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Past Academic Seminars

March 29, 2016 by Maciej Bartkowski

2016 Academic Seminars

Civil Resistance

Forman Christian College, Lahore, Pakistan

September 26-27, 2016

This seminar aims to facilitate learning and teaching on basic themes in civil resistance studies. This course provides a foundation knowledge on civil resistance, including its history and commonly employed strategies. It discusses topics such as Pakistan’s nonviolent history, Abdul Ghaffar Khan, nonviolent strategies against violent extremism, and the role of Islam and civil resistance. The course examines challenges and opportunities for nonviolent mobilization and campaigns, drawing on lessons from the region. Finally, the course discusses how to teach and train young people in the field of civil resistance.

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Civil Resistance: The Study of Nonviolent Power and Organized People

Hekima College, Nairobi, Kenya

September 20-22, 2016

hekima This seminar aims to provide a general introduction to civil resistance, examining its history and common misconceptions. It discusses movement formation as well as effective strategies and tactics commonly used in nonviolent campaigns. Other topics include mobilization, repression & backfire, and the roles of women and external actors. A session in the program also included case studies while looking into contemporary nonviolent campaigns in West Africa and the challenges, opportunism, and impact associated with them.

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Civil Resistance Studies: Driving Ideas, Findings, Cases and Research Agenda

University of Brasilia, Brazil

August 22-24, 2016

U of Brasilia This is a multidisciplinary seminar designed to facilitate learning on the part of participants. The goal of the course is to offer an introduction to the field of civil resistance studies and analyze the driving ideas behind it, discussing various case studies, tactics, and research materials.

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Civil Resistance as an Applied Field of Academic Inquiry

FLASCO, Quito, Ecuador

June 9-11, 2016

FLASCO This course provides general introduction to the field of civil resistance, explore different understandings of political power in society with regard to the practice of organized, mass-based civil resistance and discuss why civil resistance can be an effective force for bringing about a significant political change.

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Civil Resistance: The Study of Nonviolent Power and Organized People

Leeds Beckett University

April 18-20, 2016

This is a multidisciplinary course whose goal is to offer an introduction to the field of civil resistance studies and provide an overview of generic but also specific analytical concepts and empirical themes in civil resistance.

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Civil Resistance: Nonviolent Force for Democracy and Justice

University of Toronto

February 27-28, 2016

This course is designed to provide an in-depth and multidisciplinary perspective on the dynamic of civilian-based movements and campaigns that defend and obtain basic rights and justice, halt political oppression and facilitate democratic transitions and accountable governance.

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2015 Academic Seminars

ICNC Academic Seminar at University of Arizona, Tuscon
University of Arizona, Tuscon
September 30-October 2, 2015

This three-day course aims to introduce participants and speakers to the fundamentals of civil resistance, including the historical record of civil resistance, its basic concepts, and cases. Beyond delving into why and how civil resistance works and the strategies and tactics of civil resistance that underlie successful movements, this seminar also explores topics such as repression and violent flanks, key lessons from nonviolent revolutions that did not succeed, and research and teaching on civil resistance, amongst other topics.
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IPSI/SAIS Bologna, Italy
Johns Hopkins University-SAIS Bologna Center
July 9-10, 2015

This course is designed to provide an in-depth and multi-disciplinary perspective on the dynamic of civilian-based movements and campaigns that defend and obtain basic rights and justice, halt political oppression and facilitate democratic transitions and accountable governance.

The course examined the nature and attributes of civil resistance, its historical record and effectiveness when compared to that of violent insurgency, factors that determine successes as well as failures of civil resistance, common misconceptions and framing of civil resistance with a specific emphasis on skills, strategic planning and tactics vis-a-vis structural externalities, long-term effects of civil resistance on democratic transformation and sustainability and new, emerging areas of civil resistance studies.
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Understanding Civil Resistance: Nonviolent Struggles for Democracy and Justice
European Humanities University
May 14-16, 2015

This three-day course provides for its EHU participants a general introduction to the field of civil resistance, including a definition of political power, and an explanation of why nonviolent struggles were ignored historically and what accounts for the effectiveness of nonviolent actions. Referring to a number of examples from the last few decades, this course looks at how civil resistance movements emerge and sustain themselves, as well as the strategic planning, campaigning, and tactical choices that are essential components of effective civil resistance. This course additionally discusses the subjects of nonviolent civilian defense by and for communities and nations, democratization and civil resistance, the role of external actors in civil resistance, and nonviolent discipline and radical flanks.
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Understanding Civil Resistance: Nonviolent Struggles for Democracy and Justice
University of Sarajevo
May 11-12, 2015

This intensive two day course is designed to introduce participants to how ordinary people are mobilizing and engaging in civil resistance as a force for reclaiming political power— whether to curb graft and abuse, increase government’s accountability, or force a repressive regime to yield. After introducing participants to the power and dynamics of civil resistance, this course highlights strategic dynamics of civil resistance struggles, tactical creativity, managing repression, amplifying backfire, and the impact of nonviolent movements on democratization.
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2014 Academic Seminars

Civil Resistance: Its Dynamics, Effectiveness and Impact
Collegium Civitas
October 22, 2014

Civil Resistance: The Study of Nonviolent Power and Organized People
Yale University
September 25-26, 2014

The nonviolent popular uprisings during the ‘Arab Spring’ showed the relevance of civil resistance. Yet, strategic nonviolent conflict is not a new phenomenon. In fact, the use of civil resistance against undemocratic regimes and other illegitimate actors is prevalent over time and space. This seminar will explore the underlying concepts and dynamics of civil resistance, discuss its effectiveness, and how its tactics and strategies are applicable. It will also talk about how civil resistance facilitates defections from the regime’s pillars of support and how a violent flank impacts nonviolent movement. Finally, the seminar will also shed greater understanding on the interplay between civil resistance and third-party actors and role of nonviolent movements in negotiations and democratic transitions, among others.
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IPSI/SAIS Bologna
Johns Hopkins University-SAIS Bologna Center
July 24-25, 2014

Civil Resistance: The Study of Nonviolent Power and Organized People
New York University
February 28-March 2, 2014

The nonviolent popular uprisings during the ‘Arab Spring’ showed the relevance of civil resistance. Yet, strategic nonviolent conflict is not a new phenomenon. In fact, the use of civil resistance against undemocratic regimes and other illegitimate actors is prevalent over time and space. This seminar will explore the underlying concepts of strategic nonviolent conflict, discuss its effectiveness, particularly vis-à-vis violent insurgency, and how its tactics and strategies are applicable. It will also shed greater understanding on the interplay between civil resistance and third-party actors and role of nonviolent movements in negotiations and democratic transitions, among others.
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2013 Academic Seminars

Nonviolent Civil Resistance: Methods of Assisting Peaceful Change
Foreign Service Program, Georgetown University
November 15, 2013

Over the last 25 years, nonviolent civil resistance movements have played an increasingly important role in shaping nations and geopolitics. From movements in Poland, the Baltic States, East Germany, and Czechoslovakia that ushered in the end of the Soviet Union, to more recent movements in Serbia (2000), Georgia (2003), Ukraine (2004), Lebanon (2005), Nepal (2006), Pakistan (2007), Iran (2009), Tunisia (2011), Egypt (2011) Yemen (2011), and other countries, nonviolent civil resistance has continually surprised experts and defied the expectations of outside observers. It is therefore critical that analysts of international politics better understand these movements, how they emerge and function, their historical record of success, their relationship to democratic gains, and considerations for external actors (i.e. foreign governments, multilateral institutions, INGOs, and other groups) that may interact with them. This clinic considered some of the basic skills and techniques of resistance and civil engagement. Drawing on up-to-date theory, case studies, and quantitative research, this clinic also provided tools and cultivate analytical skills for understanding how civil resistance movements work, the variety of issues around which they emerge, their impact on various countries, and their possible influence on democracy assistance norms and practices. We discussed questions critical to external actors as they consider acting in environments in which civil resistance movements are present. In addition to the presentations and discussion, participants were also introduced to a computer simulation game that allowed them to assume a leadership role in a movement and play-test strategies in a variety of scenarios.
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Nonviolent Conflict as a Means of Achieving Peace
United States Institute of Peace Academic Seminar
November 14, 2013

This seminar drew on diverse cases, frameworks for action, and up-to-date research findings in the multidisciplinary field of civil resistance studies. Special attention was paid to movements struggling for rights, democracy, and government accountability. The seminar also explored the role of third parties who may interact with or want to assist civil resistance movements and introduce a group exercise around that theme.

St. Andrews Academic Seminar
St. Andrews University
October 23-25, 2013

As nonviolent movements around the world increase in number and scope, they are changing whole societies by animating and enlarging civilian-led struggles for human rights, democracy, justice, women’s rights, indigenous rights, transparency (anti-corruption) and environmental protection. Although not all movements are successful, many of them are, and the use of civil resistance has a remarkable record of challenging and displacing obstacles—such as unaccountable government, marginalization, corruption, and violence—to more peaceful societies. It is therefore crucial that practitioners, external actors and conflict analysts have a clear understanding of how civil resistance movements form, what makes them effective, and considerations for interaction with such movements.
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IPSI/SAIS Seminar in Bologna
SAIS Bologna, Italy
July 4-5, 2013

This short seminar was designed to provide a comprehensive perspective on the dynamic of civilian-based movements and campaigns that defend and obtain basic rights and justice, halt political oppression and facilitate democratic transitions and accountable governance.
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Civil Resistance in an Age of People’s Uprisings
Peace Research Institute Olso (PRIO)
May 12-May 14, 2013

This intensive course was designed to provide an in‐depth and multi‐disciplinary perspective on civilian‐based movements and campaigns that defend and obtain basic rights and justice around the world with the use of nonviolent tactics and strategies‐ from Egypt to Burma, from Zimbabwe to West Papua. We will look, among others, at issues of agency and structure, strategic planning and mobilization, formation, sustenance and dynamics of nonviolent movements, backfire and security divisions, digital actors and tools, negotiations and democratic transitions, role of third party actors and finally, historical and contemporary cases of civil resistance around the world.
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Strategic Nonviolent Conflict: Political Power at the Grassroots
Uppsala University
May 10-May 12, 2013

Civil resistance as a practice is centuries-old, but still remains relatively unknown among educators, policy makers, civil society professionals, and the media. This was a three-day series of sessions and discussions that provided an in-depth and multidisciplinary perspective on civil resistance, its nature, dynamics, effectiveness and impact.
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Nonviolent Force to Win Freedoms and Rights: Power and Dynamics of Civil Resistance
Dartmouth College
April 13, 2013

This one-day seminar explored the use of nonviolent force in the struggle to obtain basic rights and justice through themes such as people’s agency, effectiveness and power of civil resistance, strategic planning and mobilization, impact of third parties and democratic transitions. It also introduced analytical concepts and practical aspects of the strategic use of civil resistance and engages participants in the discussion based on a segment from the documentary A Force More Powerful.

