Israeli-Palestinian Grassroots Peace Initiative Comes to Ashland

Roots Tour: Two Truths in One Heart, Two Peoples in One Land

Wednesday, November 5th | 7pm

John C. Meyers Convocation Center - Trustees Room

Join us to hear about the challenging and groundbreaking work of this Israeli-Palestinian grassroots initiative for understanding, nonviolence and transformation in the West Bank.

Check out https://www.friendsofroots.net/ for more information.

Co-Sponsored by the Ashland University Honors Program.

Judge Not

A group of us here in Ashland are getting excited about our upcoming training in Nonviolent Communication this weekend. In preparation, we’re reading a book by the same title by Marshall Rosenberg, who developed this methodology in the 1960s and 1970s. 

Nonviolent Communication teaches us to be observant, to see and withhold judgment. This is the first step in NVC, but it’s crucial, especially when it comes to communication that in some way hopes to bring resolution with another person: to mitigate a conflict, to deescalate a situation, to alter some destructive or distressing behavior. Rosenberg emphasized that many conflicts escalate because people confuse observation with evaluation (judgment). When we mix in judgments, interpretations, or labels, the other person often feels criticized and becomes defensive. 

Call for Papers - "The Spirit of Peace" Conference 2026

Multi-disciplinary Conference to be held March 21, 2026

Ashland University in Ashland, Ohio

Call for Papers: Due December 20, 2025

In order to foster interdisciplinary conversations around peace and nonviolence, the Ashland Center for Nonviolence invites proposals for the 2026 John D. Stratton Conference, centered on the theme: “The Spirit of Peace.”

This conference will explore how spiritual, religious, and contemplative traditions understand, articulate, and display peace commitments. While many contributions to peacemaking arise from political, legal, and scientific efforts, enduring global movements have often drawn their deepest strength from spiritual sources: practices of prayer and meditation, prophetic traditions, rituals of healing and forgiveness, and visions of interconnectedness and beloved community.

We welcome proposals from across disciplines—including religious studies, theology, ethics, history, literature, philosophy, psychology, education, the arts, and peace studies—as well as from practitioners working in interfaith dialogue, religious education, activism, and other peace-related fields. Together, we seek to better understand the spiritual dimensions of peace and how they can be nurtured in today’s world.

Question to explore might include:

• How do spiritual and religious traditions define and pursue peace?
• What roles do inner transformation, mysticism, and contemplative practice play in peacemaking?
• How have faith-based movements contributed to nonviolent resistance or reconciliation?
• What are ethical, theological, and other related roots of nonviolence across religious traditions?
• How do religious and spiritual art, music, and ritual help to cultivate a culture of peace?
• How can and have spiritualities been linked to resilience and hope amid violence and injustice?
• How can spiritual formation be integrated into peace education?

Both theoretical and practical approaches are encouraged.

Submission Guidelines:

Abstracts of no more than 300 words should be submitted using the online submission form no later than December 20, 2025. Individual presentations should plan for 35 minutes with 10 additional minutes for discussion. Panel proposals are also encouraged.

Presenters are welcome to engage in academic or practical debates but should avoid unnecessary jargon and be mindful that our audience includes scholars, students, community members, and practitioners from a wide range of disciplines and backgrounds.

For more information on the Ashland Center for Nonviolence or for questions related to the conference, please contact acn@ashland.edu or (419) 289-5313.

Compassion and Humanity, Even in Battle

by Craig Hovey

This last Spring, I learned about a fascinating and surprising event that took place during a WWII battle 80 years earlier. In response to a suicide attack on the USS Missouri, the ship’s captain led a military burial for the pilot with full honors. It was the same kind of burial that any of the ship’s own crew would have received. None of the crew of the Missouri were killed in the attack.

See AP story here

The 80th anniversary of this event was marked by a ceremony aboard the Missouri, which is now a museum at Pearl Harbor. It was reported that the ceremony included grandsons of the captain, the mayor of Honolulu, and a Japanese city where kamikaze pilots often flew from. 

Stop it!

It may be that our historical moment is not unique, but it can feel like it is. There are enough tensions, outright violence, and injustices that must end to make one throw up one’s hands and shout “stop it!” 

Getting other people to stop what they’re doing, especially when it’s violent, degrading, or unjust, makes sense. In trying to accomplish this, we may get close to nonviolence, but we’re not there yet. 

Gaza Ceasefire is an Opportunity

Thank God for the recent ceasefire in Gaza. It's almost impossible to imagine a way forward toward lasting peace in the region, between Israelis and Palestinians. This is one of the world's most difficult and painful conflicts and obviously requires a lot of careful work. Deep and compassionate listening will be crucial, as it always is when seeking reconciliation and peace, no matter the scale—from interpersonal conflict to conflicts between nations and other groups. It is a simple and profound truth, here articulated by Thich Nhat Hanh and Oprah Winfrey several years ago:

Love: The Center of Nonviolence

Martin Luther King, Jr. was deeply influenced by Jesus and Gandhi, both of whom taught the importance of love. “At the center of nonviolence stands the principle of love,” King said to the War Resisters League in 1959. It is not enough to resist using physical violence; we must avoid the internal violence of our spirits. The following year, King confessed that he had been tempted to consider that loving one’s enemies really is something we should only apply at the individual, person-to-person level while a “more realistic approach” is the right path when addressing bigger things: social problems or conflicts between nations. But Gandhi’s teaching of satyagraha—truth-force—changed his mind. When we commit to always seeking the good of others, recognize the humanity of our adversaries, and trust love as a creative and redemptive force, we are holding on to and expressing deep truths. 

