Summer Peacebuilding Program

In his 1989 movie “Do the Right Thing”, Spike Lee explored the Kingian tension between love and hate, in the aftermath of the Civil Rights Movement. Lee paints a dark picture of the state of civil society in the USA in a post-civil rights era, a reality charged with lasting racial tensions and emphasized differences. […]

Humans live in a built realm, use and buy designed products, create and design our individual realities. All around the world people live in a built environment, whether it is designed formally or informally. What designers create affects and changes the lives of individuals and societies. Peace processes and related practitioners are often unaware of issues […]

Dr. Richard Mathews spoke with us on Friday about natural resources, violence, and peacebuilding. Although I feel I have always known that the environment is involved in conflict (and often a victim), I was a bit struck by how much of a role the environment plays in not only the instigation of conflict but in […]

The first week of the program has  come to an end, leaving us with two more weeks of exciting and challenging learning to go. The intensive schedule of the program did  in all honesty make this weekend more than welcome – especially given all of the wonderful activities Monterey has to offer. My numerous encounters with various aquatic animals and wonderful […]

Last week, we visited the Salinas Police Department. Salinas is approximately 30 minutes away from Monterey and has significant problems regarding gang violence. The city’s overall violent crime is higher than California’s average. Chief of Police, Mr. Kelly McMillin, showed us around the police station, explained police training and operations. He also answered some of […]

“Peacebuilding” is a strange concept. It’s loose. As I mentioned in my first post, it seems that our program’s focus on this loose concept is deliberate, and rightly so – in conflict-ridden, violence-struck areas, the only way for policymakers to achieve true long-lasting peace is to think holistically; to balance the different conditions that each […]

This past week has been a whirlwind of long, informative days. In attempt to learn about what peacebuilding is, I feel as though a more encompassing question is “what isn’t peacebuilding?” From nuclear weapons to conflict and water, we have already been exposed to so many different themes that all revolve around peacebuilding, and although […]

The first week at Summer Peacebuilding Program was an exciting opportunity for me to learn from and network with different academicians, practitioners and thinkers in the field of peacebuilding. Out of the various sessions, I was very interested in learning more about peacebuilding and the relation between development and peacebuilding. Coming from a nation which […]

It is becoming more and more widely acknowledged that one of the major trends of structural violence occurring in the United States (and indeed nations across the globe) is food injustice. Food injustice refers to not only the environmentally sound production of food, but also the problem also known as hunger, food insecurity, food deprivation, […]

This week, we talked about neoliberalism in Professor Arocha’s session. I must say I enjoyed that one a lot. He started by asking us to share the two things that immediately come to our minds when we hear the word neoliberalism. We all said different yet very connected things: McDonald’s, free trade, globalization, etc.. What […]