ICNC/Rutgers-Newark Online Course
Online
February 18-April 5, 2013

This online course provided an in-depth and multidisciplinary perspective on civilian-based movements and campaigns that defend and obtain basic rights and justice around the world with the use of nonviolent tactics and strategies – from Egypt to Russia, from Zimbabwe to West Papua. We looked at issues of agency and structure, strategic planning and mobilization, formation, sustenance and dynamics of nonviolent movements, democratic transitions and civil resistance, backfire and security divisions, digital actors and tools, role of third party actors and finally, historical and contemporary cases of civil resistance around the world.

Skills Institute – People Power: How and Why Civil Resistance Works
American University, Washington, DC
February 8-10, 2013

This participatory short course was designed to provide a multi-disciplinary perspective on nonviolent, civilian-based movements and campaigns that defend and obtain basic rights and justice around the world – from Zimbabwe to West Papua, Mexico to China, and throughout the Middle East-North Africa region. Historically, political change in countries that curtail freedom and ignore international human rights norms has been difficult to achieve. Violent revolution or the use of armed force by external actors is typically seen as the primary means of overcoming oppression. Yet people power, relying on a variety of methods of nonviolent action, has been used for this purpose for well over a century in different parts of the world, by different peoples and societies, in different cultures and political systems, and with some impressive results as well as some apparent failures. Furthermore, countries that experience bottom-up, civilian-based resistance are known to have a better track record of successful democratic transitions than the states that initiated their systemic transformation after a protracted civil war, or due to top-down, elite-to-elite negotiations or external military interventions.

2012 Academic Seminars

The ICNC/USIP Online Course
Online
October 20 – December 8, 2012

Civil Resistance and the Dynamics of Nonviolent Conflict is a professional level course developed by ICNC and presented under the auspices of the United States Institute of Peace. This course was designed to provide an in-depth and multi-disciplinary perspective on civilian-based movements and campaigns that defend and obtain basic rights and justice around the world, and in so doing transform the global security environment.

Central European University (CEU): Academic Seminar on Power and Dynamics of Civil Resistance
CEU Summer University, Budapest, Hungary
July-9-13, 2012

This course was designed to provide an in-depth and multi-disciplinary perspective on civilian-based movements and campaigns that defend and obtain basic rights and justice around the world – from Egypt to Russia, from Zimbabwe to West Papua. Civil resistance, relying on a variety of methods of nonviolent action, has been used for this purpose for well over a century in different parts of the world, by different peoples and societies, in different cultures and political systems, and with impressive results as well as some apparent failures.
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Nonviolent Force in the Struggle for Change – IPSI/SAIS Bologna
IPSI/SAIS Bologna Center
July-5-6, 2012

This course explored the use of nonviolent force in the struggle to obtain basic rights and justice through themes such as agency and structure, strategic planning and mobilization, and negotiations and democratic transitions. It also introduced analytical concepts and practical aspects of the strategic use of civil resistance.

Nonviolent Civil Resistance Seminar
European Peace University, Austria
June 11-13, 2012

In this seminar we explored the sociology, social history and theoretical bases of civil resistance as it unfolded and became a powerful agent of social change from the twentieth century onwards. We looked at issues of agency and structure, strategic planning, mobilization and cultural framing processes, backfire and security divisions, digital actors and tools, democratic transitions, prevailing misconceptions and case studies of civil resistance around the world.

People Power in the Struggle for Freedom
The University of Cambridge
May 1-4, 2012

This was a four-day series of sessions and discussions that provide an in-depth and multidisciplinary perspective on civilian movements and campaigns that defend basic rights, accountability, and justice. Thematic sessions included: How Civil Resistance Works, Forgotten History of Civil Resistance, Agency of People and their Collective Actions, Media in Civil Resistance, Sustained People’s Nonviolent Mobilization in Egypt, Movement in Action: Strategies, Tactics and Planning, Civil Resistance and a Violent Flank in South Africa, Woman and Minorities in Civil Resistance, and case studies from the Arab Spring and beyond.
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ICNC/Rutgers Online Course
Online
April 23-June 5, 2012

This online course provided an in-depth and multidisciplinary perspective on civilian-based movements and campaigns that defend and obtain basic rights and justice around the world with the use of nonviolent tactics and strategies – from Egypt to Burma, from Zimbabwe to West Papua. We looked at issues of agency and structure, strategic planning and mobilization, formation, sustenance and dynamics of nonviolent movements, democratic transitions and civil resistance, backfire and security divisions, digital actors and tools, role of third party actors and finally, historical and contemporary cases of civil resistance around the world.

Power of Nonviolent Action at Rosario University
Rosario University, Bogota, Colombia
April 17-20, 2012

This ICNC course brought up basic analytical concepts and practical aspects of the strategic use of civil resistance. Often times, despite adversarial conditions, civil resistance used by ordinary people against repressive regimes can be very successful. We explored the question why this type of conflict can be successful.
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Nonviolent Force in Political Change: Power and Dynamics of Civil Resistance
The University of the Basque Country, Bilbao, Spain
March 16, 2012

This was a one-day intensive course designed to provide an in-depth and multidisciplinary perspective on civilian based movements and campaigns that defend basic rights, accountability, and justice. We looked at the following issues in civil resistance: History and dynamics of civil resistance; Movement in action: strategies, tactics and planning; Women in civil resistance; Civil resistance in unstable societies; Civil resistance in democracies; Civil resistance and democratic transition; Future research on civil resistance.

Power and Dynamics of Civil Resistance
The University of Deusto, Bilbao, Spain
March 13-15, 2012

This ICNC course discussed the dimension of political power as exercised strategically by ordinary people. It will covered basic dynamics of civil resistance, strategies and tactics of nonviolent conflict, and presented a number of topics related to the study of civil resistance, such as third party actors, security defections, social media, and democratic transition.
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Nonviolent Force in Political Change: Power and Dynamics of Civil Resistance
The University of Sydney, Australia
February 20-22, 2012

This ICNC course introduced to academics and educators general ideas and concepts with regard to strategic nonviolent conflict. It emphasized the importance of a growing field of civil resistance as an emerging new discipline of study. Presented content aimed to provide the academic audience with useful material to develop curricula on civil resistance.
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AU Skills Institute
American University, Washington, DC
February 10-12, 2012

This two and a half day skills institute, offered through American University, was designed to provide a multi-disciplinary perspective on nonviolent, civilian-based movements and campaigns that defend and obtain basic rights and justice around the world.

Power and Dynamics of Civil Resistance
University of Amsterdam
January 5-8, 2012

This ICNC course discussed the dimensions of political power that ordinary people can exercise through the use of civil resistance to obtain basic rights and justice, using examples from around the world- from Egypt to Burma, from Zimbabwe to West Papua. It demonstrated how this little understood type of struggle is effective, even against repressive regimes, through topics such as movement formation, backfire and security divisions and digital actors and tools.
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2011 Academic Seminars

Power and Dynamics of Civil Resistance
School of Law, Hong Kong University
October 10-13, 2011

This ICNC course addressed the void of academic study on civil resistance as a tool for ordinary people to achieve basic rights and justice, despite a long history of the practice of civil resistance and strategic nonviolent conflict that goes back at least to the eighteenth century. The course covered numerous topics that contribute to the practice and strategy of nonviolent conflict including third part actors, security defections, social media, and democratic transition.
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Academic Seminar on Civil Resistance at Central European University
Budapest, Hungary
September 8-12, 2011

This ICNC course explained the basic analytical concepts and practical aspects of the strategic use of civil resistance- a little understood, but effective tactic that ordinary people can use to obtain basic rights and justice, and even to overthrow repressive regimes. To investigate how such methods are effective, the course explored multi-disciplinary perspectives on civilian based movements and campaigns around the world.

Civil Resistance as a Force for Change and Peace
Virginia Tech University
January 12 – 14, 2011

This ICNC academic program is part of a short course entitled, “Non-Violent Civic Action: Negotiations, Strategies and Tactics” that investigates how ordinary people can use civilian-based movements and campaigns to defend and obtain basic rights and justices. It introduced basic analytical concepts and practical aspects of the strategic use of civil resistance.

2010 Academic Seminars

EMUNI/ICNC – Power and Dynamics of Civil Resistance
Ljubljana, Slovenia
November 8-12, 2010

This ICNC course discussed the dimension of political power that ordinary citizens can strategically exercise to defend their rights and obtain justice, even against repressive regimes. It covered the basic dynamics of civil resistance, strategies and tactics of nonviolent conflict and present other topics related to the study of civil resistance.
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USIP/ICNC Course: Civil Resistance and the Dynamics of Nonviolent Conflict
United States Institute of Peace, Washington, DC
October 19 – December 9, 2010

This is a professional level course developed by ICNC and presented under the auspices of the United States Institute of Peace. This course is designed to provide an in-depth and multi-disciplinary perspective on civilian-based movements and campaigns that defend and obtain basic rights and justice around the world, and in so doing transform the global security environment.