There are deep divisions in our nation and our world, some of which will likely be on display today if we look around. We should remember that the way of peace is a love that allows no room for physical violence, for sure, but also allows no room for the internal violence of our spirits, hearts at war with others. How can I recognize and value the humanity of my adversary? Are they speaking something I should listen to and learn from? How can I be open to hearing it? It can be hard to ask these questions and even harder to answer them with our lives. It is much more normal to shut out my adversaries, to hate them, to ridicule them in my heart or to my friends, to draw attention to their failures, and then, if possible, to try to get them to change their ways by some coercion. This is normal but very unfortunate because this means that I still have a heart at war and a violent spirit. It does not align with the truth of nonviolence founded on love. King taught a better way.

In Memoriam: Jimmy Carter

The life of James Earl Carter, Jr., the 39th President of the United States of America (1977-81), provided me an up-close introduction to politics at an impressionable age. In 1976, I was a second grader living in middle Georgia, a few hours’ drive from Carter’s rural hometown of Plains. My brother and I accompanied my parents and their friends as they campaigned for him on days’ long car drives around south Georgia. We waved green-and-white posters at intersections, attended speeches and parades, wore “Jimmy Carter for President” T-shirts and pins (I saved the one in the photo), and visited small businesses to deliver brochures. Because Carter had served prior as a State Senator from Georgia (1963-67) and Governor of Georgia (1971-75), his hallmark smile and dialect were familiar to me. From my perspective, at the time of his Presidential run, Jimmy Carter was not a new public figure. But he represented for me novel directions for public life and offered a fresh point of reference for what a committed political life could achieve.

An exemplar of servant leadership, Carter exhibited a commitment to peace during and long after his time in the Oval Office. As President, perhaps his most notable achievement was his mediation of the Arab-Israeli conflict. He invited Anwar El-Sadat, President of Egypt, to meet with the Israeli Prime Minister, Menachem Begin, at Camp David in 1978 with an aspiration of reaching a peace agreement. Although the talks did not yield a withdrawal of Israeli settlements from the West Bank, Egypt did formally recognize Israel, and elected governments were established in the West Bank and Gaza. The Camp David Accords were instrumental in closing a longstanding conflict between Israel and Egypt and marked the first treaty between Israel and any Arab country. Carter had said that one of the greatest goals of his life was to bring peace to Israel, and expounded on this idea in his 2006 New York Times Bestseller, Peace Not Apartheid.

His post-Presidency years are often lauded for his volunteerism, both close to home and abroad. He helped build houses with Habitat for Humanity, a non-profit organization founded in Americus, Georgia, that aims to help low-income families build and own safe, decent, and affordable housing. Carter had been instrumental in early promotion of the organization and volunteered construction time well into his eighties. In Atlanta in 1982, he founded The Carter Center with the purpose of advancing human rights, alleviating human suffering, and improving the quality of life for people in 80 countries. He observed and monitored 113 elections in Africa, Asia, and Latin America through The Carter Center’s Democracy Program and fought disease through the Center’s River Blindness Elimination Program (cartercenter.org).

Source: Habitat.org

Throughout my adulthood, I have visited Carter’s Boyhood Farm in Plains, Georgia multiple times and attended numerous “Conversations at The Carter Center” in Atlanta. I heard Rosalynn Carter speak passionately about mental health issues at a Rotary Club meeting in Macon in the 1990s. The most memorable occasion was hearing Jimmy Carter teach an adult Sunday School class at Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains in the early 2000s. Sitting in the first few pews of a modest church, listening to him expound upon the story of Daniel in the Lion’s Den, and then meeting him in the churchyard afterwards, will remain with me as a salient, enduring memory.

The life of Jimmy Carter (1924-2024) impacted millions of people, improving health and housing for vulnerable populations worldwide. His commitment to peace through diplomacy and conflict resolution remains central to his legacy. His efforts to find peaceful solutions to international discord, as well as advancing democracy and human rights, were acknowledged by a Nobel Peace Prize in 2002. His humility and spirituality that served as a foundation to his political views affected me profoundly as a young person and have served as a role model to me well into adulthood. May he rest in peace.

—Dr. Katie Brown, Dean, College of Arts & Sciences, Ashland University

Let It Begin With Me

The song “Let there Be Peace on Earth and Let it Begin with Me” was written by Sy Miller and Jill Jackson in 1955 and is often associated with the Christmas season. The angel and the heavenly host proclaimed peace on earth to shepherds in the region of Bethlehem. The Miller and Jackson interpretation not only encourages self-examination and self-criticism, but also empowers each of us to be a part of the peace that is coming. Like Gandhi’s “Be the change you want to see,” we are taken from the thought of the overwhelming character of violence and conflict in our world and given a task: start with ourselves.

In one of the most influential recent books on conflict resolution, The Anatomy of Peace by The Arbinger Institute, the authors begin by observing a common assumption when facing conflict, whether within families, at work, or at the geopolitical scale. It is usually assumed that others must change. The authors think this is a mistake that results in conflicts continuing as root causes go unaddressed or even are perpetuated in attempts to solve the very problems that they are causing.

