How Come Peace Has Disappeared?

When I was in graduate school, which was from 1967 through 1971, the national news began every night with a report from Viet Nam. Those of us who were on college campuses during those years spent our evenings watching bombs being dropped on Viet Nam and then spent our mornings or afternoons demonstrating against those bombs in front of the campus building which housed the ROTC.

Anyone today who claims they were not involved in anti-war activities in the late 1960’s or early 1970’s was either not a college student or wasn’t born before 1955. If you were born after 1955, by the time you went to college, the war in Viet Nam was over and by the way, we lost.

What then started happening on college campuses was the appearance of what were called ‘peace studies,’ These were programs which offered an interdisciplinary major, combining courses in History, Sociology, Political Science, and prepared students to do whatever kids do who graduate from a four-year school.

There are now 128 colleges and universities which have a major in Peace Studies, except most have been renamed ‘conflict resolution’ programs, and I guess get students ready for careers in corporate HR. Which isn’t a bad way to earn a living, right?

Meanwhile, the whole notion of peace as a way to define relations between countries, as in ‘peaceful…