Humanitas the Bulletin of the Institute for the Humanities Volume Three: Spring 2004 SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY
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humanitas The Bulletin of the Institute for the Humanities Volume Three: Spring 2004 SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY humanitas Institute for the Humanities • Simon Fraser Univer si ty • Burnaby, British Co lum bia Humanitas 2004 cover 1 12/23/03, 11:28:11 AM humanitas humanitas Spring 2004 Staff Donald Grayston, Trish Graham, The Mural Cover Design Director Program Assistant The mural depicted on the covers of Humanitas, “Writing, Humanitas editor Figures, Shelves and the Humanities, 2000” can be seen in Trish Graham the Humanities Department at the southeast corner of the Academic Quadrangle. It is a life-size, digitally constructed Consulting editors and composed series of images that represent each of the faculty members and programs in the Humanities area. Donald Grayston Jerry Zaslove A collaboration of all the faculty in Humanities, it is based on an idea by Jerry Zaslove and Steve Duguid and was composed and designed by Jerry Zaslove, Department of Humanities, Layout and design and Greg Ehlers, Learning and Instructional Development Anthea Lee Centre, SFU. Photography: Greg Ehlers, Spring, 2000. Program Information, Continuing Studies, Simon Fraser University Steering Committee Institute for the Humanities Donald Grayston Simon Fraser University Institute Director and Department of Humanities, 8888 University Drive Simon Fraser University Burnaby, BC V5A 1S6 About the Institute Telephone: 604-291-5855 Stephen Duguid The Institute for the Humanities at Simon Fraser Chair, Department of Humanities, University, now twenty years in existence, initiates, Simon Fraser University supports and promotes programs devoted to the exploration and dissemination of knowledge about Kathy Mezei traditional and modern approaches to the study of Departments of Humanities and English, the humanities. Simon Fraser University The Institute sponsors a wide variety of community- based activities, along with its university-based Ian Angus academic programs. Department of Humanities, Simon Fraser University Tom Nesbit Institute for the Humanities Director, Centre for Integrated and Credit Studies, Continuing Studies, Simon Fraser University Simon Fraser University 8888 University Drive Margaret Jackson Burnaby, BC V5A 1S6 School of Criminology, Simon Fraser University Telephone: 604-291-5855 – 2 – Humanitas 2004 cover 2 12/23/03, 11:28:20 AM Table of Contents 5 Director’s Letter Donald Grayston Violence and its Alternatives 6 Exile as an Alternative to Violence: The 2003 Joanne Brown Symposium on Violence Jerry Zaslove 10 Gandhi Jayanti and the Thakore Visiting Scholar Award Drs. Eric Hoskins and Samantha Nutt Violence and its Alternatives: The Continuing Series 14 The Culture of Violence and the Politics of Hope: Community Mobilization around Media Risks Stephen Kline and Kym Stewart 20 Twisting the Cross: Terrorism and the Shaping of American Society Michael Fellman 26 Violence and the Literature of War Kate Scheel humanitas 32 Weapons of Mass Destruction and the End of War? Acknowledgments Douglas Alan Ross The Institute for the Humanities gratefully acknowledges the support for its programs received through the Modernity, Secularity, Pluralism Lecture Series Simons Foundation, the J.S. 38 Overcoming Onto-theology: George Grant and Woodsworth Endowment fund and Religion without Religion Ms. Joanne Brown. Peg Peters Becoming Non-Rational: Recent Transformations For further information contact 43 in Evangelical Belief Donald Grayston at [email protected], Bruce Hiebert telephone 604-291-5516 or Trish Graham at [email protected], telephone 604-291-5855. 49 Aristotle, Derrida, Girard Christopher S. Morrissey Visit our website at www.sfu.ca/humanities-institute/ Exploring Islam Lecture Series 51 Democratizing Shi’ism: The Theoretical Foundations of Iran’s Reform Movement Humanitas Peyman Vahabzadeh Bulletin of the Institute for the Humanities 56 The Ethical Crescent Volume 3: Spring 2004 Amyn B. Sajoo © 2004, Simon Fraser University – 3 – Table of Contents Human Rights and Democratic Development 68 The Human Right to Peace Senator Douglas Roche—offered in the Leon and Thea Koerner Lecture Series 73 Peaceful Resistance in Palestine Melissa Mullan Humanities and Community Education 75 Merton Conference Celebrates 25th Anniversary Judith Hardcastle 76 Social Justice Series: Elaine Bernard, Grace MacInnis Visiting Scholar Shanthi Besso 77 Learning in the Czech Republic: Transforming Perspectives Jessica Denning, 2003 recipient of the Institute’s Travel Study Award Book Reviews 81 More to Academe than Making Money Derek Bok’s University in the Marketplace Tom Nesbit 82 Lloyd Axworthy’s Navigating a New World: Canada’s Global Future Nancy Harris 83 Thomas Berger’s One Man’s Justice: A Life in the Law Phil Bryden 87 2003 Publications in the Humanities Department 89 Associates of the Institute – 4 – Director’s Letter humanitas Spring 2004 Director’s Letter The Humanities in a Less-Than-Humane Time Again I am glad to be in touch with