Fall 2014 - 27th Annual Peace Studies Conference
"LIGHTING THE DARKNESS: EXPLORING ALTERNATIVES TO VIOLENCE"
27th Annual CSB/SJU Peace Studies Conference
Wednesday, September 17, 2014
Mel Duncan is the founding Executive Director of Nonviolent Peaceforce (NP), a nongovernmental organization created to promote, develop and implement unarmed civilian peacekeeping as a tool for reducing violence and protecting civilians in situations of violent conflict.
Film: "Little Town of Bethlehem"
This award-winning documentary captures the story of three men born into violence who now risk everything to find a path to peace through non-violent resistance. Sami is a Palestinian Christian, Ahmad a Palestinian Muslim, and Yonatan an Israeli Jew. Inspired by Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi, each learned that peace is possible when adversaries discover the humanity in one another. This film offers a model for conflict resolution that reaches far beyond the Holy Land. Winner of the 2011 Reel Rose (Pope John Paul II Film Festival) and Best Oklahoma Film (deadCENTER Film Festival) awards.
Keynote Address: Dr. Erica Chenoweth
Dr. Erica Chenoweth's groundbreaking work promoting the empirical study of civil resistance has already won her numerous awards, leading Foreign Policy magazine to name her one of its "Top 100 Global Thinkers for 2013". As an expert on terrorism, she set out with her colleague Maria Stephan (an expert on nonviolence) to study the relative effectiveness of both violent and nonviolent movements. They built a database including over 300 movements from 1900 - 2006, and when they crunched the numbers, they told a surprising tale. They report the details of their findings in their award-winning book, Why Civil Resistance Works Why Civil Resistance Works . For a preview, watch her TEDx Talk (12 ½ minutes long).