Students:Whether you candidate won or lost,
use this election as peacebuilding opportunity
Note: I plan to email this to all of my students as soon as we have a presidential winner.

Nov. 4, 2020

Dear Peace Studies and Peace Journalism students:

Despite the divisions and angst it has generated, the presidential election nonetheless offers us the opportunity as peacebuilders to put our craft into practice. This is true regardless of which candidate you supported.

If you supported the winner, congratulations. As a peacebuilder, I would hope that you would accept the results graciously and with humility, and not celebrate by using inflammatory language that might deepen partisan, racial, and cultural divides. Further, as a supporter of the winner, I believe it is your responsibility to reach out to those who supported the other candidate to build bridges, in the parlance of peace studies and peace journalism. During these discussions, begin with listening, and with showing empathy for the emotional impact from the election results. Let them know that your vote was cast with the best intentions, for the leader and policies you feel will be most beneficial for the country, and was not a ballot cast against the supporters on the losing side.

This difficult discussion is not optional. The father of peace studies, Dr. Johan Galtung, wrote this week on Twitter that failure to conduct these demanding conversations will lead almost inevitably to violent conflict. As a “winner,” you are uniquely positioned to demonstrate your humility by initiating these discussions.

If you supported the losing candidate, I’m sorry. Keep in mind that during your life, you will assuredly win and lose some electorally. Politics are cyclical.

Even though the results seem very personal, I believe that they are not. Sure, there are obnoxious forces on both sides who do vote with malice in their heart—racists, xenophobes, homophobes, haters of Christians and rural Americans, elitists, etc. But I believe that 99% of us vote with the best intentions, not intending to personally harm anyone. Some of these good intentions arise out of ignorance and social and geographical isolation, and offer an opportunity to you as a peacemaker to educate those around you about our diverse society. This is a chance for you to build bridges as well. Begin by listening carefully, and don’t be argumentative or pedantic.

Regardless of how your candidate performed, you can harness your anger and disappointment, or energy and enthusiasm, to build peace. Begin by looking around to find the impediments to positive peace in our society. Positive peace, as theorized by Dr. Galtung, is the attitudes, institutions, and structures that create and sustain peaceful societies. Positive peace is sustainable and built upon a foundation of justice and opportunity for everyone. Make it your mission to seek out and combat impediments to positive peace, be they structural (laws, policies, procedures) or cultural (ideology, language, traditional attitudes). Your peace activism might, for example, battle sexism or racism, or seek to expand and protect religious and free speech rights. You could also monitor and call out news media that distort and fuel the divides in our society.

In short, what will you do as a peacebuilder to plant the seeds for a sustainable, lasting peace?

We can do better—better at communicating with and respecting one another, and better at fostering positive peace. We’ll never get rid of partisanship, but perhaps we as peacebuilders can help build a society where the nastiness and bitterness accompanying our elections becomes a relic of the past.

Peace,

Professor Youngblood