Reflections on the position(s) of Peace Studies

Abstract

About a week after the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, staff and students in the Department of Peace Studies at the University of Bradford met to begin discussing how the Department should respond. At one end of the spectrum was the conviction that the Department should publicly express a collective position. Both within and outside the Department, people were asking: What is the position of peace studies? At the other end, there was the equally strong conviction that it was both impossible and inappropriate for the Department to answer this question, that peace studies should provide a space for argument and debate about the complexities of the situation rather than presume a consensus that might not exist beyond a very general level. The first argument worried those who —justifiably —insist that intellectual freedom and debate is integral to academic activity. The latter disappointed those who —equally justifiably —expect peace studies to take a clear stance in favor of the values that constitute the very rationale of the discipline.