Proactive Peace Theme for New Center Leadership
Peace is not a gap between times of fighting, or a space where nothing is happening. Peace is something that lives, grows, spreads, and needs to be looked after.
Katherine Scholes 1989
Peace is a daily, a weekly, a monthly process, gradually changing opinions, slowly eroding old barriers, quietly building new structures.
John F. Kennedy 1963
Much time is spent negotiating resolutions to conflicts that have arisen. By comparison, relatively little time is spent taking steps to anticipate potential conflicts and avoid them before they erupt? "Proactive peace" focuses on peace as an unfolding process. Primary emphasis is placed on anticipating potential conflicts before they arise through maintaining open networks of communication. We seek to promote the understanding of peace not as a static social condition, but as an evolving exercise in cooperation maintained by constant vigilance and creative foresight.
Admittedly, foresight is not 20/20 as is hindsight. Nevertheless, it is readily apparent that much could be done to diffuse sources of tension well in advance of contention. In response to the religious overtones of the September 11th tragedy, President Bush called together clerics from Jewish, Christian, and Islamic religious traditions to participate in an interfaith service at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC. This was a much needed effort to deal with misunderstanding and the hostilities toward Muslims in America. His response, however, was reactive rather than proactive. From the perspective of proactive peace, such a nationally sponsored interfaith gathering should have occurred years ago, given the changing cultural and religious landscape in the United States.
Ironically, interfaith meetings have been occurring on the local level in a rather unassuming way for at least twenty years in some cities around the country. There has also been two international meetings of the Parliament of World Religions. This interfaith movement, however, has gone relatively unnoticed and basically was denied national in the US attention until the crisis brought on by the September 11th terrorist attacks.
Opening channels of communication plays a central role in negotiating resolutions to conflict. Proactive peace efforts aim not only at opening such channels, but maintaining the active use of pre-existing channels of communication for the purpose of identifying issues of tension in advance of conflict. The "proactive peace-keeper" asks: 1) "What groups presently are not actively communicating?" 2) "Why is communication not occurring?" 3) "What points of tension are being ignored?" and 4) "What can be done to alleviate those points of tension or anticipate their effects in advance?"
Often, the reasons such questions are not being addressed seem very benign. In a time of peace and prosperity, people are just too busy enjoying social harmony or are in a position where it is simply not profitable to spend time pondering its demise. We generally misunderstand peace as a static condition of enjoyment and forget that it's sustenance takes constant vigilance.
Last April, a live satellite broadcast took place entitled "School-wide Education for Violence Prevention." The teleconference was produced by the Hamilton Fish Institute at George Washington University and the Violence Prevention Project at Eastern Kentucky University. While certainly reacting to the isolated school shootings that have occurred in the United States over the past several years, the program's depth and thorough examination of the issue of school violence elevated it beyond mere gun control to the proactive consideration of character development, perspective-taking skills, decision-making skills, multiculturalism, communication skills and anger management skills that directly address the sources of frustration that form the root cause of teenage violence.
Proactive peace can be approached through a variety of disciplines and frequently applies philosophies of non-violence to non-political circumstances. Parenting classes which help alleviate reliance on corporal punishment, arts programs such as those offered at the Muncie Center for the Arts which encourage constructive self-expression, athletic programs made available to at-risk teenagers, civil engineers designing efficient and orderly transit systems to minimize tension among commuters, and intercultural events and discussion groups are examples of proactive peace efforts that generally escape political attention.
It's time we broaden everyone's view of the role peace studies should play in education. For peace is not as a static social condition, but an evolving state of cooperation and a continuous exercise in vigilance in which change is welcomed and anticipated with unselfish creative foresight.