Sept. 20—It’s barely a week after the terrorists struck, and President George W. Bush says America is at war. He vows a “crusade” to end terrorism and capture the perpetrators “dead or alive.” Tonight, the president, addressing a joint session of Congress, will tell the world that “justice will be done.” But this morning, 16 students—mostly freshmen and sophomores; about half men, half women; mostly 18 and 19 years old—sit quietly around two tables pushed together in a wood-paneled room in Papazian Hall.

They are studying peace.

J. William “Jerry” Frost, the Howard M. and Charles F. Jenkins Professor of Quaker History and Research and director of the Friends Historical Library, is struggling to keep their minds (and his own) on the syllabus for the course. Today’s topic in Frost’s course, Introduction to Peace and Conflict Studies, is supposed to be ethology—animal behavior—and he wants to explore what we can learn about human aggression from the innate, instinctual, and learned behavior of our primate relatives.

But Sept. 11 intrudes. Frost tells the students that “our laboratory as current historians is America”; then he asks, “What is going on here? Everyone is saying that Islam is a religion of peace. So when we sing ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic,’ does that mean that Christianity is a religion of war? It’s not that simple—Islam, Christianity, and Judaism are religions of both war and peace.” There are no simple answers for Jerry Frost, and he doesn’t allow his students that luxury either.

The semester is young, and the students are still assembling the intellectual tools they will need to examine war, peace, and conflict. In the first few weeks of the course, Frost will touch on history, politics, economics, psychology, biology, sociology, and religion, using each of these disciplines as a lens to examine ideas about peace and war. The course will then examine various methods and organizations that attempt to alleviate the causes of war. Finally, students will apply these interdisciplinary tools to a research project on a local, national, or international conflict. Some of this semester’s papers will look at the failure of the Oslo Accords, the conflict between India and Pakistan, and the role of nongovernmental organizations such as Amnesty International and the American Friends Service Committee. Another will explore sports and violence, and one student is tackling the definition of terrorism, asking, “When does a freedom fighter become a terrorist?”

For these students, the clash of ideas is what Swarthmore is all about. A vital question—how shall we achieve peace in the world?—is placed in the center of the room and looked at from a half-dozen different perspectives.

But first there’s the problem of defining peace. Is it merely the absence of war? Or is peace a natural state of human relations that is constantly being interrupted by conflict? Must peace exist only in opposition to something else, as health does with disease? Is there a peace-war continuum that starts with harsh words on a street corner or the threat of violence within a family and extends through crime and political violence all the way to the clash of national armies?

Frost says he tends to define peace in a “negative” way—as the elimination of armed violence among or within nations. “If you define peace through things like economic justice, better child rearing, or human rights—what we call ‘positive peace,’” he says, “that doesn’t give you enough of a lever to stop armed conflict. There are more than enough wars to keep one busy without trying to see peace in this broader sense.

“It’s like the myth of Sysiphus. Stopping war is hard enough; you just have to keep rolling that stone up the hill. Positive peace gives you too many choices—you don’t know which stone to roll up the hill.”

Still, every discipline has its own stones. Although the causes of war may be studied in depth by historians and political scientists, the forces of history and politics cannot by themselves explain the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. In the weeks after the attacks, faculty members in many disciplines applied their expertise to the situation.

Stephen Golub, professor of economics, commented on the economy—which, at the time, he expected to “carry on as normal.” Frank Moscatelli, professor of physics, calculated the energy forces brought to bear on the World Trade Center by exploding aircraft. Sociologist Robin Wagner-Pacifici noted that within a few hours, an “accident” became an “incident”; an “incident” became an “attack”; and the attack was likened to Pearl Harbor.

Andrew Ward, assistant professor of psychology, said that it may be difficult for people to rid themselves of their anger to achieve peace and understanding: “There’s a self-righteous component to it, and sometimes people like to remain angry because it makes them feel good.”

Linguist Donna Jo Napoli observed that rumors are “something to fill your mouth when there’s nothing else to say, when you want to make contact.” And Nathalie Anderson, professor of English literature, was heard on National Public Radio, saying that poetry did not console her so much as it helped her to “think through things.” William Butler Yeats, she said, “made art out of his own trouble, and I think that’s an important thing.” (For more faculty perspectives, see “Peace, Politics, and Justice,” page 32.)

This multidimensional outpouring finds its curricular expression in Swarthmore’s interdisciplinary programs and concentrations. There are now 14 such constellations of courses, reflecting a trend toward interdisciplinary study that has grown stronger in the past 20 years. In May 2000, the faculty voted to treat many of these programs as course minors, making the minor available to students outside the Honors program for the first time. (See “Shared Interests,” page 86.)

