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Peace and Conflict Studies
Students and Alumni |
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PCS students and Alumni
apply their interests and knowledge
in service, research, vocation,
and further education. |
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2006-2007 
Katie
Camillus '08 to
initiate a micro-finance program in UgandaHaving interned last summer at Kiva.org and working with microfinance organizations, Camillus is using her Lang Opportunity Scholarship at Swarthmore to initiate and study a social justice project in Uganda in cooperation with Project Have Hope . You can follow her work this summer via her blog . 
Jared
Leiderman '05 to enter graduate school at Harvard UniversityStarting in fall 2007, Jared will attend the JFK School of Government at Harvard on a Reynolds Foundation Fellowship in Social Entrepreneurship . Jared Leiderman '05 is currently serving as a Fellow with the Insight Collaborative As one of three 2006 Insight Fellows, I have the opportunity to provide real and sustainable assistance to numerous organizations worldwide by applying advanced conflict management, effective communication, and negotiation theories and techniques. The Fellowship includes a $20,000 expense allowance to support three months of intense training in the field and nine months of international travel to apply that knowledge to humanitarian contributions. Each Fellow designs 3 three-month international placements that are spurred by guidelines that include entrepreneurship, communication, sustainability, and self-reflection. Currently, each Fellow will spend one placement at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, working as a special consultant to the Chief Prosecutor and his immediate staff. I will then travel to Uganda to assist the Northern Uganda Peace Initiative’s forum on reconciliation and provide consulting services to enhance its internal communications. And finally, in the Spring, I will work with Partners-Jordan to design, create, and launch a new mediation program. Other Fellows have focused on reconciliation in Cyprus, micro-economic development in Uganda, improving education in China, and post-Khmer Rouge justice in Cambodia. Each Fellow keeps journals of their experiences, thoughts, and reflections which are posted online and produces a presentation and report around a central theme at the end of the Fellowship. In addition, pursuant to the guideline of Sustainability, the Fellows must fundraise to “refill the pot” to keep that position available for the following year’s Fellows. For more information, please visit: www.insightcollaborative.org or get in touch with me via Professor Lee Smithey. Starting in fall 2007, Jared will attend the JFK School of Government at Harvard on a Reynolds Foundation Fellowship in Social Entrepreneurship . Zsaleh Harivandi '07 spent six weeks this summer in a small village in northeast Ghana 
Zsaleh Harivandi '07 spent six weeks this summer in a small village
in northeast Ghana with Operation Crossroads Africa. She worked on a
women's development project which involved setting up a mill with local
village women; helping roast, mill, and package "Nutrifood"; organizing
a system for rural women to sell Nutrifood, thereby increasing their income;
and promoted nutrition in surrounding villages.
Zsaleh also spoke
at First Collection
this year.
Amy Kapit '06 writes for Israel Policy ForumAmy Kapit '06, a recent Honors Peace and Conflict Studies graduate will soon become Director of Programs at Meretz USA . She is currently completing an internship at the Israel Policy Forum where she has contributed to the organization's weekly analysis with a piece on the tenuous ceasefire in Lebanon . Meretz USA for Israeli Civil Rights and Peace is a US non-profit organization that supports a genuine peace between the State of Israel and its neighbors [including the Palestinian people] based on a negotiated land-for-peace solution. You can read an article, "The 'Martyr' Part 2", derived from her senior Religion thesis on the Meretz USA blog. 
