Thursday, Feb. 7, Peacemaker-in-Residence and Professor in the Center of Global Understanding and Peacemaking (CGUP) Jonathan Rudy gave a presentation in the Winter’s Alcove of the High Library.

This presentation, “Beloved Siblings and Estranged Lovers: The Relationship Between Peace, Justice, and Nonviolence,” served as a follow up to a presentation given by fellow CGUP professor Dr. Michael Long.

Within peace and conflict studies, there tends to be tension between the strategies of nonviolent action and peace building. Rudy, through his presentation, worked to focus on the overlaps of these two approaches and the ways in which they can ultimately work together.

Rudy stated expressly that he is “always trying to take a step back and realize how all things are connected.”

It may initially seem that, while their goals may overlap, those who take to protesting in the streets are disparate from organized, professional “peace builders.” Rudy posits that this dichotomy is not truly present and that it is important to “understand civil resistance in the context of peace building” because they share the goal of “undoing injustice.”

Rudy’s first personal experience with this overlap was in 1987 when he worked in a refugee camp in what is now Somaliland. While there, he noticed that a military group was physically forcing young men into service despite there being laws in place supposedly protecting against such behavior.

Though Rudy did not find it his place to intervene directly in the situation, he made it clear to the military group that he saw what they were doing because he felt at the time that “observing violence has a blunting effect on it.”

Rudy admitted that, in retrospect, this “civic resistance” he took part in was a bit naive— it didn’t address the larger issues and could have turned out violently for him. It did, however, provide him with an understanding that civil resistance is at times a necessary course of action.

It would be nearly a decade later, in 1996, that Rudy would reevaluate his approach to peace building.

While volunteering in Swaziland, one of the last enduring absolute monarchies, Rudy noted “the problems there were very long term, the changes had to be systemic” and while “civil resistance could be part of [the solution], other actions were needed.”

Rudy said he feels that one of the most valuable tools for global peace building is reconciliation.

He found that taking action without working towards peace would manifest in a cycle of discordance and exploitation, which happened to the Philippines in the 1980s.

The Filipino people took to the streets and ousted then-Dictator Ferdinand Marcos. The efforts were well coordinated and the civil resistance worked, but the systemic and structural forces of inequity remained unaddressed.

Thus, there still remains a great need to navigate sustainable peace in the Philippines. Major changes, such as an increased participation in local democratic processes, have helped build up the Filipino people post-dictatorship.

Taking these instances into account, Rudy utilized graphics to convey the ways in which Nonviolent Action and Peacebuilding overlap in terms of global policy. He extrapolated upon this point, stressing the importance of understanding what he refers to as “the modalities of change.”

“In the broader sense, one of the core values of peace building is nonviolence,” Rudy said.

This opens up a dialogue for a broader discussion on what nonviolence is and provokes questions such as “What does nonviolence look like?” and “Is it okay to destroy property?”

These concerns about defining nonviolence were echoed by Long.
“Why is reconciliation important? If there is an incredibly unjust power, why not just get rid of it… sometimes harm can be beneficial?” Long asked.

Rudy maintained that regardless of other factors, peacebuilding is fundamentally more sustainable than violent resistance.

Acess Services Librarian Amy Magee offered that the perceived tension between these two strategies may rely on a negative connotation of the word “peace,” saying:

“I think a lot of people jump to the conclusion that peace is keeping the status quo, [but] if we don’t have justice on our lives our lives are not peaceful,” she said.

Rudy echoed this definition of peace, claiming that, “media has biased us to believe that peace is just the absence of shooting— but what we’re looking for is long-term sustainable change.”