The concentration in Peace and Conflict Studies (PCS) was approved by the faculty in 1991. It is currently coordinated by Associate Professor of Economics Amanda Bayer and a committee that includes four faculty members—Frost, Ward, Richter Professor of Political Science Raymond Hopkins, and Professor of Philosophy Hugh Lacey; and Wendy Chmielewski, curator of the Swarthmore College Peace Collection. To minor in PCS, students must take at least 6 courses from a list of more than 30 offerings. Introduction to Peace and Conflict Studies is the only required course, though many students also take Frost’s War and Peace, and all concentrators must complete a PCS thesis or final exercise. The remaining courses are offered by six different academic departments: Economics, History, Political Science, Psychology, Religion, and Sociology and Anthropology.

Bayer’s economics course, Games and Strategies, is on the PCS list. In it, she looks at bargaining and negotiation, teaching students to analyze the behavior of parties to strategic decisions. Using examples from business, biology, politics, sports, and everyday life, she helps students develop mathematical tools and language to talk about threats, promises, cooperation, and conflict.

One classic case studied by scholars of game theory is the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. “It has all the elements of a strategic game,” says Bayer. “The parties were mutually interdependent, the actions of one party affected the others, and both parties were aware of the actions of others.” In this context, she shows students the 1967 film Dr. Strangelove, which, she says, is “all about threat making.”

Bayer’s course is aimed at students of economics (sophisticated game theory is now a staple of economic analysis), but she says that PCS students learn how third parties “can manipulate the environment facing combatants to encourage them to come to a more socially attractive outcome.” She cites the diplomatic efforts of former Senator George Mitchell in Northern Ireland, where Mitchell not only established himself as a source of credible information but was willing to make personal sacrifices to show his faith in the peace process.

Although Bayer thinks that it would be “irresponsible for me—a trained economist—to talk about the political causes of a conflict,” she says that understanding complex problems of war and peace takes a multidisciplinary approach. Students in PCS learn to “see the importance of all sorts of factors.”

As coordinator of the PCS concentration, Bayer has moved quickly to address issues raised by the Sept. 11 attacks. Two visiting scholars have been hired to teach courses during the spring 2002 semester. Barak Salmoni, a doctoral candidate at Harvard University’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies, will offer a course on the state interests and power dynamics of the contemporary Middle East, which he defines as lands from Morocco to Afghanistan and from Azerbaijan to Sudan. Robert Musil, executive director of Physicians for Social Responsibility, will teach about the theory and practice of social change, looking at critical moments in the developing peace and environmental movements since World War II and their efforts to change U.S. policy.

Using the “positive” definition, Peace Studies also encompasses human behavior and spirituality. Courses such as Social Movements in Latin America, taught by Associate Professor of Anthropology Miguel Díaz-Barriga, and Psychology of Oppression and Resistance, taught by Andrew Ward, provide a wide range of perspectives.

Don Swearer, the Charles and Harriett Cox McDowell Professor of Religion, has taught in the PCS program since its inception. His popular course on Buddhist social ethics focuses on important social issues such as medical ethics, human rights, and the environment as seen through Buddhist moral philosophy.

“At issue,” says Swearer, “is how a religion that appears to be other-worldly can actually have a social ethic—or whether the idea of Nirvana always trumps how one acts in the world.” Swearer explains how Buddhism is “nonabsolutistic and pragmatic” when contrasted with theistic systems that “root ethics in the divine commandments.”

Another of Swearer’s courses, Religious Belief and Moral Action, explores the nature of religious ethics through the writings and life work of “moral exemplars” such as Mahatma Gandhi, Dorothy Day, Thích Nhât Hanh, and Martin Luther King, Jr. One of the major themes is the relationship be-tween love and justice.

“As we are painfully aware, religion can be used to justify almost any action,” says Swearer. “This seems self-evident, but it doesn’t really tell us much. This course tries to show that there are different ethical perspectives within each of the great religious traditions—that there’s no monolithic Hindu, Islamic, Christian, or Buddhist ethic. From this, we go on to see that there may be some ethical principles that people can agree on, such as compassion or a document like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, for example.”

Swearer wonders, “Could Gandhian nonviolence become a universal moral principle, so that whenever you see a particular issue of justice in the world, you do your best to apply this principle? After all, Gandhi and King did it. We tend to think of war and peace in terms of global violence among nation-states, but violence erupts at all levels—just look at the bullying and violence in schools.”

Beth Tsai ’02, a PCS concentrator, calls Jerry Frost’s course, War and Peace, “the best class I’ve taken at Swarthmore.” Offer-ed every other year in the Department of Religion, the course begins with an examination of religious perspectives about and influences on organized violence, introducing the concepts of holy war, just war, and pacifism. This is followed by a look at the impact of religion on World Wars I and II, the founding of Israel, the Cold War, the Gulf War, and the recent conflict in the Balkans. Frost says he will add the “war on terrorism” the next time he teaches the course.