ICNC Seminar on Teaching Civil Resistance
Ramallah, West Bank
October 14 – 16, 2010

The ICNC Seminar on Teaching Civil Resistance is an educational seminar for local scholars and civil society actors that will introduce the strategic use of nonviolent conflict to assist in developing curricula on civil resistance. It will emphasize the importance of the growing field of civil resistance as an emerging, and incredibly important area of study.
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Academic Teacher Workshop (Global)
Istanbul, Turkey
July 25-27, 2010

As part of its education mission, ICNC is organizing a two-day academic training for international college and university instructors, faculty members and doctoral students on teaching and studying the subject of civil resistance.
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Council of Europe Summer University: Three ICNC Sessions on Civil Resistance
Strasbourg, France
June 28-30, 2010

The 5th Summer University for Democracy, a gathering of 600 political leaders, civil society activists, journalists and business leaders met to discuss “crises of leadership.”
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Academic Teacher Workshop (North America)
Emory Conference Center, Atlanta, GA
May 21-22, 2010

As part of its education mission, ICNC organized a two-day academic training for North American college and university instructors, faculty members and doctoral students on teaching and studying the subject of civil resistance.
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New President for International Center on Nonviolent Conflict

March 24, 2016 by David Reinbold

Peter Ackerman, the founding chair of the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict (ICNC), has announced that the Center has a new president – Hardy Merriman, former vice president of the organization. On January 1, 2015 he succeeded Jack DuVall, who was president for 13 years since the organization was founded in January 2002.

“When we established ICNC,” Dr. Ackerman said, “we wanted to create new ways to teach and disseminate everywhere the critical knowledge of how civil resistance movements and campaigns can win rights, democracy, justice and freedom. We’ve done that, and more – with the vital leadership of outgoing president Jack DuVall, the dedicated staff at ICNC, and the help of civil society leaders, scholars, teachers, organizers, activists and independent journalists in more than 70 countries around the world.

“In Hardy Merriman, we have a new president with extensive knowledge, experience and vision to lead ICNC into a new decade of growth. He is one of the top thinkers on civil resistance who combines both practical and theoretical knowledge. His nearly 13 years of work in the field has been marked by deep competence and versatility – from leading workshops for activists, presenting to scholars and publishing writing for diverse audiences.”

Hardy Merriman stated: “I am honored to serve as President of ICNC, and thank Peter Ackerman for his confidence and myriad of contributions to the field of civil resistance. I also want to thank Jack DuVall for his strong, creative leadership in growing ICNC from its beginning to its present status as the leading international organization focusing on civil resistance. I am committed to furthering ICNC’s support of groundbreaking research, knowledge sharing and development of educational resources about civil resistance, one of the most powerful means there is for oppressed people to struggle for rights, freedom and justice.”

Among ICNC’s many collaborative programs have been its annual Summer Institute in the Advanced Study of Nonviolent Conflict at the Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy at Tufts University; the James Lawson Institute for Nonviolent Civil Resistance in Nashville, Tennessee; the Oxford University Project on Power Politics & Civil Resistance (2007-2012); online courses in the dynamics of nonviolent conflict with Rutgers University and the U.S. Institute of Peace; support for research that has led to books such as Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict, by Drs. Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan (Columbia University Press) and Curtailing Corruption: People Power for Accountability and Justice, by Shaazka Beyerle (Lynne Rienner Publishers); support for documentary films produced by Steve York, including Orange Revolution and Confronting the Truth; field seminars for activists and organizers from Egypt, Guatemala, Palestine, Syria, Tibet, West Papua, Western Sahara and more than 20 other countries; and academic seminars at more than 30 institutions such as Cambridge University, Central European University, Collegium Civitas (Warsaw), the International Peace & Security Institute’s Bologna Symposium, Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), Sydney University, the University of Hong Kong, Universidad del Rosario (Bogota, Colombia) and Yale University.

In passing the baton of leading the center, Jack DuVall said that “Hardy Merriman will give ICNC both the vigor and steadiness which it needs to meet the challenges ahead. He has the intelligence, the practicality and the drive to shift ICNC into a higher gear and be a fair as well as a spirited leader. I don’t have to wish him the best because I know he’ll achieve it.”

For more on Mr. Merriman, you can read his biography here.

Toward a Nonviolent World: The Means of Power and the End of Domination

March 8, 2016 by intern3

Jack DuVall
St. Bonaventure University
October 20, 2006

DOWNLOAD THIS PRESENTATION

Frequently Asked Questions

February 25, 2016 by David Reinbold

1. What is nonviolent conflict?

In a nonviolent conflict, civilian-based resistance is used to challenge the legitimacy of an oppressor, raise the cost of repression, and to undermine the opponent’s sources of power, including the military and police.

There are over 198 tactics (or methods) of nonviolent action. Various forms of protest—such as petitions, parades, displaying symbols or mass demonstrations—can weaken an opponent’s legitimacy, and also help to recruit, mobilize, and enlarge people’s participation in a nonviolent movement. Certain acts of noncooperation—including resignations, refusal to obey orders, and civil disobedience—jeopardize the status quo. Other forms of noncooperation—such as strikes, boycotts, and refusal to pay fees and taxes—cut off an opponent’s material resources. Direct intervention in the form of sit-ins, targeted acts of economic sabotage, and blockades can directly disrupt an oppressor’s system of control.

Tactics vary widely in the amount of time and energy they require to implement (e.g. occupying a building vs. displaying a symbol), the amount of risk involved (e.g. a public strike and picket line vs. a consumer boycott or a stay-at-home strike), the degree to which people are concentrated or dispersed (e.g. a protest in front of a city hall vs. a population’s refusal to pay taxes), and the amount of people required to carry the tactic out (e.g. a hunger strike vs. mass civil disobedience). Tactics also vary widely in their function; for example some tactics—such as distributing literature to recruit or fund raise, or training members of a movement—help to build the strength of a movement while other tactics—such as a mass demonstration or a strike—may directly confront the movement’s opponent.

2. How does nonviolent conflict work?

Nonviolent conflict works by reducing an opponent’s power to control events and exploit his position in the society or nation. This can typically happen when the reliability and loyalty of key groups (such as the police, military, media, bureaucracy, businesses, laborers, students, religious institutions, or other groups), on which an oppressor depends, maintain its position, deteriorate or collapse. These groups either move towards neutrality in a conflict or actively join with the nonviolent movement to challenge the oppressor’s unjust rule.

When a society’s opposition groups are able to unite among themselves, form a nonviolent movement, develop a strategy and goals based on accurate analysis of their situation, and organize actions that effectively target and shift the loyalties and behavior of their opponent’s supporters, the oppression can no longer rule and power is shifted to the people.

WATCH – Dr. Peter Ackerman talks about key elements of civil resistance below

3. How is nonviolent conflict different from “nonviolence” or passive resistance?

“Nonviolence” is usually a moral choice. Nonviolent conflict is usually a pragmatic choice. Nonviolent conflict is about power—organizing and applying it to fight for and win rights or other political, economic, or social goals. Many people that have used nonviolent action in the past wanted to advance their rights or interests but chose nonviolent methods either because they saw that violence had been ineffective in the past or because they had no violent weapons at their disposal.

When a nonviolent movement follows a strategy aimed at unifying people, mobilizing them to act, concentrating on achievable objectives, and undermining the loyalties and cooperation of an opponent’s key supporters—especially the loyalties of the police and the military—it has the potential to wield decisive power. There is nothing passive about using that kind of power. Gandhi called nonviolent action “the greatest and most active force in the world.”

WATCH – Hardy Merriman talks about nonviolence and nonviolent conflict

VIDEO – Rev. James Lawson talks about Gandhian nonviolence

4. Can nonviolent conflict work against brutal opponents and in highly oppressed societies?

Some of the 20th century’s harshest oppressors were removed through nonviolent conflicts.

In Chile, General Augusto Pinochet tortured and killed thousands of dissidents, but a nonviolent movement developed a way to topple him.

The apartheid regime in South Africa made public assemblies in black townships illegal and threatened or even assassinated nonviolent organizers, but the indigenous nonviolent resistance was still able to shatter the regime’s internal and international support.

In the Philippines, over 70 opposition workers were killed before the 1986 election, but people still successfully organized and nonviolently dislodged dictator Ferdinand Marcos from power soon afterwards.

And the Solidarity movement in Poland opened up oppositional space where little had previously existed, both before and after the communist regime imposed martial law.

One of the key reasons why these and other nonviolent movements were effective against their brutal adversaries is because they undermined the reliable support that many of the key groups in society—including the state’s security forces—had provided to the oppressive regime. Once a nonviolent movement is able to do this, a society can become ungovernable for the existing regime, and a transition to new rulers or a new system can begin.Those who do not understand that nonviolent conflict works in this way tend to dismiss its achievements, but millions—who no longer live under dictatorships, or under other oppressive systems dissolved by nonviolent strategies—would not agree.

5. Where are the significant nonviolent conflicts happening in the world today?

Currently, groups are using civil resistance to obtain rights in nations such as Azerbaijan, Belarus, Burma, Colombia, China, Cuba, Egypt, Honduras, Iran, The Gambia, Vietnam, Zimbabwe, and other places. In places such as Tibet, West Papua, Western Sahara and the Palestinian Territories, groups are fighting nonviolently for self-determination.

To find out more about active nonviolent conflicts in the world, visit our “Movements and Campaigns” page.

6. How often has nonviolent conflict happened in history?

Nonviolent conflict has happened in history more frequently than is commonly realized.

The British gave up their occupation of India after a decades-long nonviolent struggle led by Gandhi.

The Danes and people’s in Europe used civil resistance against Nazi occupation during World War II, raising the costs to Germany of its occupation of these nations, helping to strengthen the spirit and cohesion of their people, and saving the lives of thousands of Jews in Berlin, Denmark, Bulgaria and elsewhere.

African Americans used nonviolent action in their struggle to dissolve segregation in the United States in the 1960s.

Polish workers used strikes in 1980 to win the right to organize a free trade union, a major victory in a communist country at a time when a million Soviet soldiers were stationed there.

Marcos in the Philippines and Pinochet in Chile were brought down by nonviolent campaigns in the 1980s.

The anti-apartheid movement in South Africa employed boycotts and other sanctions to weaken the white-dominated government, forcing it to negotiate a different political future for the country.

At the end of the 1980s, Eastern Europeans and Mongolians effectively used civilian-based protest to put massive pressure on communist governments, removing their hold on power.

In 2000, Serbs ousted Slobodan Milosevic, after a nonviolent movement helped co-opt the police and military, thereby dividing his base of support.

In 2002, citizens in Madagascar organized nonviolently to enforce their presidential election results.

In 2003, Georgians used nonviolent action to expose fraud and enforce election results in their country and in 2004, Ukrainians did the same.

