International Scholars Launch Weekly Online Public Conversations on Ending Violence.
Every Tuesday 11AM New York, 5PM Paris, 6PM Amman starting May 18, 2021, free, online, open to the global public. #IPEVLive
This article was co-authored by Michel Wieviorka and Hal Plotkin
On May 18, 2021, the International Panel on Exiting Violence (IPEV) will begin a series of eight live weekly online public conversations reviewing the results of its four-year scholarly research project on violence and how it can be brought to an end. The multidisciplinary research project, funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York in partnership with the Paris-based Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, focuses primarily on the Middle East North Africa (MENA) region, whose turbulent history and renewed turmoil provides an instructive microcosm for those seeking to understand and end violence.
On eight successive Tuesdays, IPEV members will share their findings and invite questions from the public as they detail the additional research and other actions necessary to extinguish violence, including strategies to deal with the political, social, psychological and cultural issues that inevitably arise in its aftermath. Panelists participating include senior social scholars from the Arab Council for Social Sciences, the Mediterranean Universities Union, the European Council on Foreign Relations, the United Nations, the Brookings Institution, and the World Bank, among others. The relatively trivial amount of funds spent on the project to date, less than $1 million, pales in comparison to last year’s total global military budget of roughly $1.83 trillion. However, notwithstanding this enormous resource mismatch IPEV’s early results indicate that bringing violence to its end is indeed possible and would cost far less overall than ignorantly extending its stubborn but often remediable causes.
Violence is a highly profitable business for those who traffic in its tools. Ending violence, by contrast, promises a prosperity that is far more widely shared. It will be a tragedy if the IPEV effort itself ends after this initial phase. But maintaining its momentum will require the attention of the world and sustained support, which is one reason IPEV’s leaders have elected to open these weekly conversations to a global audience, free of charge.
Operating in 11 transnational working groups, IPEV scholars tackled topics ranging from the role of gender in sustaining and ending violence, the impact of religious ideologies, state sanctioned violence, sectarian causes, familial influences, and how memories are created or maintained that reduce or amplify violence. Some notable conclusions have already captured global attention, including the counterintuitive but substantial evidence that terrorism is not typically rooted in economic conditions experienced by terrorists or their families. Other critical findings have not yet been widely understood, including the folly of trying to prevent social and political violence without considering the foundational role of gender inequality and violence directed specifically at women. The most hopeful findings, which are best considered at appropriate length in the type of weekly seminars planned, reveal the ways in which conducting rigorous social science-based research with widespread public participation can by itself create new opportunities for cross-sectarian partnerships capable of creating new realities.
Violence is not a medical issue. But during this global pandemic it is useful to recall how well-intentioned applications of early evidence-free medical science often accelerated pathologies under treatment. In many societies, we frequently see similar counterproductive and adverse outcomes generated by efforts to prevent violence and the individual suffering and mass dislocations violence causes ultimately fail when those interventions themselves rely on violence or threats of violence. The still-nascent IPEV effort by contrast sees violence as a social pathology that does not always exist everywhere. Violence exists at certain times in certain places under certain conditions. By understanding its causes and cures, humanity can take another step forward in its long march beyond its bestial origin toward a more humane form of civilization that is still under construction. You can participate in these public conversations by registering in advance at: IPEVLive
Michel Wieviorka, the scientific director of IPEV, is a former president of the International Sociological Association (2006–2010) and the former president of the Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme (2009–2019) based in Paris. Hal Plotkin, the moderator of IPEVLive, is a founding editor of public radio’s Marketplace program and a former Senior Policy Advisor in the administration of President Barack Obama.
For more information about registering to view IPEVLive see: https://www.ipev-fmsh.org/program/ Registration is free and open to the global public.
