conviction. But in many cases, they expressed their conviction as would a bitter couple seeking a divorce, using all manner of coercion to get the best deal — dismissive of the misery their hatred would create in their own lives, and the injury it would cause in the lives of the children.

Yet, we cannot responsibly blame this on politicians. The hostility they expressed did not originate with them. We in this country are in the midst of a social crisis, a harsh and deepening split between groups that are all too ready to see evil in each other. Each side has never been more eager yet more unable to dominate the other. Both sides call for change, but each believes it’s the other side that must change.

We cannot pretend to stand outside this. We are woven into it.

We the People are exhibiting the human tendency that James Madison warned of in 1787, in Federalist No. 10.  And I quote: “A zeal for different opinions concerning religion, concerning government, and many other points … have … divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to co-operate for their common good.”

Two hundred and twenty-five years later, we are like actors following the script for creating factions:  Develop strong convictions. Group up with like-minded people. Shun the others. Play the victim. Blame the enemy. Stoke grievance. Never compromise.

At a time of expanding diversity of people and moral opinions — when we need more skill and wisdom in engaging those with other views — we seem to be less skillful, less wise.

So of all the questions posed in this campaign season — the most important one is rarely asked.  Now, when the country is increasingly diverse, when the number of disputed moral questions is rising, when citizens have deep and opposing passions that neither side will give up for the sake of civility — Can citizens of the United States learn to express their convictions in more skillful, more respectful ways?

We need an answer.

A country whose citizens treat one another with scorn does not have a bright future.

**

Many of you chose to come to a seminary in Washington D.C. because you wanted to engage the world, live your faith, and learn how it can make an impact.

I believe your faith can have a transforming effect on the world.

Of all the graduates entering the wider world this spring, you here today, more than others, have the responsibility, and the training, and the commitment to address the most urgent, most strategic challenge in the country today — the challenge of reducing hatred and promoting love.

This is your calling.  It is the most urgent call of our times.

“For this is the message you have heard from the beginning:  love one another,” says the First Letter of John.  And this command to love is found not only in Scripture, but in our hearts.  Love is the deepest human need.  Each human being has a deep spiritual, psychological, emotional longing for love. And not to get it injures us deeply.

Love is the greatest commandment — and hatred is at the heart of the greatest sins. Hatred is the great destroyer — the great divider. Hatred is more dangerous to us than any other threat, because it attacks the immune system of our society — our ability to see danger, come together and take action.

Hatred poisons everything.

Yet we seem not to see the danger. As Augustine wrote in his Confessions, “It is strange that we should not realize that no enemy could be more dangerous to us than the hatred with which we hate him.”

If we can help solve the problem of hatred, we have a chance to come together and solve all the others.

Now, I would rather not admit any special intimacy with hatred. I would like to say that I am familiar with it only from hearing confessions and reading books.  I must confess, however, that much of what I know of hatred comes from examining the temptations in my own heart. So here are some personal observations.

First, we cannot directly reduce anyone else’s hatred. If we were capable of reducing the hatred of others, we would already have done it. Most everyone would prefer there were less hatred in the world, yet there seems to be more — which is indirect proof that no one apparently wants to give up any of their own.

Second, if we’re going to do battle with hatred, we have to accept for practical purposes that hatred is not out there. It is in here — ready to rise in disguise inside of us, posing as virtue, sowing destruction.

Third, to avail itself of the most effective disguise, hatred often hides in self-righteous conviction — where it can be seen as driving the effort toward a noble goal. This is why hatred is so hard to see. It can hide from our conscience by entangling itself in our most noble beliefs.

Let me offer an illustration.

In 2009, a member of the Armed Forces was charged in a plot to commit murder. He had created a plan he called “Operation Patriot,” complete with maps and photographs. In papers recovered by law enforcement, he had written that — because he had taken an oath to protect the country against all enemies foreign and domestic — he was obliged to honor that oath by killing the President of the United States.

That young man fell prey to self-deception. He believed he was driven by a noble desire to protect the country, when in fact he was driven by deep hatred in the guise of patriotism.

To spare ourselves the same form of deceit, we have to call on our conscience to explore our convictions and how we express them. Even in the case of my most noble belief, I must ask myself: am I trying to advance this belief through persuasion or coercion, with respect or contempt, by accepting sacrifice or imposing sacrifice? When I refuse to compromise, is it because I love a principle, or because I hate the people on the other side?

In 1749, after a series of riots in Ireland that included attacks on Methodists, John Wesley published an essay he titled Letter to a Roman Catholic.  He wrote:

“Are you not fully convinced that malice, hatred, revenge, bitterness, whether in us or in you, in our hearts or yours, are an abomination to the Lord? Be our opinions right, or be they wrong these tempers are undeniably wrong. They are the broad road that leads to destruction.”

This Roman Catholic has received John Wesley’s letter, and I am fully convinced of the manifest truth grounded in the Gospel that it proclaims.

If we are committed to reducing hatred in the world, then the way we engage one another in public debate is not a means to an end; the means are the ends.

And if we are determined to keep our convictions free of malice, then I propose that we strive to meet one simple test for public discourse: Our attempts to express our convictions should take the form of an effort to persuade.

If I am confident in my beliefs, and I have love and good will for the other side, then it would be my duty to try to persuade them. And if I want to persuade them, then how can I vilify them? People are not persuaded by those who attack their character.

But if I don’t try to persuade them, but only condemn them, then I am not showing the respect that love demands. To stand apart, proclaim my position, and refuse to talk except to judge, does not reduce hatred or promote love. And if it does neither, how can it be inspired by God?

The moment I venture into tone and language that is unlikely to persuade, it can be a signal that I have left the sphere of respectful discourse. Once I do that, my odds plunge of winning over another, and the chances rise that I am expressing hatred — which will lead to factions and fracture the common good. With the common good fractured, any individual good becomes a very fragile hope indeed.

The danger is all around us now. Hatred is rising, yet all sides feel more virtuous. We’re asleep to the threat. We can have the most sophisticated Constitution, a brilliant system of checks and balances, and a Bill of Rights to safeguard against the tyranny of the majority — yet none of it can stand against the power of hatred. It can all be thrown down.

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As you set out in your ministry, I ask you to affirm again the noble beliefs that led you here, and advance those beliefs in ways that strike a moral contrast with the dominant culture of discourse in the country today. If you do this, you will set a new standard for moral conviction in the 21st century — one that will offer hope for reconciling two great human needs: our longing to give full expression to our most passionate convictions and the need for a national unity that can survive the diversity of our views.

Let me close with a story well known to all of you.

Driven by the desire to “bring good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives, to recover sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free,” Wesley Seminary began planning a new campus in downtown Washington DC, right at the intersection of Poverty and Power.

In late 2008, the votes had been taken, the plans were set, the shovels were ready … and the financial crisis struck. Investment houses vanished. The stock market was losing half its value. Universities saw their endowments plunge and their donors step back.

President McAllister-Wilson, the board, the faculty of Wesley had one last chance to turn back. They conferred. They prayed. They pondered the wisdom of giving up the seminary’s financial security in stern economic times. But ultimately, they asked one another: “Does the world now need our witness and service less … or more?”

And so the seminary that taught you and steeped you in the theology and practice of passionate Christianity pushed ahead — as the whole world pulled back.

Could there be any better inspiration for your ministry?

Go now — become worthy sons and daughters of your seminary. Inspired by its example, go preach love, stand fast against the momentum of your times, and renew the face of the earth.