By Floyd Rudmin
Professor of Social & Community Psychology

The idea of an MA in Peace Studies at this university is a thought provoking consideration with a number of complications. First, the master's degree is a relatively new and entrepreneurial type of degree that is incompatible with traditional pensum-based pedagogic methods. Second, peace studies is a relatively new academic topic and does not have a large or coherent body of knowledge. Third, because peace studies is new and interdisciplinary, it does not have any epistemological methods to differentiate robust theories or effective interventions from bad ones. For these reasons, an MA degree program probably needs some very original design that both sets it into traditional disciplinary departments, but also sets it separately from them. Plus, there is need to build in flexibility for failure.

MA Degree

Although the UK and France both have traditions of master's degrees, I am presuming that the idea here is to adopt the American MA model for this degree. This has some unusual qualities, which make it a little difficult to fit into the Norwegian university traditions. First, MA studies are short-term, just 2 years in length. Students or departments that drag MA studies out to 3, 4 or more years are considered failures. Second, the people entering this degree often do not have prior training in the topic, and often take an MA as a first step in changing careers. So, the MA has some grunnfag qualities to it. The University I came from in Canada just shortened its commerce MA degree from two years to one year, by admitting only students with natural science and engineering backgrounds, which allows them to cut out grunnfag level courses in math and analytical thinking. Third, the MA degree is the most vocational degree in the university. The goal is not pure knowledge or intellectual development. The goal is to quickly bring people to some level of expertise, in a way that they might give them some competence in handling real-world problems. The commerce MBA is probably the most common example of this.

Fourth, the MA is the most entrepreneurial of the university degrees. These are created and closed at a rather fast rate, compared to BA and PhD, program. If you enter the key-words "new MA program" into a web search engine, you will get a lot of hits. This entrepreneurial quality is possible a) because the MA takes relatively little of the university's resources, and b) because they are short-term degrees and thus can be changed or closed without having residual students to somehow take care of. It is possible for the University to take risks in creating MA degree programs, because if they do not work out, then change them or close them. All of these qualities make the MA more sensitive to market considerations that other degrees. The knowledge or expertise taught in an MA is relatively narrow, because there is not time to teach broadly. The students tend to be mature, people who have finished other degrees, who have held jobs, and thus who undertake new studies with specific practical goals in mind. If it is easy for one's own university to make new MA programs, that is true for the competing universities also.

So, in conceiving an MA degree program, the first and most important step is to conceive of the program's market niche, who will be the students taking this degree, and what vocational use will this degree have for them, or rather, for their employers? There is need to look at the MA degrees being offered at other universities, to see what is already being done, and what needs to be done. An empirical market-study is a sensible thing to do before launching a new MA degree.

MA Degree Pedagogy

The traditional Norwegian university teaching method has a) professors picking a pensum reading list, b) students self-studying the pensum, c) some of the students attending some of the lectures where they sit and take notes, and d) a single final exam at the end of the year. This traditional approach will probably not work with an American-style MA degree for a number of reasons. First, the MA degree does not have enough time available for this kind of inefficient learning. The single exam method gives students no feedback on how they are doing during the course of the study. The risk of repeating an entire year because of failing one exam is too great to attract mature students who have families and careers to attend to.

Second, the pensum approach is too static and locked-in for an MA program. Knowledge in applied fields is dynamic and changing very fast. Teachers and students need freedom to approach and to use the most current information and methods. Third, the intent of an MA program is not to acquire a storage of old information. The intent is to develop skills to find, evaluate, create, and use information in realistic settings.

The development of such skills requires that the student's minds be actively engaged with the topic, such that they are not consumers of the knowledge, but masters of the knowledge. Thus, the pedagogic method should escape the passivity of reading pensum and listening to lectures, and instead should emphasize the social and dynamic qualities of interacting with professors, with fellow students, and with the applied settings. "Create", "criticize" and "apply" are the key concepts. This requires teaching by seminars in which students craft arguments and research papers, present them, and discuss and defend them. Not once per year, as with the traditional semesteroppgave concept, but 8 or 10 or 15 times per year.

Lack of Knowledge

Peace studies in 2001 is something like psychology 100 years ago. Only a few universities had departments or issued degrees, and every new department had to face opposition from within the university. Most universities would wait 40 of 50 more years until psychology had more knowledge and some reliable research methods. William James, who stands as one of the greatest psychologists, was a professor at Harvard University. But Harvard would not allow a psychology department until 1936. In 1892, James described psychology thus:

"A string of raw facts; a little gossip and a wrangle about opinions; a little classification and generalization on the mere descriptive level; a strong prejudice that we have states of mind and that our brain somehow conditions them: but not a single law in the same sense in which physics shows us laws, not a single proposition from which any consequence can causally be deduced….This is no science, it is only the hope for a science."

