Whiteness, patriarchy, and peacebuilding in UN higher education: some theoretical and pedagogical implications from one case institution

Abstract

Peace in and through education has become an important educational development agenda. It has been included in human rights frameworks since 1948, and is emphasized in the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Yet, there are few studies examining how Peace and Conflict Studies (PACS) scholars, and by extension the institutions they embody, translate this agenda into the classroom. This paper then critically examines how PACS scholars from one United Nations higher education peace institution understand, practice and experience the challenges and contradictions of teaching for peace in the twenty-first century. In the study, data were collected through semi-structured interviews, participant observations, and document analysis with 25 PACS lecturers and 108 postgraduate students. Findings suggest that despite aspirations toward the liberal peace ideals of international understanding, equity and democratic peacebuilding as expressed by scholars and in peace studies literature, the practice of higher education peace pedagogy is instead imbued with ethnic, cultural, and gendered inequities. Some scholars articulated awareness of this while many others were more optimistic of the positive social change proclaimed through peace studies. Theoretical implications and two pedagogic strategies for peace are discussed.

Keywords:

• United Nations
• higher education
• liberal peacebuilding
• peace pedagogy
• White patriarchy
• Ethnography

Notes on contributor

Kevin Kester is Assistant Professor of International Education & Global Affairs at Keimyung University in Daegu, Korea. His research and teaching interests lie in the sociology and politics of education with a focus on the international system, social theory, and qualitative research methods. His most recent publications are in Educational Philosophy and Theory; Teaching in Higher Education; and Globalisation, Societies and Education.

ORCID

Kevin Kester http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9025-3217

Notes

1 The Visiting Faculty Manual is not included in the references list in order to maintain anonymity of the institution.

2 These are not the full course titles; they are altered here for the anonymity of the institution and lecturers.

3 University statistics indicate that the student population was approximately 70–75% female and the faculty population was approximately 25–30% female in the year of my study. My surveys with students, observations and fieldwork with faculty at the university also confirmed this (see Kester 2017a).

4 The positive comments on sitting all refer to male lecturers (i.e. Matias, Tom, William).