If the root causes of all conflict—including the ones that we feel most powerless to address—are the same, overcoming them can certainly begin with me. The authors of The Anatomy of Peace identify bitterness, envy, indifference, and resentment, although the list can be expanded to include greed, fear, the need to control, and so on. Their point is that conflict cannot just be identified by actions since conflict refuses a heart at peace and nurtures a heart at war. Identifying these things gets us thinking about root causes. Wars can be hot or cold, violent or not violent. But a war that is cold and not outwardly violent is still a war. A heart at war refuses to believe the humanity of other people and sees them as objects and obstacles. A heart at peace emphasizes our shared humanity, looks for ways to cooperate, and commits to finding shared solutions to problems.

Nonviolence is about so much more than not being violent. It is about cultivating a heart at peace, open to discovering forms of violence within ourselves that we did not know to call violence; welcoming truth from strangers, including enemies; and looking for what is good and beautiful in ourselves and around us. The Arbinger Institute and countless others who put in the hard work to resolve (or reframe) conflicts will point to this work as usually being arduous and drawn out, especially since hearts at war can be resistant to embracing an alternative. But there’s no shortcut around dealing with the root causes, which is why peace on earth begins with each of us.

Means are Everything

In 1924, Gandhi responded to the claim that any means are okay as long as the goal is a good one. He disagreed. "I would say," he wrote, "'means are after all everything'. As the means, so the end. Violent means will give violent Swaraj [ self-rule] ... There is no wall of separation between means and ends . . . I have been endeavoring to keep the country to means that are purely peaceful and legitimate. . . . If we take care of the means, we are bound to reach the end sooner or later."

Gandhi's commitment to uniting means and ends contrasts strongly with so much of what we witness. Today, for example, in Israel's war with Hamas in Gaza, more than 35,000 Palestinians have been killed, ceasefire negotiations have stalled, and other nations are turning their backs on Israel while Israel's leaders express their willingness to stand alone.

Sixty years ago in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, King said, "I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality." To him, the reason for this appears to have been that unarmed truth and unconditional love are actually the nature of reality itself. In the same speech, King urged that humanity must "evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love."

Likewise, Gandhi taught that "nonviolence is the law of our species." It is the power that believes that the best way to a just and peaceful future is to act justly and peaceably all the time. But it's more than this since nonviolence isn't just a belief about something essential to our humanity; it is the truth about our humanity.

I was recently speaking with an Israeli who commented that Israel has already lost its war with Gaza. He might not have phrased his point in terms of nonviolence. But the idea is there: "Violent means will give violent self-rule."

I often point out that, at ACN, we don't spell "nonviolence" with a hyphen. This came to us as a suggestion from Arun Gandhi when ACN was being founded 20 years ago. It's got to be nonviolence rather than non-violence. Otherwise it's a problematic word because it can imply that violence comes first, that violence is the more fundamental reality of things, and then some of us feebly come along try to oppose it.

But it is nonviolence that comes first just as peace is a deeper reality than violence. We must not let violence set our agenda. Many of us have made this point countless times. But it's always a challenge to accept and believe since there is clearly so much to oppose. How does one hold onto and convey the conviction that peace is a deeper, more fundamental reality than violence?

I think about Keon, a student leader here who started Ashland's Black Lives Matter protests in 2020. He would sometimes shout at passing drivers, "We love you no matter what!" It occurred to me that this, more than anything else, was what made our demonstrations on Ashland Main Street peaceful. It's not so much that we kept from using violence. That's not the heart of nonviolence. It's as King said: "The foundation of such a method is love."

I must not shame or humiliate my adversary. I need to work to identify shared problems and figure out what shared solutions might be. This work is itself already peace-work and it's easily swept aside when we're self-confident, self-assured, self-righteous. What if my adversary is actually part of my truth-finding process? What if she is speaking something that I need to hear? How will I make sure that I'm open to hearing it?

There is, as Gandhi taught, an experimental quality to all of this: experimental and risky. Satyagraha, we remember, literally means "truth-force" and Gandhi would talk about his own experiments with truth. All of this is an experiment with truth—the truth that love is the foundation of all things. It would be very foolish to try to live as though that were true if it isn’t. But this is why nonviolence must be dared. 

Craig Hovey

Executive Director, ACN

Statement on the Ongoing Violence in Israel and Palestine

At the Ashland Center for Nonviolence, we mourn the violence in Southern Israel and Gaza. Our hearts break over the loss of life, safety, and livelihood in Israeli and Palestinian communities. As conditions appear to worsen and tensions increase, a humanitarian crisis is unfolding.

We stand by the principles of nonviolence now more than ever. Violence should never be confused with justice nor can it achieve true and lasting peace. The dignity of every person is precious and must be upheld by policies and processes of community-building. Every individual has inherent worth regardless of their background, beliefs, or circumstances, emphasizing the need to treat all people with respect and fairness.

At ACN, we are committed to increasing understanding, especially when situations are complicated. This understanding takes patience, humility, and education. We also recommit ourselves to being guided by core principles of peace and justice. These look for shared solutions to problems for building a better future and are not content with only ending conflict—although this is of course no small goal, especially at the moment. Instead, as Martin Luther King, Jr. taught, creating a future situation in which violence isn't needed to protect and avenge can be achieved by meeting human needs and delivering justice evenly. Love names the preference for mutual benefit over retaliation and hostility.

There are no easy solutions to most conflicts, not least the conflicts between Israel and Palestine. The present escalation calls to mind the depth of the historical wounds involved, generations of persecution, pogroms, and displacement; decades of incomplete and sadly inadequate attempts at peacemaking, and ultimately the need for our world to devote sustained energies and resources to preventing the kinds of horrors we are seeing and to ensuring peaceful and just coexistence.

