Peace and Nonviolence Discussion

The Peace Studies program is offering a new course this semester (Spring 2010): Philosophy of Peace. Many of the readings for this course are available online. If you are interested in following along, you can access the website that organizes these online readings here. This website will keep changing as the course proceeds, and so if you find it interesting, you might want to keep checking back to see the latest updates.

I mentioned this in one of our discussions:  Wars apparently are becoming more and more deadly for civilians. Of the deaths caused by each of the following wars, here are the percentages of those deaths being civilian deaths:

World War I: 14%
World War II: 67%
Wars of the 1980′s: 75%
Wars of the 1990′s: 90%

http://webarchive.afsc.org/youthmil/html/news/feb99/askus0299.htm

(The book those statistics are from is: WAR AND PUBLIC HEALTH, edited by Barry S. Levy and Victor Sidel, New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.)

Welcome to this site, set up for discussion of issues related to peace and nonviolence!  A group of faculty and staff at St. Lawrence University are participating in a Peace Studies Reading Group, and this group blog is set up as an opportunity for members of the discussion group to share further thoughts between our meetings.  Others are free to read and comment as well!  Happy discussing!