The Many Voices of Peace Studies: Celebrating 50 Years

Michael Ugarte

Michael Ugarte, director of Peace Studies for three years in the early ’90s, volunteered to take on his role in the program to save it from extinction after the first two directors – Joel Bleifuss and Robbie Lieberman – left the university.

Though a course was taught before Bleifuss and Lieberman came onboard, it was not a university-approved course.

“It was just people wanting to study issues of war and peace,” Ugarte says. “And it was clearly a manifestation of all the years of struggles against the war in Vietnam.

“So, Joel got together with some students interested in trying to figure out how society works, how a society could produce such a war, and what we could do to prevent it in the future. And that was what was going on when I got here. But what really gave it legitimacy is when Joel got in touch with members of the Columbia community: businesspeople, professionals, Veterans. We had a lot of Veterans of the military involved in the program.”

In the Beginning

It was Bleifuss who first got Ugarte involved in Peace Studies. Ugarte, who never served in the Armed Forces, but considers himself a veteran of the struggle to end the war in Vietnam, was also in favor of black liberation. He was working at the university as a professor in 1979 when he met a Spanish woman who just happened, at the time, to be Bleifuss’ girlfriend.

“I have a Spanish background,” he says. “And she and Joel asked me if I’d like to be involved in Peace Studies. And I said, ‘yes.’ And so, I was on the faculty advisory committee after that. And I’ve been involved with the program ever since – more active some years and less active others – but I’ve been generally involved with it for a long time.”

Role as Director

In the early years, Ugarte was half-time in his regular department, Romance Languages, and the other half in Peace Studies.

“When I was faculty director, it was really a difficult job,” he recalls. “I don’t remember those years with a great deal of fondness except in terms of the engagement with students. It started out with almost zero funding. And if it weren’t for Friends of Peace Studies, the community organization that wanted to address itself to issues of war and peace, I think we probably would have just gone by the wayside and not been funded at all.”

The first few years he was there, Ugarte worked the entire program. In addition to teaching the introductory course, he was the administrator and secretary.

“We had no support at all,” he says. “We slowly and surely got more support, and the next director didn’t have to deal with all that stuff. And now, especially with Clarence Lo who had recently been over there for the past few years, we really got some administrative support.”

The only true Peace Studies course offered was Introduction to Peace Studies when Ugarte arrived. Other courses were cross listed with other departments and taught by various professors from various disciplines. Ugarte moved forward to offer more Peace Studies classes and was successful in doing so, but they were still cross listed. These were classes such as women’s studies, black studies, and other interdisciplinary studies.

Moving Upward With Help From Others

Ugarte said Charlie Atkins also had a great deal to do with the program’s success. The local businessman contributed a great deal financially to the program, as did peace advocate Gertrude Marshall.

“Charlie was really one of the spearheads in terms of getting the program going,” Ugarte says. In addition to financial support, he often met with the Dean to provide input into why he believed the program important and also suggested potential curriculum offerings.

Ugarte, who is current professor emeritus for Romance Languages and Literature as well as Peace Studies, says he felt it only right he got involved in peace and social justice movements.

“Professors have a responsibility to engage students in issues having to do with peace and justice,” he says. “One of the things all of us have to try to do is to struggle against the myth and stereotype of the program – that it’s purely ideological, that there’s no academic substance, that the people involved in it are all sort of flaky. That’s not the case at all. Every person I’ve met who’s been involved with the program is committed to critical thinking.”

A Different Way of Looking at Things

He says Peace Studies is different from other programs in several ways. One is that they study the content of problems they need to face.

“And another really important part of what we do that separates us from other programs is that we are committed to offering solutions, to think about a certain issue and just not describe it. A lot of students come out of other classes saying, ‘Boy, I’ve learned a lot in that course, but what’s the solution? What am I doing here?’

“There are so many other departments that study the same things we study, but we try to engage students to ask, ‘How would you solve this problem? How could it be better? To understand aspects of world conflict, to understand why it happens. And to try to figure out ways in which we could prevent similar things from happening.’”

Negative vs Positive Peace

So, is war sometimes necessary? “That’s an issue that comes up in terms of peace studies,” Ugarte says. “There’s a distinction between negative peace and positive peace. We can say that we are at peace right now. The United States is at peace. But we just ended this horrific war in Afghanistan, and the U.S. is still involved in Iraq. But we are not directly in a war. But that doesn’t mean there’s peace. Right?

“It’s not that peace is not just the absence of war. Peace Studies involves justice, harmony in which citizens feel they have a stake in the government, that they have a voice in the government, and they’re comfortable with what the government does, and they are allowed to participate in that government. And that’s what the ideal is.

“Sure, in many ways it’s utopian. And we are accused of being utopian. I get so much of this from students: ‘Oh, professor, you’re just so naive because human beings are just a rough bunch and you’re never going to turn them into peaceful, loving people.’

“But that’s a very simple-minded way of looking at human nature. And one of the issues that comes up is human nature, human law. Is this inevitable? Is this absolute?”

Getting Young Men and Women Involved

He says today’s young people have the duty to try to solve the issues of war and issues that lead to war. “We have branched out into not only political conflicts, but gender and race issues, gay rights, calls for justice, environmental justice.

“And some ask, ‘What does that have to do with peace?’ It’s definitely a part of what we should be studying. Everything to do with environmental degradation leads to a lot of conflict. So, we have not just narrowly focused on wars and political conflicts, but on lots of issues that are related to conflict and violence.”

Missed Opportunities

He cites the Afghanistan war as one where other avenues could have been taken. As 9-11-21 terrorist attacks on U.S. soil.

“It was one of the first times ever that the United States got sympathy,” he says. “Worldwide sympathy for what had just happened and 3,000 dead. We missed a tremendous opportunity at that time to enter into a worldwide attempt to condemn Al-Qaida and condemn Islamist terrorism, but not necessarily by doing the same things they were guilty of.”

Ugarte says he’s seen a lot of changes over the years. “One of the most important changes is that’s Peace Studies has gone from a marginal program that was barely even acknowledged by the university to a legitimate program that has a series of courses, a major, research initiatives. We are actually part of the mainstream university.

“When I taught Introduction to Peace Studies, my first lecture of the semester I would always say, ‘I know you think that I’m one of these hippy professors who is going to be eating berries and grass, and thinking about love and understanding.’ And I got a lot of laughs with that because I know that’s what a lot of them were thinking.

“But Peace Studies is about things like food insecurity and discrimination and all of those other issues. We look beyond just the issues of war and peace and specific conflicts that have to do with war.

“I would hope that years from now, a civil society, would consider Peace Studies as a legitimate interdisciplinary course of study – as much as biology or history or English.”