Solomon Asch Center

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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).

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

Chaim Kaufmann, from Lehigh University’s International Relations department, spoke at Asch on February 24th.  Here is a brief summary:

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.

illustration from Al Awan

Asch director Clark McCauley’s essay on the Psychology of Terrorism, for the Social Science Research Council, has recently been translated into Arabic by Abdullah Housein.

Asch Summer Fellow Alan Keenan, who lives in Colombo and works for the International Crisis Group, is quoted in a February 18 New York Times article by Thomas Fuller.

Displaced ethnic Tamils, Feb 7, 2009.

TRINCOMALEE, Sri Lanka — Just north of here, after a string of recent victories, the Sri Lankan military is closing in on separatist rebels in what it calls the climactic battles of the country’s long-running civil war. But in this heavily militarized port city, there are no signs of jubilation.

Ethnic Tamil civilians waited on Feb. 7 to go to a camp for displaced people. Intense fighting is still expected in the territory that remains held by the rebels, where an estimated 200,000 civilians are trapped.

The government similarly declared victory here in Eastern Province 18 months ago. Though there are clear hints of reconstruction, the fear and lack of development apparent in the area reveal just how far the government still has to go to win the peace, even if its forces ultimately prevail on the battlefield.

The rest of the article can be found HERE.