Tag Archives: structural violence

This weekend I gave the keynote presentation at the Teaching about Global Conflict and Peacebuilding Seminar at Montgomery College. The conference brought together over 30 community college professors from across the country teaching in a variety of fields and all interested in incorporating peace and conflict studies into their work. I was invited to give the keynote address by the conference organizer, David Smith, an education and peacebuilding consultant who has for many years now been working with community college helping them build and develop peace and conflict studies program.

The title of my presentation was, “Teaching Our Way Out of the Cave: How Peace and Conflict Educators Are Challenging War, Violence, and Human Suffereing.” The title at first might seem a bit obscure, but for the past few years I have been using the metaphor of a cave to explain the differences between direct violence and structural violence and the difference between negative peace approaches and positive peace approaches to addressing those different kinds of violence.

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