Violence

Michael Shank

Paul Snodgrass — Mon, 11 Jul 2022 15:17:40 +0000

Michael Shank Paul Snodgrass Mon, 07/11/2022 - 11:17

Adjunct Faculty, Carter School
Director of Engagement at the Carbon Neutral Cities Alliance
Adjunct Faculty at NYU's Center for Global Affairs

Personal Websites

Michael Shank's Website

Biography

Dr. Michael Shank is the Director of Engagement at the Carbon Neutral Cities Alliance, a group of international cities committed to achieving aggressive long-term carbon reduction goals. Michael’s professional career includes leading press and/or policy shops at the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, Climate Nexus (clients included the United Nations, Vatican City, The White House, and Fortune 500 Companies), U.S. Congress, Friends Committee on National Legislation, Institute for Economics and Peace, Biodiversity Northwest, Puget Soundkeeper Alliance and more.

Michael’s academic career includes a Ph.D. from ��ӽ紫ý’s Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution and is focused on climate conflict. Michael is adjunct faculty at New York University’s Center for Global Affairs, where he teaches graduate courses on Sustainable Development, Power and Politics and Climate and Security. Michael also serves as adjunct faculty and advisory board member at ��ӽ紫ý’s Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution, where he teaches graduate courses on Writing for Policy and Practice and Communicating Conflict.

Michael is a former opinion columnist for the Washington Post and US News & World Report and a contributor to USA Today, CNN, FOX News, The Guardian, TIME, Fast Company, Newsweek and more. Michael lives in Vermont, where he serves on the boards of the Safer Society Foundation, Compass Music and Arts Foundation, and Barn Opera. Michael also serves on the advisory councils of the New Standard Institute and Global Environment Media. Social: Twitter | YouTube | Instagram

Collected Resources on the Ukraine Invasion

Paul Snodgrass — Thu, 07 Apr 2022 17:28:28 +0000

Collected Resources on the Ukraine Invasion Paul Snodgrass Thu, 04/07/2022 - 13:28

In This Story

Point of View Statement on Conflict in Ukraine: Negotiate Peace Now

The Carter School has collected articles and seminars written and presented by our faculty to help researchers, peacebuilders, and knowledge seekers understand the scope and impact of Russia’s war on Ukraine. As new resources become available, they will be added to this page.

Student Initiative

The Carter School Peace Engineering Lab and students of the “CONF 695- Peace Engineering and Participatory Approaches to Narrative” course have launched Sensemaking in Ukraine to bring to light the experiences of everyone who has been affected and better understand what can be done to improve the situation in the short term and prepare for peace.

Seminars

Karina Korostelina spoke at a web conference hosted by Al Jazeera Center for Studies on March 28 and 29, 2022 entitled “Redrawing Spheres of Influence: The Dynamics and Implications of the Russian-Ukrainian War.”

Karina Korostelina co-organized a panel entitled Conflict, politics and crisis in Ukraine Implications for EiE, an Education in Conflict & Emergencies Seminar on Monday April 11, 2022.

On April 6, 2022, the Russian and Eurasian Studies Program at ��ӽ紫ý held an online discussion featuring Karina Korostelina on the Current State of Russia's War on Ukraine with the participation of faculty with specializations in history, politics, and conflict analysis and resolution

Articles

Karina Korostelina was featured in Mason News on March 4, 2022: The conflict in Ukraine is fueled by Putin’s information war, Carter School expert says. Here’s what needs to be done.

Richard Rubenstein wrote The Ukrainian Conflict and the Imperial World System for CounterPunch on March 4, 2022.

Alpaslan Özerdem wrote an article for The Conversation entitled, What the Montreux Convention is, and what it means for the Ukraine war, published March 1, 2022.

Susan Allen and Paula Garb are signatories to the letter Independent American and Russian Women Call for Peace published in The Nation and in Russian at Новые известия on February 15, 2022.

Social Media Image Credit: Image by M.Bitton is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license via Wikimedia Commons.

