It's rather daunting--and
certainly humbling--to be included among the august company of those recognized
by Promoting Enduring Peace over the past fifty years. And I am very happy to
accept the Gandhi Peace Award, on behalf of the New England Peace Studies Association
(NEPSA) and many people who have contributed to it over fifteen years. "Involved
with and dedicated to practicing, teaching, and studying peace, justice, and
nonviolence," as its Mission Statement indicates, New England Peace Studies
Association for fifteen years has encouraged collaboration among individuals
and institutions to share ideas and information about resisting injustice and
violence and building a peace culture.
Initiated by Glen Gersmehl,
now head of Lutheran Peace Fellowship, Seattle, with the support of Professor
Joseph de Rivera, Clark University, NEPSA is a regional affiliate of the Consortium
on Peace Research, Education, and Development, and the International Peace Research
Association, co-founded in 1965 by Elise and Kenneth Boulding, Herbert Kelman,
Johan Galtung, and others. NEPSA is fortunate to count Elise, since she moved
from Colorado to Massachusetts, as one of our most active members, and has benefitted
from close cooperation with the Boston Research Center for the 21 st Century
and particularly the Peace Abbey, in Sherborn, Massachusetts, which offered
us a home.
Among those responsible
for carrying on its work, through seminars, conferences, retreats, several are
here: Dale Bryan, Tufts University; Helen Raisz, Trinity College; Predrag Cicovacki,
Holy Cross College; Joanne Sheehan, War Resisters League; Liz Aaronson, Central
Connecticut. State University. Others central to the effort over the years include
Michael Klare, Director, Five College Peace and World Order Studies Program,
Hampshire College, Paul Joseph, Tufts University, and Gordon Fellman, Brandeis
University.
This award means a great
deal to me personally, because of my indebtedness to Promoting Enduring Peace,
whose publications I appropriated shamelessly for my courses over the past thirty-five
years.
PEP's commitment, one might even
say its "discovery" and development of citizen diplomacy, undoubtedly helped
us survive the Cold War, after being on the brink of nuclear annihilation on
several occasions. And it is exciting that essential work being carried on by
Yael and Bruce Petretti bodes well for the next fifty years of the organization.
This award also challenges
NEPSA to identify and to assist every teacher, kindergarten through graduate
school in our region who offers a unit or course in peace and conflict studies
and nonviolence. In this way, NEPSA members work not only to strengthen and
deepen the peace movement, but also to liberate the university from its alliance
with the military/industrial complex. It's a mighty task.
As someone who fell in
love with the university, and John Henry Newman's "idea of the university,"
I mourn the corruption of university by the forces of empire, its complicity.the
CIA, the Pentagon, biological and nuclear weapons manufacturers and other practices
anathema to anyone who values the university. A major attractions peace studies
for me is that the researchers and students continue to ask essential questions
about power, conflict, violence, sustainability that are often ignored by others,
and to emphasize the dynamic quality of peacemaking and nonviolence. In that
way, we recognize peace as "a presence," in Denise Levertov's words, as "an
energy field more intense than war."
In a culture wounded and
endangered by violence, peace studies and nonviolence theory and practice are
sources of healing that our culture needs so desperately. This fact was recognized
and validated most recently by the UN Decade for the Culture of Peace and Nonviolence,
approved by the 169 members nations of the General Assembly in 1999.
Finally, as a contribution
to the celebratory manner of this 50th anniversary of Promoting Enduring Peace,
I'll conclude with a brief poem by Denise Levertov. Entitled "About Political
Action in Which Each Individual Acts from the Heart," it acknowledges both the
solitary and sometimes lonely aspect of peacemaking, but also the communal strength
evoked when activists and academics cooperate in resisting injustice and humiliation
in the effort to build peace cultures, from the family to the international
community: