Live Blogging: International Studies Association, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

As a conflict analyst and peace educator, I have long thought and written about the links between language, peace and power. Language, of course, is dynamic, social and contested. Elites can use it to exclude; non-elites sometimes use it to resist being defined by elites and reclaim identities. Hence perhaps the most powerful moment I experienced at the International Studies' Association Conference (co-sponsored by the ABRI, Brazil's International Relations Association), was seeing a discussant challenge his panel to restate their papers in "plain, everyday language". (The discussant may not want his name here, so I will not add it.) Using direct language sounds like such a simple thing, but as any academic presenter knows, it is anything but easy. Dense and sterile language can be a suit of armor which keeps others at arm's length. I've done my best not to use it, either teaching or writing. Only my students and readers, of course, can judge if I've been successful at this. When the Discussant made this request, to their credit, both presenters rose to the challenge and their ideas immediately became more powerful and clear. I was reminded of, believe it or not, a journalism class I took back in undergrad (at Mary Washington College), taught by a working local journalist. He gave us a stat that has stayed with me since: writers start to lose their readers when they get to more than 10-12 words a sentence. "Write to express," he told us, "not to impress." If you're not communicating, you're wrong.

This brings me to another delight of this conference, which was meeting an historian and scholar, Juan Cole, an expert on the Middle East who has forgotten more about the region than most of us will ever know. I even had the pleasure of a dinner and some local music with him and another new colleague. I know of Juan, of course, frankly not because he teaches at the U. of Michigan, but because he's written for Salon.com and his blog. This brings me to my other point, one which I hear repeated quite a lot but don't see enough action on: peace workers must do outreach to the public. Elections, as we like to observe in DC, have results, which means that information is critical. Juan, I think, does a wonderful job of reaching people because he says it clearly and directly, and therefore helps people bridge history and the present. In a democracy, policy analysis really should be for all. After all, this is a government BY the people. This equality of access to the power of knowledge is the heartbeat of peace education. I'm arguing for what one might call a democracy of language.

I emphasize these points, which have after all often been made by others, because peace and conflict resolution remains a new and often misunderstood, stereotyped field. This means we need to focused on excellent outreach all the more. I'm reminded of a conversation with a friend and colleague as we shared our mutual frustration at the lack of interest we perceived in outreach to the media. Yet this is how a national conversation shifts--talking to people we've never talked to before. I chose the field of conflict resolution because of its commitment to a set of values I hold, one of them being greater social equality. Let's use every avenue available to us to speak out! To do this, we need to say it plain.

To get us all started, here's a great link: Peace Media

Security and Community

It's been said by one of my favorite writers and thinkers on peace building that conservatives start with security, believing it will lead to peace, and liberals start with peace, believing that it will result in security. Where ever one falls on that spectrum, I hope most would agree that security and community (peace) are inherently linked.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately as someone who believes that a classroom is (or can and should be) a community. Writers and thinkers grow best in a community of other writers and thinkers. That's why I involve so much discussion in my classroom, as well as projects that ask kids to draw on a variety of interpersonal, communications, language and problem-solving skills. Yet this is of course a particularly challenging environment to build community in. For one thing, kids come and go very quickly. Secondly, with some students who are struggling with the most serious of charges and mental health issues (one might soon be diagnosed with multiple personality disorder), keeping myself, staff and other students safe is responsibility one. Kids can't learn in a tense classroom where every move is corrected; neither can they learn when they don't feel safe. (It sure affects my teaching, too!) One of our security guys said he's never seen kids like some we just got in. He's been here over 25 years, so I'm inclined to listen. I've recently had a student assault another student, out of nowhere, in my classroom. Just today nearly have of last period was on lock-down. Apparently things had not gone well throughout the day.

I've reflected all year on how best to build community in my classroom here, and I think I've hit on a few things that work at least sometimes. I think the journals can be key to this. Students regularly ask me to bring them back to their living units to write in. We share daily. I get inappropriate responses that I stop mixed in with humor, honesty, missing home, missing cats, your own bed and self-reflection. Right now we're exploring media literacy, identifying techniques of propaganda in ads and commercials. The final assignment for this will be to create a commercial (using the handy wonderful video recorder our Executive Administrator scared up for us) that shows two or more of the techniques. They'll be putting text together, essentially, and along with all of the creative, critical thinking and language skills involved, it will take community for my students to put together a successful project.