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Peace and Conflict Studies raises timely questions across campus
By Vicki Ritterband
 Is there such thing as a “just war”? Are human
beings inherently violent? Is terrorism ever a legitimate means to an end?
Students taking courses in the Peace and Conflict Studies program at Holy
Cross grapple with these and many other tough and timely questions.
Administered through the Center for Interdisciplinary and
Special Studies, Peace and Conflict Studies examines the complex issues
surrounding war and peace from the perspective of multiple disciplines.
Anchored in the events of the day, the program attempts to give students
the tools to think critically and constructively about the threats to peace,
justice and human survival, while investigating nonviolent problem solving
as an alternative to war.
“The classes were able to provide a religious, philosophical
and historical context for the things going on in the world at the time,” says
Simon Hess ’93, who now runs a vocational academy in Boston. “That
was so appealing. There was a real connection between the academic and
the real world.”
In fact, it was a real world event—the Vietnam War—that
helped illuminate the need for such a program. In the late 1960s and early
1970s, Holy Cross, like campuses across the country, was in turmoil over
America’s involvement in Southeast Asia. Some members of the College
community had begun to question the wisdom of continuing its ROTC program.
After much debate, ROTC was allowed to march on, but some faculty and students
insisted that a counterbalance was badly needed.
“Some of us felt that the College needed to give the
same self-conscious attention to peacemaking that ROTC offered to questions
of national security,” says Professor David O’Brien, one of the
five faculty founders of the program and its first director.
Furthermore, as both a Catholic and a liberal arts college,
Holy Cross had a dual responsibility to educate its students in these matters,
according to O’Brien.
“Issues of war and peace are integral to Catholic self-understanding
and witness,” he says. “And a liberal arts education is structured
around the belief in freedom, reason and human rights. Any serious liberal
arts person can’t avoid the responsibility to attend to these crucial
issues facing the human family.”
O’Brien and like-minded colleagues lobbied for years
for the creation of an academic program in Peace and Conflict Studies.
The faculty finally approved the program, and in 1988 it was launched.
The founders of the program—and the first faculty to
teach under its umbrella—reflected the diversity of disciplines and
approaches the program champions: historian O’Brien, the late philosopher
George Hampsch, theologian Bernard Cooke, economist Charles Anderton and
international relations professor J. Ann Tickner.
In the past decade or so, there has been an explosion in
interest in issues of war, peace and social justice. More than 100 U.S.
colleges and universities, and many more around the world, now offer courses
of study—even masters and doctoral programs—in the subject. The
field supports specialty journals, conferences and growing numbers of fellowships
for its scholars. Why the interest?
“The global-political economy is intensifying income
polarization worldwide and there’s been a lot of fallout from this,” says
associate professor of religious studies Mary Hobgood, who teaches courses
within the concentration. “One of the disciplines that’s exploring
a lot of these realities—for example, deepening poverty, the threat
of war—is Peace and Conflict Studies.”
Every year at Holy Cross, between 15 and 20 students graduate
with a concentration in Peace and Conflict Studies. Another 20-25 students
declare themselves “concentrators” and lots of others simply
take these courses because they’re interested.
Students take pertinent classes from various departments,
including philosophy, economics, political science, religion and sociology.
Courses that fall within the concentration include: “The Economics
of Peace”; “Latin American Liberation Theology”; “Political
Violence”; and “Faith and World Poverty.”
To graduate with a concentration in Peace and Conflict Studies,
students must take Introduction to Peace and Conflict Studies as well as
three elective courses. In the second semester of the student’s final
year, the program culminates in the “capstone” project—a
self-designed course of study with one or two professors, ending in a thesis
that’s a minimum of 30 pages long. Concentrators give oral presentations
of their theses during the academic conference, held during the final weekend
of the spring semester in Hogan Campus Center.
“We think of the capstone project as the crown of their
peace and conflict commitment, and the learning process,” says the
program’s current director Predrag Cicovacki, a philosophy professor
whose own interest in peace and conflict studies grew as war destroyed
his native Yugoslavia. “It gives students the chance to show what
they’ve learned and what they passionately care about.”
For his capstone project, Michael Grandone ’03, of Worcester,
is looking at peace and conflict from an existential perspective—studying
what philosophers like Jean-Paul Sartre, Søren Kierkegaard and Albert
Camus had to say on these matters.
With the guidance of associate professor of philosophy Jeffrey
Bloechl, Grandone is struggling with questions such as: “What is the
essential nature of human beings?”; “Is conflict an inevitable
part of human nature?”; and “Will peace ever exist?”
