International Center on Nonviolent Conflict

Fletcher Summer Institute 2012

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The Fletcher Summer Institute for the Advanced Study of Nonviolent Conflict is the only executive education program in the advanced, interdisciplinary study of nonviolent conflict, taught by leading scholars and practitioners of strategic nonviolent action and authorities from related fields.

When: Sunday, June 24th – Saturday, June 30th, 2012

Where: Fletcher School / Tufts University / Medford, MA (USA)

Who is attending: International professionals, journalists, campaign organizers, policy analysts, scholars, and educators.

Want to know more about the FSI experience?

Check out presentations and interviews with participants from FSI 2010 and FSI 2011.

Keynote Address: Rev. James Lawson

Speaker: Rev. James Lawson, Distinguished Scholar at Vanderbilt University
Date: Sunday, June 24th, 2012
Time: 9:00pm – 10:30pm

Description: Rev. James Lawson was one of Dr. Martin Luther King’s key strategists during the U.S. Civil Rights Movement. Having traveled to India to learn about Gandhian nonviolence, upon returning to the United States Lawson would put what he learned into action throughout the American South, integrating mass-based, nonviolent direct action into some of the movement’s most successful campaigns – the lunch-counter sit-ins, the freedom rides, the sanitation worker’s strike, and many more. A gifted trainer of nonviolent action, a committed voice for social justice, and a distinguished scholar, James Lawson speaks about his experience during the Civil Rights Movement and the role of civil resistance and nonviolence in contemporary struggles for rights and justice.  The keynote address is preceded by a segment from the film, A Force More Powerful.

Additional Resources

The Ideas and Dynamics of Civil Resistance

Presenter: Jack DuVall, President of International Center on Nonviolent Conflict
Date: Monday, June 25th, 2012
Time: 11:00am – 12:30pm

Description: The modern practice of civil resistance sprang from new ideas about the underlying nature of political power that began to be framed about 170 years ago. As later developed by Gandhi and adopted by scores of movements and campaigns for rights and justice in recent decades, strategies of civil resistance have exhibited a common dynamic, propelled historic changes, and imparted certain political and social properties to their societies. The record of these strategies in liberating oppressed people, when compared to that of violent insurgency or revolt, has been remarkable – and suggests why political violence may substantially be reduced in the future.

Additional Resources

Forming a Movement: Cognitive Liberation

Presenter: Dr. Maciej Bartkowski, Senior Director for Education and Research of International Center on Nonviolent Conflict
Date: Monday, June 25th, 2012
Time: 2:00pm – 3:30pm

Description: How are people aroused to action and why do they decide to join civil resistance campaigns despite a high degree of risk and uncertainty of outcomes? In other words, how do people reach ‘cognitive liberation’ that breaks the barrier of apathy, shatters fear and awakens their minds to civic re-engagement and self-organization? These questions are linked with the reflections on how civil resistance movements build their case for change and how they use opponents’ anti-movement rhetoric and actions to diminish the adversary while galvanizing greater participation, gaining greater visibility and developing resilience.

Additional Resources

Strategic Planning and Tactical Innovation

Presenter: Hardy Merriman, Senior Advisor of International Center on Nonviolent Conflict
Date: Monday, June 25th. 2012
Time: 4:00pm – 5:30pm

Description: Strategic planning and tactical choices are essential considerations in effective civil resistance. This session offers a strategic framework with which to analyze civil resistance movements. It also examines numerous tactics available to civil resisters, and explores issues involved in tactical choice, success and failure.

Additional Resources

Film Screening: Bringing Down a Dictator

Guest Speaker: Ivan Marovic, Veteran of Otpor
Date: Monday, June 25th, 2012
Time: 7:00pm – 9:00pm

Description: Bringing Down A Dictator (56 min) documents the spectacular defeat of Slobodan Milosevic in October 2000, not by force of arms, as many had predicted, but by an ingenious nonviolent strategy of honest elections and massive civil disobedience.