Peace,

Craig Hovey
Executive Director
Ashland Center for Nonviolence

Jennifer McBride Delivers the 2023 Rinehart Lecture in Practical Theology

Jennifer McBride, an author, educator and theologian, delivered the 2023 Rinehart Lecture in Practical Theology at Ashland University on Wednesday, February 22, at 7 p.m. Her presentation, which was free and open to the public, focused on the findings of her book, You Shall Not Condemn: A Story of Faith and Advocacy on Death Row. The event was held in room 115 of the Dauch College of Business and Economics (400 College Ave.). 

The Rinehart Lecture in Practical Theology is an annual endowed public lecture honoring the memory and continuing work of Don Rinehart, who inspired generations of AU students as a faculty member for 46 years. For more information on the Rinehart Lecture series, contact Peter Slade, Chair of the religion department and professor of religion at Ashland University, at (419) 289-5237 or at pslade@ashland.edu. 

Click HERE to listen to the audio from the Lecture, and HERE to purchase McBride's book. 

ACN Attends PJSA Annual Conference

 

From October 14th through October 16th, the Ashland Center for Nonviolence (ACN) participated in the annual conference of the Peace and Justice Studies Association (PJSA) at the University of Mount Union. Elizabeth Buttil, the Assistant Director of the ACN program, and three Peace Scholars, Josie Brown, Tyler Easton, and Carolina Amparo, spent two days learning about Peace movements, theories, and leaders.
    
The PJSA conference was organized into a series of activities such as roundtable discussions, lectures, film screenings, and poetry readings. On the first day, our ACN team joined a roundtable led by attendees from Berea College about  “Teaching and Learning Nonviolence through Being Nonviolent.” Afterward, we listened to a presentation by one of the members of the ACN programming committee, Dr. Wim Laven, titled “What are They Telling Us?” Dr. Laven’s work was focused on “ the role of forgiveness in healing a divided America” according to a “broad range of responses from students and young adults.” Friday ended with a keynote lecture by E. Ethelbert Miller, who spoke on “Writing Poetry and Asking Questions: The Journey of an African American writer.”

    

Our ACN team presented the following Saturday morning. We spoke about “Peace Scholars as Models for Peacebuilding on College Campuses” and explained the initiatives ACN has held in the past few years, such as book clubs, tutoring programs for local students, peace vigils, and forums. We took a variety of questions from audience members who were affiliated with similar organizations across the country. Overall, the ACN panel highlighted the interests and strengths of our Peace Scholars and displayed the different ways we can promote a welcoming and respectful campus community.

    After our panel discussion, we split up for the remaining two sessions and listened to different topics. Some learned about peace and justice issues pertaining to the “Colonial, Postcolonial, and Decolonial” moderated by Dr. Michelle Collins-Sibley, who is another member of our programming committee. Others focused on topics such as “Exploring Gender, Sex, and Sexuality.” After eating some phenomenal Thai food for lunch, we made our way back to the awards banquet and plenary speech.

 The PJSA conference was an opportunity for educational and personal growth. As Peace Scholars, we were able to practice presenting our work before an audience and, as participants, were free to explore the aspects of Peace Studies that called to us. We are incredibly grateful to our Assistant Director, Elizabeth Buttil, and all other members and donors of ACN who made this experience possible. 

Carolina Amparo an undergraduate student majoring in Political Science and Political Economy at Ashland University. She is a Peace Scholar with the Ashland Center for Nonviolence, as well as an Ashbrook Scholar and a Diversity Scholar. 

October Event Wrap-Up: Dispelling the Myths and Misconceptions

 

 

    On Tuesday, October 25th, Egyptian-American and police officer, Sarah Shendy, presented her Anti-Islamophobic training to the Peace Scholars, students of the criminal justice and religion departments, and AU community members. She mainly explained and corrected common misconceptions about Islam and shared her experiences as an Muslim woman in America. She also emphasized the necessity of understanding Muslims correctly not only for police officers, but for people of all professions because of the problem posed to Muslim Americans by stigmas and misunderstandings by other Americans. Some of the main points about Islam that Sarah touched on in her talk were the Five Pillars of Islam, the Arabic language, and the rights of Islamic women. She also talked about how the Muslim community is growing in America, especially within Hispanic communities in Texas. This was something I had not known before the talk, as I had not realized how widespread the Muslim community is in America, nor that it is growing so rapidly. This further stresses the importance of being educated on Islam. As a female police officer, Sarah is passionate about her job and thankful she was able to pursue the career that she was interested in and well suited for: “I didn’t choose the profession; the profession chose me.” She said that she cares most about helping victims of abuse, and that she even likes to send notes to those she helps and check in with them to see how they are doing. This talk was very informative about both Islam and the perspective of police officers in America, and it was a pleasure to meet and learn from Sarah.

Anne Casey has Philosophy and Political Science majors, as well as History and Ethics minors. She is an Ashbrook Scholar and Intern, an ACN Peace Scholar, and an Honors Program Scholar. She works as a communication coach at the Writing and Communication Center and as a philosophy tutor. She is Vice President of  the Thomistic Institute and is a ballet teacher and chair of health and safety for the AU Dance Company.

2022 September/October Event Updates

 The ACN is off to a great start for the '22-'23 academic year! Our programming committee worked hard over the summer to outline a series of events around the theme of Welcoming the Stranger. The following programs have taken place or are upcoming this month. Please stay tuned to the blog for more updates and reviews of all of the happenings at the ACN!

