Wednesday, March 3 4:15-6:30 p.m. Science Center Room 199 Swarthmore College
Please join us for a screening of Angels are Made of Light, a documentary that traces the lives of young students and their teachers at a school in the old city of Kabul. The film interweaves the modern history of Afghanistan with present-day portraits, offering an intimate and nuanced view of Afghan society in Kabul. The screening will be followed by a discussion facilitated by Peace & Conflict Studies Professor Amy Kapit.
Pizza will be served!
Sponsored by Peace & Conflict Studies, the Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility, and Asian Studies
A number of major civil rights organizations, including The Fellowship of Reconciliation, the SNCC Legacy Project, and the Highlander Center, came together this month to commemorate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s April 4, 1967 speech “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence,” in which he for the first time publicly advocated for an end to the U.S. war in Vietnam. Dr. King was assassinated exactly one year later after delivering the speech. The nation-wide webinar, “Breaking the Silence: An Intergenerational Call for Unity” occurred on the anniversary of the speech and consisted of its public reading as well as a panelist discussion.
The event organizers also invited groups to host local readings of the King speech–a call readily taken up by the Swarthmore community. Professor Lee Smithey (Peace and Conflict Studies) in cooperation with Professor Edwin Mayorga (Educational Studies) coordinated Swarthmore College’s reading. The project included a full gamut of community voices, including students, faculty, administrators, alums, and more. The video recording of the college’s reading can be found below.
From https://kingandbreakingsilence.org/
Cosponsors at Swarthmore College include: Educational Studies Department; Peace and Conflict Studies Program; Black Studies Program; Intercultural Center; Women’s Resource Center; The Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility; Department of Sociology and Anthropology; TriCo Asian American Studies; Department of Religion; History Department; Beit Midrash; The Interfaith Center; Student Government Organization; ENLACE; Intercultural Center Interns; QuestBridge; Swarthmore Queer Union; Petey Greene Program.
A book talk with Naomi Moland, Professorial Lecturer at the School of International Services at American University.
Wednesday, December 4th
4:30p.m.-6:30p.m.
McCabe Library Atrium
For fifty years, Sesame Street has taught generations of Americans their letters and numbers, and also how to better understand and get along with people of different races, faiths, ethnicities, and temperaments. But the show has a global reach as well, with more than thirty co-productions of Sesame Street that are viewed in over 150 countries. In recent years, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has provided funding to the New York-based Sesame Workshop to create international versions of Sesame Street.
At this talk, Dr. Naomi Moland will discuss her new book, Can Big Bird Fight Terrorism? which looks at the Nigerian version, Sesame Square, which began airing in 2011. The show seeks to promote peaceful coexistence in Nigeria, where segregation, state fragility, and escalating conflict raise the stakes of peacebuilding efforts. This book offers rare insights into the complexities, challenges, and dilemmas inherent in soft power attempts to teach the ideals of diversity and tolerance in countries suffering from internal conflict
The Swarthmore Campus & Community Store will provide books for purchase and author signing.
Sponsored by Peace and Conflict Studies with co-sponsorship from Film and Media Studies and Education Studies
Swarthmore Hosts Aspiring Academics of Color at Mellon Mays Conference
The Communications Office
14 November 2019
Jayanti Owens ’06 and Sa’ed Atshan ’06 Jayanti Owens ’06 (left), a professor at Brown University, will speak at the conference, organized by Assistant Professor of Peace & Conflict Studies Sa’ed Atshan ’06. Both are MMUF alums.
Now the Mary Tefft and John Hazen White, Sr. Assistant Professor of Sociology and International & Public Affairs at Brown University, Owens is returning to Swarthmore to share insights from that journey when she gives the first keynote address at this year’s MMUF Mid-Atlantic Regional Conference this weekend. About 80 people are expected to attend the event from Swarthmore as well as Bryn Mawr, Haverford, Cornell, Princeton, and the University of Pennsylvania.
“I will be talking about pulling back the curtain on graduate school applications and navigating the ‘hidden curriculum’ for success in graduate school,” says Owens, who graduated from Swarthmore with honors in political science and educational policy. “My hope is that by sharing both my personal experiences and the evidence base of social science research around the unique challenges faced by many students and faculty of color in the academy, students will leave with some strategies and a larger sense of some of the factors they might think about as they set out on their own journeys.”
Swarthmore is one of eight founding members of the MMUF Program, which primarily aims to increase diversity in the faculty of institutions of higher learning. In the program’s more than 30-year history at Swarthmore, nearly 150 students have graduated as MMUF Fellows. Of them, 47 have earned doctorates or are in the process of doing so, in addition to those who have earned law or medical degrees.
