SPI 2023

Paula Facci

This course will focus on social and global processes of transformation by exploring global challenges, local experiences and struggles, and transnational solidarities that emerge in response to those challenges. It will be concerned with institutions, relations of power, and the relationship between power and the production of justice and peacebuilding theories and practices. It will pick up where Foundations 1 left off, aiming to add to students’ comprehensive overview of justice and peacebuilding practice and its multi-disciplinary, multi-level aspects. 

Whereas Foundations 1 centered on personal, interpersonal, small group and organizational transformation analysis, theory and practice, this course will equip students to further develop their knowledge and skills for dealing with conflict and situations of injustice and building sustainable peace. Particular focus will be given to social, state, and political change with increased sensitivity to race, gender, ecology, and other political economy traditions. Particular attention will be given to the colonial legacies and decolonial possibilities in justice and peacebuilding, exploring decoloniality as both an epistemic and a political project.

Action and struggle for justice and peacebuilding are always found in peoples’ local, place-based experiences, but to gain understanding in order to effect change, we have to explore their global features. To do this we will examine the intersections and overlaps among the local and the global, including the transnational solidarities that connect local struggles around the world. Students will become familiar with theories and frameworks that help explain the causes and dynamics of larger-scale conflicts, injustice, and structural violence. Students will work individually and in small groups to apply these ideas and skills to cases that progress in complexity from the community to the national and global levels (and back again). Students will also continue to develop their self-awareness as well as their capacity for professional judgment and reflective practice with attention to vocation, values, ethics, faith and spirituality. 

This course is required for all MACT and MARJ students. (taken from the PAX 635 syllabus)

Syllabus

Frank Dukes

As the global population grows, economies develop, and climate impacts increase, the pressures on our historic and natural resources continue to mount.  Environmental issues offer particular challenges because of their impacts on multiple communities and on multiple levels of governmental jurisdictions. Conflict is often experienced within a community as well as between communities sharing the same resources, and between and among responsible agencies of government. 

Environmental problems typically involve many different types of parties, issues, and resources. What is often at stake in the most intractable environmental problems are core issues such as individual and community health, racial and ethnic justice, the integrity or destruction of whole ecosystems, and the economic or cultural viability of various human communities. The environmental arena invokes passion because the consequences of these issues are so profound to individual and community life. 

This course explores best practices for managing, resolving and transforming environmental conflict through the use of deliberative environmental conflict resolution (ECR) processes. The class begins by examining the nature and dynamics of environmental disputes and methods for assessing conflict situations. The course then turns to methods for conceiving, conducting and completing various forms of ECR processes with a focus on the principles of equitable collaboration. Students will develop a capacity to assess the strengths and weaknesses of ECR processes while learning about best practices for preventing, preparing for, and addressing environmental conflict. Among the domestic and international environmental conflicts examined this year are the Virginia coalfields and the Chesapeake Bay.

This course examines more closely the structure of specific environmental disputes and introduces students to the mid-level theory and practice of situation assessment, process design, and convening and conducting a process. Questions addressed in this course include the following:

• What do we need to know about a dispute in order to understand its sources, dynamics and potential outcomes? 
• How do we decide whether or not a case is suitable for an ECR process?
• How do we conduct a situation assessment that can lead to an effective process design and convening?
• What strategies need to be employed to convene which parties, for what purposes?
• What are the key components of process design?
• How are science and policy considerations introduced?
• What constitutes success in environmental conflict resolution? What outcomes are desired, which outcomes are possible, and how do we measure those outcomes?
• What leads to successful ECR? What can we learn from successful and unsuccessful ECR cases?

Syllabus

David Evans and Jonathan McRay

The language of Antiracism permeates the pages of best selling books, institutional strategic plans, social movements, and business conferences. Why now?  Who benefits from the popularity of antiracism activity? What does this language mean? What world, or worlds, are antiracism educators, organizers, and practitioners trying to imagine and build?

Equipped with years of teaching, organizing, and scholarship, we aim to discover the conversations that will most enliven participants in this course during our time together. What questions, challenges, and themes in antiracism feel pressing to us in this particular moment and space? By exploring the collective wisdom in the room, what we talk about will be relevant to our lives and our work. This course is not a workshop or training. Instead, we want to get off script to reflect on practices, definitions, stories, and assumptions that comprise antiracism education, action, and organizing. For example:

What terms have become antiracism jargon and what assumptions and histories inform them? (eg. intersectionality, identity politics, racism, woke, etc.)

What’s the difference between call-outs and cancellations, or call-ins and accountability? What roles do shame, guilt, rage, and anxiety play?

How does antiracism relate to decolonization?

What tensions might exist between antiracism as therapeutic psychology and antiracism as political struggle?

Is it possible, or desirable, to move beyond race? Is there race without racism? What do we imagine are the crucial markers of a community that can provide the freedom for folks to discover the beauty of their unique humanity and flourish as a result?

Through roundtable conversations, careful reading, and unsettled silences, we invite organizers, educators, and caregivers to join us as we engage these and other critical questions at the heart of antiracist struggle for a world where everyone, and every community, can express and thrive in their full humanity. 

Course Goals

- Name important tensions in antiracism education and organizing.

- Discuss the ethics of antiracist activism.

