NetVUE’s November 2023 Webinar focused on vocational elements of peacemaking and conflict resolution in the context of existing conflict and violence in various parts of the world, such as Gaza and Ukraine.
Engaging students in the classroom continues to be an essential part of undergraduate education but is often a challenging task. Current world events can be complicated, stressful, and difficult to understand. NetVUE’s November 2023 Webinar focused on vocational elements of peacemaking and conflict resolution in the context of existing conflict and violence in various parts of the world, such as Gaza and Ukraine. Exploring meaning and purpose as peacemakers can help students connect academic topics as well as personal development to global and local realities. On November 21, three speakers discussed experiences and strategies for how we can integrate global events in our work with students.
John Barton (top left); Geoffrey Bateman (top right); Jonathan Golden (bottom left); Rachel Pickett (bottom right)
Occasionally, in the middle of class, I’m visited by a horrible thought: what if a shooter burst through the door? There I am, up in front of the room, a prime target, and there my students are, tucked away behind laptops or bent over notebooks. Could there be a more vulnerable moment? What would I do? What could I do? Fear, panic, rage, and helplessness swamp me all at once. Like many universities, mine has installed special barricading devices for classroom doors that can be used in case of emergencies. But these devices only work if you have time to use them. Like most faculty members, I’ve had training in spotting and reporting at-risk students. And, like many of us, I’ve had active shooter training, which, to be honest, doesn’t feel much more comforting than the tornado drills in elementary school where we knelt in the halls and covered our heads, or the old A-Bomb drills that had students kneel beneath their desks. The same horrible thought comes to me sometimes during large public events as well as small, routine outings like a meal in a restaurant, a trip to the mall, sitting in church.
How do we think about mass shootings vocationally? I do not know. But we need to. Our vocations and our lives are imperiled by them. As professors and teachers and, really anyone in any workplace, place of worship, or public venue, we are always under this looming cloud. What’s more, it’s in the back of our students’ minds, and it will be in their futures. Vocational studies must equip students to flourish in a world wherein lives and their purposes are randomly, senselessly, and suddenly, snuffed out. “Dying ain’t in people’s plans, is it?” A teenage character, reflecting on the death of a kid his own age, says in Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses. Increasingly, it is in ours. Seen this way, the reality of our vulnerability to mass shootings fits Wadell and Pinches‘ definition of a called life: “a fundamental way of thinking about ourselves and about our place in the world.”
In my course, “Art, Religion, and Politics in the Hispanic World,” I asked students to consider ways to overcome the silence that conversations on religion and politics often produce. At the same time, I invited them to think of how the interconnections between art, religion, and politics could help transcend silence and, instead, offer new possibilities for identity formation, community, and the discovery of new commitments and life purpose.
Picasso’s Harlequin (1918).
From an early age we are taught not to discuss politics and religion with others. Why is that? Is it because we do not want to offend our neighbor, or is it for self-protection? Is it out of respect for other peoples’ views, or is to prevent confrontation? Although any of these reasons can be justifiable, none of them are totally sufficient because, to my mind, they produce the same result: silence. If vocation requires listening we must try to overcome silence and encourage dialogue with respect for difference and dissent. Of course, this is often easier said than done. To authentically listen and to speak our truth sometimes we need to be willing to turn things upside down. Inversion, as a reversal of order, can help us see things anew, give new meaning and perspective even to contradicting ideas and discouraging experiences in order to pursue our callings with hope.
