The Oberlin Review
<< Front page News February 23, 2007

Symposium Suggests Peace

“If peace is what every government says it seeks, and peace is the yearning of every heart, why aren’t we studying it and teaching it in the schools?” asked Colman McCarthy, a nationally recognized journalist-turned-peace activist.

Members of the Oberlin Peace and Conflict Development Group — a collection of townspeople, College students and professors pushing for a Peace and Conflict Studies (PACS) department at Oberlin — are asking the same question.

Last Saturday, academics from universities around the country gathered with members of the Oberlin community to share ideas in a symposium to promote PACS. The event, held in the Adam J. Lewis Environmental Studies Center, featured a panel discussing the possibility of implementing an Oberlin PACS program.

The Peace and Conflict Development Group was formed in the spring of 2004. At its inception, the group created an Experimental College course, “We’d Rather Teach Peace,” which refers to McCarthy’s similarly titled pedagogical journal, “I’d Rather Teach Peace.”

The course, led by Al Carroll, OC ’58, was aimed at teaching sixth-graders at Langston Middle School about alternatives to organized violence.

In 2005, Carroll and Melissa Hines, OC ’06, co-taught another ExCo, this time directed at college students. Carroll said there are plans to teach a slightly-altered version next fall.

This semester, the group plans to move beyond ExCos and push directly for an interdisciplinary PACS concentration.

“The biggest hurdle was finding faculty to take a leadership role in promoting the concentration,” College junior Sheera Bornstein said. In recent months, the group has drafted a proposal and secured the support of Oberlin professors from several disciplines.

Not all professors, however, are ready to endorse the concentration.

“In an era of proliferating majors, we need to make clear why this is necessary,” said Professor of History Steve Volk. “Students need some introduction so they know [PACS] is not just an intellectual grab-bag they can do without,” he said

College junior and student senator Colin Jones agreed that PACS supporters have work to do. “The main thing we have to do is make the case to the entire campus community,” Jones said. “[Supporters need to convince the community that we have] to challenge the notion that we must always be a nation at war, and that this activity makes us safer.”


 
 
   

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