In 2005, Lebanese used nonviolent action to end Syrian military control.

In 2006, Nepalis used nonviolent methods to restore democratic rule to their country.

7. Have governments taken into account the potential of nonviolent conflicts in their policies?

Governments do not often or consistently take into account the potential of nonviolent conflicts in their policies.

In the early- and mid-1990s, for example, the United States relied on diplomacy to end Slobodan Milosevic’s aggression in Bosnia, but it declined to provide much support to his democratic opponents inside Serbia when they were using nonviolent action to oppose him. When Milosevic later began ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, NATO`bombed Serbia until he stopped, but he remained in power. Finally in 1999, U.S. and European agencies gave modest but well-targeted support to nonviolent pro-democracy groups in Serbia, and they brought Milosevic down.

What negotiating and bombing had both failed to do—end Milosevic’s regional terrorism once and for all—nonviolent resistance accomplished. The U.S. and European support for the Serbian pro-democracy movement was not the primary reason for the movement’s success, but it did help. Fortunately some policymakers in a number of national capitals are seeing this and awakening to the realization that nonviolent campaigns usually produce democratic results, which in turn contribute to lasting peace. This is likely to change the nature of peacemaking itself.

8. What can governments and non-governmental organizations do to support nonviolent movements?

Governments that value and support human rights and international organizations should develop a comprehensive, transparent approach to assist (but not control or interfere with) civilian-based nonviolent movements. A key part of this approach should be to promote:

The transfer of generic knowledge to oppressed people about how civil resistance works and how it can be strategically planned. This could be done by funding independent efforts to provide tools, equipment and training about nonviolent struggle to groups in conflict.
International pressure on oppressive rulers should be enhanced and intelligent media coverage should be increased. This would help to promote and protect the rights of those who are engaged in nonviolent resistance and who face persecution.

VIDEO – Jack DuVall talks about civil resistance and the international community

9. Why has the successful use of nonviolent strategies to take power not been more widely appreciated?

Most people are taught that power comes from the decisions of leaders of governments, corporations, or organizations or that it comes from the threat or use of violence. Therefore, many people fail to see that when the civilians of a city, region, or country organize themselves, that they are capable of producing power and propelling change.

Some scholars, organizations, and certainly members of the news and entertainment media reinforce the view that power comes only from the decisions of leaders or by violence, because that is what they frequently talk and write about. This creates the mistaken impression that action by elites, revolutionaries, or terrorists is the strongest form of waging a conflict against oppression. Yet the truth is that over the last hundred years, bloody tyrants and even military forces have been neutralized and overcome through the use of strategic nonviolent conflict.

10. Do nonviolent movements require charismatic leaders like Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr.?

Nonviolent movements do not necessarily require charismatic leaders like Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr.

While charismatic leadership can be important, it is the ability of a movement or its leaders to use clear strategic thinking and to make wise decisions in the course of a conflict that is far more important in determining the movement’s success or failure. For example, the Chinese students who led the protest in Tiananmen Square had sensational personalities, but their movement collapsed when it had not strategy about what to do when the Chinese government refused to meet their demands.

In some situations, having charismatic or identifiable leadership can even be detrimental to a movement’s success—because the leader may be arrested, corrupted, intimidated, or make poor decisions. Movements that have had to hide or decentralize their leadership have still fared well. For example, the leaders of the Danish underground resistance to the Germans in World War II were entirely anonymous. The Serbian movement to oust Slobodan Milosevic in 2000 was largely decentralized and lacked a single identifiable leader.

Gandhi’s success with the Indian people did not rely on his charisma but rather his persistent campaigns that enlisted Indians at all levels of society to take control of their own lives and then gradually reduce the value to the British of having colonized India.Martin Luther King, Jr. was an inspiring speaker, but that talent would have made little difference if he and others had not identified shrewd ways for African Americans and their allies to put pressure on the system of segregation and undercut its economic and political support.

198 Methods of Nonviolent Action

February 25, 2016 by David Reinbold

There are hundreds of different methods (or “tactics”) of nonviolent action that have been used in the past, and nonviolent movements are constantly creating new methods as they face new situations and use new technology. To understand what constitutes a method of nonviolent action, see the definition of the term “nonviolent action”.A partial list of methods can be found below. Each of the methods on this list has been catalogued and documented by Gene Sharp in his book The Politics of Nonviolent Action: Part 2 – The Methods of Nonviolent Action, (Boston: Extending Horizons Books), 1973.

Formal Statements

1. Public Speeches
2. Letters of opposition or support
3. Declarations by organizations and institutions
4. Signed public statements
5. Declarations of indictment and intention
6. Group or mass petitions

Communications with a Wider Audience

7. Slogans, caricatures, and symbols
8. Banners, posters, displayed communications
9. Leaflets, pamphlets, and books
10. Newspapers and journals
11. Records, radio, and television
12. Skywriting and earthwriting

Group Representations

13. Deputations
14. Mock awards
15. Group lobbying
16. Picketing
17. Mock elections

Symbolic Public Acts

18. Displays of flags and symbolic colors
19. Wearing of symbols
20. Prayer and worship
21. Delivering symbolic objects
22. Protest disrobings
23. Destruction of own property
24. Symbolic lights
25. Displays of portraits
26. Paint as protest
27. New signs and names
28. Symbolic sounds
29. Symbolic reclamations
30. Rude gestures

Pressures on Individuals

31. “Haunting” officials
32. Taunting officials
33. Fraternization
34. Vigils

Drama and Music

35. Humorous skits and pranks
36. Performances of plays and music
37. Singing

Processions

38. Marches
39. Parades
40. Religious processions
41. Pilgrimages
42. Motorcades

Honoring the Dead

43. Political mourning
44. Mock funerals
45. Demonstrative funerals
46. Homage at burial places

Public Assemblies

47. Assemblies of protest or support
48. Protest meetings
49. Camouflaged meetings of protest
50. Teach-ins

Withdrawal and Renunciation

51. Walk-outs
52. Silence
53. Renouncing honors
54. Turning one’s back

Ostracism of Persons

55. Social boycott
56. Selective social boycott
57. Lysistratic nonaction
58. Excommunication
59. Interdict

Noncooperation with Social Events, Customs, and Institutions

60. Suspension of social and sports activities
61. Boycott of social affairs
62. Student strike
63. Social disobedience
64. Withdrawal from social institutions

Withdrawal from the Social System

65. Stay-at-home
66. Total personal noncooperation
67. “Flight” of workers
68. Sanctuary
69. Collective disappearance
70. Protest emigration [hijrat]

Actions by Consumers

71. Consumers’ boycott
72. Nonconsumption of boycotted goods
73. Policy of austerity
74. Rent withholding
75. Refusal to rent
76. National consumers’ boycott
77. International consumers’ boycott

Action by Workers and Producers

78. Workmen’s boycott
79. Producers’ boycott

Action by Middlemen

80. Suppliers’ and handlers’ boycott

Action by Owners and Management

81. Traders’ boycott
82. Refusal to let or sell property
83. Lockout
84. Refusal of industrial assistance
85. Merchants’ “general strike”

Action by Holders of Financial Resources

86. Withdrawal of bank deposits
87. Refusal to pay fees, dues, and assessments
88. Refusal to pay debts or interest
89. Severance of funds and credit
90. Revenue refusal
91. Refusal of a government’s money

Action by Governments

92. Domestic embargo
93. Blacklisting of traders
94. International sellers’ embargo
95. International buyers’ embargo
96. International trade embargo

Symbolic Strikes

97. Protest strike
98. Quickie walkout (lightning strike)

Agricultural Strikes

99. Peasant strike
100. Farm Workers’ strike

Strikes by Special Groups

101. Refusal of impressed labor
102. Prisoners’ strike
103. Craft strike
104. Professional strike

Ordinary Industrial Strikes

105. Establishment strike
106. Industry strike
107. Sympathetic strike

Restricted Strikes

108. Detailed strike
109. Bumper strike
110. Slowdown strike
111. Working-to-rule strike
112. Reporting “sick” [sick-in]
113. Strike by resignation
114. Limited strike
115. Selective strike

Multi-industry Strikes

116. Generalized strike
117. General strike

Combination of Strikes and Economic Closures

118. Hartal
119. Economic shutdown

Rejection of Authority

120. Withholding or withdrawal of allegiance
121. Refusal of public support
122. Literature and speeches advocating resistance

Citizens’ Noncooperation with Government

123. Boycott of legislative bodies
124. Boycott of elections
125. Boycott of government employment and positions
126. Boycott of government depts., agencies, and other bodies
127. Withdrawal from government educational institutions
128. Boycott of government-supported organizations
129. Refusal of assistance to enforcement agents
130. Removal of own signs and placemarks
131. Refusal to accept appointed officials
132. Refusal to dissolve existing institutions
133. Reluctant and slow compliance
134. Nonobedience in absence of direct supervision
135. Popular nonobedience
136. Disguised disobedience
137. Refusal of an assemblage or meeting to disperse
138. Sit-down
139. Noncooperation with conscription and deportation
140. Hiding, escape, and false identities
141. Civil disobedience of “illegitimate” laws

Action by Government Personnel

142. Selective refusal of assistance by government aides
143. Blocking of lines of command and information
144. Stalling and obstruction
145. General administrative noncooperation
146. Judicial noncooperation
147. Deliberate inefficiency and selective noncooperation by enforcement agents
148. Mutiny

Domestic Governmental Action

149. Quasi-legal evasions and delays
150. Noncooperation by constituent governmental units

International Governmental Action

151. Changes in diplomatic and other representations
152. Delay and cancellation of diplomatic events
153. Withholding of diplomatic recognition
154. Severance of diplomatic relations
155. Withdrawal from international organizations
156. Refusal of membership in international bodies
157. Expulsion from international organizations

Psychological Intervention

158. Self-exposure to the elements
159. The fast
a) Fast of moral pressure
b) Hunger strike
c) Satyagrahic fast
160. Reverse trial
161. Nonviolent harassment

Physical Intervention

162. Sit-in
163. Stand-in
164. Ride-in
165. Wade-in
166. Mill-in
167. Pray-in
168. Nonviolent raids
169. Nonviolent air raids
170. Nonviolent invasion
171. Nonviolent interjection
172. Nonviolent obstruction
173. Nonviolent occupation

Social Intervention

174. Establishing new social patterns
175. Overloading of facilities
176. Stall-in
177. Speak-in
178. Guerrilla theater
179. Alternative social institutions
180. Alternative communication systems

Economic Intervention

181. Reverse strike
182. Stay-in strike
183. Nonviolent land seizure
184. Defiance of blockades
185. Politically motivated counterfeiting
186. Preclusive purchasing
187. Seizure of assets
188. Dumping
189. Selective patronage
190. Alternative markets
191. Alternative transportation systems
192. Alternative economic institutions

Political Intervention

193. Overloading of administrative systems
194. Disclosing identities of secret agents
195. Seeking imprisonment
196. Civil disobedience of “neutral” laws
197. Work-on without collaboration
198. Dual sovereignty and parallel government

The Stages of the Montgomery Bus Boycott Movement: Lessons for Activists

February 25, 2016 by intern3

This LIVE ICNC Academic Webinar took place on Thursday, Feb. 25, 2016 at 12 p.m. EST.

