Critical Peace Pedagogies at the American Center for Civil and Human Rights and the Canadian Museum for Human Rights

• In Event: Highlighted session: Philosophical and pedagogical perspectives on peace education

Proposal

The struggle for racial equity in the United States and Canada is ongoing. Troubled historical legacies in both countries have present-day implications. African Americans and Indigenous Canadians are still two of the most marginalized populations from the standpoint of socioeconomics and political representation (Giroux, 2013; Vickers, 2012). In order to redress these problems, peace and human rights education have to pose structural questions and expose systemic unbalances. In the recent past, neoliberalism has had a major influence on the organization and content of American and Canadian formal education, obscuring some of these structural questions (Ravitch, 2013). In this context, peace and human rights museums like the National Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta and the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg are non-formal third spaces of education that strive to make sense of these complicated legacies and envision a more inclusive present.
This exploration is a comparative case study which employs a holistic analysis to look at how these two museums construct and teach peace and human rights, the role that they ascribe to memory and emotion in these constructions, and their engagement with and augmenting of formal education. The three conceptual frameworks of analysis are critical peace pedagogies for troubled societies (Bekerman and Zembylas, 2013), sentimental education (Rorty, 1998), and third space theory (Bhabha, 1994). Content analysis is conducted on a variety of sources in the two museums: semi-structured interviews, exhibits, audiovisual materials, artifacts, and direct observations.
The museums are found to display more contestation of the past than of the present, prioritize cultural and political rights over socioeconomic rights, and impact the visitors’ emotions powerfully through a variety of very participative visceral experiences that bypass the intellect.
However, from the standpoint of socioeconomic sustainability and globalizing sustainable futures, a major problem identified in each of these two pedagogical third spaces has to do the frequent employment of the neoliberal paradigm in terms of developing specific understandings of peace and human rights. The prioritization of the first and third generations of rights in the two museums, and particularly in Atlanta, has essential ramifications to unpack. As known, first-generation rights in the UDHR are political and civil, second-generation rights are socioeconomic, and third-generation rights are collective and cultural. From this standpoint, it can be argued that contemporary multicultural neoliberalism in such peace-museum education celebrates primarily cultural diversity and political pluralism but often fails to take into account resource distribution and wealth accumulation along racial lines.
Neoliberalism also defines many of the solutions proposed in the two museums. One of the most striking exemplifications of this aspect is found on an interactive table in Atlanta. In the “Act! Take Action” rubric, the best course of remedial action to global and national poverty that visitors are encouraged to take is the following: educating themselves about it, donating clothes and other items to charities, and volunteering at homeless shelters. Once more, this partial and starkly neoliberal framing begs the question: is it not more important and rights-centric to demand that the government provide what they owe citizens rather than having people meet the gaps between basic guarantees and realities? As Gabriela from the museum in Canada underscores, “going out and assisting at a shelter or a food bank is really good and important work, but a more critical human rights approach is to look beyond and to start to question and understand why it is that people need food banks at all” (interview, May 15, 2017).
There are three major ways in which the solutions in these museums reveal neoliberal tendencies. First, there is a constant emphasis on individuals and personal psychology. ‘Defenders’ are the most discussed and celebrated entities in both locations. The pictures and profiles of such people as Nelson Mandela, Eleanor Roosevelt, Malala Yousafzai, Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., or Liu Xiaobo are constant presences. Lesser-known national, contemporary activism is equally individualized in Winnipeg. Furthermore, the whole division of the contemporary human rights gallery in Atlanta into the “Defenders/Offenders” dichotomy is neoliberal. What this largely individualized approach leaves out are the broader social and political forces behind these tragedies and triumphs and the fact that they usually involved the participation of massive groups of people. This is a rather top-down, or trickle-down approach, as opposed to a more bottom-up, grassroots vision that emphasizes alliances, collaboration, community. Where is the equally extensive and much-needed discussion on contemporary movements, such as the past Civil Rights Movement?
A second major way in which many of the remedies point to neoliberalism has to do with their entrepreneurial character. This tendency is more pronounced at the U.S. National Center for Civil and Human Rights, where the interactive table which explores various peace and human rights topics is full of purportedly innovative business solutions. The market-driven aspect of these remedies is undeniable. At the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, entrepreneurialism manifests itself in the “Actions Count” interactive display, where the hypothetical scenarios to be resolved demand comparable transactional skills. In both examples, only the surface is skimmed, while the more profound sources of inequitable structural socioeconomics largely get a pass.
Finally, a third way in which solutions are primarily neoliberal deals with the missing discussion on how to organize for political action. Visitors are provided with multiple examples of how to act individually. From volunteering, to starting conversations, to making donations, a number of important remedies are suggested. The need for agency is constantly encouraged. Each museum features a space for expression and direct involvement: “Share Your Voice” in Atlanta, “Join the Conversation” in Winnipeg. However, what is absent are specific instructions on where and how to join social or political movements and influence policy systemically.
To conclude, the major task of these two peace and human rights museums in order to make their pedagogies even more dialogic and conducive to equity and sustainability is to intensify the shift from a pedagogy of recognition to one of redistribution and to emphasize the socioeconomic aspects of peace and human rights much more prominently.

Author

• Ion Vlad, The University of San Francisco