Peace, Justice and Human Rights
Description
The interdisciplinary concentration in Peace, Justice and Human Rights offers students the opportunity to study the history, philosophy and critiques of the rights tradition, examine themes of human rights and justice in their local and international contexts, and apply philosophical, social scientific and ethical reasoning to real-world problems.
Three core courses are combined with three elective courses focused on a particular theoretical problem, geographical region, or comparative study, to expand or enhance the focus students pursue in their majors. Students will also learn to communicate about their studies across disciplinary boundaries, and will be encouraged to develop creative new perspectives on entrenched problems.
The concentration is open to students in any major who wish to focus on topics such as:
- human rights and critical rights discourse (universalism, localism, relativism, formal equality, group and special rights categories, individual and state responsibility, critiques of the rights tradition);
- recovery from conflict and mass violence (reconciliation, restorative justice, reparations, truth commissions, cultural renewal, legal mechanisms);
- war, conflict, peace-keeping and peace-making (weapons, conflict resolution, just war, sustainable peace);
- globalization and global governance (sovereignty, trade and capital, global justice, international economic institutions, technology, the media, immigration);
- politics of life (medicine/health, environment);
- space and the built environment (links between rights, social justice and the building of urban spaces, policing urban areas, urban poor);
- technology and politics (technology and media, weaponry).
Curriculum
Students meet with the director, ideally in the spring of their sophomore year, to work out a plan for the concentration. All concentrators are required to take three core courses: PEAC 101 Introduction to PJHR; PEAC 201 Applied Ethics of PJHR; and PEAC 395 Capstone Seminar in PJHR. Alternate courses may on occasion fulfill a core requirement.
Students are required to take three additional elective courses for the concentration. They will choose these courses in consultation with the concentration director, working out a plan that focuses the concentration regionally, conceptually, or around a particular substantive problem. A course does not have to appear on an existing list of electives or have "peace" or "justice" in its title to count toward the concentration. The aim is to articulate a focus that helps each student pursue her or his interests in PJHR.
Concentrations are meant to overlap with students' majors: ideally two courses will overlap with the major. Each student will work out a plan of study appropriate to his or her focus with the concentration director.
Resources
The program encourages students to take advantage of the many opportunities for enriching their academic work through independent research and/or internships, in both domestic and international settings. This will help students face the challenges of integrating data and theory into original analyses. Possibilities include traditional social science fieldwork, archival research in the humanities, guided research in the sciences, advanced work in applied ethics backed by research, and so on. Haverford students may seek support through Haverford’s Center for Peace and Global Citizenship (CPGC), from the Hurford Humanities Center, or the Koshland Integrated Natural Sciences Center (KINSC).
Examples of recent CPGC-funded projects include: a semester-long internship with the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom; a humanitarian relief project in Panabaj, Guatemala following civil war and a devastating mudslide; research into the struggles of Philadelphia refugees from conflict zones; a summer internship at a school for street children in Indonesia; and participation in the World Social Forum in Venezuela.
Director
Jill Stauffer, Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Director of Peace, Justice and Human Rights. B.A., M.A., and Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley. Professor Stauffer’s teaching interests include philosophy of law; ethics; alternatives to legal responses to violence; political reconciliation; forgiveness, resentment, and restorative justice; continental philosophy; and why the study of human rights is necessarily interdisciplinary. Stauffer is on the Board of Directors for the non-profit book series Voice of Witness, which illuminates human rights crises through the stories of the men and women who live through them. She has published widely on the international reach of rights, personal and political responsibility, political reconciliation, and the rule of law. Her edited volume, Nietzsche and Levinas: After the Death of a Certain God, was published by Columbia University Press in 2009. She is currently writing a book on political subjectivity as it relates to the promise and limits of reconciliation after violence.
For more information on the Bryn Mawr Peace and Conflict Studies program, see http://www.brynmawr.edu/peacestudies/.
For more information on the Swarthmore Peace and Conflict Studies program, see http://www.swarthmore.edu/x20631.xml.
Courses
The following is a partial listing of courses at Haverford and Bryn Mawr that may count towards the concentration. The concentration is interdisciplinary and open to new ideas, so students and faculty are invited to propose other courses around which students may focus their research and inquiry.
PEACE, JUSTICE & HUMAN RIGHTS
- PEAC H101 Intro to Peace, Justice and Human Rights
- POLS B111 Introduction to Peace and Conflict Studies
- PEAC H201 Applied Ethics of Peace, Justice and Human Rights
- PEAC H202 Forgiveness, Mourning, and Mercy in Law and Politics
ANTHROPOLOGY
- ANTH B206 Conflict and Conflict Management: A cross-cultural approach
- ANTH H249 Colonialism, Law and Human Rights in Africa
- ANTH H261 Memory, History, Autobiography
- ANTH H263 Architecture and Space
- ANTH H315 Human Rights, Gender and Knowledge
COMPARATIVE LITERATURE
- COML B211 Primo Levi, Holocaust and Aftermath
- COML H322 Politics of Memory in Latin America
BIOLOGY
- BIOL H301 Genetic Analysis
- BIOL H308 Immunology
CHEMISTRY
- CHEM H 261 Environmental Chemistry
ECONOMICS
- ECON H 100 The Economics of Public Policy
- ECON H 220 Economics of Immigration
- ECON H 224 Women and the Labor Market
ENGLISH
- ENGL H211 Intro to Postcolonial Literature
- ENGL H343 Transatlantic Exchanges
FRENCH
- FREN H312 Le Genocide Rwandais
HISTORY
- HIST H227 Statecraft and Selfhood in Early Modern Europe
- HIST B287 Immigration in the U.S.
- HIST H310 Political Technologies of Race and Body
- HIST B325 Topics in Social History: Radical Movements
- HIST H347 War and Warriors in Chinese History
INDEPENDENT COLLEGE PROGRAMS
- ICPR H281 Violence and Public Health
- ICPR H221 Epidemiology and Global Health.
- ICPR H301 Human Rights: Development and International Activism
- ICPR H302 Bodies of Injustice
- ICPR H310 Restorative Justice
PHILOSOPHY
- PHIL H302 Topics in Philosophy of Law
- PHIL B225 Global Ethical Issues
- PHIL H257 Critical Approaches to Ethical Theory
- PHIL B344 Development Ethics
POLITICAL SCIENCE
- POLS B141 International Politics
- POLS H151 International Politics
- POLS H161 Politics of Globalization
- POLS H171 Democratic Authority
- POLS H232 Peace Building
- POLS H252 Human Rights and Global Politics
- POLS H266 Sovereignty
- POLS H345 Islam, Democracy and Development
- POLS H229 Latino Politics in the U.S. (Cross-listed in Peace, Justice & Human Rights)
- POLS H235 African Politics
- POLS H334 Politics of Violence (Cross-listed in Peace, Justice & Human Rights)
- POLS H370 Topics in Political Theory (Cross-listed in Peace, Justice & Human Rights)
RELIGION
- RELG H264 Religion and Violence
- RELG H266 Religion, Nonviolence and the Meaning of Peace
SOCIOLOGY
- SOCL H235 Class, Race, and Education
- SOCL B354 Comparative Social Movements