Dear Friends:


In the last few days about three hundred professors from around the
country
have come together via email to form a group called "Professors for
Peace."
The group's primary aim is to promote a peaceful and thoughtful
resolution
to the current conflict and to oppose the growing call for war, in part
by
promoting teach-ins and discussions among students. Below is the basic
rationale and goals suggested by Professor Jennifer Terry of Ohio State
and
UC Berkeley.

I am interested in establishing a chapter of this group at Miami to work

with other local peace groups (Oxford and students). If anyone is
interested in being part of the Miami chapter of Professors for Peace,
please send me an email at [log in to unmask] I plan to set up an
organizational meeting in the coming days. You could also join the
national
group and listserv  by going to [log in to unmask] -
but
be aware that a lot of messages are coming through right now, some less
useful than others.

Regardless of whether you join us or not, I hope you will do your part
encouraging students to be critical about the discourses of war and
Orientalism that are currently circulating. The sadness that I
experienced
last week has been compounded by watching some of our national leaders
kick-start a war machine.

My best to all of you in this difficult time,

Rodrigo Lazo
Department of English




Below is the Statement on Professors for Peace from
Jennifer Terry
Visiting Associate Professor of Women's Studies
UC Berkeley (2001-2002)
Associate Professor of Comparative Studies
Ohio State University



Basic rationale:  It seems obvious to many of us
teaching college students right now that they have
very little understanding of the history and
possibilities of peace movements and that many of them
are not so gung-ho about going to war yet they are
nearly paralyzed and cannot think of alternatives
right now.   Also many of them feel personally
threatened by the unleashing of bigotry being done in
the name of patriotism and national security.

Basic strategy:  In addition to teach-ins and courses
and public (on and off-line) demonstrations on waging
peace in a post Cold War world, Professors for Peace
could work in affinity with other anti-racist groups
fighting against the rising tide of hate crimes
against people of Islamic and/or Middle East and South
Asian origins.  I understand that a course on
tolerance and hatred is being put together to be
collectively taught this Fall quarter at Ohio State
University.  We could share syllabi and course
materials about such courses and teach-ins.  And we
could form ad hoc watch dog groups to monitor the role
of the university in funding and supporting defense
contracts and the current mobilization for war.  In
other words, there is much to be done and we could
decide how much we want to undertake and what our
coordinated strategies might be.  Outreach to you is
the first step.  We might find that we should organize
in local contexts, college by college, university by
university.  Or we might want to think of other
strategies for organizing, such as around particular
foci and tasks.  Or a combo of these and other kinds
of strategies and subgroups. I'm thinking outloud here
folks, so please bear with me.

Beyond the Campuses and into the Public Sphere:  In
addition to whatever we do on campuses, the group
could show the larger society that the professoriate
has a crucial (and neglected) role to play in shaping
public dialogue and debate right now.  This could also
be an avenue for the voices of profs of color, women,
and queers to be heard -- we are almost no where to be
found in all the pundit shows and "late breaking news"
on TV right now.  Right now it's mostly the straight
white men heroes' show.  We need to be more organized,
involved, and visible as this country moves toward
some racist war.