THE ART OF PEACE – A Galtung-Institut Masterclass (2021/2022)

Johan Galtung, G-I Administration and Naakow Grant-Hayford

19th September 2021

THE ART OF PEACE – A Galtung-Institut Masterclass (2021/2022)

Enroll online HERE for the (G-I) Galtung-Institut Masterclass on: THE ART OF PEACE

Begins: November 1st. 2021 – Ends: February 14th 2022

12 weeks in total – Assisted Learning throughout – Galtung-Institut & TPU Certification.

Table of Contents

About: Galtung-Institut & Masterclass: THE ART OF PEACE

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The Galtung-Institut

The Galtung-Institut for Peace Theory & Peace Practice (G-I) is an independent & international nonprofit NGO. We are legally registered & accredited in Germany to: “carry out & teach scientific peace research”. We are located exactly on the Swiss-German border in the suburb Grenzach-Wyhlen adjacent to the swiss city of Basel. The G-I was initiated by members of TRANSCEND International (T-I) which is the premier peace-development-environment & mediation network connecting over 500 peacebuilding professionals located in 80 countries.

Initiated in 2011 by Erika Degortes, Karoline Weber & Naakow Grant-Hayford (at that time all 3 research assistants to Prof. Galtung), the Galtung-Institut for Peace Theory & Peace Practice was founded together with: Prof. Johan-Galtung (founder of the academic discipline of Peace & Conflict Studies); Prof. Hanne-Margret Birckenbach (Prof. for Political Science at the University of Giessen), Drs. Nelda & her husband Hans Graf von Sponeck (former undersecretary-general of the United Nations), Dr. Bernd Pirrung (former regional director for the Goethe-Institut in Africa) & Dr. Dietrich Fischer (former academic director of the European Peace University; † October 2015).

Since 2011 the G-I has been the official on-site carrier of the “TRANSCEND Peace Universty” program, which offers professional trainings in Peace Literacy, Solution-Indicative Conflict Analysis, Peace Journalism, Mediation, Polyculturalism (intercultural competence), Trauma-Sensitive Conflict Transformation and Post-Violence Conciliation. All expert-training certificates acquired in our online & on-site courses are issued in the name of both the Galtung-Institut & TRANSCEND International.

The G-I Masterclass: The Art of Peace

This online masterclass “THE ART OF PEACE – Acquire Professional Peacebuilding Techniques” is based on & fundamentally draws from Prof. Galtung’s 60+ years worth of unbroken research-findings & consultancy-experience acquired & refined in practical peacebuilding interventions around the world. The certificate acquired by completing this G-I masterclass can be combined with the on-site practical mediation & trauma-conciliation simulations imparted in our Conflict Transformation Specialist trainings (CTS-training) & currently taught here by Naakow Grant-Hayford. Combining & completing both courses [(1)THE ART OF PEACE (online) & (2) CTS (onsite)] qualifies participants to be international mediators in the exact paradigmatic approach that has served the founder of the academic discipline of applied peace research so well in the field. We absolutely invite you to consider adding our onsite mediation & conciliation training [CTS] to this G-I online masterclass.

Prof. Galtung’s book THE ART OF PEACE is the foundation of this course. Participants of this online masterclass will get access to the G-I’s & T-I’s digital libraries for further course materials.

Why is this course titled THE ART OF PEACE?

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In a claim reminiscent of the latin “si vis pacem para bellum” (if you want Peace prepare for war), it is often said that the chinese military strategist & philosopher Sun Tzu wrote “THE ART OF WAR”, in order to advocate for military preparedness as a prerequisite for Peace. While such a claim may apply to both liberal & authoritarian variants of Negative Peace, it certainly falls flat when exploring the prerequisites of societies aspiring to political forms of Positive Peace. Upon even the most basic inspection, “THE ART OF WAR” quickly reveals itself to be, surprise surprise: a treatise of strategies towards managing hostilities & warfare.

In response to Sun Tzu’s teachings, Johan Galtung, widely recognized as the father of academic Peace research, published a field manual in 2017 titled “THE ART OF PEACE – Global Peace Studies 101: Theory & Practice”. It contains, after 60 years of uninterrupted research on the matter, his key theoretical & practical insights & techniques for identifying and creating the prerequisites for Peace from a social science perspective. This masterclass is designed to guide you through & impart to you, these key findings including the very paradigme they rest on.

If Sun Tzu’s “THE ART OF WAR” is a collection of sophisticated proposals for men to master the craft of mutual destruction & hostilities, Galtung’s “THE ART OF PEACE” & this identically named masterclass are designed to impart to all enrolled a collection of sophisticated & actionable proposals for humans to master the craft of nonviolent, constructive conviviality aka Peacebuilding.

This Galtung-Institut masterclass substantiates “Si Vis Pacem para Pacem” (If you want Peace, prepare for Peace) with actionable concepts, arguments & techniques. The aim is to make sure participants professionalize their Peace Literacy.