Peace Studies in 2001 is something like that. It has little reliable knowledge, certainly nothing equivalent to the Periodic Table of Elements, or to Bayes' Theorem, or to transformational grammar, or to the Kreb Cycle. Various interventions to prevent, reduce or resolve conflicts have been proposed, for example, theories of "conflict transformation" or the "cultures of peace" concept. But these have not been tested by the double-blind standards required in pharmacology or psychology. The "cultures of peace" project is a cultural engineering scheme, but there is little evidence in history that such schemes have ever been successful. We do not know how cultures work, so it is unlikely that we can successfully manipulate them, setting aside the issues of whether or not it is ethical to manipulate people's cultures, or whether or not there are negative consequences to reducing cultural diversity. The Native assimilation programs across Canada in the 1950s, and 60s were cultural engineering projects. Individuals and whole communities were devastated by those plans to help the Indians by teaching them our language and values, based on good intentions. Communism in Russia was one great cultural engineering project. There we had a government for 80 years, with complete control of all institutions, and with no ethical restrictions. Part of the plan was to eliminate Christianity. But as soon as communism collapsed, people were lined up to go to Church. It had not worked. Esperanto was devised as a world peace proposal, that we would all switch to a common language. It has not worked.

Peace Studies lacks a body of knowledge for a variety of reasons. One is that the field is relatively new and simply has not had time to develop a body of knowledge. The Peace Research Institute in Oslo is one of the oldest such institutes in the world, and it was founded only four decades ago. A second reason is that Peace Studies lack epistemological methods. It has no way to separate nonsense from knowledge. What it does is 1) borrow from other disciplines and too often apply those methods in an inferior way, or 2) appeal to authority, very much as religions might (eg, "Einstein said that….." "Gandhi once wrote….." and what such famous people said is presumed to be true), or 3) rely on raw rhetoric (eg, finding truth in well-turned phrases, or repeating ideas over and over with passion and confidence).

A third reason that Peace Studies tends to lack knowledge and epistemological methods is that peace promoters tend to be in a hurry for action. They are not so much interested in knowing things but in doing things they feel good about. They tend not to have time for knowledge, and their confidence comes not from knowledge but from good intentions. But there are so many examples in recent history where that approach led to disaster. The practice of lobotomy, for example, or Canada's plan to change the culture of the Native Peoples.

A fourth reason that Peace Studies lacks knowledge and methods of coming to knowledge is that it tends to be interdisciplinary. Almost every academic discipline in the university has something to say about peace and war. Even a field as mundane as Accounting could study, for example, the opportunity costs of peace activism. Interdisciplinarity has the problem that people end up either weakly familiar with many disciplinary methods or they are skilled in one discipline's methods but unable to judge the quality of scholarship using other disciplinary methods. In either case, an interdisciplinary field like peace studies has an impaired ability to evaluate or critically develop its knowledge base.

A Proposal

On one hand, a general, interdisciplinary Peace Studies MA program will probably be unsuccessful because it will not have a coherent knowledge base, will not be able to bring students to an adequate understanding of any disciplinary method of epistemology, and will not develop skills suitable to applied settings. On the other hand, a Peace Studies MA degree set within a single discipline, for example, Social Medicine or Psychology or Political Science, will be too narrowly focussed and would be indistinguishable from an MA in that particular discipline.

Rather, I would like to propose the possibility of a "Constellated MA Program in Peace Studies". The idea would be to have a variety of vocationally focussed MA programs, set within specific disciplines. A Peace Studies theme can be conceived for most, if not every, department in the university, depending on faculty interest and on the ability to conceive of program niches and employment applications. Here are some possibilities:

MATHEMATICAL MODELLING OF PEACE AND WAR: Applied mathematics and physics have sophisticated analytic skills, and formal analyses often can detect processes that naïve spontaneous theorizing cannot. Math might be able to "discover" something about peace and war that was not obvious. Students completing this degree would be employed as theorists in large NGOs, Ministries of Foreign Affairs, the UN, policy think tanks, or the military.

WAR TERMINATION STUDIES: A different kind of MA in peace studies might be focussed on the ending of wars. This would be set within the history department, with focuses on the history of war truces and treaties. The students completing this degree would be employed by Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Ministries of Defense, NGOs, as well as within universities.

PEACE LOBBYING STUDIES: A different MA program might be set within a political science department, focussed on how to effectively lobby a government to change its war policies. The land-mines success is a good case in point. The students would primarily be people employed by NGOs and church groups.

