Our Peace-Centric Approach
While we recognize the importance of exploring the conditions under which violent conflicts emerge, we adopt a peace-centric approach. We interrogate the nature of peace, not solely as the absence of direct and structural violence, but as a desirable social good.
Acting for Peace: Ethically-grounded Reasoning
Those concerned with peace usually operate in such a manner that asks three questions: (1) Who am I? (2) Who are you? and (3) What’s Next?
1- Who am I?
a. What are my values?
b. What goals do I hope to achieve?
2- Who are you?
a. Who are the actors with whom I am interacting?
b. How do they align or diverge from my values and goals?
3- What’s Next?
a. Given what I know about myself and others, what is the best course of action as far as peace is concerned (e.g., calibrating the ideal and the possible)?
Situational Awareness: Our Peace Ecosystem Model (PEM)
To answer these questions at the center of ethically grounded peace policy, we advance an ecosystemic approach to peace. It conceives of peace policymaking in a given context as situated within an ecosystem of paradigms (world views), instruments (policy tools that seek to enact said world views), and actors (who utilize such instruments while both shaping and being shaped by the respective world views).
Peace Policy Spheres: Academia, Policy, and the Public
It can be said that paradigms are informed, though certainly not solely, by academic debates. Instruments, on the other hand, often emerge out of policy debates through actors who are situated within social discourses in the public sphere. With that in mind, our programs target all three interrelated spheres – academia, policy, and the public.