Your course Instructors

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Our institute’s namesake Prof. Johan Galtung & Naakow Grant-Hayford – who is currently the G-I’s academic director – have been colleagues in research, consultation, conflict analysis, conflict transformation & mediation across the globe in Africa, Asia, the Americas & Europe since the early 2000s with mutual work on a wide range of subjects covering epistemology, theory, methodology & praxeology of applied peace research. This Galtung-Institut masterclass is designed to offer enrolled participants a unique opportunity to acquire actionable insights, techniques, principles, concepts & models designed by & continuously improved upon by Prof. Galtung et al. since he initiated & founded the first university department for peace-research in the world.

Johan Galtung:
- Founder of the Academic Discipline of Applied Peace & Conflict Research (1959)
- Founder of TRANSCEND International: The peacebuilding by peaceful means NGO (1993)
- Co-Founder & lifetime honorary president of the Galtung-Institut for Peace Theory & Peace Practice (2011)
- Senior consultant for international conflict mediation & post violence conciliation
  - (office [at] galtung-institut.de)
Naakow Grant-Hayford: watch direct message

- Co-Founder of the Galtung-Institut for Peace Theory & Peace Practice (2011)
- G-I Academic Director & CTS-Trainer (Solution-Indicative Conflict Analysis, Mediation & Trauma Conciliation)
- Consultant in international conflict mediation & post violence conciliation
  - (office [at] galtung-institut.de)

Participant profiles: Who can enroll?

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Whether you work in a conflict zone or study conflict-formations from the saftey of a desk in an office or a library: we strongly encourage you to enroll in this Galtung-Institut masterclass on the ART OF PEACE. You will acquire professional & applicable peacebuilding insights.

This Galtung-Institut masterclass does not expect participants to come equipped with a particular background in Peace Research. Everything you need in order to comprehend what you are being taught will be explained in detail as we proceed. At all points during this 12 week masterclass, participants may call for & receive individual assistance by the G-I’s academic director Naakow Grant-Hayford. This allows for any & all eventual comprehension issues to be tackled.

The diversity of the formative backgrounds of participants in our courses has been remarkable: Teachers, students, businessminded entrepreneurs, human resource experts, psychologists, coaches, various UN staff, politicians, diplomats, international development & aid experts but also chemists, physicists, biologists, medical physicians, authors, musicians, sculptors, poets, designers, engineers and IT specialists. The more diverse the participant group, the richer the learning experience: including for us as course instructors.

For the inexperienced participant: you stand to acquire an all new coherent set of transdisciplinary techniques & conceptual vantage points from which to better solve conflicts in both your private & professional contexts.
For the experienced participant: the tools imparted in this masterclass are guaranteed to expand & enrich your previous Conflict Resolution, Mediation or Conciliation Literacy with numerous sophisticated tweaks & innovations. At least that’s the feedback we keep receiving from our peers working in and on conflicts & peacebuilding.

Here’s what we posit to be the case within any & all human societies: conflicts are ubiquitous & inevitable whereas violence is conditional. Based on this understanding, the Galtung-Institut prides itself of its usp, which is a transdisciplinary & translevel approach to Peace Theory & Peace Practice. By that we mean, that the set of instruments we teach & use professionally allows us to engage solving conflicts at all levels of human interaction: from the kindergarten to the global diplomatic arena.

Over the years, we have not only trained and taught pedagogues, teachers & school directors, pupils & students, couples, spouses & parents, CEOs, managers & teamleaders, journalists, mayors, members of congress, soldiers & rebels on all continents HOW to identify the prerequisites for peace in their specific familial or professional relations, we have ALSO enabled participants to act in such ways as to elicit more peaceful interactions with other humans in their environments & networks. Past participants have been social scientists, natural scientists & fieldworkers with varying backgrounds & specializations. Long story short: Come as you are.

Content & Form: How is the course set up?

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Content: 12 themes in 12 weeks: THE ART OF PEACE – Acquire Professional Peacebuilding Techniques

Trilateral Social Science: Empiricism, Criticism, Constructionism.
Deep Nature – Deep Culture – Deep Structure.
Basic Needs & the question of Legitimacy: A Life centred approach to Politics.
Time & Space as History & Geography as: Context.
Cultural Violence + Structural Violence + Direct Violence & Trauma.
The Diagnosis + Prognosis + Therapy approach to Solution-Indicative Conflict Analysis.
Scanning Societal Faultlines for Incompatibilities & Contradictions in Conflict Analysis.
Positive Nonviolence, Negative Nonviolence & Civil Disobedience.
Defensive Defense & Offensive Defense.
Criminalizing War.
Creativity & Solution-orientation in Peacebuilding: Cultural Peace – Structural Peace – Direct Peace.
Understanding the Peace Formula.

Form: 4 Weekly Q&As with Instructors + Access to Learning Materials + Assignments + Workload

(1) The teaching method: QUESTIONS

The Galtung-Institut masterclass on THE ART OF PEACE is designed to be fuelled by QUESTIONS from the enrolled participants.To that end, participants are equipped with reading and audio-video course materials at the beginning of the course. The G-I’s quality control of the course is guranteed by regular definitorial input lectures by Naakow Grant-Hayford on the 12 themes to which participants are asked to react with QUESTIONS. The answers given, shall be explored collectively in our online fora on top of & in addition to Prof. Galtung’s responses to them. Prepare to produce QUESTIONS to the material. Every participant is expected to produce a regular set of 7 to 12 QUESTIONS per theme.
Participants and course instructors meet online as scheduled for Q&A sessions between participants and instructors. The courses are intended to be DIALOGICAL & conversational.