Milosevic was strengthened by patriotic fervor when NATO bombed Yugoslavia in early 1999, but a few months later, a student movement named Otpor! (“Resistance” in Serbian) launched a surprising offensive. Audaciously demanding the removal of Milosevic, they recruited where discontent was strongest, in the Serbian heartland.

Their weapons were rock concerts and ridicule, the internet and email, spray-painted slogans and a willingness to be arrested. Otpor students became the shock troops in an army of human rights, pro-democracy, anti-war, women’s groups, and opposition political parties. Their slogan: “He’s Finished!”

Sustaining the Movement: Unity and Coalition Building

Presenter: Hardy Merriman, Senior Advisor at International Center on Nonviolent Conflict
Date: Tuesday, June 26th, 2012
Time: 9:00am – 10:30am

Description: This session addresses the critical issue of building and maintaining coalitions within movements. Effective coalitions can provide movement infrastructure and be an organizational hub around which broad strategy and discourse is formed. However, coalitions take effort to establish and maintain, and there are numerous risks and potential stresses that can lead a coalition to failure. This session discusses the costs and benefits of coalition formation, as well as factors that promote or inhibit coalition establishment and sustainability.

Additional Resources

Nonviolent Discipline and Radical Flanks

Presenters=: Dr. Howard Barrell, Senior Lecturer at Cardiff University

Date: Tuesday, June 26th, 2012
Time: 11:00am – 12:30pm

Part One – Nonviolent Discipline and Radical Flanks: A crucial yet understudied aspect of civil resistance is the impact of simultaneous violent campaigns on the outcomes of campaigns of nonviolent resistance. That is, does a violent movement operating at the same time and in the same country as a nonviolent one increase or decrease the likelihood of success of the nonviolent movement? One argument is that a violent movement may undermine the position of a nonviolent movement because it discredits all regime opponents, provokes repression, and reduces third party support. Another argument is that a violent movement increases the leverage of a nonviolent one by making it seem less threatening to elites or creating a crisis that is resolved in favor of the nonviolent challengers. All campaigns against states have a major, disruptive political objective: toppling a regime, ending foreign occupation, or secession. Generally, the presence of a simultaneous violent movement has no direct effect on the outcomes of nonviolent resistance movements. However, there is an indirect negative radical flank effect, as simultaneous violent movements decrease the level of participation in nonviolent movements.

Part Two – It’s the Politics, Stupid! Civil Resistance and Violent Flanks – The Case of South Africa’s Struggle Against Apartheid:  This talk examines how simultaneous campaigns of civil resistance and organised military violence against apartheid interacted with each other in the case of South Africa. It examines a complex and paradoxical relationship that developed between popular civil resistance inside South Africa and the ANC’s armed campaign. It argues that the ANC’s almost exclusive focus on armed struggle between 1961 and 1979 severely undermined civil resistance, ironically also held back the development of armed struggle itself, and retarded the achievement of ending apartheid. It concludes that civil resistance inside South Africa led by the United Democratic Front (UDF) eventually far surpassed armed activity as a force for change in South Africa in the 1980s. The presentation will offer reasons for this outcome.

Additional Resources:

Guest Speaker: Czeslaw Bielecki

Speaker: Czeslaw Bielecki, Polish Solidarity Dissident and Author of “Freedom. Do It Yourself”
Date: Tuesday, June 26th, 2012
Time: 12:30pm – 2:00pm

Description: Czeslaw Bielecki’s talk is informed by his personal journey as a nonviolent anti-communist activist who, at the age of twenty, joined the 1968 pro-democracy demonstrations suppressed by the Polish regime. Despite harassment and imprisonment, Bielecki remained committed to nonviolent struggle throughout the 1970s, joining the Solidarity movement with millions of his countrymen in 1980. Bielecki applied his experience and professional artistic background to the development and running of an underground publishing house in Poland with the purpose of challenging official censorship and offering Poles access to the free word.

