How do we transform violence into peace?

By Talia Bank ’23

Macalester’s Big Questions series brings together faculty, alumni, and President Rivera to discuss issues and ideas that shape our world in the classroom and beyond it. President Rivera traveled , Professor Karín Aguilar-San Juan, chair of Macalester’s American Studies Department, and Michele Garnett McKenzie ’91, deputy director at The Advocates for Human Rights, talked about how to transform violence into peace.

Here are five takeaways from that discussion:

• Violence often rests on division and alienation. Peace is the process of repairing the broken social ties that can lead to violence. By mending those broken links, we can create a more durable, authentic, and resilient peace.

• One can have good intentions but still be complicit in violence. Violence exists on individual as well as structural levels. Structural or systemic violence is a result of human design; by accepting a violent status quo, we perpetuate its harms.

• Language matters. We “crush” our goals, “combat” human rights violations, and describe some public policy as a “war” on drugs and poverty. The words we use to describe everyday life, and even the peace-focused initiatives we undertake, reflect a culture that glorifies violence. Noticing this and choosing different language is a step towards emphasizing peace instead.

• Face-to-face connections between people fosters peace. Social media can connect us, but it can also serve as a vehicle for alienation and stigma. Being aware of how we use social media and seeking out chances to connect with others in person, safely, is one way to further peace and quell violence.

• “Hope is something that we labor for.” We hope for a better tomorrow, not a perfect one. Therefore, we take on the challenge of achieving peace with the understanding that peace is a process well worth the struggle.

Want to know more? Watch the full conversation.