The Next Generation of Social Justice and Peace Activists

I recently had the opportunity to attend the University of Penn’s conference on “Gender, War, and Militarism” from the 25th to the 26th of October. The conference was sponsored by the Alice Paul Center and Penn’s Women’s Studies Program and included panel speakers who were academics, lecturers, and directors of women’s organizations from across the nation as well as the globe.

The first session began with papers prepared on “Gender and the Militarization of Society.” Caren Kaplan, a professor of women and gender studies at the University of California, Davis, started off the line-up with a paper entitled, “Endless War: U.S. Feminism’s Cosmopolitan Militarism.” The outline of this paper analyzed how Western feminist organizations such as NOW and Feminist Majority, have focused little attention or energy on the wars (occupations) being waged across the world. Caren Kaplan also offered that many of her experiences as a professor put her in contact with students who were aware of atrocities and discrimination, but often ‘misguided’ in their efforts to combat such oppressive practices.

Caren Kaplan went on to suggest that youth, specifically young women, have adopted a superior role as peace keepers when addressing foreign issues of conflict, especially in occupied areas. This was one example that she cited as Western “imperial feminism”, where it was proposed that in an effort to offer our resources as humanitarian organizations we really just want to “save the day.”

Discussion of “Endless War” further developed the idea that feminism in the U.S. was used as a tool by the Bush administration to wage militarism across the globe. Criticisms of modernity arose especially in the case of “national militarism as a source for cosmopolitan feminism.”

During the question and answer section of the first session, one comment arose concerning the lack of youth involvement in social justice and peace issues. This comment was drawing back to Caren Kaplan’s own comment that her students were unaware of how to step outside of the “superior role as peace keepers” as well as educate themselves on global feminist issues that kept them from becoming a part of an “imperial feminist” movement themselves.

Reflecting on this discussion, I found myself contemplating, as a graduate student in Philadelphia as well as a young (er) feminist, why we may be viewed as having accepted such roles. I began to question why in comparison to generations of women fighting in the modern women’s liberation or the civil rights movement, we would be considered a generation of immobilized “superior peace keepers”.

I wanted to speak about elementary school, where I was read stories about the peace between the Pilgrims and the ‘Indians’ who occupied the land. Where we saw pictures of bountiful feasts and peace gifts offered between the new settlers and those who were native to the land, rather than true accounts of genocide and slavery. I wanted to share about high school where textbooks left two pages for Harriet Tubman and whole chapters to slave owning Presidents. I wanted to remind the panel about Black History Month and Hispanic Heritage Month and Women’s History Month, which must by default, mean all other months belong to white males. And about my history class, the lies my teachers told me, the lies that had nothing to do with me and her-story.

I began to question how our educational system breeds generations of youth who operate under rhetoric of a “free and just” nation. I wanted to talk about how in 5th grade I was not allowed to go out for recess for two days, because I would not salute the flag during our morning “Pledge to America.” I wanted to talk about how I could not go a week through my senior year without getting a call from an armed service recruiter trying to sell “free rides to college” in order to protect this land of the free. I wanted to talk about how teachers lectured on the pride we should carry to be living in such a free nation, how blessed I should feel to have been born in a just and fair society.

I began to question why a conference filled with academics sitting behind long tables reading their prepared papers, did not understand that the very system they were a part of was the system by which our critical thinking skills had been repressed. What knowledge have I been armed with that would tell me to stand up? I have been ‘educated’ and socialized to DIE for this country, not question it.

When we question why college students aren’t rising up and mobilizing in acts of peace and calls for social justice, I want to know why would we? Where is our next generation of activists? Who will understand the need?

I am not an imperial feminist, I do not prescribe to the role of a “superior peace keeper.” I am a young woman who understands that while wars are being battled on foreign soil, those wars were created right here, against ‘us’ by ‘us’. They continue to be cultivated within our own minds. And where is our next generation of activists, right here, right here, right here.


Nikki Border
MSW Intern US WILPF Office

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