Program Is Organized Around the Strategies, Tactics, and Methods by Which AFSC and Others Have Struggled to Achieve Peace and Social Justice
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In April 2017, the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), a leading peace and justice organization, celebrates its 100th anniversary. To mark this milestone, we will host a one-day symposium to showcase cutting-edge scholarship on areas of AFSC work both past and present and to inspire the next generation of research on peace and justice. The symposium will bring scholars together with past, present, and future activists, highlighting the connection between scholarship and advocacy around AFSC’s key issues. This program is organized around the strategies, tactics, and methods by which AFSC and others have struggled to achieve peace and social justice. The papers provide examples of how these approaches have been applied in the U.S. and around the world at different times. Program 8:30 AM - Welcome & kick-off: George Lakey, founder, Training for Change and leader in the field of nonviolent social change 9:00-10:30 - Morning Panel #1: Direct Service Humanitarian intervention and service as a way to encourage healing and understanding; includes domestic and international relief, reconstruction, feeding, and medical service. Chair: Emma Lapansky-Werner - Emeritus Professor of History; Emeritus Curator of the Quaker Collection, Haverford College Moderator: Linda Lewis – AFSC Country Representative, DPRK Presenters: Susan Armstrong-Reid (9:10) Three China ‘Gadabouts’: Working with the Friends Service Unit, 1947-1951. Dr. Susan Armstrong-Reid is an adjunct professor in the Department of History at the University of Guelph. Both her teaching and research focus on the transformation of Waging Peace: AFSC’s Summit for Peace and Justice 1 humanitarianism since 1945. Her third book, The China Gadabouts: the New Frontiers of Humanitarian Nursing, 1941-1951, is forthcoming with the University of British Columbia Press. Guy Aiken (9:30) Peace without Justice? The AFSC's Early Relief Projects in Appalachia Guy Aiken is a PhD Candidate in American Religions in the Religious Studies Department at the University of Virginia. His dissertation, "Sowing Peace, Reaping War," is about the AFSC's humanitarian projects in Germany and Appalachia in the 1920s and 30s. Immaculada Colomina Limonero (9:50) The AFSC and the victims of the Spanish Civil War Immaculada Colomina Limonero is the CONNECTING EXCELLENCE- MARIE CURIE FELLOW at School of Humanities: History, Geography, and Arts, Universidad Carlos III, Madrid, Spain. She specializes in immigration and refugees studies, with a focus on women and children's issues, both as a researcher and professor. Dissertation theses about the Spanish children refugees in the former Soviet Union. For 5 years, a postdoctoral researcher at Arizona State University. Currently leading research about North American international humanitarian relief for women and children during the Spanish Civil War. 10:30-10:45 Break 10:45-12:15 Morning Panel #2: Grassroots Organizing Organizing and providing resources to affect change from the grassroots level up on issues of both peace and justice. Chair: Regina Austin - William A. Schnader Professor of Law, University of Pennsylvania Law School Moderator: Pedro Rios – AFSC San Diego Area Program Director Presenters: Terence L. Johnson (10:55) African American Civil Rights and Educational Equality Organizing in South Carolina Terence L. Johnson is a history teacher at Montgomery College in Silver Spring, Maryland. He has conducted research on rare letters and photographs of African American educators, dating from the 1940s to the 1970s. He is presently working on an audiobook that explores the secret history of the Civil Rights Movement. Stephen McNeil (10:15) American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), LGBT Rights and the Religious Society of Friends Stephen has worked for the San Francisco office of the AFSC for 32 years in a variety of positions. Currently he is the Wage Peace Director working on police militarization, U.S./Mexico arms trade, and supporting veterans and active duty military personnel through the GI Rights Hotline housed in the AFSC San Francisco office. In his AFSC work Stephen was a member of the San Francisco AFSC LGBT Rights Task Force. He has been active with FCNL for three decades and is currently on its General Committee and on the Board of Pendle Hill. Francis Bonenfant-Juwong (11:35) Catalytic Agents: Community Development and the "Organizing" of Arab Villages for Peace and Prosperity in the 1950s Francis Bonenfant-Juwong is a PhD candidate in History and Peace Studies at the Kroc Institute of the University of Notre Dame. His dissertation incorporates the work of AFSC into a larger discussion of the role of American NGOs in the promotion of development-as- peacebuilding among Arab villagers in the mid-20th century. Waging Peace: AFSC’s Summit for Peace and Justice 2 12:15-1:30 Lunch 12:30-1:30 Lunch Panel: Lives dedicated to Peace and Justice Using biography to understand the links between service, humanitarianism, and activism. Tracy K'Meyer (12:30) “Mom, what did you do in the