Please visit our calendar for all upcoming activities in the Penn Program in Ethnic Conflict

Andrew W. Mellon Sawyer Seminar Series: Power-Sharing in Deeply Divided Places

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation's Sawyer Seminars Series provides support for comparative research on the historical and cultural sources of contemporary developments. The program aims to engage imaginative and productive scholars in comparative inquiry that would, in ordinary university circumstances, be difficult to pursue, while at the same time avoiding the institutionalization of such work in new centers, departments, or programs. The seminars have brought together faculty, foreign visitors, postdoctoral fellows, and graduate students from a variety of fields. This year's Sawyer Seminar focuses on power-sharing as a political formula to calm deeply divided places, i.e. countries wracked by national, ethnic and communal conflict.

Strategic Communication and Conflict Resolution: Firsthand Observations From States in Crisis -- Bosnia to Darfur

Simon Haselock, an international communications expert, will discuss the apparent gap between how policymakers win popular support for their programs in their own countries and the failure to follow the same logic overseas. As recent experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan illustrate, successful stabilization, peacebuilding and power-sharing efforts hinge on the support and ownership of the local population, and of the perception, as well as the reality, of inclusiveness. Such questions are at the heart of a broad notion of strategic communications in these environments, yet the methods used by governments and others for such "strategic communications" campaigns are often far from strategic.

Ten Years After Ireland's Good Friday: Looking Back And Forward

A roundtable discussion on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the Good Friday agreement, held in conjunction with the American Ireland Fund's Inaugural Leadership Luncheon honouring Senator George Mitchell for his role in bringing peace to Northern Ireland.

Article 140 and the Future of Iraq

Washington, D.C. - On May 9, 2008, the Washington Kurdish Institute (WKI), the Penn Program in Ethnic Conflict at the University of Pennsylvania, and the Kurdish National Congress of North America (KNC) hosted an all-day conference in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill. The focus of the conference was Article 140 of the Iraqi Constitution, which mandates a process of normalization and
referendum for disputed territories.