Grandone says the process has been rewarding, but not without
its challenges. “It’s difficult to be self-paced when you have
so many other things you’re responsible for—academic commitments
with shorter deadlines,” he observes. “With the capstone you
have to say to yourself, ‘I have a light week, so I can get this done
on my capstone.’ It’s a balancing act.”
Part of the program’s mission is to educate the entire
College community on issues of peace and conflict, so it regularly sponsors
or co-sponsors speakers, sometimes from opposite ends of the political
spectrum. This fall, leftist historian Howard Zinn spoke about the Iraqi
crisis and his opposition to war, followed in the spring by Daniel Pipes,
an ultra-conservative and highly controversial historian who is often accused
of being anti-Muslim. Both speakers packed the house.
Not surprisingly, the past year’s events have thrust
Peace and Conflict Studies into the spotlight. All of its programs have
been well attended and its courses have become extremely popular. A second
section of “Understanding and Responding to Terrorism” had to
be added this semester because an unprecedented number of students sought
admittance. But this wasn’t always the case.
“For many years, after the cold war, the program’s
existence was sometimes called into question,” says Cicovacki. “The
feeling was that everyone’s for peace. There are no imminent dangers
to our security. Everyone is in agreement that we should reduce our nuclear
arsenals. Now, all of a sudden, it’s totally reversed. We’re
the focus of a lot of interest.”
Recently, the program has undergone other changes. A past
criticism of Peace and Conflict Studies, says Cicovacki, was that the program
was too homogeneous in its opinions, always leaning toward the left—more
partisan than impartial. With the influx of more conservative voices—among
both students and faculty—the concentration has become more diverse
and, as a result, more academically rigorous, he notes.
“A couple of years ago, I would have assumed that none
of our concentrators or faculty would be interested in just
war theory—that
everyone would agree that war is wrong under any circumstances,” says
Cicovacki. “I no longer assume this. There are now students and faculty
involved in Peace and Conflict Studies who are extremely conservative.
This has pushed the faculty committee that oversees the program
to say clearly that our role is not one of activism, like Pax
Christi, but rather to provide an intellectually respectable
spectrum of opinions. We want to give our students the chance
to arrive at their own informed opinions.”
One constant over the years, however, has been the profound
impact Peace and Conflict Studies has had on many of its concentrators
and their choice of careers.
“When I came to Holy Cross, I was interested in the
world, but never had a clue that there were these great injustices taking
place around the world,” says Hess, whose school serves primarily
students with special needs or limited English proficiency—mostly
from poor families. “I never had any idea that an individual person
could have an impact on that. Along with the Jesuit tradition, Peace and
Conflict Studies really engrained in me a desire to serve.”
Adds Benjamin Zawacki ’97, now a lawyer with the Jesuit
Refugee Service in Thailand: “The program was formative as well as
informative—it contributed to the way I think, in addition to just
giving me more information to think about.”
Pax Christi: Thinking About the World in a Prayerful Way
Every Wednesday evening for almost 20 years, Holy Cross’ peace group,
Pax Christi, has met in Campion House for their hourlong business meeting.
Although the faces have changed over the years, the mission has not: to
pray, reflect, educate and agitate about the injustices that plague the
world. As its name suggests, the organization’s commitment to active
nonviolence is grounded in the peace-loving example of Christ.
The Holy Cross group is a college chapter of the national and international
organization Pax Christi. This year, “Pax,” as it is affectionately
called, has focused much of its attention on Iraq. It has sponsored weekly
anti-war vigils and brought speakers to campus to talk about the impact
of sanctions and war on the Iraqi people. Since the conflict began, two
different members have fasted each day of the week, as a form of prayer
for its victims.
For the past five years, Pax members have joined the annual protest outside
the U.S. Army School of the Americas, renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute
for Security Cooperation, which critics charge has trained some of Latin
America’s most murderous death squads. The group also spearheads letter-writing
campaigns and works with other Holy Cross groups when something happens
on campus that needs addressing, like a racial incident for example.
Pax Christi, which numbers about 30 students, is as spiritual as it is
spirited. Kim McElaney ’76, director of the Office of College Chaplains,
serves as moderator. Every Wednesday night meeting begins with some type
of reading, followed by a prayer and then a recording of a song.
“This gives people a chance to think about the world around them
in a prayerful, reflective manner,” says co-coordinator Colleen Crowley ’04,
of Melrose, Mass. “It creates a tight community that’s hard to
get in other places. You feel like you can really share your feelings and
not be judged.”
An Open Letter to "Pax Christi" Sidebar > Vicki Ritterband is a freelance writer from Newton, Mass.
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