- Gain understanding of competing definitions of antiracist language.

- Practice having passionate, curious and challenging conversations about potent themes.

Syllabus

Ram Bhagat and Elaine Zook Barge

During STAR Level II participants are invited to:

• Share STAR experiences from your context with each other.

• Review the core concepts of STAR and the 3-part STAR snail model, using Village STAR, a practical and simply illustrated manual.

• Practice exercises and skills that promote healing and build resilience.

• Plan and receive feedback on how you will engage STAR concepts and tools.

• Reflect on your own position, power, and challenges as a STAR practitioner.

• Envision and understand how to shape structural and organizational change toward trauma-informed, resilient organizations and communities.

The Level II training includes additional content, exercises, and skills for addressing trauma and building resilience to deepen the experiences from STAR I. Participants will create and present action plans about how they will adapt and apply STAR concepts and pedagogy within their work and life contexts. Upon completing STAR II, participants are invited to join the STAR online learning community, a group of STAR Practitioners working in a variety of contexts, sharing their questions, learnings, and experiences.

Participants must have applied STAR concepts personally or professionally since completion of STAR Level I training (normally for a period of about 3-6 months).

Syllabus

Gloria Rhodes and Claudia Moreira

Watch a video about this class

Mondays, 2-5pm (May 30-June 30, plus one July and one August meeting)

Analysis focuses on understanding the factors that cause conflict and violence and those that support peacebuilding. Good conflict analysis skills are a central component of designing effective strategies for transforming conflict and building peace.

Course participants will use lenses including identity (gender, religion, nationality, etc.), human needs, narratives, power, culture, worldview, and others to understand conflict and propose possibilities for change.  Case studies of conflicts at multiple levels will provide content and an opportunity to practice analysis skills individually and in small groups. Participants will become more aware of their own roles and biases in conflicts through self-analysis and will develop their ability to “see” and describe conflict from different perspectives. The class will also focus on research strategies for gathering and organizing data and developing theories of change as an intermediate step from analysis to designing effective social change.

Syllabus

Gloria Rhodes 

Watch a video about the course

Wednesdays, 2-5pm (May 30-June 30, plus one July and one August meeting)

As individuals working for peace, social justice, and the reduction of violence, we are the instrument of the work. Therefore, we need to cultivate our ability to engage conflict and injustice with wisdom, compassion, and clarity.

Participants will strengthen their abilities to understand and manage self and to attend to self-care, to listen and communicate, create and maintain healthy boundaries, recognize and promote diversity, lead from their vision and values, and engage people in dialogue and decision-making. The course will survey leadership roles, key skills, systematic processes, and varied contexts within the broad field of peacebuilding and conflict resolution/transformation. Contemporary strategies for structuring conversations and decision-making, including arts-based approaches, will be explored along with traditional processes of negotiation, mediation, and facilitation.  

Course participants will gain a holistic understanding of self as person, practitioner, and leader, with emphasis on the importance of intellectual, emotional, physical, and spiritual well-being and growth.

Syllabus

Bridget Mullins

Watch a video about the course

Wednesdays and Fridays 11am -1pm May 30th - June 30

In a complex, interconnected, and emergent world we have to change how we do things, not just what we do, in order to truly co-create meaningful innovation and catalyze positive social change. Unwittingly, the conventional structures we use to organize, plan, and collaborate (lectures, open discussion, round robin updates, brainstorms, etc) stifle inclusion and flatten complexity. Whether you work in an NGO, a public institution, a community group, a school, or a social movement, you may regularly experience some of the following realities that block most people’s ability to work together creatively and productively:

• Rigid organizations expressing a desire for change but little movement
• Power and hierarchy getting in the way of freedom and responsibility
• Exclusion, mistrust, and disengaged people
• Unproductive, boring meetings
• Difficult conversations routinely avoided

In this course, we will practice the mindsets, processes, and skills needed to lead meaningful innovation. Through hands-on, experiential learning, we will explore emergent facilitation and strategy, equity-based human-centered design, and a set of 30+ Liberating Structures designed to unleash more creativity, more complexity, and more wisdom. Participants will walk away with tools that they can immediately apply after each session as well as practice opportunities to begin designing, facilitating, and receiving feedback within a supportive community.

Syllabus

Sarah Roth Shank

Tues/Thurs, 5-7pm (May 30-June 30)

The restorative justice field continues to grow at a rapid pace. With this growth comes divergent theoretical perspectives, like those ranging from minimalist to maximalist, which in turn influence divergent types of implementation, all with the intention of meeting the diverse needs of the community and context in question. In this course we will identify how restorative justice is best positioned to strengthen relational and social fabric in our respective communities, and what it means for a restorative approach to be responsive and adaptable while working from a strong theoretical foundation. We will examine the contemporary critical issues in the field compared to those thirty years ago. Students will then have the opportunity to focus on a particular critical issue relevant to their context of choice and analyze it – by drawing on pertinent theories and implementation processes – through a restorative lens. 

This course will prioritize relationship and collaborative decision-making and will draw on the wisdom of each participant. It will engage learners through a combination of virtual circle processes, small group discussion and lecture. It is designed for people with an existing knowledge base of restorative justice principles and practice modalities who are looking to deepen that knowledge through discrete areas of application.

Syllabus