struggle for peace and justice?": Using Oral History to Document the Work of the AFSC. Tracy K'Meyer is a professor of history at the University of Louisville, where she is also Co- Director of the Oral History Center. Her research focuses on social movements in the 20th century U.S. She is currently writing a book on the AFSC's housing activism from the 1930s to 1970s. Nan Macy (12:50) An American Farmer in WWI France: Quaker Roots and Influences in AFSC's Early Years With a writing, editing, videography, and events background, Nan is writing a book about AFSC's WWI peace work. A Hedgebrook alumna, a founding organizer of the Chuckanut Writers Conference, and a contributor to Everyday Book Marketing, she serves on Pendle Hill’s Education Committee and holds graduate degrees in American Studies and English. Vanessa Northington Gamble (1:10) - Talk Racial Justice, Medicine, and the American Friends Service Committee: The Activist Work of Dr. Virginia M. Alexander Vanessa Northington Gamble, MD, PhD is University Professor of Medical Humanities and Professor of Health Policy and American Studies at the George Washington University. A physician, scholar, and activist, Dr. Gamble is an internationally recognized expert on the history of American medicine, racial inequities in health care, and bioethics. 1:45-3:15 Afternoon Panel #1: Reconciliation, Connection, and Cooperation Bringing people together in order to promote dialogue, reconceive problems and solutions, and cooperate for peace and justice. Chair: Jason Tower – AFSC East Asia/Global Quaker International Affairs Representative Moderator: Mari Oye – AFSC Myanmar Quaker International Affairs Representative Presenters: Carolyne Lamar Jordan (1:55) The Third World Coalition’s Influence on AFSC’s Mission and Impact for Nearly Five Decades. Carolyne Lamar Jordan is a member of Sandwich Monthly Meeting (NEYM), AFSC Corporation. Formerly, AFSC Board, Africa and Women's program, IDEC, and NE Regional EC. Past board member, Cambridge (MA) Friends School, and The School for Friends (Washington, D.C.). Civil rights advocate for Native Americans, immigrant farm workers, and unfairly incarcerated. Participant in 1960 Nashville (TN) sit-in movement. Retired college/university vice president. Gordon Mantler (2:15) Partners in Justice and Peace: AFSC and the Poor People’s Campaign of 1968 Gordon Mantler is an Assistant Professor of Writing and of History at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. He wrote Power to the Poor: Black-Brown Coalition and the Fight for Economic Justice, 1960-1974, published in 2013 with UNC Press. His current project is on multiracial electoral politics in Chicago in the 1980s. Doris Panzer (2:35) Measuring progress in tiny steps: local peace process implementation through civic engagement in Northern Ireland Waging Peace: AFSC’s Summit for Peace and Justice 3 Anthropologist Dori Panzer teaches at the University of Pennsylvania, where her focus is on expressions of cultural identity and heritage in Irish America and Ireland. Her current research examines how people are negotiating the cultural politics of citizenship and identity in post-conflict Northern Ireland and ways in which they are creating and performing their own heritage of the Troubles. 3:15-3-30 Break 3:30-5:00 - Afternoon Panel #2: Speaking Truth to Power Using protest, agitation, and persuasion, often aimed at change in policy or official action with examples that range from local to national and international. Chair: Maria Stephan - Senior policy fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace and a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council Moderator: Alma Abdulhadi Jadallah – AFSC Middle East Quaker International Affairs Representative Presenters: Stephen Zunes (3:40) The AFSC and Israel/Palestine: From Reconciliation to Advocacy Stephen Zunes is a professor of Politics at the University of San Francisco, where he serves as coordinator of the Middle Eastern Studies program. He is a member of the Quaker Palestine/Israel Network and has served as a staff member, committee member, and/or volunteer on Middle East concerns for the AFSC, Friends General Conference, and Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. David L. Hostetter (4:00) Anatomy of Truth: Speak Truth to Power, Anatomy of Anti- Communism, and AFSC Strategy to Thaw the Cold War. David Hostetter, independent scholar, is author of Movement Matters: American Antiapartheid Activism and the Rise of Multicultural Politics, which includes a chapter on AFSC’s anti-apartheid work. A 1979 graduate of George School, he served on the staff of the Washington Peace Center from 1985-88, and works with the Peace History Society. Negar Razavi (4:20) From Feminist Security Experts to Human Rights Lobbyists: Middle East Policy and the Politics of ‘Resistance’ within the Washington Establishment Negar Razavi is an advanced doctoral candidate in anthropology at Penn. Her dissertation evaluates the role of Washington, D.C.-based policy experts in shaping U.S. security policies toward the Middle East since 2001. She previously worked at the Council on Foreign Relations and the Education for Employment Foundation and has an MSc from Oxford and a BA from Tufts.