Camillus '08 joins Peace and Justice Studies Association
BoardKatie Camillus '08, a new student in the PCS program, will be joining the board of the Peace and Justice Studies Association as its student liaison. Lang Opportunity Grant winner Katie Camillus '08 and Swarthmore's tradition of student activism are featured on a recent broadcast of Wisconsin Public Radio's "Here on Earth." Listen here. Find Swarthmore references at min. 15, 21, and 47 (Katie's interview). 2005-2006 
Theresa Williamson ’97posted 10-24-05 The Power of Grassroots Communities in Brazil and Around the World: The Potential of Connecting Them Through New Technologies A talk by Theresa Williamson ’97 Tuesday, October 25th at 7:30 p.m. Scheuer Room, Kohlberg Hall On Tuesday, October 25th, Theresa Williamson '97 will be at Swarthmore College to speak about her work with low-income communities in Brazil. Ms. Williamson spent the last few years founding Catalytic Communities* http://www.catcomm.org/ , a not-for-profit, non-governmental organization (NGO). Catalytic Communities develops resources useful to low-income communities in their effort to plan and carry out their own innovative community improvement projects by offering internet database and network services. In her current role, she is CatComm's primary fundraiser (responsible for all major gift solicitations, small donor cultivation, and special events), liaison to the Board of Directors, and oversees staff responsible for day-to-day organizational management and oversight. Theresa also oversees all program strategy, development and activity. In May 2004 Theresa received her Ph.D. from the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of Pennsylvania which will yield a book about Catalytic Communities' development. It is entitled "Catalytic Communities: The Birth of a Dot Org" and was one of three finalists for the 2004 Barclay Gibbs Jones Award for the Best Dissertation in Planning. She has published articles from this dissertation and related research in Progressive Planning, The Journal of Urban Technology, and Cidadania.org. Prior to her doctoral research and decision to found CatComm, Theresa had already been active in a number of movements for years, since the early age of 12. Over the years she worked for or volunteered with: Jeremy Rifkin, of the Foundation for Economic Trends; Colman McCarthy, of the Center for Teaching Peace; Co-op America; the Child Welfare League of America; the Philadelphia Recycling Office; the Ombudsman for the State of Paraná, Brazil; and S.E.A., Students for Environmental Action (Maryland). Theresa's undergraduate degree was in Biological Anthropology, with concentrations in Environmental Studies and Peace and Conflict Studies , from Swarthmore College. Though raised in the Washington, DC area, Theresa is a dual Brazilian and British citizen. *Catalytic Communities (CatComm) was founded in 2000 as a not-for-profit in both the USA and Brazil, having arisen from the recognition that somewhere in the world there exists a tailored community solution to virtually any mentionable social or environmental challenge: from HIV to water contamination, housing to cultural preservation, unemployment to lack of political mobilization. Unfortunately the tailored local solutions that exist in communities all around us have historically been isolated and undervalued. Our organization works to create spaces - physical and virtual - designed to empower and inspire a global network of community-generated solutions. 
Ivan Boothe '05posted October 13, 2005 Ivan Boothe serves as the Communications Director for the Genocide Intervention Fund , and he presented a paper, "Privilege and Nonviolent Intervention in the Context of Empire," at the 2005 meetings of the Peace and Justice Studies Association . The paper is co-authored with Lee Smithey and is derived in large part from Ivan's senior thesis on transnational nonviolent empowerment and third party nonviolent intervention. update August 29, 2006 Boothe and Smithey's paper will appear soon in Peace and Change . Boothe, Ivan and Lee A. Smithey. Forthcoming. "Privilege, Empowerment, and Nonviolent Intervention." Peace and Change. Amy Kapit '06 posted September 18, 2005 Amy received the Julia and Frank Lyman Student Summer Research Fellowship for the summer of 2005. The fellowship was established to support students in independent research or unpaid internships. Amy spent the summer working for the Education for Peace in Iraq Center (EPIC) in Washington, DC. While there, she acted as the Dispatch Coordinator, writing news summaries to highlight some of the most important stories in the ongoing war. The majority of her work focused on researching trends in Iraqi civilian deaths and on following the constitutional process. Marissa Vahlsing '06 posted September 16, 2005 
Marissa recently received a Truman Scholarship: a national
award that recognizes leadership skills, a committment to public
service and academic excellence. Marissa hopes to use this award
to attend law school for human rights law; a decision that she came
to while studying human rights and social movements last year with
the International Honors Program in England, Tanzania, India, New Zealand
and Mexico. This past summer, Marissa researched dissent from the
war on Terror among NYC activist groups, and will use this research to
generate a Peace and Conflict studies thesis on Power and the Production
of Truth in the War on Terror.