(2) Modes of interaction with the course instructors

Weekly Video Dialogues:
Access to G-I & T-I digital library for learning materials (literature, audio, video)
Weekly: Participants are asked to read at least two mandatory papers from the assigned weekly reading list and generate 07 QUESTIONS from their reading & own reflections to be discussed with the course instructors. These QUESTIONS are due every Sunday by 23:59 CET.
Website based G-I e-classrooms: Participants register in the forum framework of the G-I Website which allows for group chats & dialogues on reading materials & assignments.

(3) Prof. Galtung’s part:

3 Live video-dialogue sessions with Prof. Galtung moderated by Naakow Grant-Hayford: Every week, on Mondays, Wednesdays & Fridays 12:35 CET Prof. Galtung will make himself available for whatsapp live conversations of each maximally 30 minutes per week. During these sessions, the QUESTIONS produced by participants from studying the course materials & ploughing their own reflections, will be engaged & explored.

(4) Naakow Grant-Hayford’s part:

12 additional Zoom sessions with Naakow Grant-Hayford of 30 to max. 60 minutes to discuss all key concepts & assignments explored in (a) his definitorial input sessions (b) Q&A calls with Prof. Galtung. In total: 48 Zoom sessions with Naakow Grant-Hayford.

The aforementioned book “THE ART OF PEACE – Global Peace Studies 101” (from which the course draws its title) is the key reference-book for this masterclass. Participants will receive an additional course reader & are invited to freely explore, include & bring up issues from all available essays here during the 3 weekly Q&A dialogues with Prof. Galtung. Weekly: From these readings & other course materials, participants must each produce a set of remarks & QUESTIONS due every sunday by midnight CET. These remarks & questions are then at the heart of this Galtung-Institut – THE ART OF PEACEm asterclass. Though flexible, the course is completed by participating in & responding to 7 Assignments: 5 collective* papers + 2 individual paper Participants have 14 days for each assignment. Individual adjustments can be discussed. Participants will each receive 2 individual assignment (to be tackled alone) as well as 5 collective tasks to be tackled in group work. Total Workload for this Galtung-Institut masterclass: 7 assignments, two of which are individual work: 14 days for every assignment over a period of 12 weeks. Weekly reading, self study & writing assignments: 12to 15 hours per week; that’s between 145 & 180 hours of reading & thinking about Peace deliberately.
Then in dialogue with the longest working academic peace researcher alive. Join in.

What to expect: What am I to take away?

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The full completion of this course is awarded with the Galtung-Institut & TRANSCEND Peace University “Masterclass Certificate for Professional Peacebuilding Techniques”. The key know-how imparted in this masterclass is practice indicative Peace Literacy. Many will have heard the saying according to which war, the concerted deployment of destructive mass-category violence, is the father of all things, while most wouldnt recognize positive peace were it to jump into their very laps. Yet contrary to this widespread idiom – which conveys a highly unfavorable view of fatherhood-, it is during times of peace, that humans thrive & civilizational wealth produced. Peace literacy in essence, is (a) to know how to recognize & solve conflicts before they escalate into violence & (b) to acquire professional reflexes that engage & disentangle procedural incompatibilities in any relational setting with creativity, nonviolence & empathy. These two components are fundamental competencies in social-familial or organizational-professional contexts. This intense masterclass is designed to familiarize & equip participants with the very paradigme & mental modus operandi behind professional peace work.

Have a look HERE at some participant-feedback from our first Sydney-University online course “Advanced Conflict Transformation” which has over the years evolved into this G-I masterclass “The Art of Peace”.
Participants acquire the following inellectual Peace literacy competencies:

1 – Conflict Literacy = How to read actors, goals, interests, values, identities & other key factors in any conflict-formation.

2 – Legitimacy Literacy = How to assess links between legitimacy deficits & violence in conflict-formations.

3 – Escalation Literacy = How to recognize which characteristics drive-escalate conflicts into violence ahead of time.

4 – Solution Liteacy = How to proceed systematically in generating solutions wherever faced with social clashes & disputes.

5 – Peace Literacy = How to bring about & maintain modes of cooperation that foster peaceful interaction in human affairs.

6 – Participants are acquainted with the Galtung-Institut’s Solution Indicative Conflict Analysis framework.

You should leave this 12 week Galtung-Institut masterclass equipped with expert-instruments developed by Prof. Galtung et al. for transcdisciplinary & translevel conflict analysis, conflict resolution & trauma-conciliation. Please Note: Participants will only receive certificates of completion by the Galtung-Institut for Peace Theory & Peace Practice & TRANSCEND Peace University upon completing the full curriculum.Enroll online HERE for the (G-I) Galtung-Institut Masterclass on: THE ART OF PEACE