2013 Peace & Conflict Studies Summer Workshop
For four days in June 2013, students from St. Mary's University and Northwest Vista College participated in an experiential learning workshop about international peace and conflict transformation. The theme of this summer's workshop is drug related violence along the border of the United States and Mexico. There were expert speakers on the subject of the drug cartels, such as the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) Resident Agent in Charge of the border between San Diego and Tijuana, the busiest land border crossing in the world. There were also two speakers, Matthew Scrimgeour and Aaron Gordon, from the Corrymeela Peace & Reconciliation Centre in Northern Ireland. The speakers came to discuss how Northern Ireland moved from a conflict to a post-conflict society, even when many thought that the violence there was not simply intransigent, but actually unsolvable. The two discussed the role of the Corrymeela Centre before, during and after the thirty year period of violence from 1969 to the signing of the peace treaty on Good Friday of 1998. |