This live academic webinar was presented by Doron Shultziner, Assistant Professor in the Politics & Communications Department at the Hadassah Academic College Jerusalem.

This webinar is transcribed into Chinese

Watch webinar below:

Webinar content

1. Introduction of the Speaker: 00:45- 02:11
2. Presentation: 02:12 – 36:56
3. Questions and Answers: 37:00 – 55:38

Webinar Summary

This webinar presents the main stages of social movements and their relevance to civil resistance by illustrating those stages on the landmark case of the Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955-1956), a notable movement that ended segregation between whites and blacks on public buses.

The webinar explains how and why black Montgomerians managed to make a transition from a cognitive and emotional climate of fear and inaction to a cognitive and emotional climate that encouraged collective action in face of risks. The webinar explains the characteristics of the protest stage of this Movement and the central factors that kept it going in a year-long struggle, with ups and downs, until the victory was handed by the US Supreme Court. The webinar explains the importance of organization, leadership, solidarity, self-esteem, music, and political factors in the course of the movement. Finally, the webinar explores the internal factors (i.e., movement strategic and political decisions) and the external factors that determined the outcome of the movement in both the legal and political arenas.

The webinar will address these aspects in a way that is helpful for activists to reflect about which stage of their struggle they are in, what they can expect to achieve and confront at each stage, and perhaps even how to prepare for the next stage of their struggle. The webinar is designed for those who are interested in civil resistance and for activists.

Presenter

Doron Shultziner is Assistant Professor in the Politics & Communications Department at the Hadassah Academic College Jerusalem. He holds a B.A. in Political Science and Middle East Studies (2000), and M.A. (Summa Cum Laude) in Political Science (2004), both from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

He received his Ph.D. from the Politics & IR Department at the University of Oxford (2008). One of his main areas of research is the intersection between social movements and democratization. He studied the civil rights movement extensively and wrote about the Montgomery Bus Boycott in his book Struggling for Recognition: The Psychological Impetus for Democratic Progress, and in his paper The Social-Psychological Origins of the Montgomery Bus Boycott (Mobilization) which won the Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship Award (2014) from the Section on Collective Behavior and Social Movement of the American Sociological Association.

He teaches a seminar on nonviolent resistance and democratic progress at Hadassah College along other courses on democracy and the history of liberal democracy. Dr. Shultziner has also observed first-hand the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong during the height of the movement (October 2014) and covered it in the media. He is a social and environmental entrepreneur and founder of Mali – Center for Enterprising Citizens that supports carrying out original ideas and projects to the benefit of society and the environment. He is married to Shalhav and father to Ohad.

Relevant Readings:

Shultziner, Doron. 2013. The Social-Psychological Origins of the Montgomery Bus Boycott: Social Interaction and Humiliation in the Emergence of Social Movements. Mobilization 18(2): 117-142. [link to full text]
Shultziner, Doron. 2010. Struggling for Recognition: The Psychological Impetus for Democratic Progress. New York: Continuum Press. (Available here)

Fletcher Summer Institute 2015

February 18, 2016 by intern3

The Fletcher Summer Institute for the Advanced Study of Nonviolent Conflict (FSI) is the leading executive education program in the world focusing on the advanced, interdisciplinary study of civil resistance.

Civil resistance campaigns for rights, freedom, and justice are capturing the world’s attention as never before. Campaigns to protect democracy in Hong Kong, for women’s rights in India, for indigenous rights in Latin America, for police accountability in the United States, against violence in Mexico, against corruption in Cambodia, against growing autocracy in Ukraine and against dictatorship in Burkina Faso are all examples in the last year of a profound global shift in how political power is developed and applied.

Since 2006, over 400 participants from more than 90 countries have gathered at FSI to learn and share knowledge. The program is taught by leading international scholars, practitioners, organizers and activists from past and current struggles. It provides both a firm academic grasp of the subject of civil resistance as well as a practical understanding of the use of nonviolent struggle in a variety of conflicts for a wide range of goals.

Organized in conjunction with the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, the program offers a certificate in the Advanced Study of Nonviolent Conflict.

When: June 7-12, 2015
Where: The Fletcher School, Tufts University, Boston, Massachusetts, USA

The James Lawson Award

Wednesday, June 10th, 2015
1:00pm – 2:15pm EST

Description: In the 1960s, the Reverend Dr. James Lawson organized and led one of the most effective campaigns of nonviolent civil resistance in the 20th century: the Nashville lunch counter sit-ins, which added significant momentum to the US Civil Rights Movement. In the years that followed he was involved in strategic planning of other major campaigns and actions and was called “the mind of the movement” by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

The James Lawson Award for Achievement in the Practice, Study or Reporting of Nonviolent Conflict is presented annually by the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict during the Fletcher Summer Institute. It is awarded to practitioners, scholars, international actors and journalists whose work serves as a model for how nonviolent resistance can be developed, understood and explained.

This year, Palestinian activist Iyad Burnat received the 2015 James Lawson Award. Steadfastly leading nonviolent resistance since 2004, Iyad Burnat is head of the Bil’in Popular Committee against the Israeli Wall and Settlements, which campaigns against Israel’s plan to replace the village of Bil’in with Israeli settlements. As dominant narratives of Israel and Palestine have focused on the threat of violence on both sides, Burnat has exercised outstanding leadership in nonviolent resistance, achieved victories for his community, and remained steadfast in his commitment to nonviolent means. While he, his family, and friends have been subject to life-threatening violence for their actions, Burnat insists: “We are not against the Jews. We are against the occupation.”

View the press release

Introduction to Civil Resistance

Presenter: Hardy Merriman, President of the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict
Date: Monday, June 8th, 2015
Time: 9:00am – 10:30am

Description: Nonviolent civil resistance movements around the world are a growing force in shaping geopolitics. In movements over the last two decades in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Europe, Latin America and North America the world has witnessed how ordinary people have used nonviolent tactics — such as strikes, boycotts, mass demonstrations and other actions — to achieve rights, freedom and justice. Yet, this critical phenomenon is often overlooked or misunderstood by external observers. It defies conventional wisdom that unarmed people mobilizing by the thousands or millions can defeat armed, wealthy and organized adversaries who seem to have all the advantages. This presentation will focus on why civil resistance works, what its long-term record and outcomes are and how it will increasingly affect social, economic and political change.

Watch this presentation (Part I)

Watch this presentation (Part II)

Movement Emergence

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

Ivan Marovic, Academic Advisor at the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict

Date: Monday, June 8th, 2015
Time: 2:00pm – 3:30pm

Description: Using a number of examples in the last few decades, we will lay out instances when hardship endured by a population leads to grievances and when grievances and protest give birth to civil resistance movements. These movements may emerge spontaneously or as a reaction to outside events but they are sustained by using their internal attributes, mainly their capacity to mobilize people and resources. This is why we will focus on the process of transformation of a protest to a movement where a strategic approach is being adopted and long-term planning and coalition building are being developed.

Watch this presentation (Part I)

Watch this presentation (Part II)

Sustaining a Movement

Presenters: Dr. Mary King, Distinguished Scholar at the American University Center for Global Peace

Philippe Duhamel, Academic Advisor at the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict

Date: Monday, June 8th, 2015
Time: 4:00pm – 5:30pm

Description: Great expectations without the ability to sustain a movement will not produce tangible change. Most successful movements—those that can bring about comprehensible and tangible social and political change through focused efforts—have been shown to have a capacity to sustain mass participation, often over a number of years. The question: What are some of the skills, approaches, understanding, and practices that support movement resilience and success? In this session, we will throw light on the remarkably important challenge of sustaining a mobilization. The session’s organizers will share some firsthand insights, and include a small-group exercise to elicit knowledge from the experiences of participants.

Watch this presentation (Part I)

Watch this presentation (Part II)

Watch this presentation (Part III)

Strategy and Tactics

Presenters: Hardy Merriman, President of the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict

Ivan Marovic, Academic Advisor at the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict

Date: Tuesday, June 9th, 2015
Time: 9:00am – 10:30am

Description: In this session, we will introduce strategic planning, campaigning and tactical choice as essential components of effective civil resistance and offer a strategic framework for analyzing social movements. We will also examine different tactics available to organizers and explore issues involved in tactical choice and effectiveness. Special emphasis will be put on strategic goals and campaign objectives, against which movement’s success should be evaluated.

Watch this presentation (Part I)

Watch this presentation (Part II)

Watch this presentation (Part III)

Repression and Backfire

Presenter: Erica Chenoweth, Academic Advisor at the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict
Date: Tuesday, June 9th, 2015
Time: 11:00am – 12:30pm

This session will discuss how repression affects nonviolent campaigns. It provides empirical evidence that nonviolent movements are still effective even against brutally oppressive opponents. It discusses how movements “manage” repression through the promotion of backfire, as well as the strategic options movements have in dealing with repression. It also provides evidence suggesting that nonviolent movements that adopt violence or develop armed wings are not usually advantaged relative to nonviolent movements.

Why Skills Can Make Civil Resistance ‘A Force More Powerful’

Speaker: Peter Ackerman, Founding Chair of the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict
Date: Tuesday, June 9th, 2015
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. 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.