As part of his presentation, Bielecki discusses his “Freedom: A Do-It-Yourself Manual,” whose content is informed by his visits to Cuba in 2005 and 2006 and his unflagging defiance against the suppression of freedom. The Manual also reflects Bielecki’s desire to offer advice on how to organize more effectively and maintain resilience in the face of repression. This talk provides an opportunity to learn from the experience of one of the veterans of nonviolent organizing and in doing so avoid replicating the same mistakes and engage more effectively in challenging undemocratic regimes.

Backfire and Security Divisions

Presenters: Ivan Marovic, Veteran of Otpor

Dr. Lester Kurtz, Professor of Sociology at George Mason University

Date: Tuesday, June 26th, 2012
Time: 2:00pm – 3:30pm

Description: One of the most visible and widely recognized challenges faced by a social movement is repression in the form of violence and intimidation. Although it can hinder a movement, repression can also “backfire” against a movement’s adversary. Sometimes the outrage that it causes also increases a movement’s mobilization and international sympathy. The outrage may also cause divisions among the adversary’s supporters as well as defections among his security forces. Backfire and defections, however, are not guaranteed and they usually come as a result of a movement’s deliberate strategies.

Additional Resources:

Internal Agency and External Assistance

Presenters: Dr. Kim Wilson, Lecturer at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy

Sadaf Lakhani, International Development Consultant

Date: Tuesday, June 26th, 2012
Time: 4:00pm – 5:30pm

Description: Movements are typically sustained by those most affected by the action of the movement. Organizers have a vested interest in the purpose and outcome of the movement and find it practical to ensure its survival. There are different forms of local or internal self-organized action, including civil resistance, and different forms of external assistance to local actors. What can be learned from assistance to community banking and financial self-help projects in development assistance?

Additional Resources:

Personal Autocracy & Democratic Backsliding

Presenters: Lisbeth Tarlow, Director of the Project on the Russian-Speaking Jewish Diaspora at Davis Center at Harvard University

Olena Tregub, Co-Founder and Executive Director of Global Education Leadership

Date: Wednesday, June 27th, 2012
Time: 9:00am – 10:30am

Part One – Russian Protest Movement in Struggle Against Personal Autocracy: Russia today experiences an unprecedented wave of citizens’ organizing against their own government not seen since the times of the collapse of the Soviet Union and nonviolent mobilization against Yanayev push in Moscow in August 1991. The current protest movement in Russia is both robust and limited. It continues engaging in creative acts of public resistance often initiated and popularized online that bring together various political and social groups. At the same time, the movement faces challenges with expanding its outreach beyond main cities into smaller towns, villages and countryside where Putin enjoys a genuine support. The authorities play on public fear of foreign interference and ‘color revolutions’ that, according to them, will destabilize economic and political situation in the country. In addition, the government introduces ever harsher laws against activists and discusses ways of tightening its control over the Internet where a significant part of the current civic organizing against Putin’s regime is taking place. In these changing and challenging circumstances it remains to be seen whether and how the protest movement can adapt and reinvent itself to convince the majority of the population that the political changes demanded by the movement are a matter of time not choice.

Part Two – From Frustration to Mobilization? Reinventing Ukrainian Society under Personalistic Rule: After the Orange revolution in Ukraine, the society ended up in a deep retrenchment from a political life as the Orange leaders disappointed in their ability to introduce economic and political reforms and quiet down their personal animosities for a greater public good. Eventually, the ‘people power’ that ushered Victor Yushchenko to Ukraine’s presidency in 2005 also brought it down, albeit through conventional politics. Yulia Tymoshenko did not manage to beat Viktor Yanukovych, an anti-hero of the Orange revolution, in the presidential race in 2010. Right from the outset of his presidency he quickly consolidated his powers via corruption schemes, and re-writing the Ukrainian constitution. Following a politically charged trial Tymoshenko was sentenced last year to 7 years in prison for allegedly exceeding her power in signing a gas deal with Russia in 2009. Next to his attempts to suppress political opposition, Yanukovych is now trying to tame down media and civil society. A number of civil society organizations and activists have been voicing their criticism in public protests and information campaigns. Until now, the Ukrainian society, by and large, has remained demobilized, still feeling the fatigue with politics. The polls however show that the protest moods in the society are higher than before the Orange revolution. The activists mostly realize their dissatisfaction with the current government and its policies through small localized and single-issue protests and ridiculing and criticizing authorities in the unrestricted digital space. The coming parliamentary elections this Fall have already seen the government imposing institutional barriers to restrict open political participation while, at the same time, some civic groups began organizing themselves, independently of the divided political opposition, for honest and fair elections.