On Friday, September 16th, our Peace Scholars joined with AU's international students for an event entitled Welcoming Our Global Friends: An ACN/ISS Dinner. Students enjoyed pizza and games and spent time getting know each other. This was a very successful kick-off event for us.

On Tuesday, September 27th, the Social Justice Book Club held a special in person meeting with author and AU faculty member Dr. Kelly Sundberg. Participants discussed Kelly's book, Goodbye Sweet Girl: A Story of Domestic Abuse and Survival. The campus advocate from Safe Haven, a local domestic violence shelter, was also on hand. The group was able to hear Kelly's story, learn more about the writing process, and share insights on interpersonal relationships and how sacrifice might or might not play into loving someone. We are grateful to Kelly for sharing her work with us. 

On Monday, October 25th, at 7pm in Bixler 309, the Social Justice Book Club will meet to discuss Notes on an Execution. While this novel is a work of fiction, we hope to discuss the impact of World Day Against the Death Penalty. This is a day to advocate for the abolition of the death penalty and to raise awareness of the conditions and circumstances which affect prisoners with death sentences. A zoom link will be available and any questions can be directed to jbrow106@ashland.edu.

On Tuesday, October 26th from 6-8pm the ACN is co-sponsoring an event entitled Dispelling the Myths and Misconceptions: Interacting with the Middle Eastern and Muslim Population. Sarah Shendy, a Copley Police Officer, will lead this presentation and workshop which will be held in the John C. Myers Convocation Center. 

Feel free to share your experience at any of these events, express any comments, or ask any questions. We hope to see you in October!

Analysis of Western Media Portrayals of the Ukraine/Russia War, 24 Feb. 2022 to Now: Perspectives from Peace and Conflict Studies, Critical Rhetoric, and Discourse Analysis

On 24 Feb. 2022, Russia’s military attacked Ukraine. Since then, Russia has continued to escalate war in Ukraine, which Russian President Vladimir Putin and many Russians view as a ‘breakaway republic,’ similar to how China views Taiwan.  This bloody conflict has been unfolding before our eyes in real time, with major coverage on television, with Zoom speeches and reports shared via social media.  Ukraine’s plight, as portrayed through mostly sympathetic treatment in Western news media, has riveted audiences worldwide.  My analysis here will examine persuasive appeals evident in social media and televised visual imagery, videos, disinformation and propaganda.  I will focus on the rhetorical interplay of visual symbols across multimedia platforms, which convey contrasting narratives and histories laden with polysemous meanings across Europe, the U.S., and the wider international community.

Ukraine’s outward international messaging has been effective, whereas Russia’s has been stodgy, old fashioned, and mostly inwardly focused.  Ukraine has relied on social media while Russia has used tightly controlled television formats.  Domestically, Russia has limited web news sharing, with many websites shut down and everyday Russian citizens access denied.  In contrast, Ukraine’s social media and televised narrative has triumphed internationally, as its moral appeals from citizen journalists inside Ukraine have proven to be irresistible.  Ukraine appears as the underdog in this fight, the David to Russia’s Goliath.  Many Ukrainians have been posting very persuasively about their plight to social media such as SnapChat, Twitter, and TikTok, galvanizing international support. In recent weeks, the U.S. has approved and begun funneling massive infusions of state-of-the-art ground weaponry for the outgunned, outnumbered, and airplane-less Ukrainian army.

One of the most poignant, persistent and persuasive pieces of media outreach has been the flurry of compelling speeches given by Ukraine’s President, Volodomir Zelensky.  Zelensky has appeared, to date, via Zoom (or a secure equivalent) before political and arts and cultural audiences, including:  the UK’s Parliament, the U.S.’s Congress, Germany’s Bundestag, and Israel’s Knesset, the Doha Forum in Qatar, and the Venice Bienniale.  In all of these portrayals, including scenes of him in the streets, bunkers, and hospitals around Ukraine’s capital city of Kyiv, we see Zelensky meeting with his besieged citizenry and soldiers, or appearing alone in empty streets of Ukraine’s capitol, Kyiv, urging courage and solidarity to Ukrainians, and beseeching Western powers for help.  Zelensky often appears in social media that gets repeated in traditional television or print media, standing alone, holding up his cellphone and speaking informally, as you would with a friend or family member on your cellphone.  A youthful former TV actor in his forties who got into politics in a life-imitates-art trajectory, President Zelensky’s charisma and charm comes bursting through our TV and social media screens.  He appears casually, usually wearing a simple army-drab t-shirt or polar-fleece jacket, speaking briefly and seriously, requesting weaponry and a NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) or European Union (E.U.) no-fly zone to be enforced over Ukraine.  While Ukraine eventually received weapons and training for them, the no-fly zone is a request which, at this writing, has yet to have happened.

Meanwhile, in Russia, in stark contrast to the casual immediacy and youthful vigor portrayed by Ukraine’s President Zelensky, in ornate Moscow governmental drawing rooms viewers see a highly formal, stiff, emotionless President Putin.  Putin couldn’t be any more opposite from Zelensky if he tried.  Putin’s media-televised portrayals have shown him most often, wearing a frumpy suit and tie, seated at the end of an absurdly long table across from visiting dignitaries like France’s President Macron, with Putin fending off attempts to broker a peace deal in the early days of the conflict when Western powers hoped a Russian retreat might be possible.  Putin looked like a comedic character of a Saturday Night Live (SNL) skit, and  Internet memes abounded, such as one spoof of an extra-long, narrow, Ikea-styled table, called ‘the Putin.’  Eventually, some weeks later, Putin must have realized both his latest war and his ‘messaging’ were not going the way he had planned, so he then appeared in a Trump-styled political rally in a stadium, this time wearing less formal attire of a turtleneck sweater and puffy jacket, attempting to muster a phoney smile on his bloated, aging face.  

