For Immediate Release:  August 25, 2006
Contact:  Marsha Nishi Mullan
610-328-8535
http://www.swarthmore.edu/news/

Panel at Swarthmore to Discuss 'Nonviolent Response to Terrorism: marking the fifth anniversary of 9-11 and one hundred years of nonviolent action'

A panel of speakers will discuss "Nonviolent Response to Terrorism: marking the fifth anniversary of 9-11 and one hundred years of nonviolent action" at Swarthmore College on Monday, Sept. 11, from 4:15-5:30 p.m. in the Scheuer Room, Kohlberg Hall.

George Lakey, nonviolent action trainer and 2006-07 Lang Professor for Issues of Social Change, will join Tom Hastings, author of Nonviolent Response to Terrorism, to consider feasible nonviolent alternatives and their historical precedents and to discuss whether nonviolent direct action can challenge non-state terrorism as effectively as it has challenged state terror.  They are joined by special guests, Our Voices Together, represented by co-founder Lynne Steuerle Schofield Swarthmore Class of '99.

Five years after the horrific attacks by Al Qaeda on the World Trade Center in New York, we will take time to reflect on how the United States as a nation has chosen to respond. The government has adopted a foreign policy of 'war on terror' that emphasizes invasive intelligence gathering and military action.

At the initial cost of over three-thousand civilian lives, Operation Enduring Freedom continues to struggle with Pushtun and Tajik Resistance in Afghanistan, while Operation Iraqi Freedom has failed to bring stability to Iraq, which may be sliding toward a sectarian civil war. We are left to ask whether violent responses such as these have successfully undermined non-state terrorist organizations.

George Lakey is the Eugene M. Lang Visiting Professor for Issues of Social Change 2006-07 teaching in the Peace and Conflict Studies Program at Swarthmore College. He is the founder and executive director of Training for Change and author of A Strategy for a Living Revolution and A Manual for Direct Action.

Tom Hastings is director of Peace & Nonviolence Studies at Portland State University and author of Nonviolent Response to Terrorism and Meek Ain't Weak: Nonviolent Power and People of Color.

This event is sponsored by the President's Office, Peace and Conflict Studies; the Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility, War News Radio, Our Voices Together, and the Department of Sociology and Anthropology.

For more information, please visit the Peace and Conflict Studies Program website at http://www.swarthmore.edu/SocSci/peace/ or contact Lee Smithey at LSmithe1@swarthmore.edu .