Movement Media

Presenters: Al Giordano, Founder of School of Authentic Journalism

Greg Berger, Founder of Gringoyo.com

Date: Wednesday, June 27th, 2012
Time: 11:00am – 12:30pm

Description: Social movements and civil resistance campaigns that make their own media have more success than those that rely on external media to tell their stories. Narco News publisher Al Giordano and NNTV director Gregory Berger have reported alongside social movements throughout Mexico and the Americas, and in 2011 in Egypt. Giordano founded the School of Authentic Journalism in 2003, which trains journalists and communicators in movements to create effective written, video and Internet media, to gain a wider public audience for it, and to better understand the strategic dynamics of nonviolent struggles. The Narco News team carefully studies media about and by movements from throughout the world so that new inventions and techniques can be applied in other lands. Javier Sicilia, the poet who launched the Mexican peace movement to end the war on drugs, recently said, “The first strong and interesting media message for the movement – there had already been others – was with Al Giordano, who began to move the life of the movement in the alternative media.”

**Video Coming Soon

President Mohamed Nasheed Receives the James Lawson Award

Awardee: President Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives
Date: Wednesday, June 27th, 2012
Time: 12:30pm – 2:00pm

Description: The first democratically elected President of the Republic of Maldives, Mohamed Nasheed, receives the James Lawson Award for Achievement in the Practice of Nonviolent Action, recognizing his leadership during many years of the nonviolent opposition to dictatorship in his country, his courage in the face of an armed coup earlier this year which forced him from power, and his renewed nonviolent action on behalf of restoring genuine democracy in his country. The Lawson Award event takes place annually at The Fletcher School at Tufts University during the Fletcher Summer Institute.

**Video Coming Soon

Additional Resources:

A Conversation on Leadership in Civil Resistance

Presenter: Dr. Deborah Nutter, Senior Associate Dean at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy
Date: Wednesday, June 27th, 2012
Time: 2:00pm – 3:30pm

Description: To give effective leadership to a civil resistance movement, an organizer must be able to strategically organize and plan, visualize a future that the movement wants to achieve, elicit sustained and value-driven participation, and effectively negotiate with disparate parts of a coalition for action, and with other institutions. The leader must articulate ideas and generate tactical actions that build the movement in order to shift perceived legitimacy from the current system to a new society sought by the people. Dean Deborah Winslow Nutter leads a discussion on leadership, based on these and other ideas, with two leaders of civil resistance: Czeslaw Bielecki of Poland, and Lhadon Tethong on behalf of Tibet.

Civil Resistance and Human Rights

Presenters: Dr. Mary King, Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies at University for Peace

Dr. Kim Wilson, Lecturer at Fletcher School for Law and Diplomacy

Nicola Barrach, Director for Civic and New Media Initiatives at International Center on Nonviolent Conflict

Date: Wednesday, June 27th, 2012
Time: 4:00pm – 5:30pm

Description: This session is an interactive discussion about civil resistance and human rights, exploring the fundamental role that nonviolent movements have played in securing and codifying most of the rights that are today recognized as universal. It is no exaggeration to say that civil resistance is both the creation and exercise of universal human rights. This includes preventing and opposing new forms of oppression. It is also the means by which new rights can be claimed and already established rights must be defended. Nonviolent movements can play a pivotal role in monitoring and reporting violations of rights, revealing abusive practices that have been concealed from view, and exerting pressure by leveraging global public opinion. In addition, nonviolent practitioners can utilize and improve both human rights law and the relationship between activists and existing networks of human rights professionals.