“The conference is a wonderful opportunity for students, faculty, and staff who care about the MMUF program in our region to connect,” says conference organizer and Assistant Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies Sa’ed Atshan ’06. “The student presentations are the heart of the conference, where the fellows will be able to showcase their excellent research and to engage in dialogue and intellectual exchange with each other.”
In addition to the support that she received to conduct original research and to attend intensive writing retreats to complete her dissertation, Owens cites the program’s fostering of lifelong friendships with peers and mentors that supported her journey through graduate school and beyond. She also credits Swarthmore’s first MMUF coordinator, Sara Lawrence Lightfoot Professor Emeritus of English Literature Chuck James, with providing unfailing support and advocacy. “I will be forever grateful to him,” she says, “and to MMUF and all the colleagues and friends I have formed through its network.”
Atshan, also an MMUF alum, is now in his first year as coordinator of Swarthmore’s program. “This is a tremendous honor and such a dream come true,” he says. “I would not be here today if it was not for Swarthmore and the MMUF program, and I feel that this is my moral responsibility to give back for this rising generation.”
We are delighted to announce that Dr. Amy Kapit will join the Peace and Conflict Studies program, starting Fall 2019.
Professor Kapit will offer a range of exciting new courses:!
Humanitarianism: Education and Conflict
Afghanistan: Where Central and South Asia Meet
Peace Education
Senior Capstone Seminar
(Scroll down to the bottom of this post for course descriptions!)
Dr. Amy Kapit
Dr. Kapit graduated from New York University’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development with a Ph.D. in International Education in 2016. She holds a B.A. in Religion and Peace and Conflict Studies from Swarthmore College.
Dr. Kapit’s research, scholarship, and teaching focuses on the relationships between education and conflict, and on the field of education in emergencies—the provision of education as a form of humanitarian aid. Most recently, she has worked as the Research Director of the Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack (GCPEA) and as an Adjunct Assistant Professor in International Education at NYU Steinhardt, where she has taught courses on Politics, Education, and Conflict and Qualitative Research Methods. As GCPEA Research Director, she has developed the organization’s research agenda related to monitoring and reporting violence committed against students, educators, and educational facilities in areas of armed conflict and political violence. She was the lead author of the report Education under Attack 2018.
During her graduate and post-graduate career, Dr. Kapit has conducted research on education in emergencies in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and in Afghanistan. From 2014 to 2016, she was the Research Director of the Assessment of Learning Outcomes and Social Effects of Community-Based Education in Afghanistan. The study, led by professors at New York University and the University of California—Berkeley, examined a community-based education program being implemented by two NGOs in approximately 200 villages in Afghanistan.
In addition, Dr. Kapit has studied the origins of the global movement to protect education from attack and how that new international advocacy network has—or has not—shaped efforts to address violence, harassment, and threats against students, teachers, and educational facilities in places where these attacks occur. Specifically, she has conducted research on the humanitarian community’s efforts to protect students, teachers, and schools in the Middle East.
We look forward to having such a remarkable scholar and teacher join our program!
New courses by Prof. Amy Kapit:
PEA 072 Humanitarianism: Education and Conflict (Fall 2019, Fall 2020)
This course will introduce students to the theory and practice of humanitarianism and, specifically, the provision of education as a humanitarian intervention—what practitioners call “education in emergencies.” The course will delve into the foundations and history of humanitarianism and track how humanitarian intervention evolved over the course of the 20th century, broadening and deepening in scope. It will explore continuing debates over the appropriateness of education as a humanitarian intervention and examine what types of educational interventions are prioritized by humanitarian agencies, as well as the goals that those interventions are trying to achieve. For example, what is the relationship between education and conflict and how do education in emergencies providers intervene to alter that relationship? Students will have the opportunity to study specific examples of education in emergencies programming in countries such as Afghanistan, Colombia, Nepal, Sierra Leone, and Syria, and to hear from guest speakers working in the field of education in emergencies. The course will encourage students to apply what they have learned to policy-oriented exercises.
PEAC 052 Afghanistan: Where Central and South Asia Meet (Fall 2019, Fall 2020)
This course examines conflict, politics, culture, and daily life in present day Afghanistan. Occupying a historic crossroads in Asia, Afghanistan is a place of regional, ethnic, and cultural diversity. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, internal and external actors, including the British Empire, Pashtun dynasties, the Soviet Union, the Taliban, the United States and its allies, and the Islamic State, have battled for control of Afghanistan. Today, as conflict continues, the international community exerts significant influence on Afghanistan’s politics, security, economy, and social institutions. This course will explore themes related to conflict, peacemaking, statebuilding, and international intervention, and their intersection with cultural and ethnic diversity, religion, gender norms, and the lived experiences of Afghan people. Students will read memoirs, literature, and scholarly work from various disciplines.
