Is Peace Possible?

This panel brings together four experienced practitioners in the art of diplomacy, cooperation among governments and international organizations, exchanges, development assistance, and other tactics that make up strategies for peace that acknowledge the limits of military power. The speakers have hands-on experience with these options—and their successful outcomes—within the intricacies of many recent international conflicts. Any new American president will be compelled to consider such options.

The Moderator:
Susan Hackley, moderator, is managing director of the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School. She is a frequent commentator in the media on negotiation and conflict resolution, and speaks on and teaches negotiation skills around the world including in Hong Kong and mainland China, Italy, Spain, France, and Slovakia. She chairs the Board of Directors of the Alliance for Peacebuilding.

The Panelists:
Herbert C. Kelman is Richard Clarke Cabot Professor of Social Ethics, Emeritus, at Harvard University and former director of the Program on International Conflict Analysis and Resolution at Harvard’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. For many years he has been engaged in the development of interactive problem solving, particularly in regard to the Arab-Israeli conflict, with special emphasis on its Israeli-Palestinian component.

Monica Duffy Toft, associate professor of Public Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, focuses on areas of international relations, nationalism and ethnic conflict, civil and interstate wars, relationships between demography and national security, and military and strategic planning. She is director of the Initiative on Religion in International Affairs at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. A recent publication is “Russia’s Recipe for Empire,” Foreign Policy (September 2008).

Stephen Van Evera is professor of Political Science at MIT, where he teaches international relations. His research interests include the causes and prevention of war, U.S. foreign policy, and U.S. national security policy. His articles on nationalism and the war problem, American intervention in the Third World, and American defense policy, include Causes of War: Power and the Roots of Conflict (1999) and “Winning the War on Terror Requires a Mideast Peace
Settlement” (The American Conservative, March 14, 2005).

“Is Peace Possible?” continues the Catherine N. Stratton Lectures on Critical Issues, which the MIT Women’s’ League sponsors annually to honor Kay Stratton, a woman whose energy, grace, and intelligence have enriched the MIT community for more than fifty years. Kay is an active participant in the planning and execution of the Lectures, which are free and open to the public.