 Russia has rolled out a fact-based news blackout, with a new, ever more draconian law passed to imprison anyone, whether professional or citizen journalists alike, with serious prison time for any reporting on what the Kremlin has called variously their ‘campaign to liberate Ukraine from Nazis,’ or their ‘limited military operation’ or ‘special peacekeeping operation’ in the Donetsk and Luhansk areas of Ukraine’s east (a.k.a. the Donbas), and southern port cities like Mariupol, which, under continuous Russian bombardment, have been reduced to rubble.  Televised and social media posts show villages and cities resembling a Terminatoresque, post-apocalyptic landscape of destroyed buildings and streets littered with burnt out husks of vehicles, and bodies of the dead strewn about or semi-interred in hastily dug shallow single or mass graves.   

All of the combined social and televised media present us with highly potent rhetorical invitations to recall Allied narratives from World War II, making comparisons between Ukraine’s plight today and France’s and other European nations’ occupation by the Nazis in WWII.   While such comparisons are historically and factually inaccurate, they nonetheless constitute potent persuasive appeals that are heightened with gripping viewing on TV and in our cellphones and other hand-held devices.  There is a life-like immediacy to these stories, which appear as modern-day equivalencies to the tender emotional connections readers in earlier generations felt from stories like Slaughterhouse 45 or The Diary of Ann Frank.  As a result, Ukraine’s leader Zelensky has been compared to England’s Winston Churchill at the height of WWII’s Blitz on London. Similarly, his citizens appear on social media, narrating breathily personal stories from apartment-bloc basements and bunkers, building an image of brave solidarity among Ukrainians.  

There is extreme pathos and persuasion conveyed via imagery, voices, and wails of refugees fleeing war, and worse, of Ukraine’s many citizens who were unable to flee, like the elderly and others, especially injured children and pregnant women.  Such sensitizing sights and sounds have clearly resonated widely, rendering European and American audiences malleable, including the U.S. Congress, which just last week approved billions of dollars of expenditures to send Ukraine’s army unpiloted weaponized drones along with additional conventional ground weaponry like Howitzers.  

Underneath all the at turns horrifying and entertaining visuals and stories, in this conflict much has been hidden but, through analysis, may be revealed.  First, Ukraine’s misfortune of its proximity to Russia—a nuclear armed superpower—has been mitigated by the international media’s predilection for Eurocentric news stories.  As critics like Afghanistan’s media owner, Saad Mohseni, have keenly observed, reverse-racism in media’s white privilege operates here.  For it is not the plight of people of color worldwide beset by wars and conflicts, from Myanmar’s Rohinga to Ethiopia’s beset Tigray residents, to Palestinians throwing rocks at soldiers on the West Bank, but rather the majority of Ukrainian people simply being white has guaranteed greater, more sympathetic media attention and audience identification among media viewers in the U.S., Europe, and internationally.  Subject matter of what media covers and how that coverage occurs is driven in part by potent but ‘invisible’ influences like racial and cultural attitudes held by powerful media owners and editors.

Second, another lesson learned is that nukes trump all ground forces.  Indeed, while Western military pundits gloat that Putin’s Russian military miscalculated badly, and have reorganized as a result to Ukraine’s south and east, what bears noting instead is that the Kremlin correctly calculated NATO’s Achilles’ heel is comprised of quasi NATO-protectorate nations like Ukraine or Moldova.  As an aspirational but still non-member state of NATO, until the past couple of weeks, Ukraine has been largely left to fend for itself, with NATO even refusing to grant Ukraine to take up Poland’s offer of two old, Soviet-era MiG jets.  The dithering inaction of NATO and the E.U. reveal starkly its member states’ fears and disagreements.   

To date, despite Zelensky’s repeated appeals, Germany has been unable or unwilling to shut off its Russian oil and gas spigot, which drives Germany’s economy but is de facto a vast income source funding this war. Only time will tell if Western European and U.S. powers were wise (or not) to cave in with belated weapons support in response to Putin-led Russia’s nuclear saber rattling and ground assault on Ukraine and its civilians.  There is much at stake in this conflict:  it is important to pay attention not only to what we easily see in media, but also to ascertain what is being left out of prevalent news narratives, and why.  

About the Author: 

Ellen W. Gorsevski (Ph.D., Pennsylvania State University) is Associate Professor in the School of Media and Communication (SMC), and Affiliated Faculty in American Culture Studies (ACS), Peace and Conflict Studies (PACS), and Women's, Gender, & Sexuality Studies Program (WGSS) at Bowling Green State University (BGSU). Dr. Gorsevski’s research focuses on contemporary rhetoric of peacebuilding, social justice and environmental justice movements. Research interests include environmental rhetoric and critical animal studies, international/intercultural rhetoric, political rhetoric, social movement rhetoric, media criticism, and nonviolent communication. Her sole authored books include: Dangerous Women: The Rhetoric of the Women Nobel Peace Laureates (Communication and Social Justice series of Troubador Publishing, 2014) and Peaceful Persuasion:  The Geopolitics of Nonviolent Rhetoric (SUNY Press, 2004).  She has published in journals such as Journal of Multicultural Discourses; Quarterly Journal of Speech; Western Journal of Communication; and Environmental Communication.  She serves on the Steering Committee of the Ashland Center for Nonviolence.