PEACE CURRICULUM THEORY: Another MA program could be a pedagogic program to make specialist teachers, textbook writers, Ministry of Education curriculum planners, and teachers college professors. The goal would be to teach how to better bring peace topics into the primary and secondary schools (gymnasia).

THEOLOGY OF WAR RATIONALIZATIONS: Many wars and violent conflicts involve religions as the cause or as a rationalization. Our ethnic groups are often defined by religions. It is one of the ironies of religion, that each religion has text advocating for peace, but that each religion at one point or other has been fundamental to war. A staff of teachers from departments of theology could offer an MA that examines this. The students would come from church staff, but maybe include journalists and military officers who have to understand and explain inter-ethnic wars.

TORTURE REMEDIATION: The Dept of Social Medicine or Psychiatry might offer an MA medical speciality on the treatment of torture victims. The students would be medical staff from various countries employed by hospitals and refugee clinics.

MARITIME DISPUTES ARBITRATION: Even a department as unlikely as Fisheries could offer an MA in a peace-related topic. Fishery territorial disputes have to be among the most difficult, since the fish move around, and the sea has no landmarked or natural boundaries.

CULTURAL PRE-CONDITIONS OF WAR: War is not uniformly distributed across cultures, nor across history for any one culture. Before schemes to change cultures are promoted, there should first be empirical knowledge on what cultural qualities predict war tendencies. The Sociology or Social Anthropology departments could design a course teaching the holocultural methods of comparing cultures. Students would work in national ministries, large NGOs, and UN agencies concerned with global projects to reduce war.

MEDIATED THERAPY FOR CHILD WAR TRAUMA: The Psychology Dept. could perhaps offer an MA degree on the use of parents or school teachers to provide therapy to children experience post-war distress. The students would be psychologists, nurses, physicians, and teachers, employed by WHO, development agencies, or by the hospitals and schools of the various countries.

CRITICAL THEORY OF PEACE AND WAR: Complementing the formal analytic force of mathematics, critical theory as taught in literature departments or film studies has a similar potential to make discoveries that spontaneous or disciplinary thinking often miss. An MA in critical theory would be of use to theorists or activists in any other discipline, helping them to take a hard look at their own work.

The list of possible peace-related MA programs is almost endless, depending on which personalities in which departments have an interest. There will necessarily be an opportunistic aspect to this, to take advantage of the interests of the academic staff available. The conceiving of MA programs could also be driven, not by the department, but by the student base available. For example, Bardufoss is within UiTø's reach, and some of the disciplinary MA programs might be geared to the needs of military officers. Norway has a refugee population, and some of the programs might be oriented towards particular foreign conflicts, as in Sri Lanka.

The concept of a "Constellated MA Program in Peace Studies" is that UiTø would develop four or six or ten such MA concepts, each set in a specific discipline. The faculty in each discipline would be primarily responsible1) to teach that discipline's epistemological method, 2) to develop two or three seminar courses (not lectures) that focus that discipline's methods and knowledge base on the defined peace topic, and 3) to supervise a thesis study. The university should hold fast to the ideal that an MA in Peace Studies will be based on knowledge, not on good intentions or on undisciplined rhetoric. The crowning component of a "Constellated MA Program in Peace Studies" would be a weekly graduate seminar, in which the students from all of the disciplinary MA programs would meet together to present, discuss, and criticize their own presentations and those of their professors and invited speakers. This is what would give the program its breadth and its intellectual edge. If there were sufficient funds, it might also be possible to arrange a 6 month's experience in a field of conflict, depending on what the vocational intent of the MA was.

If some of these disciplinary MA programs turned out to be ill conceived, or without adequate resources or interest, then terminate them, giving care to the students who were already accepted. Expect that there will be some market driven failings within this, but that such failings need not jeopardize the entire constellated MA concept, as long as there were a critical mass of students for the collective seminar. As some of the disciplinary programs failed for lack of faculty or students or vocational need, weed them out and let another program have a chance.

Conclusion

This concept of a "Constellated MA Program in Peace Studies" would a) bring students to expertise based on a disciplinary body of knowledge and disciplinary methods of epistemology, b) yet allow them to have engagement with a wide variety of other disciplinary approaches to peace topics, as well as c) prepare them for vocational opportunities. For the university, a "Constellated MA Program in Peace Studies" would d) allow considerable flexibility, including e) coping with some of the programs falling to relatively low levels of enrolment and f) making opportunistic use of the interests and abilities of the existing faculty to consider and offer a variety MA options.