Peace Activism on Minnesota Campuses
by David L. Fox, Assistant Professor of Geology and Geophysics, University of Minnesota

Peace activism on college campuses is about as unusual as the United States waging unprovoked wars against nations with vastly inferior conventional military strength.

Historical examples of such U.S. wars are too numerous to list here, but recent examples include the invasions of Panama and Grenada. Many of these U.S. wars in the 20th century provoked organized responses from peace activists among university students, staff, and faculty. However, it was the protracted wars in Southeast Asia sponsored or led by the U.S. beginning in the 1950s that eventually led to the development in the 1960s of the most widespread peace movement on U.S. campuses. In essentially all of the historical cases, organized opposition both on and off campus only began to grow and spread in earnest after the destruction of war was well underway.

What is unusual about the scope of the peace movement that has developed today in opposition to a U.S. invasion of Iraq is that the war has not actually begun yet. Assisted by the speed and power of the Internet and e-mail as organizing tools, peace groups have sprouted in communities across the nation in the last several months. This movement has many and diverse roots, but one of the strongest and deepest is certainly colleges and universities.

As a relatively new Minnesotan, I am proud that campuses here in Minnesota have been at the vanguard of this precocious peace movement. Campus peace activists have been organizing in opposition to war with Iraq at many campuses in the state, including the University of Minnesota, St. John’s University/College of St. Benedict, Hamline University, University of St. Thomas, Macalester College, St. Cloud State University, and St. Olaf College, among others.

I am most familiar with peace activities at my home institution, the University of Minnesota (UM), where at least three groups have organized. Students Against War (SAW) formed last academic year in response to the U.S. war in Afghanistan. They have also been active around other issues, including the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the School of the Americas at Fort Benning, GA. This year SAW has been an important voice on the Twin Cities campus in opposition to war with Iraq. As a prelude to the International Day of Action on October 26, 2002, SAW organized a successful campus demonstration on October 24 that drew about 500 people.

Among UM staff, AFSCME Local 3800, which represents 1,800 UM clerical workers, has also been active. Local President Phyllis Walker was a speaker at the St. Paul peace demonstration on October 26, and the local has passed a resolution against the war, the recent attacks on civil liberties, and funding cuts to public services.

The faculty, teaching staff, and athletic coaches are also organizing. Along with 275 of my colleagues, I signed a letter opposing war with Iraq on moral, humanitarian, and legal grounds. We published it as full-page advertisements in the Minnesota Daily (the UM-Twin Cites campus paper) and the St. Paul Pioneer Press. Prior to the Congressional vote on the war resolution, we delivered our statement to Sen. Wellstone’s campaign office and urged him to vote against war, which he did in his last vote in the Senate. We also faxed our letter to the offices of the other members of the Minnesota Congressional delegation, many of whom also voted against the resolution.

The letter written by UM faculty was placed on the Internet by faculty at MIT and Harvard. As of November 14, it has been signed by 31,434 students, staff, and faculty at universities around the world. The letter has also been translated into Arabic by a Saudi academic and published in one of the leading newspapers in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

The UM faculty group, with the help of Marie Braun of WAMM, organized two well-attended teach-ins on campus to help educate people on and off campus about the history and issues of the looming war with Iraq. We are planning additional teach-ins soon.

The newest group at UM is the Health Coalition for Nonviolence, which has recently organized among students, staff, and faculty in the medical, dental, nursing, and public health schools at UM. Construing nonviolence broadly, this group will bring the valuable perspective of health care providers to the peace movement at UM.

I cannot do justice to the full range of activities on other area campuses, but I can provide some information. Faculty at St. John’s University and the College of St. Benedict have been quite active. They organized two teach-ins and published an “Open Letter to Students” as a full-page advertisement in the student paper. They also organized a student referendum on war with Iraq on October 29. Participation was unusually high: 1,032 students voted, which is almost twice the typical turnout on the campus of about 4,000 students. The results were 810 opposed to war and 222 in favor. The faculty organizers judged the educational efforts associated with the referendum to be a success.

Hamline Students FOR Peace, an affiliate of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, sponsored a resolution in the Hamline University Student Congress, the central governing body of all student organizations on campus. The resolution condemned the Bush Administration proposal for U.S. war with Iraq. It received heated and prolonged debate at several weekly meetings and finally passed by a roughly three to one margin with about 140 votes cast by student congress members.

Most recently, the Student Coalition for Social Justice at the University of St. Thomas organized a meeting of college peace groups from around Minnesota on November 13. The goal of this meeting was to foster communication and organizing across campuses so that groups could inform each other of events and priorities and discuss ways of acting to prevent the war in Iraq.

I hope I have missed many groups and events at campuses around the state in my brief summary, and I apologize to those I have missed. We are in a relatively unique situation given the breadth of the peace movement before the war has started. We must make the most of this time and continue to broaden the movement.

I see several important goals for the campus peace movement in Minnesota and elsewhere. First, individual campuses need to expand organizing among students, staff, and faculty. Second, we must develop strong connections among campuses locally and nationally. Third, we need to reach out to community- and faith-based activists to strengthen the existing movement. Fourth, campus groups need to use their energy and knowledge to organize in the working-class and minority communities that will be most affected by the losses (both personal and economic) of the coming war and its aftermath. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, we need to continue to educate ourselves and those around us so that the war with Iraq can be placed within the proper context of the larger struggle for peace and justice and equality and security for all human beings on Earth.

Campus Organizing Resources

International A.N.S.W.E.R.
Act Now to Stop War & End Racism
www.internationalanswer.org
(Student organizing resources integrated throughout site)

Midwest Campus Anti-War Network
www.angelfire.com/journal2/mcan/
The National Youth & Student Peace Coalition
c/o United States Student Association
1413 "K" Street NW, 9th Floor
Washington, DC 20005
www.nyspc.net

Student Peace Action Network
1819 H St. NW, Suite 425
Washington, DC 20006
202-862-9740 ext. 3051 phone
span@peace-action.org
www.studentpeaceaction.org

Tikkun Campus Network
2107 Van Ness Ave., Ste. 302
San Francisco, CA 94109
415-575-1200 phone
marisa@tikkun.org
www.tikkun.org/community/campusnet/