External Actors

Presenter: Maria Stephan, Academic Advisor at the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict
Date: Tuesday, June 9th, 2015
Time: 4:00pm – 5:30pm

Description: Local nonviolent activists and movements, along with the tactics and strategies they use, will always be the primary drivers of bottom-up change. However, external actors, both governmental and non-governmental, can play an important role in supporting those activists and movements and shaping the environment for civic activism. At the same time, there are challenges and risks inherent in external support for local nonviolent movements. This session will problematize external support and address the following questions: What are the principles that should guide external support? Which criteria should be used to determine which groups/movements to support? What are some of the most important external actors? Which tools do governmental and non-governmental actors have to support nonviolent activists and movements? What are examples where those tools have been used effectively, or ineffectively? What are the most significant risks and opportunities involving external support to movements? How can the former be mitigated and the latter seized upon?

Nonviolent Discipline and Radical Flanks

Presenter: Dr. Erica Chenoweth, ICNC Academic Advisor and Assistant Professor at the Josef Korbel School, University of Denver

Date: Wednesday, June 10th, 2015
Time: 9:00am – 10:30am

Description: This session will look at the impact of violent flanks on the success rates of unarmed mass movements. What happens when groups start using violent means of insurrection — such as targeted kidnappings, assassinations, guerrilla ambush, etc. — alongside civil resistance movements? What happens when less lethal forms of violence — such as the use of projectiles against police lines or indiscriminate and anonymous vandalism against public and private goods — start to fray nonviolent discipline? Do violent flanks increase the leverage of nonviolent campaigns? Or does violence against the regime, even when provoked, undermine the necessary public participation, and the potential for regime repression to backfire? This session will present the latest research about the interplay between unarmed civil resistance movements and violent flanks. Finally, an exercise will invite participants to look at potential ways nonviolent discipline can be buttressed and sustained by specific interventions.

Language and Meaning in Movements

Presenter: Jack DuVall, Senior Counselor and Founding Director of the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict

Date: Wednesday, June 10th, 2015
Time: 11:00am – 12:30pm

Description: Effective nonviolent movements have to develop sizable participation by people who fervently want their rights, justice or other changes in their lives and country. To summon the protracted commitment that is needed by a movement, organizers and leaders have to offer more than restating familiar grievances or touting new policies. A unifying proposition that resonates with people’s most deeply rooted beliefs about their aspirations, identity and future has to be offered to those who may have to give years of their lives to the cause. This session will explore the content of the language that such a proposition, and the ongoing dialogue that a movement has with the people, should reflect.

Loyalty Shifts and Defections

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

Stephen Zunes, Professor of Politics and International Studies, University of San Francisco; Co-Chair of ICNC Academic Advisors Committee

Date: Wednesday, June 11th, 2015
Time: 2:30pm – 3:30pm

Description: A key variable determining the likelihood of success by nonviolent movements, particularly in authoritarian situations, is defections by government supporters. The enforcement power of the state ultimately depends on the cooperation of security forces and other government officials. “Defections” by security forces and other personnel does not necessarily mean stripping off uniforms and joining protests; it can also include decisions to quietly not carry out orders, leak information to the opposition, engage in work slowdowns, to “lose” paperwork and delete computer files and other less overt acts of defiance. Movements which maintain nonviolent discipline have been shown to dramatically increase the rate of defections due both to allowing for greater sympathy for the opposition as well as a sense that defectors would be welcomed instead of punished.

Watch this Presentation (Part I)

Watch this Presentation (Part II)

Anti-Corruption Campaigns

Presenter: Shaazka Beyerle, Senior Advisor at the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict
Date: Thursday, June 11th, 2015
Time: 9:00am – 10:30am

Description: Now that the links between corruption and violent conflict, authoritarianism, poverty, inequality and human rights abuses are clear, the key issue is how to curb it. What options exist beyond traditional approaches? What strategic value do citizens bring to the anticorruption struggle? How do bottom-up campaigns and movements complement and reinforce top-down anticorruption efforts? In this session we’ll consider these questions, explore how people power impacts corruption and impunity, analyze a few of the creative tactics carried out by millions of citizens around the world, and apply what we’ve learned in an interactive, group format.

Struggles Against Unjust Industry Practices

Presenters: Althea Middleton-Detzner, Senior Advisor of Education and Field Learning at International Center on Nonviolent Conflict

Maira Irigaray Castro, FSI 2015 Participant

Date: Thursday, June 11th, 2015
Time: 11:00am – 12:30pm

Description: From Shell’s oil drilling in the Niger Delta to Freeport McMoRan’s mining in West Papua, to the Belo Monte Mega Dam construction in Brazil and in communities all over the world, nonviolent struggles have emerged as a means for holding multinational corporations, international finance institutions, and governments accountable to the people whose livelihoods are directly affected and negatively impacted by unjust industry practices. In this session we will present an analytical framework for understanding the role of civil resistance in corporate accountability and governance. We will explore cases where civil resistance has contested power-holders involved in unjust industry practices, and we will engage in an interactive activity and simulation challenges that will require the synthesis and application of a number of theories and practices covered throughout the week.

Watch this Presentation (Part I)

Watch this Presentation (Part II)

Lunch Panel: Civil Resistance in the US

Panelists: Austin Thompson, Nickie Sekera and Conrado Santos
Date: Thursday, June 11th, 2015
Time: 12:30pm – 2:30pm

Description: The United States has a long tradition of civil resistance. Through this method of struggle, women achieved the right to vote in 1920, workers achieved the right to unionize, African Americans struggled for equal rights under law, pressure has been brought on the US government to stop wars and to cease its support for violent insurgencies in Central America and other parts of the world, the US government’s plans to build 1,000 new nuclear power plants were curtailed, and numerous other objectives have been furthered or achieved. Currently in the United States, the Immigrant Rights Movement has been struggling to achieve rights for immigrants, environmental organizers have been campaigning on causes as diverse as addressing climate change to blocking the privatization of water supplies, and African Americans have been at the forefront of fighting against police brutality, the biased implementation of criminal justice policies, and the marginalization of their and other communities. On this lunch panel, we will hear about these and other struggles.

Breakout Session: Democratic Transitions

Presenters: Dr. Erica Chenoweth, ICNC Academic Advisor and Assistant Professor at the Josef Korbel School, University of Denver

Stephen Zunes, Professor of Politics and International Studies, University of San Francisco and Co-Chair of ICNC Academic Advisors Committee

Date: Thursday, June 11th, 2015
Time: 2:30pm – 4:00pm

Description: This session will look at the role of strategic nonviolent resistance in transitions from authoritarianism to democracy. Some of these have taken place through dramatic mass uprising with hundreds of thousands occupying central squares in the capital city. There have also been cases of nonviolent struggles against autocratic regimes that were unable to topple the dictatorship in a revolutionary wave, but did succeed in forcing a series of legal, constitutional, and institutional reforms over a period of several years which eventually evolved into a liberal democratic order. Both of these kinds of transitions have taken place across different regions and against different kinds of authoritarian systems. Constitutional reform, the independence of the judiciary, civilian control over the military, free media, and honest elections are often the focus of continued activism.

This session will explore the evidence that successful nonviolent campaigns tend to usher in more durable and internally peaceful democracies, which are less likely to regress into civil war than when violent insurgents succeed. We will both challenge the dominant, top-down, institutional and elite-based approaches to democratization and identify likely pathways through which civil resistance bolsters democratic consolidation and civil peace. Finally, we will observe how even the long-term effects of failed nonviolent campaigns are more favorable to democracy than the long-term effects of successful violent campaigns.

Breakout Session: Unarmed Civilian Protection/Protective Accompaniment: Effective Strategies to Assist

Presenter: Katherine Hughes-Fraitekh, Associate Director, Field Initiatives for the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict
Date: Thursday, June 11th, 2015
Time: 4:00pm – 5:30pm

Description: At a time when human rights defenders, activists and broader civil resistance movements around the world are growing, but concurrently under increased attack, the tried and true methods of unarmed civilian protection, protective accompaniment and proactive presence provide methods for international civil society to assist. These nonviolent methods allow internationals to broaden the political space for civil resistance movements by deterring violence, providing empowerment and hope, and supporting cultural and institutional reforms. International presence as protection is not a new concept, but the modern concept of active, nonpartisan, physical accompaniment by internationals to protect civilians in conflict was pioneered by groups such as Peace Brigades International and Witness for Peace in the 1980s. The field has greatly expanded in the last 30 years.

Protective accompaniment, and the broader unarmed civilian protection, works with a wide array of groups, including those dealing with enforced disappearance, corruption, victim’s and indigenous rights, environmentalists, and gender justice. In doing their work, accompaniers can have similar strategic and tactical considerations to the nonviolent activists that they aim to protect, including engaging in cost/benefit analysis, dissuasion, deterrence, and mobilizing broad networks.

Methods of protective accompaniment have demonstrated impact, and have potential to grow and be utilized much more extensively in conflicts around the world. This interactive workshop will give detailed information, case studies and examples of how protective accompaniment works and in which situations it is the most/least effective. We will discuss what international and regional organizations/mechanisms can be used to support this strategy, issues of relevant international law, and how protective accompaniment locally can have major policy impacts at the regional and international levels. The workshop leader has extensive experience both practically and theoretically in the field.

Economic Self-Empowerment

Presenter: Kim Wilson, Lecturer in Human Security and International Business at the Fletcher School, Tufts University
Date: Friday, June 12th, 2015
Time: 9:00am – 10:30am

Description: In countries like Kenya, Nigeria, Haiti and India, communities have created engines of social empowerment through networks of financial clubs. This session offers examples of self-organization and how it can lead to civic empowerment and ultimately action. We also look at the dark side of microfinance – when it does not lead to empowerment but despair. We hope to spend most of the session hearing experiences and lessons from FSI participants.