References

Anonymous.  Do not call Ukraine invasion a ‘war’, Russia tells media, schools. Al-Jazeera.com.  Retrieved 22 April 2021 from: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/3/2/do-not-call-ukraine-invasion-a-war-russia-tells-media-schools 

Anonymous.  ‘Double standards’: Western coverage of Ukraine war criticized. Al-Jazeera.com.  Retrieved 25 April 2021 from:  https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/2/27/western-media-coverage-ukraine-russia-invasion-criticism 

Escalante-De Mattei, S. (22 Apr. 2022). Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky shows up at the Venice Biennale with urgent message.  Retrieved 25 April 2022 from:  https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/ukrainian-president-volodymyr-zelensky-venice-biennale-1234626319/ 

Halpirin, J. (21 Apr. 2022).  Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky makes an urgent plea at the Venice Biennale for the Art World to shine a light on Ukraine. ArtNet.com.  Retrieved 22 April 2021 from: https://news.artnet.com/art-world/ukraine-venice-biennale-volodymyr-zelensky-2103257 

U.N. Meetings Coverage. Describing relentless Russian Attacks against his country, Ukraine President challenges Security Council to act for peace or disband United Nations.  U.N. Retrieved 22 April 2022 from:  https://www.un.org/press/en/2022/sc14854.doc.htm 

To See Yourself as You are Seen, As We See You

 

Lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith, August 7, 1930, Marion, Indiana[1]

 

“’Make America great again . . .’ there [is] a blind spot in this idea of the America that once

was great or this place deep in the historical past where America was great. [. . .]

. . . we only feed into the erasure of the actual history of America and the actual history of

my ancestors by deciding that we would rather not see their images.”

Barry Jenkins[2]

 

On Friday, May 14 Barry Jenkins’ 10-part adaption of The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel, began streaming on Amazon Prime.  The series, four years in the making, debuts at a pivotal moment in our shared history: just shy of one month after Derek Chauvin’s conviction in the murder of George Floyd, ten days shy of the one-year anniversary of that murder and just two weeks shy of the centennial of the Greenwood Massacre.[3]  If the arc of the moral universe does indeed bend towards justice, this ground breaking visual narrative of our nation’s racial legacy may be understood as yet another point on that trajectory. 

Like Whitehead’s original novel, Barry Jenkins’ series offers another contribution, in powerful visual language, to contemporary neo-slave narrative.  Neo-slave narrative challenges the past in the light of the present while simultaneously challenging our vision of the present by remembering the past; in so doing these narratives reconstruct United States history from the bottom up and through a Black gaze.   His visual neo-slave narrative, also like Whitehead’s novel, intersects with speculative fiction – specifically the New Weird -- and irrealism.  Of the two narrative genres I’ve just named “speculative fiction” is perhaps the most familiar; think fantasy or science fiction. These are works in which the setting is other than the “real” world, involving supernatural, futuristic or other imagined elements and written as commentary on contemporary society.   The “New Weird” emerges from fantasy to overturn cliché and twist the tradition; it has been described as a genre that subverts the fantasy conventions in order to unsettle rather than console the reader as it critiques our current moment.  Which brings us to “irrealism,” that is, fiction inclined toward realism yet engaged with the unknowable, indefinable or unimaginable – think Kafka’s Gregor Samsa who awakes one morning from troubled dreams to find he has been transformed into a giant cockroach.

In the first episode of the series, Jenkins plunges us into a horrific plantation scene: a fugitive Black man – Big Anthony -- has been recaptured and returned to the plantation; as an example to other enslaved people who might contemplate escape he is whipped, hung up by his arms, set on fire and burned alive.  The scene unfolds in the presence of a lunch party at which the plantation owner’s guests eat, drink and are entertained by this spectacle of black pain.  There is something both familiar – sickeningly familiar – and yet uncanny, irreal about this scene. 

These are familiar images from our not-too-distant past: photographs of lynched Black men, women and children transformed into keepsakes or souvenirs in the form of postcards.   The illustration at the top of the page is taken from one such memento -- the lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith in Marion, Indiana on August 7, 1930.  I have cropped the image to direct the viewers eye away from the bodies of Shipp and Smith and instead to the onlookers in the crowd.  The photograph offers but a sampling of those in attendance – some ten to fifteen thousand whites were involved in the lynching – a young couple who appear to be on a date, an excited child, an older man who gazes directly into the camera pointing proudly at the two bodies hanging above the crowd.

Jenkins’ tragically familiar scene becomes uncanny, indeed irreal, because the director forces a change in the viewers’ perspectives.  Rather than the white gaze of the guests directed at the spectacle of black pain, after the fashion of the souvenir postcard, we see the crowd of guests through the Black gaze, through Big Anthony’s eyes.  More than that, in this agonizing moment Jenkins gives Big Anthony a voice: he says to the other enslaved people forced to witness his murder “no more masters, no more slaves,” then to his brutalizer, “God damn you, God damns you.”[4] As we the viewers are compelled  to look through this Black man’s eyes, the critical gaze shifts from the racial object – the non-white Other – to what has been, conventionally, the racial subject, the white self.  Object becomes subject and subject, object.

