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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).

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.

Expectations for what will happen if U.S. troops leave Iraq on schedule in 2011 range from a functioning federal Iraq to a client state of Iran to an even larger civil war to genocide. These expectations are based on different understandings of Iraq’s path from the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in April 2003 to where we are now. Were opportunities missed to construct a democratic Iraq without disintegration along communal lines? Has the ‘surge’ helped? How much has Iranian interference mattered?
Professor Kaufmann, who has written extensively on communal conflict and its management, will speak on these questions on Tuesday, February 24th, 4-5:30 pm. 

Poster link

The author of this Jerusalem Post column is Gershon Baskin, Co-CEO of the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information. Excerpt:

Several weeks ago I wrote that the war in Gaza “may have really been a ‘war of no choice.'” Following the recent leaks from the talks about the “imminent” release of Gilad Schalit, I have decided to expose what I already knew before the war began.

Two weeks before Israel launched its attack on Gaza in response to a breakdown of the tahadiyeh (the cease-fire) with three weeks of barrages of Kassam rockets and mortar shells against its civilian population, I had met with a senior Hamas personality in a European capital. This person is connected and in contact with the Hamas leadership in Gaza and in Damascus. Over the past 950 days since the abduction of Schalit, he has transmitted messages for me back and forth to the Hamas leadership in Damascus, including a letter from Noam Schalit to Khaled Mashaal on September 8, 2006 that led to the release of the first sign of life from Gilad, which was received by the Egyptians on September 9, 2006.

We spent several hours talking about the conditions to renew the tahadiyeh. Since the abduction of Schalit on June 25, 2006, my involvement behind the scenes has been in holding unofficial talks with various Hamas leaders in Gaza, Damascus and elsewhere, all seeking to advance the negotiations to bring Gilad home. For two and half years I have been trying to bring about a direct secret back-channel bypassing third party mediators in order to speed up the process.

Read the rest of the article HERE.

Asch Summer Fellow Diane Perlman’s open letter to President Obama regarding the Israel-Palestine conflict has been published in the Huffington Post.  She is organizing a group, CONFLICT ANALYSIS PROFESSIONALS FOR ENDURING SECURITY, to develop interdisciplinary strategies and communicate with the media and policymakers.   Her website is www.consciouspolitics.org.

Dr. Perlmans can be contacted at dianeperlman@gmail.com