Nonviolence may become a minor

By Ian Herbert
Daily Staff Reporter  On  October 11th, 2005

When Will Travers came to the University as a 22-year-old freshman in the Residential College, he said a typical RC concentration in the social sciences was not for him - he wanted to major in nonviolence. He knew that Wayne State University offered a course called "Intro to Peace and Conflict Studies" and thought nonviolence "was as good a major as any."

To realize his goal, Travers crafted an individualized concentration he called "Philosophy and Practice in Nonviolence." Hoping to make the study of nonviolence available to more students, Travers set out to introduce a minor and possibly a major to the University for his senior project.

"I felt that if I left this university without doing something like this, I'd consider myself a failure," he said.

After working for more than a year on the project, Travers's idea has won the support of several faculty members.

Last Thursday, Travers held a meeting with about a dozen professors to present his final proposal.

Travers said the responses he received from the professors who saw his presentation gave him hope that his nonviolence studies program may have a chance at the University.

"The plan of action is to inspire people in this room to go make it happen," Travers said at the meeting.

But Travers, who recently graduated, is leaving his project to pursue a new life in California while RC Prof. Helen Fox takes the reins in pursuing nonviolence studies.

In the past few years, Fox has taught a course titled "Nonviolence in Action," which Travers sees as one of the core courses for both a minor and a major. The class looks at the causes of war and violence, when and how to intervene in conflicts, nonviolent social movements and nonviolence in religious traditions.

"(Travers's) role was doing research on it," Fox said. "He personally has a lot invested in this idea. It's not his responsibility anymore. He's done a good job and lit a spark. And we'll see where that goes."

The University has long taught classes similar to Fox's. RC Prof. Richard Mann taught a class called "Intro to Peace Studies" in the late 1980s, and the history of nonviolence courses at the University goes even further back than that. But there has been a resistance to making nonviolence studies a major or even a minor.

Political Science Prof. David Singer said he's given his full support to Travers's idea, though he has opposed previous attempts to establish a peace studies concentration.

"My basic opposition is that I don't like majors that get too narrow of a focus," Singer said. "I want my students to get a broad education and then within that broad area, focus on something."

He added that disciplines as focused as peace studies tend to attract students with similar beliefs. But he said the emergence of a political climate that condones using violence to resolve problems has led him to change his mind.

"It's still not a great idea pedagogically, but I think the political motivations outweigh that now," Singer said.

Another concern professors raised at last week's meeting was that students who graduate with such a narrow focus will not be able to find jobs. But prof. Michael Nagler, a Peace and Conflict Studies professor at University of California at Berkeley, said the majority of his students go into nonprofit work, human rights organizations or health care. Many of his students go overseas with organizations such as the Peace Corps.

"We're not going to survive unless we learn the arts of peace," Nagler said.

Berkeley's well-established peace and conflict studies department has been in existence since 1985 and graduates 30 to 40 students each year. Nagler said he was excited to hear about the possibility of a program at the University, even if it was just a minor.

"You take it one step at a time," Nagler said. "You build something, and once you find out that it doesn't bite and it doesn't cost 10 million dollars a year, you go from there."

Fox said a minor is certainly feasible, and she is willing to put in the time it will take to complete the necessary administrative work. If the minor is sponsored by the Residential College - which RC Prof. Charlie Bright said is certainly a possibility - it needs to be approved by the RC curriculum planning committee. The sponsoring faculty members would then need permission from all of the departments that would offer classes in the new program.

Departments with courses in nonviolent studies would most likely include political science, religion, english, history and art history, among others. After gaining permission from the departments, the potential minor would need to be taken to the LSA curriculum committee before being posted as a minor.

Fox said she is not yet prepared for the additional work of creating a nonviolence studies major. But Phil Hanlon, associate provost and chair of the Taskforce on Multidisciplinary Studies, said that it might be the kind of program that could be sponsored by the taskforce.

"It's a little hard to tell outside the context of a specific proposal," Hanlon said. "What we're looking to support are large courses and concentrations that pull from many different areas."

Bright and Hanlon both estimated the whole process was at least a year away from completion, but Hanlon said that was standard for any new program.

Printed from www.michigandaily.com on Sat, 21 Nov 2009 10:27:57 -0500