Peace? Why bother?

By Terry Savage

Throughout history, universities and other institutions of higher learning have been places in which ideas could be articulated – passioately – and contested. Ideas about everything! Love. Sports. Poverty. Wealth. Slavery. Who gets to vote. Beauty. Sexuality (and sexualities). Manhood. Women in society. Limiting violence when at war, and seeing when and how to make peace.

The list is endless. And often, so is the exasperation and outrage we feel when hearing each other’s views. Occasionally, one sees the trust and good humor of classmates who debate each other’s ideas endlessly – and yet realize how much they have to learn from the exchanges.

University means many things to many people: an opportunity to get skills, get ahead, get access to work you find meaningful; a chance to embrace the joy of learning; a reason to hope! And above all, university is about creating an agreed ‘safe space’ with each other, a space in which all honest ideas are always welcome. In a world wrenching apart with polarizing politics, a university has to be a zone of peace.

On many campuses in the United States, conflicts have flared up that could have opened up innovative thinking. Instead, many of these debates have turned nasty. Personal. Vitriolic. Violent. Fine minds have been destroyed in a frenzy of self-righteous mobbing and mayhem.

How do seemingly decent people become so convinced they are right that they turn so spectacularly destructive of other people?

One legend in the field of Conflict Resolution, Johan Galtung, depicts violence as a triangle. The apex represents the visible manifestation of violence (which he calls ‘direct violence’). This is the punch that gets thrown or the words intended to degrade and diminish what another person holds meaningful: their bodily dignity, the memory of a grandma, a personal story of resilience, the ideas by which – right or wrong – they make sense of the world.

What makes this violence possible, according to Galtung, are two, more latent forms of violence that constitute the bottom half of the triangle. One is ‘structural violence’ – the social institutions, policies, and societal arrangements that consistently block people’s ability to meet their needs. The other is ‘cultural violence’. This refers not only to forms of violence steeped in tradition, like whale hunting or sports hooliganism. Crucially, cultural violence refers to those parts of a culture that make both any form of violence feel right, make it feel ‘called for’ – understandable and even imperative.

It is a scary concept because it asks the hard question: what is it in our attitudes, assumptions, prerogatives, and even our established the cherished identities to which we are loyal that condones acts hurtful to people around us?

Globally, demands are growing for a better understanding of peace. Beyond the absence of violence, what is peace? What would we see if we were looking at it?

On campus, peace is in the mix of enjoyment and focused work one sees, all around, when walking into the Alvin Sherman Library, Research, and Information Technology Center. It is there in the palm-treed peace, the kindness of our friends, and in the patience with which we wait while a classmate fumbles trying to say what they really, really, mean, and, as we teach in Conflict Resolution, creating peace in debate is about understanding and drawing on what others in the room have said before you in order to express your view more powerfully.

Internationally, an initiative has been launched by a coalition of organizations and global leaders – civic, military, political, and academic – to build a set of principles that define peace and can serve as a guiding framework for peacemaking efforts everywhere. Two of the eight “Principles for Peace,” as they are called, comprise an ethical commitment to “dignity” and “solidarity”, and a third, labelled “humility,” involves striving to be empathetic and respectful.

Dignity, solidarity, and a humble respect and empathy toward others: these are values glaring in their absence from the passionate debates of our time – on campuses, and in the political rhetoric that produces battlefields and rubble where once there were lives.

Conflicting ideas can be a driver of innovation. Conflicting points of view can open up new insights bring people together in mutual cooperation. Conflict can be creative. It takes a zone of peace to make that happen.

Terry Savage is an associate professor in the Halmos College’s Department of Conflict Resolution Studies and serves on the United Nations’ Peace and Development experts roster.