After a War: Repair, Recovery and Reconciliation

CRN: 30296
Note: This 8-credit program meets from 6 to 9:30 p.m. on eight Tuesdays (Mar. 30, Apr. 6, 20, 27, May 4, 11, 25, Jun. 1), from 9:30 to 5:30 on four Saturdays (Apr. 3, May 8, 22, Jun. 5) and will attend a conference in Seattle on Saturday April 24 and Sunday April 25. First class meets in SEM 2 C1107.

In this program we will examine the complex adjustments, aspirations, and investments needed to enable people and indeed society to return to the ways of peacetime life. As faculty we are specialists in personal and social health and diplomacy/justice, but the range of issues we will consider also includes infrastructure reconstruction, the arts, education, and the other elements needed for the re-creation of civic society.

The program will highlight several case studies — for today: Iraq and Afghanistan, in the recent past: Mozambique and the North of Ireland, and in the more distant past: the US Civil War and Korea. We will examine international interventions (for example economic and food aid, UN Peacekeepers etc.) and domestic activities (for example Reconciliation Commissions, trauma treatment and refugee repatriation). We will consider the health effects of war, both direct and indirect. And we will develop a sophisticated understanding of the ways that post-war societies can and cannot recover their health and well-being, in the broadest sense of the terms.

This program connects to our life experience today — we face all these issues once fighting dies away in Iraq and Afghanistan.