you, the readers of another dimension of our mandate. We also see the Laurier Humanitas. Many of you teach or study at SFU, some live and Institution, with its concerns around citizenship, as work in the community of greater Vancouver or elsewhere in another organization with which we hope to develop closer British Columbia, and some in the great world beyond this co-operation. Partnership and co-sponsorship, then, must province of great physical beauty and political, economic and mark our future. social diminishment. Wherever you work and think and hope, This year the Institute marked its 20th anniversary; and so we greet you, and invite you to work and think and hope with significant a milestone has moved us to approach the us as we study and act on the fourfold mandate of the University Advancement Office, and to explore the possibilities Institute: Violence and its Alternatives, Human Rights and of a funding campaign which would enable us to take a Democratic Development, the Humanities and Contemporary quantum leap from our present level of activity. I mentioned to Culture, and Community Education. Together these emphases the Faculty of Arts advancement officer that a major donor had stretch us to explore the limits and the capacities of the given our sister institute at the University of Washington $5 humanum in what I find myself calling a less-than-humane million dollars (US, sans doute!) as an endowment. When she time, a time in which the geist of the zeit is querulous, fearful calmly asked me what we would do if someone gave our and distracted. Institute the same amount (even Canadian!), I found myself If we have ever had second thoughts about our work on the launched into a process of brainstorming which will continue theme of Violence and its Alternatives, for example, the year of as 2003 ends in meetings of our faculty and community grace 2003 would have settled them for us. It was the year in associates. Together with them, and with the steering which the unelected president of a powerful nation, possessed committee of the Institute, I hope to put into the three-year by the archetypes of warrior and savior, sent the young women plan requested by the Dean of Arts, proposals both reasonable and men of the armed forces of his nation into action against a and imaginative. I offer here only one such possibility: a nation laughably weaker, in search of weapons of mass fellowship program for community activists, comparable to distraction. It was the year in which the cuneiform tablets of the Southam Fellowships for journalists, which would enable The Epic of Gilgamesh , arguably the world’s oldest narrative, them to spend six months at SFU as fellows of the Institute, were looted from the Baghdad Museum. It was also the year in nourishing their vision from the many resources which a which Canada took the road harder to travel, and declined to University of our calibre has to offer. join the coalition responsible for these travesties. In this As I re-read the letter I wrote in last year’s Bulletin, I am connection, two speakers generously funded by the Leon and gratified to realize that we have indeed taken steps in each of Thea Koerner Foundation, and offered to the community in the areas which our workshop of last December with Kathleen co-operation with Burnaby Mountain College, were Senator Woodward, director of the above-mentioned Simpson Institute Douglas Roche and the CBC’s Eleanor Wachtel, both of whom, for the Humanities at the University of Washington, had in different ways, addressed the theme “The New World Order recommended: an increase of funding, a raising of our profile After Iraq: Negotiating Citizenship.” The fourth annual Joanne within the University, a focus on citizenship and more Brown Symposium addressed the related motif of exile, which involvement in community education. Please read the rest of with leadership from David Kettler, Martha Langford and Jerry the Bulletin with these concerns in mind; and please feel free Zaslove proved highly stimulating to the 14 of us very willingly to contact me directly if you have ideas of how the Institute cooped up on Bowen Island during the heaviest rainstorm in might act upon them further, alone or in consort with other BC since 1883. organizations of like mind and heart. The mention of Burnaby Mountain College moves me to As usual, I close with greetings to the many of you with whom commend to you this nascent effort at the creation of a we have worked over this past year and with whom we hope to residential community of scholars and grad students here on work again. I also wish to thank each of you who has donated the Burnaby campus, similar in ethos to Green College at UBC. to the work of the Institute, attended our programs, served on I represent the Institute on the BMC steering committee; and our committees, worked with other associates, written for this the goals and objectives of the College so nearly approximate Bulletin, and in many other ways tried to strengthen our those of the Institute that it is increasingly clear that a strong modest efforts to nourish the human in a less-than-humane element in our future must be more joint planning and time.