Building Peace Through Higher Education in Divided and Conflict-Affected Contexts: Insights from China/Taiwan, Cyprus, Korea, and Somalia

• In Event: Building peace through Higher Education

Proposal

Peace education as a philosophy and field of practice has grown significantly in recent decades in a variety of formal and non-formal education sites across the world (Eom & Kester, 2022). Yet, there are few studies as of yet examining peace in/through higher education (HE) in settings affected by conflict. Thus, to fill this void, this study aims to explore HE pedagogies for peace with university educators in four divided and conflict-affected contexts. It turns its attention to learning from and across the adaptable and resilient HE pedagogies for peace and reconciliation that have emerged among academics in China/Taiwan, Cyprus, Korea, and Somalia. The goal of the research, then, is to examine and enhance HE responses to division and conflict, and for Korean scholars to learn from educators working for peace through HE in other divided and conflict-affected societies.

To be sure, university educators in the four contexts have much to learn from each other toward nurturing pedagogies for peace. Specifically, China/Taiwan, Cyprus, Korea, and Somalia have been chosen as they are contexts currently tackling issues of conflict and peace in diverse ways through HE. Each context faces social and political division. In each case, the division was the cause/consequence of a war:

- the 1949 defeat of the Republic of China Army forcing the Kuomintang to retreat to Taiwan;
- the 1950-53 Korean War resulting in the Demilitarized Zone at the 38th parallel that divides the peninsula today;
- the 1974 Turkish Invasion of Cyprus that led to the division of the island with Turkish Cypriots in the North and Greek Cypriots in the South (a
UN Demilitarized Zone separates the two); and
- the 1991 Somalian Civil War (ongoing) resulting in the self-declared state of Somaliland in the North.

In each context, a de facto state was created following the conflict: Taiwan, Northern Cyprus, North Korea, and Somaliland (Ali, 2017; Kolsto, 2006). Only North Korea is internationally recognized today with UN membership. Taiwan, Northern Cyprus, and Somaliland continue to lack international recognition and remain fragile contexts; and aspirations for unification remain in each context. Additionally, in each setting is a people who have shared much in common throughout their history until these recent divisions, including experiences of various forms of colonialism throughout the 20th century. Moreover, in the China/Taiwan, Korea, and Somalia cases, the peoples on each side of the divide (mostly) share the same ethnicity and language. Each context is additionally politically democratic (except China and North Korea) and economically liberal. Thus, there are historic, ethnic, linguistic, political, economic, and colonial similarities between these contexts, yet the memory, legacies, and responses to the conflict differ with fascinating implications for HE pedagogies for peace and reconciliation.

Data collection for the project is ongoing, collected through interviews, document analysis, and fieldwork with university educators working in China/Taiwan, Cyprus, Korea, and Somalia. The guiding research questions for the study include: How and to what extent do university educators' visions and specific educational pedagogies work toward constructively responding to conflict and division in and beyond the HE classroom? How do these pedagogies contribute to peace, reconciliation, and efforts toward unification, if at all? Under what conditions do the educators advocate for reconciliation and unification? And, how and when are different theoretical, pedagogical, methodological, or policy approaches utilized to more effectively promote peace and understanding? Audio-recordings are being transcribed, and the data -- together with documents and fieldnotes -- is analyzed through an inductive thematic analysis (Nowell et al., 2017). Theoretically, the insights are then considered through the lens of cultural political economy of education and decolonization (Higgins & Novelli, 2020; Kester & Chang, 2022; Robertson & Dale, 2015).

Findings indicate that efforts toward peace and reconciliation, through pedagogy and curricular choices, weave across the contexts in unexpected ways. While some educators support and promote unification in the divided contexts many others instead emphasize national sovereignty and aspirations for international recognition. Yet, each of the educators argues for open debate, dialogue, critical thinking, and conflict-sensitive teaching.

In the end, this study contributes to contemporary discourse and practices concerning the role of HE to respond constructively and effectively to division and conflict, and to nurture the capacities of citizens to support sustainable peacebuilding. In particular, the research offers new empirical knowledge on HE peacebuilding in four divided and conflict-affected contexts and contributes to debates on decolonizing peace education (Dryden-Peterson, 2010; Millican et al., 2021; Milton, 2018; Kester et al., 2022).

References
Ali, N. (2017). Somalia Stability: Hostage to Local, Regional and Distant Actors. Education and Conflict Review, 1, 22-23.

Dryden-Peterson, S. (2010). The politics of higher education for refugees in a global movement for primary education. Refuge: Canada's Journal on Refugees, 27(2), 10-18.

Eom, J., & Kester, K. (2022). Education for Peace and International Understanding in the Asia-Pacific: Trends and New Directions. Springer International Handbook of Education Development in the Asia-Pacific edited by W.O. Lee, P. Brown, A.L. Goodwin, & A. Green, 1-19. New York: Springer.

Higgins, S., & Novelli, M. (2020). Rethinking Peace Education: A Cultural Political Economy Approach. Comparative Education Review 64: 1–20.

Kester, K., Abura, M., Sohn, C., & Rho, E. (2022). Higher Education Peacebuilding in Conflict-Affected Societies: Beyond the Good/Bad Binary. International Journal of Comparative Education and Development 24 (3-4): 160-176.

Kester, K., & Chang, S.-Y. (2022). Whither epistemic (in)justice? English Medium Instruction in conflict-affected contexts. Teaching in Higher Education 27: 437-452.

Kolsto, J. (2006). The sustainability and future of unrecognized quasi-states. Journal of Peace Research, 43, 723-740.

Millican, J., Kasumagić-Kafedžić, L., Masabo, F., & Almanza, M. (2021). Pedagogies for peacebuilding in higher education: How and why should higher education institutions get involved in teaching for peace? International Review of Education, 67, 569-590.

Milton, S. (2018). Higher education and post-conflict recovery. London: Palgrave.

Nowell, L., Norris, J., White, D., & Moules, N. (2017). Thematic Analysis: Striving to Meet the
Trustworthiness Criteria. International Journal of Qualitative Methods 16: 1–13.

Robertson, S. L., & Dale, R. (2015). Towards a ‘Critical Cultural Political Economy" Account of the Globalising of Education. Globalisation, Societies and Education 13 (1): 149–170.

Author

• Kevin Kester, Seoul National University