Civilian Agency in Disrupted Societies

Presenters: Oliver Kaplan, Assistant Professor in International Security and Human Rights at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies

Alex De Waal, Executive Director of the World Peace Foundation

Date: Friday, June 12th, 2015
Time: 11:00am – 12:30pm

Description: Civilians would seem powerless when facing violent and heavily armed actors in settings of civil conflict, and yet communities in various countries have found ways to avoid violence. This session will examine various strategies that communities from around the world have used to retain autonomy and self-rule in the face of competition among multiple armed groups. Social cohesion in civilian communities affords them greater chances to implement collective strategies to deceive and influence armed actors and defend their communities. We will explore how these strategies vary in their organizational requirements and probable effectiveness, and consider the conditions under which they are most likely to succeed. These strategies illustrate that the unity of civilian moderates can help impede and isolate violent “extremists.”

Watch this Presentation (Part I)

Watch this Presentation (Part II)

Fletcher Summer Institute 2014

February 18, 2016 by intern3

The Fletcher Summer Institute for the Advanced Study of Nonviolent Conflict (FSI) 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.
Organized in conjunction with the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy of Tufts University, the oldest exclusively graduate school of international affairs in the United States, the program offers a certificate in the Advanced Study of Nonviolent Conflict that draws upon its multi-disciplinary approach to global affairs.

You can stay up to date with all the news on FSI 2014 on our Facebook page and Twitter feed. Download the FSI 2014 flyer To learn about past FSIs, you can watch presentations from FSI 2013, 2012, 2011 or 2010. If you have any questions, or would like to request a paper application, please send an email to fsi@nonviolent-conflict.org. Click here to view an introductory video to the Fletcher Summer Institute.
When: June 14-21, 2014
Where: The Fletcher School, Tufts University, Boston, MA

Keynote Address: Rev. James Lawson

Speaker: Rev. James Lawson / Distinguished Scholar, Vanderbilt University

Date: Saturday, June 14th, 2014
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:

Storify of tweets and photos
Ackerman, Peter & DuVall, Jack. A Force More Powerful: A Century of Nonviolent Conflict. New York: Palgrave, 2001.
Lawson, James. Lawson on Gandhi and Nonviolence (interview). June, 2009
Lawson, James. Lawson on Training for Nonviolent Resistance (interview). June, 2009.
Nelson, Stanley. Freedom Riders (documentary film). Firelight Films, 2011.
NPT. A Conversation with James Lawson (interview).
York, Steve. A Force More Powerful (documentary film). A Force More Powerful Films: September, 2001

The Dynamics of Civil Resistance

Speaker: Jack DuVall / President, International Center on Nonviolent Conflict

Date: Sunday, June 15th, 2014
Time: 7:30pm – 9:30pm

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 and applied by Gandhi, and then adapted through use in scores of movements and campaigns for rights and justice in recent decades, strategic nonviolent action has exhibited a common dynamic, propelled historic changes, and helped impart political and social properties to the societies in which such movements operated.

The success of civil resistance in liberating oppressed people, when compared to violent insurgency or revolution, has been extraordinary – and is doubtless why it is now being increasingly censured by numerous authoritarian regimes and by ideologues that favor change led by vanguards. But today’s “people power” movements continue to evolve rapidly as a historically new force in human affairs, and they may augur significant change not only in the way in which power is developed but also in how the legitimacy and vibrancy of democracies can be regenerated.

Video not displaying properly? Click here to view on YouTube.

Additional Resources:

Ackerman, Peter & DuVall, Jack. The Right to Rise Up: People Power and the Virtues of Civil Disruption. Fletcher Forum, 2006.
DuVall, Jack. Civil Resistance and the Language of Power. OpenDemocracy.net. November 19, 2010
DuVall, Jack. Why Learn about Civil Resistance? (interview). June, 2009.
Merriman, Hardy. Why Learn about Civil Resistance? (interview). June, 2009.
Zunes, Stephen – Why Learn About Civil Resistance? (interview). June, 2009.

Managing Repression

Speaker: Dr. Erica Chenoweth / Assistant Professor at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver

Date: Monday, June 16th, 2014
Time: 4:30pm – 6:00pm

Description: This session will discuss how repression affects nonviolent campaigns, provide empirical evidence that nonviolent movements are often effective even against brutally oppressive opponents. Erica discusses how movements “manage” repression through the promotion of backfire, as well as the strategic options movements have in dealing with repression. She also provides evidence suggesting that nonviolent movements that adopt violence or develop armed wings are not usually advantaged relative to nonviolent movements. This is because using violence against the regime, even when provoked, can undermine the necessary public participation that nonviolent campaigns enjoy, and can also undermine the backfiring of regime repression.

Video not displaying properly? Click here to view on YouTube.

Evening Program Guest Speaker: Kumi Naidoo

Date: Tuesday, June 17th, 2014
Time: Event will be live-streamed on this page from 7:45pm – 9:45pm EST

Description: “We believe that intensifying peaceful civil disobedience is not only ethically justifiable but morally necessary” – Kumi Naidoo.

Dr. Naidoo will look at when and why direct action should be deployed as well as what justifies nonviolent direct action. Dr. Naidoo will draw on recent campaigns such as last year’s protest at an Arctic oil drilling rig, which saw activists arrested by Russian authorities and held for 100 days, as well as the anti-apartheid struggle he was part of in his home country, South Africa.

Hailing from South Africa, Kumi Naidoo has been the International Executive Director of Greenpeace since November 2009.

Video not displaying properly? Click here to view on YouTube.

The James Lawson Awards

Date: Wednesday, June 18th, 2014
Time: Event will be live-streamed here from 1:30pm – 3:00pm EST

Description: In the 1960s, the Reverend James Lawson organized and led one of the most effective campaigns of nonviolent civil resistance in the 20th century: the Nashville lunch counter sit-ins for the US Civil Rights Movement. In the years that followed he was involved in strategic planning of numerous other major campaigns and actions and was called “the mind of the movement” by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

The James Lawson Award for Achievement in the Practice of Nonviolent Conflict (or, for journalists and scholars, the “Reporting” or “Study” of Nonviolent Conflict), is presented annually by the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict at The Fletcher School at Tufts University during the Fletcher Summer Institute. It is awarded to practitioners, scholars and journalists whose work serves as a model for how nonviolent change can be developed, understood and explained.

This year, four distinguished people receive the James Lawson Award, in the presence of us all.

Civic Mobilization and Post-Conflict Power-Sharing: Bosnia and Macedonia

February 18, 2016 by intern3

This LIVE ICNC Academic Webinar took place on Thursday, Feb. 18, 2016 at 12 p.m. EST.

This live academic webinar was presented by Kurt Bassuener, co-founder and Senior Associate of the Democratization Policy Council and co-author of the Diplomat’s Handbook.

Watch the webinar below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7Y3Oo00hCk

Webinar Content

1. Introduction of the Speaker: 00:00- 02:18
2. Presentation: 02:19 – 35:12
3. Questions and Answers: 35:12 – 56:19

Webinar Summary

Bosnia and Herzegovina and Macedonia both are governed under post-conflict power-sharing agreements – the Dayton (1995) and Ohrid (2001) Agreements and have the EU membership perspective. While the natures of the conflicts, social distance of the ethnic divide, and state structures differ significantly, the unaccountability of political power has led to repeated popular mobilizations in both countries.

The webinar will discuss these two cases and the lessons learned for civilian-based, nonviolent conflict strategies in these countries.

You can follow us on Twitter directly (@nvconflict) or by searching for #ICNCWebinars. We will be live-Tweeting the webinar with Robert Press so come join us to ask questions for the presenter!

Presenter

Kurt Bassuener is co-founder and Senior Associate of the Democratization Policy Council, under whose aegis he has published numerous policy briefs, papers, and studies. He has worked professionally on Bosnia and wider Balkan policy since 1997 and resided in Sarajevo since 2005. He has also contributed various analyses and opinion pieces to numerous publications, including The Washington Post, Wall Street Journal Europe, Christian Science Monitor, and The Irish Times.

He also co-authored (with Amb. Jeremy Kinsman) the Diplomat’s Handbook for Democracy and Development Support, a project of the Community of Democracies. As the project’s Research Director, he authored or co-authored Handbook case studies on Belarus, Burma, Chile, China, Egypt, Ukraine and Zimbabwe.

His Ph.D. research at the University of St. Andrews beginning in September 2016, will focus on the functional dynamics of postwar power-sharing in Bosnia, Macedonia, and Lebanon. He received his MA in European Studies at the Central European University in Prague in 1994 and his BA in International Relations at America University’s School of International Service (1991).

Fletcher Summer Institute 2013

February 9, 2016 by intern3

The Fletcher Summer Institute for the Advanced Study of Nonviolent Conflict (FSI) 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.
Organized in conjunction with the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy of Tufts University, the oldest exclusively graduate school of international affairs in the United States, the program offers a certificate in the Advanced Study of Nonviolent Conflict that draws upon its multi-disciplinary approach to global affairs.

Applications are now closed. You can stay up to date with all the news on FSI 2013 on our Facebook page and Twitter feed. Download the FSI 2013 flyer. To learn about past FSIs, you can watch presentations from FSI 2012, 2011 or 2010. If you have any questions, or would like to request a paper application, please send an email to fsi@nonviolent-conflict.org .
When: June 16-22, 2013
Where: The Fletcher School, Tufts University, Boston, MA

Keynote Address: Rev. James Lawson

Speaker: Rev. James Lawson, Distinguished Scholar at Vanderbilt University
Date: Sunday, June 16th, 2013
Time: 9:00pm – 10:30pm

Additional Resources:

Ackerman, Peter & DuVall, Jack. A Force More Powerful: A Century of Nonviolent Conflict. New York: Palgrave, 2001.
Lawson, James. Lawson on Gandhi and Nonviolence (interview). June, 2009
Lawson, James. Lawson on Training for Nonviolent Resistance (interview). June, 2009.
Nelson, Stanley. Freedom Riders (documentary film). Firelight Films, 2011.
NPT. A Conversation with James Lawson (interview).
York, Steve. A Force More Powerful (documentary film). A Force More Poweful Films: September, 2001

The Dynamics of Civil Resistance

Presenter: Jack DuVall, President of International Center on Nonviolent Conflict
Date: Monday, June 17th, 2013
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 the societies in which those changes happened. The record of these strategies in liberating oppressed people, when compared to violent insurgency or revolution, has been remarkable – and suggests why political violence may recede in the future.