Tsai, a double major in Latin and computer science, has taken a course in the PCS concentration “almost every semester” because the interdisciplinary approach offers a broad perspective on issues that matter to her. Active in Amnesty International (AI) since high school, Tsai says she especially appreciated being able to study the work of nongovernmental organizations such as AI. She heads the Swarthmore chapter of the organization and coordinates joint action by AI student groups in the Philadelphia region.

Last summer, she was awarded a Patrick Stewart Human Rights Scholarship (named for the actor and activist), which she used to assist the North Australian Aboriginal Legal Aid Service (NAALAS) with a campaign to repeal mandatory sentencing laws that she says unjustly affect aboriginal people. In an unusual move, NAALAS embarrassed the Australian government by directly petitioning the United Nations (UN) under a provision of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights that allows individual citizens to apply for UN relief if they believe their civil and political rights are being violated.

Andy Wong ’02, who is taking Introduction to Peace and Conflict Studies as a senior, came to the concentration later in his Swarthmore career. A political science and special major in women’s studies, he decided to add PCS to his program of study because of his personal interest in the issue of violence against women. PCS courses “allow me to examine violence on a more holistic level,” he says. “We look at the root causes of violence in society.”

Wong says that the academic study of peace has “given me a lot of tools to understand the current international situation. Issues of war and peace are going to follow us all our lives. It surprises me, really, that more students are not interested in Peace and Conflict Studies.”

It’s true that the number of concentrators is small—even as Swarthmore programs go. Since 1995, when the first concentrator graduated, the number of students who have minored or concentrated in PCS has averaged between three and four per year. The future of the program—which, al-though relatively new, has its philosophical roots in the Quaker foundations of the College—is difficult to predict, says coordinator Amanda Bayer.

Several of the program’s key faculty members will retire in the next few years: Frost and Swearer from Religion, Lacey from Philosophy, and Ray Hopkins from Political Science. Bayer, the economist, says, “There’s enormous demand for what we supply [in Peace Studies], but we have a supply problem. We need more resources in this program, especially after Jerry Frost retires. We need someone who specializes in Peace Studies.” The terms of the endowment for Frost’s chair, which specify a scholar of Quaker history, will complicate the decision about his replacement.

The challenge, says Bayer, is that interdisciplinary programs do not hire new faculty members—the departments do. According to Bayer, “the concentrations don’t always have the clout to influence department decisions, which are made with departmental curricular needs in mind.”

Swearer agrees that there is “no guarantee that new appointments will dovetail into Peace Studies. If we launch these programs, we have to be willing to support them. How could you argue against making Peace Studies a central commitment of the College, given Swarthmore’s history and character?” He suggests that Swarthmore needs a dedicated director for the PCS program—“someone with a foot in one of the departments but with a mandate to nurture this program.”

Back in Papazian Hall, students in the intro course are looking at gender and war. Frost poses the day’s big question: Is there a sex-based imperative that drives men to make war and women to be peacemakers?

The debate is lively as students talk about gender roles in their families and how boys and girls are socialized for different roles. They compare the types of toys that they were given as children. Nature vs. nurture arguments surface quickly; the students seem to lean toward nurture, at least for the moment.

Frost makes a list of male incentives to go to war: the warrior myth; the excitement; the heroism of the individual (“me and my gun”); the chance to sacrifice for the group (“me and my buddies”); the chance to be “more sexually attractive”; and, ultimately, the “seduction of facing death.”

Women, he says, are seen in different wartime roles: the factory worker (“Rosie the Riveter”), the mother sacrificing her son, the nurse, the prostitute. Even when directly involved in the conflict, women are more likely to be victims than warriors.

And what about feminism? One idea within feminism is to make women more powerful—the woman as warrior. “If you’re going to be a feminist,” Frost challenges the students, “what style of feminist do you want to be? Is peacemaking just another example of ‘women’s work’? How do you get men to take up peacemaking, if they see it as a feminine activity?”

Ultimately, it’s a question of rights, he says. “We talk about human rights as the rights of all persons, yet until we extend these rights to everyone—especially to women—we will not have a rights-based society. We will not have peace in the broad sense.

“This is the promise and the curse of Peace and Conflict Studies,” he concludes. “Where do you start? With pink and blue blankets? With socialization? Education? Economics?” He laughs, “Then along come the biological determinists, who tell you that what we learn may not make any difference anyway, that aggression and war—and even reconciliation and peace—may be genetically programmed.” T