peace by degree

Sojourners Magazine, Sep/Oct 2005 by Polter, Julie

Conflict may be an inevitable part of life, but how you deal with it isn't. Many schools are teaching a better way.

ANNE FIGGE IS used to the reaction when she answers the question, What did you major in?

"I can't tell you how many blank stares I've gotten when I say that I have a degree in peace studies. I always sheepishly flash a peace sign and say it again."

Figge, 24, will leave in September for Cape Town, South Africa, where she will serve a year with the Episcopal Church Young Adult Service Corps, concentrating on reconciliation work. Although she received her degree from Colgate University, a small, nonsectarian liberal arts college in upstate New York, she finds that her major has had a large impact on her faith life. Her program, like most peace studies programs, was interdisciplinary-required courses included women's studies, sociology, international relations, and language.

"It changed the way I saw the world around me," says Figge. "I feel pretty certain that I wouldn't have pursued a faith-based international service program if I hadn't first had exposure to peace studies. It heavily informs my spiritual life."

When Jesus referred to Jerusalem's ignorance of the things that make for peace, he likely was not speaking of those things learned through books, classrooms, or internships. But the study of peace in an academic setting can provide valuable tools for analyzing and addressing conflict, from the international level down to corporations, local governmental disputes, the justice system, the church, even the home.

Peace means many things to many people and often seems like an ethereal concept (perhaps because it is so elusive in our day-to-day world). But the study of peace brings one smack up against very concrete realities.

To study peace inevitably means studying conflict and violence: the history of wars and lower-intensity struggles, especially their root causes; the ethics of the use of force; the dynamics of intractable social conflicts (such as the abortion debate in the United States); case studies of crime and law enforcement; dimensions of race, class, religion, ethnicity, and gender in disputes. It means wrestling with theories of dealing with conflict nonviolently-and often, applying those theories through an internship in the local community.

Real peace cannot survive without justice. So a student might learn about human rights, civil rights, public policy, and the intricacies of, for example, delivering humanitarian aid in a war zone without being unduly used or manipulated by any party to the conflict. Students at a Christian school will also study theology and biblical ethics as part of their program.

AMONG CHRISTIAN colleges and universities, peace studies and conflict resolution programs have most often been found at institutions affiliated with the historic peace churches (Mennonite, Brethren, and Friends) and the Catholic Church. The first undergraduate peace studies program was founded in 1948 at Manchester College, an Indiana institution affiliated with the Church of the Brethren. According to the Association for Conflict Resolution, for several decades most peace studies programs focused on large-scale conflict and peace issues, nonviolence, and the nuclear arms race.

The number of programs in the United States increased noticeably during the Vietnam War (cited by some conservative critics of the field as evidence that "peace studies" is equivalent to "anti-American studies"). Beginning around 1980, programs under the rubric of "conflict resolution" (or related terms) began to emerge. During the last 15 years, a growing interest in mediation and similar skills as applied in a variety of settings-business, diplomacy, family conflict, the court system-has led to an increased or added emphasis on conflict resolution "tools," practicum within existing peace studies programs, and a multiplying of new conflict resolution and peace studies programs.

Some programs that self-describe as conflict resolution don't engage the same range of philosophical and ethical concerns and social analysis that is addressed in classic peace studies programs. This may be because of a specific, pragmatic focus of the particular program-for example, on the use of conflict resolution in business or law settings. But it also can represent different institutional philosophies about what constitutes peace (or even what constitutes a resolved conflict), and the means for reaching this condition.

Programs at schools rooted in a pacifist church tradition or in rigorous interpretation of the Catholic social teaching of just war may have more commitment to and knowledge of the potential and efficacy of nonviolent techniques than a program that doesn't draw on such history. One university's program may lean heavily to theory, while another emphasizes field experience. As with all choices about what to study and where to go to college or graduate school, a person needs to consider her or his own values, goals, and interests.