There are good reasons to celebrate the Sri Lankan government’s final victory over the Tamil Tiger rebels last week. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) were one of the most brutal and repressive terrorist organizations in the world, with a crypto-fascist ideology focused on the personality cult of their now-slain leader Vellupillai Prabhakaran. The LTTE pioneered the use of the suicide bomber, killed two heads of state and tens of thousands of civilians, and pressed child soldiers into their ranks. During the final days of the Sri Lankan Army’s assault this past month, the Tigers shot Tamil civilians trapped as human shields if they attempted to flee. Their demise has given Sri Lanka its best chance of ending a long-standing ethnic conflict that has troubled the island nation for more than 25 years.

However, the Sri Lankan government’s triumphant celebrations and promises of a peaceful future mask deep differences about the consequences of the war’s end for the different communities that call Sri Lanka home. . .

READ MORE . . .

Photographer Melanie Blanding is Asch's first featured artist. Learn more by clicking on one of her images at right.

Asch’s newest project is up and running!  Under the direction of Associate Director for Conflict and Visual Culture Initiatives Jonathan Hyman, the Asch network is expanding to include photographers, fine artists and filmmakers exploring the interaction between conflict and visual expression.   We look forward to new kinds of collaboration and cross-pollination as a result of this new venture.

To visit our online galleries, click on any of the images in the sidebar.  A description of each artist’s work and contact information is displayed along with the images.  For more information on the CVC project, or to recommend an artist for the online galleries, please contact jhyman@brynmawr.edu.

Etelle Higonnet

executive producer

WEAPON

a film about sexual violence and War Crimes in Cote d’Ivoire

Thursday, April 23, 2009
Carpenter B21
4-6pm

click on image for more information

From cartoons of Muhammad in a Danish newspaper to displays of the Confederate battle flag over the South Carolina statehouse, acts of cultural significance have set off political conflicts and sometimes violence. These and other expressions and enactments of culture–whether in music, graffiti, sculpture, flag displays, parades, religious rituals, or film–regularly produce divisive and sometimes prolonged disputes. What is striking about so many of these conflicts is their emotional intensity, despite the fact that in many cases what is at stake is often of little material value. Why do people invest so much emotional energy and resources in such conflicts? What is at stake, and what does winning or losing represent? The answers to these questions are explored in Culture and Belonging in Divided Societies.

Editor Marc Ross is William Rand Kenan, Jr., Professor of Political Science at Bryn Mawr College, and co-director of the Solomon Asch Center. He is author or editor of seven books, including Cultural Contestation in Ethnic Conflict (2008, Cambridge University Press).

The impact of war and armed conflict on children, and the various roles they play during wartime, is a timely subject of keen interest that cries out for historicizing and in-depth investigation. Scholars from around the world in fields such as sociology, anthropology, psychology, history and religion have accepted invitations to speak at the conference. They will be joined by human rights lawyers and NGO officials.  Ishmael Beah, author of A Long Way Gone: Memoir of a Boy Soldier, will give the keynote address.

The “Children and War” conference will be held in Philadelphia and on the Rutgers–Camden campus. The conference is free and open to the public.

To register online, visit http://childhood.camden.rutgers.edu/children_war/index.html

]]> http://aschcenter.blogs.brynmawr.edu/2009/03/20/children-and-war-conference-april-3-5-2009/feed/ http://aschcenter.blogs.brynmawr.edu/2009/03/16/375/ http://aschcenter.blogs.brynmawr.edu/2009/03/16/375/#comments Mon, 16 Mar 2009 15:38:30 +0000 lbeck http://aschcenter.blogs.brynmawr.edu/2009/03/16/375/

Jennifer Lind

Dartmouth College

Governments increasingly offer or demand apologies for past human rights abuses, and it is widely believed that such expressions of contrition are necessary to promote reconciliation between former adversaries. Lind challenges the conventional wisdom by showing that many countries have been able to reconcile without much in the way of apologies or reparations.

Dr. Lind is the author of Sorry States: Apologies in International Politics(Cornell University Press, 2008).

Poster link: http://www.brynmawr.edu/aschcenter/asch908/activities/lind032309.pdf

Here is a link to the book on the publisher’s web site: http://www.cambridge.org/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=9780521690324

Academia, human rights organizations, and governments agree: partition is no solution to communal conflict. Indeed partition is just another name for ethnic cleansing   Chaim Kaufmann has a radically different view, based on years of study of dozens of cases.  He argues that, once large-scale communal violence has begun, separation of populations and partition is the best way to reduce loss of life. Applied to Iraq, his argument leads to the conclusion that peace and safety depend on defensible boundaries for nearly homogenous populations of Shi’a, Sunni, and Kurds.  The U.S. should not, however, encourage the Kurds to seek de jure sovereignty because Turkey would not permit it.  The U.S. also should not encourage the Sunni to try to re-unify Iraq; an attempt to re-establish minority control could destabilize the whole of the Near East.  The U.S. should try to remain helpful to the Shi’a majority, who control the rump of Iraq, so that they will not turn to Iran for assistance and may be dissuaded from raising Shi’a insurgencies in oil-rich Gulf countries.  Perhaps most controversial of all, Kaufmann argues that the “surge” has mostly provided secure borders between ethnic enclaves in Baghdad, especially for Sunni enclaves surrounded by Shi’a.  U.S. troops should offer secure transport from these enclaves before quitting Iraq.  Today these ideas are shocking, tomorrow they may seem obvious.  Many lives depend on the right answer.

cordially invites you to a lecture by

The Rachel Hale Professor in

Science and Mathematics

Clark R. McCauley

“Political Radicalization:

Are We Winning the War of Ideas

Against Jihadi Terrorism?”

Tuesday, March 3, 2009
4 p.m.
Thomas 110 - Bryn Mawr College

Reception to follow in The London Room, Thomas Hall

Clark McCauley uses a pyramid model of radicalization to argue that sympathy for terrorist goals can be distinguished from support for terrorist attacks.  He presents polling data to show how sympathy and support for terrorism can be tracked over time.  These data indicate that the U.S. is not winning the war of ideas against jihadist terrorism.