The Underground Railroad has been in production for four years and in it Barry Jenkins anticipates, replicates and reinforces one of the most remarkable events of this last pandemic year.  I refer to the murder of George Floyd on May 25, 2020.  Former police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on George Floyd’s neck for nearly nine and a half minutes, an agonizing spectacle captured through a Black gaze on the smart phone of a courageous young Black girl.  The video, as is by now typical, went viral but reaction to it was far from typical: it sparked a racial uprising across the United States and the globe; a hitherto unprecedented diversity of people in the hundreds of thousands, perhaps in the millions, rose up to demand racial justice, an end to police brutality.  Videos of Black men, women, and children brutalized or murdered by the police have become commonplace; scarcely a week goes by without news of yet another such recording uploaded to social media – what made this video different?  I suggest that the difference lies, as with Jenkins’ depiction of a Black man’s lynching, in a forced shift of perspective.  We do not see George Floyd’s murder through police body cams, through the white gaze.  We see him die through the eyes of a teen-aged Black girl.  We see Derek Chauvin as he, like so many others have been, is seen, through a Black gaze.  For some of us this was tragically familiar, we know and recognize it; for others it was uncanny, irreal . . . something unknowable or unimaginable.

The uncanny takes that which is familiar, makes it strange and thereby enables critique.  The irreal engages with the unknowable, indefinable or unimaginable and thereby empowers us to imagine it, define it, recognize it.  W.E.B. DuBois with The Souls of Black Folk was said to have drawn away the veil concealing Black experience from the white gaze.  In his reimagining of Colson Whitehead’s novel Barry Jenkins does something equally revelatory: he draws away the veil concealing whiteness and the function of white supremacy from white people.  Just as the video of George Floyd’s murder enabled white viewers to see and to recognize what has long been familiar to Black folk in this country, Barry Jenkins, “virtuosic landscape artist” as he is named in the New Yorker, allows us to see ourselves and our country for what and who we are.    We are a country created and recreated by immigrants.  We are a country that tells immigrants to go back where they came from; a country that says that to anyone who isn’t white, even if their ancestors came here hundreds of years ago or were here before Columbus. We are a country whose citizens have the right to freely assemble and to protest.  We are also a country where there is “no excuse for the destruction of property” but a seemingly infinite series of excuses for the killing of unarmed Black men, women, and children – we call it qualified immunity.  But this is not all that we are, neither is it who we have to be.  If we are to change, to move towards a just and peaceful community we must see ourselves whole.  We must be willing not only to be seen but to see ourselves as we are seen.  Why is this?

While the arc of the moral universe may well bend towards justice that destination is far from inevitable.  Most of us associate this phrase with Dr. Martin Luther King jr.  But King was in fact paraphrasing part of a sermon delivered in 1853 by the abolitionist and Unitarian minister Theodore Parker.  In that sermon Parker says, “I do not pretend to understand the moral universe.  The arc is a long one.  My eye reaches but little ways.  I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by experience of sight.  I can divine it by conscience.  And from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice.”[5]  I quote him here at length as his words convey an uncertainty that Dr. King’s do not.  He tells us that he doesn’t so much understand the moral universe but envision it through the prism of his faith. It is through his own conscience and his own actions that justice may be achieved.  Barry Jenkins’ The Underground Railroad, like the novel it reimagines and so many other works gifted us by Black artists over the generations, offers us a different lens, a different mirror.  Not the mirror of Erised in which we are mesmerized by the deepest and most desperate of our desires but rather the picture of Dorian Gray in which we see the degradation of the soul and the dangerous consequences of sin and excess.

If you are committed to social justice, I recommend the series to you.  It is brutal, beautiful, and offers us a glimpse of the sublime – a greatness beyond all possibility of calculation, measurement, or imitation, that which is unknowable, indefinable or unimaginable – empowers us to know it and moves us to action.

 

 

 

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[1] Loewentheil Collection of African-American Photographs, Cornell University Library https:digital.library.cornell.edu/catalog/ss:1508533, Creative Commons, May 17, 2021

[2] Terry Gross, “Underground Railroad Director Barry Jenkins Sees Film as An ‘Empathy Machine.’” Fresh Air. May 10, 2021 https://www.npr.org/transcripts/994616279

[3] Also known as Tulsa Race Massacre – May 31 to June 1, 1921 – when white mobs, many of whom were deputized and given weapons by city officials attacked Black residents and businesses of the Greenwood District in Tulsa, Oklahoma; the single worst incident of anti-black violence in American history, the attacks destroyed more than 35 square blocks of the district, leaving some 10,000 Black people homeless and resulting in property damage in excess of $1.5 million in real estate and $750,000 in personal property (equivalent to $32.25 million in 2019).  Some 800 people were hospitalized while some 6,000 displaced Black residents were interned in large facilities. 

[4] Terry Gross, op. cit.

[5] Melissa Block, “Theodore Parker and The ‘Moral Universe’.” All Things Considered. NPR (Sept 2, 2010). For a complete account of Parker’s sermon, “Of Justice and the Conscience,” originally published in Ten Sermons of Religion (1853); the Elibron Classics (2001) edition is a facsimile reprint of that 1853 edition as published by John Chapman, London.

Michelle Collins-Sibley is Professor of English & Director of the Africana Studies Program at the University of Mount Union.  She currently serves on the board of the Peace & Justice Studies Association and the ACN steering committee.