She has also secured an internship in DC for the summer
of 2006 with the International Labor Rights Fund (ILRF)2004-2005 Elizabeth Anderson
'05
Anna Morgan '04
posted February 11, 2005 
Anna Morgan (pictured far left) has joined the
Quaker U.N. Office
as a Program Assistant. Anna graduated from Swarthmore
College in May, 2004 with a B.A. in Political Science
and minors in Peace and Conflict Studies and Asian
Studies. While at Swarthmore, she served as the Co-President
of the Student Council, held leadership positions in various
diversity-related organizations, and helped to found and
clerk the student Quaker organization. Anna also worked
as an intern in the American Embassy, Madrid. She grew
up attending Orange County Friends Meeting in southern
California.2003-2004 posted June 9, 2004 
From this August to next June, I will
be working under a Fulbright grant with the Law School
and the School of Public Policy and Management at Qinghua
University in China to research: 1) The rise of a new legal elite in China (lawyers, prosecutors, judges, legal experts), where they are from in China, where they were educated, and how they interact with one another (i.e. where the main forms of discourse occur between government and non-government legal entities). 2) What impact this new class of legal experts is having on the common Chinese citizen who is largely unaware of their legal rights. Are they pushing the threshold? Are the new legal aid centers at universities being used? How much information about constitutional change reaches the impoverished in the countryside? 3) What implications does this potential change in attitude toward government accountability and legal know-how have for the rise of some form of civil society in China in the decades to come? Jared Leiderman '05 posted June 9, 2004 
This
s
ummer I will be working at the Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace
and Justice (IPJ)
at the Uni
versity of San Diego. (
peace.sandiego.edu
) By taking a number of different
news sources from the area and around
the world, I will put together a number of short,
informative articles for the IPJ's weekly
publication. I'll work closely with Executive
Director Dr. Joyce Neu and Deputy Director
Dr. Dee Aker for these weekly reports. I
will also work with them on organizing
and promoting specialized programs such as
the Women PeaceMakers Program and WorldLink.
The WPP facilitates dialogue
s
among individual women working to promote
peace and equal gender roles in areas
of conflict around the world by bringing them
to the IPJ for two months at a time. It also
documents the womens' personal experiences
through video, writing, and audiotape.
WorldLink is a program directed at bringing
high school youth from San Diego, Los
Angeles, and Tijuana, Mexico, together
to "promote international awareness and
understanding among high school students."
( www.youthworldlink.org
) Finally, I will
present on my research and personal ideas
to the staff at the end of the internship. My
research is funded by the Summer of Service
Internship at the Lang Center.See weekly updates by Kroc Institute interns and Jared's bio . Sheena Johnson '05 posted June 21, 2004 I am working as an intern in the D.C. office of Search for Common Ground, an international conflict transformation organization . I am working with their Sub-Sahara Africa Program. Currently, they have programs in five countries in Africa. Their motto is: "Understand the differences, Act on the commonalities." They are known around the world for using media (such as radio and tv programs) as a tool for peace building.Thier mission is very ambitious: to transform the way the world deals with conflict. We emphasize cooperative solutions, pursed on a realistic scale and with practical means. Marissa Vahlsing '06 posted June 9, 2004
I have recieved a Summer of Service Internship
Grant
(SOSI), and I am interning at the National
Labor committee in NYC, which is a
group that advocates for workers rights
in the developing world, particularly
for those who work in factories managed
by US multi-national corporations.
My role in this has been to carry out research
about those American
corporations who are on the ground in Bangladesh
and employing mostly young
girls in their factories who are without
any enforcable labor rights. We are
currently working with various large
companies like the GAP, H&M, Nike and
Sears and have succeeded in having them
agree to give more rights to their
workers. Debbie Cohen '06 posted June 13, 2004 This summer, I'll be working at a small Jewish camp called Galil in Bucks County, PA, where I've been going for quite a few years now. The camp belongs to an organization called Habonim Dror North America ( www.habonimdror.org ), and the pillars of the organization are socialism, social justice, judaism, zionism, and actualization. Our primary concern at camp is informal education, and we hope to impart our values to the kids, especially about peace and justice in the middle east as well as the US and respecting and sharing with everyone through fun activities, group building, and sharing the physical labor responsibilities that keep the camp running. |
Elizabeth Anderson '05, a Swarthmore College senior
from Saint Joseph, Mich., [and a Peace and Conflict Studies minor]
is among the 12 recipients nationwide for the 2005-2006 George J.
Mitchell Scholarship. The first Swarthmore student ever to receive
a Mitchell award, she will study for a Master's degree in ecumenics
at Trinity College in Dublin.