PEAC 022 Peace Education (Spring 2020, Spring 2021)
In this introductory course, students will explore the historical, ethical, and theoretical foundations of peace education, a subfield of peace and conflict studies. Students will consider different approaches towards peace education: should peace education be oriented towards eliminating physical violence? Facilitating co-existence and understanding? Teaching human rights or citizenship? Empowering the dispossessed and eliminating inequality and injustice? Is peace education best integrated in the existing schooling system, an extracurricular activity, or should it be distinct from schooling? Using case studies, students will critically examine different types of peace education and explore existing research on how they do—or do not—work.
“Historically Black Colleges and the Struggle for Citizenship in America”
Professor Cally Waite (Columbia University)
National Director, Mellon Mays Graduate Initiatives Program, Social Science Research Council
Thursday, March 16, 2017 4:30pm Kohlberg Hall Room 228 Swarthmore College
Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos recently described historically black colleges and universities as “pioneers” of the school choice movement, with HBCU leaders from across the United States meeting with President Trump.
How do we contextualize these developments? What is at stake for the historic struggle of Black Americans for citizenship and social justice?
Organized by Peace and Conflict Studies, Sponsored by the Black Cultural Center, the Intercultural Center, Black Studies, Education, History, Sociology & Anthropology, Political Science, and the Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility.
From our friends in Educational Studies and the Native American Students Association
Discussion: Decolonizing Education
Educational Studies and the Native American Students Association present a discussion between Professor Edwin Mayorga and Dr. Sandy Grande on the role of education in colonialism and the process of decolonizing the education system.
Sandy Grande is an Associate professor and Chair of the Education Department and the Director of the Center for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity (CCSRE) at Connecticut College. Her research and teaching are profoundly inter- and cross-disciplinary, interfacing critical Indigenous theories with the concerns of education. Her book, Red Pedagogy: Native American Social and Political Thought (Rowman and Littlefield, 2004) is currently being published in a 10th anniversary edition. She has also published several book chapters and articles including: “Accumulation of the Primitive: The Limits of Liberalism and the Politics of Occupy Wall Street,” The Journal of Settler Colonial Studies. ”Confessions of a Fulltime Indian,” The Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy, “American Indian Geographies of Identity and Power: At the Crossroads of Indigena and Mestizaje,” Harvard Educational Review; and, “Red-ding the Word and the World” In, Paulo Freire’s Intellectual Roots: Toward Historicity in Praxis. Bloomsbury Academic. New York, New York. Eds. Robert Lake & T. Kress. (2013).
Edwin Mayorga is an Instructor in the Educational Studies Department and Latin American and Latino Studies (LALS) program at Swarthmore College. His research focuses on cultural political economy, U.S. Latinos and urban education & policy, racial/ethnic studies, teacher-lead social movements, and teaching for social justice. Much of his energies are focused on the Education in our Barrios Project, a digital, critical participatory action research (D+CPAR) project that centers on working alongside youth in Latino core communities in Philadelphia and New York City. He is co-editor of the book: What’s Race Got to Do with It? How Current School Reform Maintains Racial and Economic Inequality (Peter Lang; 2015; co-edited with B. Picower). At Swarthmore he is also co-leading the Critical Education Policy Studies group. Prior to Swarthmore, he was an elementary school teacher in New York City and was a member of the educator-activist group, the New York Collective of Radical Educators (NYCoRE).
Lee Smithey had the opportunity to meet up in Belfast, Northern Ireland with Dee Craig a couple of weeks ago. Dee is the artist who painted the mural on the Science Center here at Swarthmore. (See photos, video, and more.)
Here is his latest piece on the Newtownards Road in East Belfast!
Dee sends warm greetings to all of his friends at Swarthmore!
Why did you choose to pursue a Doctoral degree in International Education?
After graduating from Swarthmore College, where I majored in religion and peace and conflict studies, I worked for a couple years on educational advocacy relating to the Israeli and Palestinian conflict. During this time, I became particularly interested in the way that education can shape historical narratives, social identities, and political opinions. I decided that I wanted to contribute to knowledge and research on the subject, focusing on the role of education in situations of armed conflict: how conflict affects education and how education affects conflict, potentially serving to either mitigate and exacerbate it.
Research focus:
I look at how the humanitarian community is addressing the problem of attacks on education (violence, harassment, and threats against students, teachers, and schools in areas of armed conflict). More specifically, I focus on the work of humanitarian actors in the occupied Palestinian territory and the linkages between what is occurring there and global advocacy efforts.