Civil Resistance and Movements Against Exploitation

Presenters: Althea Middleton-Detzner, Educational Advisor at International Center on Nonviolent Conflict

Greg Berger, Founder at Gringoyo.com

Date: Thursday, June 28th, 2012
Time: 9:00am – 10:30am

Description: While authoritarian or corrupt governments are prime abusers of people’s rights, other groups – such as military interveners, independent militias, violent gangs, transnational traffickers, and international corporations – are also responsible for abusing rights and worsening social and economic conditions. This session will focus on transnational corporations that have operations as far reaching as the grasslands of Mongolia to the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. In particular, extractive industries have had long-lasting social, economic, and environmental effects, with collateral human rights abuses. To further complicate matters, corporate operators and their supposed state regulators have been corrupted in many cases by organized crime and paramilitary groups. This session will examine efforts by organized nonviolent resistance movements in Cheran, Mexico, and West Papua, Indonesia to control the presence and practices of transnational companies and of organized crime operating in their regions.

Additional Resources:

Civil Resistance Negotiations and Democratic Transitions

Presenters: Dr. Maciej Bartkowski, Senior Director for Education and Research at International Center on Nonviolent Conflict

Dr. Amy Finnegan, Faculty at University of Minnesota Rochester

Date: Thursday, June 28th, 2012
Time: 11:00am – 12:30pm

Part One – Civil Resistance and Negotiations: This presentation highlights the synergy between negotiation and civil resistance. Based on negotiation theory and practice, it emphasizes what is critical to a successful integrative negotiation strategy. Utilizing Gene Sharp’s mechanism of change, and drawing on the civil resistance struggles in South Africa and Serbia, a more in-depth examination of the role that negotiation plays through the particular mechanisms of accommodation and nonviolent coercion are presented. In the end, the presentation raises some important questions about the timing of negotiation within a civil resistance struggle as well as the skills necessary to be an effective negotiator.

Part Two – Civil Resistance and Democratic Transitions: An overemphasis on the importance of structural conditions and processes has overshadowed the idea that people’s mobilization and civil resistance can be a democratizing force long after the authoritarian regime is gone. Recent studies suggest that countries that experience political upheavals spearheaded by civic nonviolent movements have a much better chance of more peaceful and successful democratic transitions than states where the regimes fall because of top-down pressure by reformist-minded powerholders, outside military intervention or violent insurrection. This session explores some of the movement-centered attributes and mechanisms, including openness to negotiations, deliberation and coalition building, by which broad-based nonviolent movements have facilitated democratization. It also considers the impact of nonviolent movements on a successful democratic transition.

Success in Civil Resistance: The Necessity of Skills

Presenter: Dr. Peter Ackerman, Founding Chair of International Center on Nonviolent Conflict
Date: Thursday, June 28th, 2012
Time: 12:30pm – 2:00pm

Description: Nonviolent conflict is a contest between nonviolent civil resisters and their (often violent) adversaries. In this contest, each side has different strategies and tactics that they can employ to try to win. Civil resistance movements wage their struggle through political, economic, and social pressure, and they have a wide variety of tactics at their disposal. A movement’s adversary often tries to wage its struggle through violent means, which has a completely different dynamic and tactical repertoire. In this asymmetric contest between violent and nonviolent actors, the side that is best organized, most skillful, and most strategic, is more likely to prevail. Therefore, the skillful and strategic choices that civil resistance movements make are of critical importance to their outcome.

Conflicts in Fragile States

Presenter: Dr. Richard Schultz, Director of International Security Studies Program at Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy
Date: Friday, June 29th 2012
Time: 9:00am – 10:30am

Description: Fragile states are unable to control their territory, maintain a monopoly over the use of force, or provide essential services to their citizens beginning with human security. Often they are also plagued by excessive corruption. Armed groups can pose threats to such states, which also inspire civilian discontent that may be harnessed by movements using civil resistance to obtain rights. But the latter may ultimately prove beneficial on behalf of a more stable order.