Thunderbird Peace-Talks Panel

Waging Peace: Conflict, resolution, and the future of gender equality in the Middle East” event attendees and panel on Feb.19 at the Thunderbird Global Headquarters/Photo courtesy of Cameron Berggren

An event at Arizona State University’s Thunderbird School of Global Management brought together a diverse array of organizations on Feb. 19 to discuss a new approach towards peace in the Middle East.

The Foreign Policy Initiative, Arizona Interfaith Movement and Thunderbird Women in Business organizations collaborated to create the event “Waging Peace: Conflict, Resolution, and the Future of Gender Equality in the Middle East.”

Tate Mulligan, president of the Foreign Policy Initiative, said that the organization initially focused on China-US relations.

“We really need to diversify the conversation into other regions. We decided that the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and US-Mexico are the grand panelist events that we are going to have this coming semester,” Mulligan said.

Albert Celoza, executive director of the Arizona Interfaith Movement and moderator of the panel said: “Our goal is to provide a better understanding between people of faith and people of no faith, and also one important thing that we do is to promote the golden rule: Treat each other the way you would want to be treated.”

From left: Daniel Rothenberg, Dr. Albert Celoza, Chad Haines and Monsoora Shirifi discuss conflict and peace in the Middle East on Feb. 19 at the Thunderbird Global Headquarters/Photo by Bella Keenan

Politics and global studies professor Daniel Rothenberg shared his thoughts on war. Despite the fact that U.S. troops were fighting in Iraq in 2014,  “most [ASU students] did not feel themselves as living in a country of war,” Rothenberg said. “War meant something, and it wasn’t what people were feeling, even though their country was expressly at war in the traditional sense.”

“War is a way to understand what is happening in the world,” Rothenberg added. “If we talk about waging peace, just as war takes a certain amount of work, obviously, peace does. I guess the question about the term waging peace is, what is the work of peace as compared to the work of war?”

Chad Haines, co-director for the Center of Muslim Experience in the US and an ASU assistant professor, questioned the meaning of peace.

“We can all imagine what peace is, but it’s complicated by what peace is not,” Haines said.“‘Not peace’ is just a cessation of violence, but the idea that we live in relationships with one another, and that’s what peace actually comes from.”

Haines also spoke about the central issue he believes is inhibiting peace in Muslim countries today.

“The biggest obstruction to peace in the Muslim world is the United States,” Haines said. “And here we have again, long histories of what we call Orientalism, the ways in which we in the West represent those in the East, and particularly Arabs and Muslims. There are biases about Islam as a religion of violence as oppressive toward women.”

He went on to describe how peace is not being found in diplomatic rooms but rather on the street corners and back alleys where there is “an ethics of negotiating differences amongst themselves.”

Mansoora Sharifi is an Afghan international business student who described the state of Afghanistan to the audience.

“There’s, to be honest, no peace at all,” Sharifi said. She hopes for education and peace for women in Afghanistan, a country that has been overtaken by the terrorist organization, the Taliban, since August 2021.

“Nothing will ever be the same if religious extremism is transformed and turned in a way that is violent against women,” said Alison Anthony, director of events for the Foreign Policy Initiative and vice president for Thunderbird Women in Business.

The panel expressed hope that discussions such as those that took place at this event will further aid the journey to peace in the Middle East.