Publications:
Kapit-Spitalny, Amy and Burde, Dana (2011). Annex 1: Prioritizing the Agenda for Research for the Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack: Why Evidence is Important, What We Know, and How to Learn More. In Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack. Report from the Knowledge Roundtable on Programmatic Measures in Prevention, Intervention and Response to Attacks on EducationNovember 8-11, 2011 Phuket, Thailand. New York, NY: GCPEA, pp. 29-46.
Burde, Dana, Kapit-Spitalny, Amy, Wahl, Rachel, and Guven, Ozen (2011). Education and Conflict Mitigation: What the Aid Workers Say. Washington, DC: USAID.
Guven, Ozen, Kapit-Spitalny, Amy, and Burde, Dana (contracted and submitted, 2011). The Education of Former Child Soldiers: Finding a Way Back to Civilian Identity. Education Above All.
Burde, Dana, Kapit-Spitalny, Amy, Wahl, Rachel, and Guven, Ozen (contracted and submitted, 2010). Education in Emergencies: A Literature Review of What Works, What Does Not, and Why. Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation.
Miller-Idriss, Cynthia and Kapit, Amy (2009). Book Review: Promoting Conflict or Peace Through Identity by Nikki Slocum-Bradley (Ed.). Journal of Intercultural Studies, 30(4), pp. 431-433.
What are your career goals?
I want to work for an international humanitarian agency on issues relating to education in emergencies, using my knowledge and research experience to inform programming and advocacy.
Many thanks to Swarthmore’s News and Information Office for this piece that has appeared on the College’s webpage. Congratulations again to Elowyn Corby!
Elowyn Corby ’13 Wins Peace and Justice Studies Thesis Award
by Jenni Lu ’16
October 21, 2013
Elowyn Corby (class of 2013) Special Major in Peace Education
Elowyn Corby ’13 presented her winning thesis at the Peace and Justice Studies Association’s awards banquet this past weekend.
If you want to be heard, speak up. It’s a basic concept that has driven the progression of democracy, the rise of cohesive communities, and now, Elowyn Corby’s [’13] thesis research, which recently caught the attention of the Peace and Justice Studies Association (PJSA).
Titled “Training for Change: Moving from Theory to Practice in Adult Education for Empowerment,” Corby’s thesis garnered her the association’s 2013 Undergraduate Student Thesis Award. Corby, a peace education and political science major with a minor in conflict studies from Santa Cruz, Calif., accepted the award and presented her work this past weekend at PJSA’s annual meeting in Waterloo, Ontario.
Participation supports both the individual and the collective, according to Corby. It allows for the formation of social trust and social connection between people and within a society, and prevents communities from becoming too insular and controlling. However, participation has always been unevenly distributed.
“What we see is certain people getting heard a lot, often because they tend to participate a lot,” she says. “The government listens to those who participate. My question was, how does education tie into this? We know we need democratic skills and participatory skills. How do we get there? Is that something that can be trained?”
Corby’s hope was to determine whether activism training could reduce the inequalities that typically arise out of the most common way people develop activism skills: in the workplace.
“The experience that you accrue in the workplace is very biased along racial and socioeconomic lines,” she explains. “So if you’re developing leadership experience in the workplace, it’s much more likely that you’re a white male from a privileged socioeconomic background than you’re a person of color, or a woman, from a working class background.”
For her research, Corby chose to focus on Training for Change, an activism training organization that she had been in contact with since her freshman year at Swarthmore. Using them as a case study, she conducted 278 surveys and seven long-form interviews over the span of a year and a half.
“Statistically, Training for Change does increase [participants’] democratic confidence and how much they can engage in issues they care about across the board,” Corby says. “They engage more frequently, they attend more meetings, they run more meetings.”
However, Corby also stumbled upon a second discovery. Not only did Training for Change equalize the participatory playing field, it did so by exponentially increasing activism skills among people of color.
“Training for Change is not only increasing democratic participatory skills,” she says, “but it’s also doing it in a way that disproportionately affects communities that are much more likely to be silenced by our current democratic system. So it’s combating larger social inequalities.”
Corby’s findings have solidified her staunch belief that anyone can become an activist, and hopes that her research can compel more people to consider the inequalities found in current activist participation in a new light. It’s just a matter of channeling your passion and honing your skills.
“I think one of the things that holds activism training back is that it’s not understood very well,” she says. “It’s not seen as something that’s actually viable for facilitating and catalyzing social change. So there’s a lot of need for activism training.”
Corby credits her advisers, Associate Professor of Educational Studies Diane Anderson and Associate Professor of Sociology Lee Smithey, with providing support and encouragement. “Lee in particular spent hours and hours with me going over the data and number crunching,” Corby says. “I feel strange taking credit for this because it was all of us.”
