Institutionalizing Peace Studies in College Life

An academic administrator in a college, even one personally sympathetic to the values and knowledge base upon which peace studies rests, must confront many issues when faculty members wish to establish a peace studies program. At one level, these issues involve traditional ones such as budget, staffing, program proliferation, quality control, faculty politics, and student politics. At another level, questions of how the college's president, its governing board, and the community will respond to such a program must be satisfactorily answered. If the institution has little tradition of concern for social and moral values or has had a poor history of multidisciplinary programs, the issues will be more intense. In such circumstances, questions will inevitably arise as to whether the college should become involved in teaching some of the policy opinions embodied in peace studies, or whether the program will be objective in presenting controversial issues, or whether the faculty members are treating peace studies as an activist issue rather than an academic concern. Many of these matters can be addressed effectively, thus assuring the establishment and maintenance of a high-quality peace studies program.