Updated April, 12, 2022

Topics

Ukraine

School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution

Peacebuilding

Violence

Negotiation

International Relations

Climate change might be fueling ethnic violence. PhD candidate Emily Sample explores why

Mariam Aburdeineh — Fri, 04 Feb 2022 19:49:37 +0000

Climate change might be fueling ethnic violence. PhD candidate Emily Sample explores why Mariam Aburdeineh Fri, 02/04/2022 - 14:49

In This Story

Douglas Irvin-Erickson

Emily Sample. Photo by Shelby Burgess/Strategic Communications/��ӽ紫ý

As a junior and senior at Annandale High School in Virginia, Emily Sample spent her summers as a docent at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. She was a teenager who had just lost a friend to police violence, she said, and joining the museum’s Young Ambassadors Program resonated with her.

“I was fascinated and continue to be fascinated by this highly illogical idea of genocide,” said Sample, a PhD candidate at ��ӽ紫ý’s Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution.

Since then, Sample has built her career around atrocity prevention. In addition to earning a master’s in human rights and genocide studies from Kingston University London, she has worked as a genocide scholar and educator for Holocaust Museum Houston in Texas. She currently works for the Fund for Peace, where she said she supports their portfolio on human rights and international peacebuilding.

“The best way to prevent genocide is to help make violence not an option,” Sample said, explaining that an “us-versus-them” mentality can develop when people believe there is scarcity of resources, and are manipulated into thinking ethnic violence is an answer.

She’s further studying this at Mason, with a case study in West Nile, Uganda, where she lived and conducted research while enrolled at Kingston. Her dissertation examines structural mass atrocity prevention through the lens of climate change adaptation and gender.

Emily Sample (right) and her research partner Lina Zedriga in Uganda in 2013. Photo provided.

“If we make the climate better, if we empower women and have better access to clean water, then [Ugandans] will not be forced into making decisions about whether or not their family lives and the next family dies,” said Sample, who is interviewing Ugandans over Zoom.

Sample is also looking at the effects of environmental racism, where negative environmental impacts disproportionately affect people of color.

“The day-to-day life of someone in Uganda may be much more impacted [by climate change than a Westerner’s] because they’re having to adjust their farming season, and the type of seeds and livestock they’re buying,” she said.

These impacts have gendered implications, Sample said, as women often tend the gardens, cook, and walk to retrieve water.

Increasing education and environmental justice, such as reparations for environmental racism, while reducing scarcity fears, could alleviate many atrocity issues, she said.

Sample said she came to Mason because she wanted to dive deeper into the genocide prevention field.

“My hometown university has one of the best [conflict resolution] programs in the country,” said Sample, who also works with Mason’s Raphaël Lemkin Genocide Prevention Program.

“The Carter School is extremely unique in how many scholar-practitioners we have,” she said. “They integrate students into their work in unique and really pivotal ways that allow students to become practitioners.”

Though the PhD journey is demanding, Sample said her studies have been worthwhile.

“Every single professor is approachable, interesting and has contributed to me seeing the world in a variety of different ways,” she said.

“Emily is a rising star in genocide studies and conflict resolution, and the nexus of these fields with the practice of peacebuilding,” said Douglas Irvin-Erickson, director of Mason’s Genocide Prevention Program. “She’s a brilliant social analyst with many years of ethnographically informed research experience, and her deeply rooted sense of justice endears her to those with whom she works the closest.”

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Sample conducts interviews for her dissertation virtually. Here, two Ugandan men communicate with her from Africa via Zoom using a smartphone (bottom right). Photo provided.

Topics

Feminist Scholar Cynthia Enloe Delivers Keynote Address at Gender and Conflict Conference

admin_alpha — Tue, 24 Mar 2015 09:00:00 +0000

Feminist Scholar Cynthia Enloe Delivers Keynote Address at Gender and Conflict Conference admin_alpha Tue, 03/24/2015 - 05:00

Topics