'The Possibility of Peace: Non-violent Strategies to Resolve International Conflict' -2010 JWAC World Forum

October 8th, 9th and 10th | UAS Egan Lecture Hall - [map]
Click here to see this event's poster

The Fall Forum is a multi-day, headliner event-- this year kicking off on October 8th, with a sneek peek preview opportunity at the Fall Meeting on the 7th. Click here to download the 2010 Forum's program (including a detailed schedule).

Forum Focus:

The forum will examine nonviolent interventions that address threats to international peace and stability including ethnic and religious strife, civil war, failed states, colonialism and its aftermath, social and political violence, environmentally-related conflict and human rights abuses. Emerging paradigms for international conflict resolution include negotiation, meditation, reconciliation, and other forms of non-violent peace building will be discussed.

Dates and Times:

(Click here to download the full schedule.) The forum will take place the evening of Friday Oct. 8, 7:00pm-10:00pm, Saturday Oct. 9, 10:00am-5:00pm, and Sunday, October 10, 10:00am-5:00pm at the UAS campus. There will be a reconciliation workshop Saturday, October 9, 7:00pm-8:30pm. Most forum events will take place in the Egan Lecture Hall opposite the library.

Speakers:

Erica Chenoweth, Wesleyan University Professor of Government: 'Rethinking International Political Violence: The Strategic Logic of Non-violent Conflict'

Dr. Chenoweth has conducted extensive research on nonviolent conflict, including the prominent 2008 study Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Resistance she published with Maria Stephan in the journal, International Security, and Rethinking Violence: States and Non-State Actors in Conflict (editor with Andria Lawrence, MIT Press, 2010). See wesleyan.edu for more details. (Erica loves fly fishing, and we promised to make sure that she would have the chance to wet a line while she's in Juneau.)

Julie Mertus, American University Professor in the School of International Service and Co-director of Ethics, Peace and Global Affairs Program: 'Human Rights and Non-Violent Struggles.'

Dr. Mertus’ main interest is in human rights. She is the author or editor of ten books, including Bait and Switch: Human Rights and U.S. Foreign Policy (2004 second edition 2007), named “human rights book of the year“ by the American Political Science Association and, most recently, Human Rights Matters: Local Politics and National Human Rights Institutions (2006 coeditor with Jeffrey Helsing) and The United Nations and Human Rights: A Guide for a New Era (2005). She has examined many postwar transitions in Central and Eastern Europe, with a focus on the former Yugoslavia. She has also worked in Vietnam, Brazil, China, Jordan, and South Africa. Dr. Mertus is both an academic and practitioner, see aupeace.org for more information.

Lawrence Wittner, SUNY Albany Professor of History: 'How Peace Activists Saved the World from Nuclear War.''

Dr. Wittner has done decades of research on the history of the American peace movement and disarmament. He is the author of seven books and the editor or coeditor of four. Two of his recent books are Confronting the Bomb—A Short History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement (2010) and Peace Action: Past, Present, and Future (coeditor, with Glen H. Stassen 2007). Dr. Wittner will provide an historic overview of international peace movements with a focus on nuclear disarmament. For more information see his wikipedia.org entry.

Judith Thompson, Karuna Center for Peacebuilding: 'On the Frontiers of Social Healing: Thinking Outside the Box.'

Dr. Thompson has a background in dialogue, reconciliation, community organizing, psychosocial healing, and leadership development. In the 80’s she founded Children of War, an international youth leadership movement working with teenagers from 22 war zones and since then has helped to launch numerous other organizations including Global Youth Connect, Cambodian Living Arts, The rwandan Youth Healing Center, The World Council of Elders and Earth Circles, Inc. She has facilitated dialogue in post-conflict settings, most recently between Israeli and Palestinian mental health workers around the process of acknowledgment, and she consults for reconciliation initiatives worldwide. She co-directs the Societal Healing Project which is exploring cutting edge innovations in the theory and practice of reconciliation. Her research interests have included the role of empathy and compassion in reconciliation processes, and she has presented on this topic in Bosnia, South Africa, Germany, Colombia, and Northern Ireland. She is past Peace Fellow at the radcliff Institute for Advanced Studies and is currently the research and Program Associate at the karuna Center for Peacebuilding, a u.S.- based nonprofit organization that offers international training programs in conflict transformation, intercommunal dialogue, and reconciliation. For more information see shiftinaction.com and ikedacenter.org.

Craig Etcheson, Investigator, Office of Co-Prosecutors, Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia: 'Reconciliation: What It Is and How To Get It.'

Dr. Etcheson also works with the Documentation Center of Cambodia and is a visiting scholar at the Foreign Policy Institute of Johns Hopkins School of International Studies. His main work for many years has been in resolution, reconciliation, and accountability following the Cambodian genocide. His most recent books include After the Killing Fields: Lessons from the Cambodian Genocide (Praeger, 2005) and Extraordinary Chambers: Law, Politics and War Crimes Tribunals (in revision for the u.S. Institute of Peace Press). He draws on his extensive field experience in examining the contested definitions of reconciliation and the many methods that have been employed around the world to achieve reconciliation in the aftermath of extreme social violence.