Additional Resources:

Presentation Slides
Ackerman, Peter & DuVall, Jack. The Right to Rise Up: People Power and the Virtues of Civil Disruption. Fletcher Forum, 2006.
DuVall, Jack. Civil Resistance and the Language of Power. OpenDemocracy.net. November 19, 2010
DuVall, Jack. Why Learn about Civil Resistance? (interview). June, 2009.
Merriman, Hardy. Why Learn about Civil Resistance? (interview). June, 2009.
Zunes, Stephen – Why Learn About Civil Resistance? (interview). June, 2009.

Civic Struggle to Protect the Environment and Political Rights

Guest Speaker: Evgenia Chirikova, Russian Environmental Activist
Date: Monday, June 17th, 2013
Time: 12:30pm – 2:00pm

Description: This talk focuses mainly on major environmental campaigns that Evgenia Cherikova led and has been involved in. These include defending the Khimiki forest (against a highway project that would destroy a natural habitat) and the Khopra region (against nickel mining). These campaigns have been driven by resistance against private corporations with close ties to both local and central authorities. Evgenia discusses how people were mobilized and organized, how they developed their strategies and resilience, what actions of civil defiance they engaged in, and the campaign outcomes.

Movement Formation

Presenter: Dr. Maciej Bartkowski, Senior Director for Education and Research at International Center on Nonviolent Conflict
Date: Monday, June 17th, 2013
Time: 2:00pm – 3:30pm

Description: When repression persists, it is often mistakenly believed that a regime is durable and mass-based resistance is not feasible. As soon as the people rise up and the regime falls, the prevailing view quickly shifts: the popular upheaval is seen as inevitable and the collapse of the system unavoidable. So movement emergence is neither impossible nor can it be easily predicted. Yet, nonviolent movements come to life and in places and times few predicted. This session will aim to explain why people rise up even if the risks are high and success uncertain. This will be linked with other questions: How are people able to break the barrier of fear and apathy? How do action-takers build their case for change? How do they gain greater recognition and how do they use an adversary’s countermeasures to strengthen or maintain their own momentum?

Additional Resources:

Presentation Slides

Strategic Planning and Tactical Innovation

Presenter: Hardy Merriman, Vice President and Director for Content Development at International Center on Nonviolent Conflict
Date: Monday, June 17th. 2013
Time: 4:00pm – 5:30pm

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

Additional Resources:

Helvey, Robert. On Strategic Nonviolent Conflict: Thinking about the Fundamentals.
Sharp, Gene. 198 Methods of Nonviolent Action.
Sharp, Gene. There Are Realistic Alternatives. Boston, MA: The Albert Einstein Institution, 2003.
Popovic, Srdja & Slobodan Djinovic, Andrej Milivojevic, Hardy Merriman, Ivan Marovic. A Guide to Effective Nonviolent Struggle. Belgrade, Serbia: Centre for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies [CANVAS], 2007.

A Force More Powerful: “Freedom in Our Time

Guest Speaker: Mkhuseli Jack, Veteran of South Africa’s Anti-Apartheid Struggle
Date: Monday, June 17th, 2013
Time: 7:00pm – 9:00pm

Description: Mkhuseli Jack was one of the most effective leaders in summoning the people’s participation in nonviolent action, in recent history. In particular, his leadership of the consumer boycott campaign in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, helped to show how the costs of apartheid could be transferred from the people of black townships to the commercial business community on which the support and revenue of the government partly depended – a comparable strategy to the strikes by black workers aimed at industrial corporations, and the external sanctions by foreign governments which made doing international business in South Africa more difficult.

Khusta, as he is commonly known, was seen by Nelson Mandela as one of the best organizers on which the movement could depend. He will share ideas and stories from his work on behalf of bringing justice and rights to all South Africans, and also his reflections about South Africa today.

Additional Resources:

A Force More Powerful Film website
Rothschild, Leehee. Mkhuseli “Khusta” Jack and the Art of the Boycott. Narco News: June 7, 2013.

Sustaining the Movement: Unity and Coalition Building

Presenter: Hardy Merriman, Vice President and Director for Content Development at International Center on Nonviolent Conflict
Date: Tuesday, June 18th, 2013
Time: 9:00am – 10:30am

Description: This session addresses the critical task of building and maintaining coalitions within movements. Effective coalitions can provide movement infrastructure and be an organizational hub around which broad strategy and discourse are formed. However, coalitions require 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:

- Presentation Slides
- Ackerman, Peter. Key Elements of Civil Resistance (interview). June, 2009.
- Cherry, Janet. Consumer Boycotts and the Anti-Apartheid Struggle (interview). June, 2009.
- Hastings, Tom. The Anishinabe and an Unsung Nonviolent Victory in the Twentieth Century. OpenDemocracy.net. November 17, 2010.
- Merriman, Hardy. The Trifecta of Civil Resistance: Unity, Planning, and Nonviolent Discipline. OpenDemocracy.net. November 19, 2010
- Merriman, Hardy. Foundational Ideas of Civil Resistance (interview). June, 2009.
Managing Repression

Presenters: Dr. Erica Chenoweth, Assistant Professor at the Josef Korbel School, University of Denver

Dr. Stephen Zunes, Professor of Politics and International Studies at the University of San Francisco

Date: Tuesday, June 18th, 2012
Time: 11:00am – 12:30pm

Description: In this session, Dr. Erica Chenoweth discusses how repression affects nonviolent campaigns. She provides empirical evidence that nonviolent movements are still effective even against brutally oppressive opponents. She discusses how movements “manage” repression through the promotion of backfire, as well as the strategic options movements have in dealing with repression. She also provides evidence suggesting that nonviolent movements that adopt violence or develop armed wings are not usually advantaged relative to nonviolent movements. This is because using violence against the regime, even when provoked, can undermine the necessary public participation that nonviolent campaigns enjoy, and can also undermine the backfiring of regime repression.

Dr. Stephen Zunes emphasizes the international impact of repression, specifically how nonviolent responses in the face of brutal repression makes it easier to isolate the oppressive regime, whereas violent resistance, even where seemingly justifiable, could be seen as rationalizing further repression in the name of “national security” or “counter-terrorism.” He also addresses the importance of nonviolent discipline in encouraging defections by security forces and divisions within the regime.

Additional Resources:
Download presentation slides (Chenoweth)

Jenni Williams on WOZA’s struggle in Zimbabwe

Speaker: Jenni Williams, Co-Founder of Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA)
Date: Tuesday, June 18th, 2013
Time: 12:30pm – 2:00pm

Description: Jenni Williams is a prominent Zimbabwean human rights defender and co-founder of the Zimbabwean organization, Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA). Since its creation in 2003, WOZA, also meaning ‘come forward’ in Ndebele, has grown into a network of over 75,000 women and has inspired tens of thousands of women and men to stand up for their rights under Robert Mugabe’s regime. In nearly a decade of nonviolent struggle and hundreds of protests and actions, more than 3,000 WOZA supporters have spent time in police custody. Williams herself has been arrested over 50 times and frequently had to battle fabricated charges. In 2009, Williams was honored by President Obama at the White House when she and WOZA Programs Coordinator Magodonga Mahlangu were awarded the Robert F. Kennedy Award. She is also the 2012 recipient of Amnesty International U.S.A.’s 2012 Ginetta Sagan Award for Women’s and Children’s Rights.

Radical Flanks and Violence

Presenter: Dr. Howard Barrell, Senior Lecturer at Cardiff University
Date: Tuesday, June 18th, 2013
Time: 2:00pm – 3:30pm

Description: Do violent groups that operate independently of a nonviolent movement or on its fringes increase or decrease the likelihood of success of the civil resistance movement? This talk focuses on the South African anti-apartheid struggle and examine how simultaneous campaigns of civil resistance and organized military violence against apartheid interacted with each other. It shows a complex and paradoxical relationship and argues that the ANC’s almost exclusive focus on armed struggle between 1961 and 1979 severely undermined civil resistance. Ironically, it also held back the development of armed struggle itself, and retarded the achievement of ending apartheid. The talk 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.

Additional Resources:

Presentation slides

From Cochabamba to Democracy

Speaker: Oscar Olivera
Date: Tuesday, June 18th, 2013
Time: 7:00pm – 9:00pm

Description: From 2000 to 2005, Bolivian social movements won a succession of important political victories, reversing unpopular government decrees and gaining increased freedoms for ordinary Bolivians. Average citizens became active practitioners of civil resistance and made their voices heard as never before.

This wave of popular struggle resulted in the election of the nation’s first indigenous President, Evo Morales, in 2005. Morales’ rise to power in Bolivia has created complex challenges for the social movements that brought him to power: How can movements maintain their independence when someone from their ranks assumes executive power? When new governments begin to commit the same abuses as their predecessors, how can social movements respond?

Oscar Olivera discusses these issues, and talk about his more recent efforts to use community work projects to strengthen self-reliance and sustain people’s organizing capacity outside the realm of state power.

Additional Resources:

“An interview with Oscar Olivera.” Cochabambino. April 28, 2011. Available online
Dawson, Ashley. “The Cochabamba Water Wars: an Interview with Oscar Olivera.” Social Text. July 5, 2011. Available online
Dean, Matteo. “Oscar Olivera: Opposition in Times of Evo.” Desinformémonos. August 11, 2010. Available online
Lackowski, Peter and Sharyl Green. “Democracy from Below in Bolivia: An Interview with Oscar Olivera.” Upside Down World. June 20, 2012. Available online

Gender and Nonviolent Conflict

Presenters: Dr. Dyan Mazurana, Director for Gender, Youth and Community and Associate Professor at Tufts University

Roxanne Krystalli, Gender-based violence specialist in conflict and post-conflict areas

Date: Wednesday, June 19th, 2013
Time: 9:00am – 10:30am

Description: This session explores the role of human rights defenders, and in particular women’s rights defenders, and their use of nonviolent means to address, confront and respond to violence during armed conflict and afterwards. We’ll look at these human rights defenders’ various strategies and methods, and security risks and their attempts to mitigate these. We look at how they use and manipulate gender roles as a means to organize, stay safe and carry out their work, and the risks associated with this. Finally, we look at what they have achieved and where their efforts are blocked or fail and why.

Additional Resources:

Presentation slides

Panel Discussion: Media and Civil Resistance

Moderator: Dr. Sarah Sobieraj / Associate Professor of Sociology, Tufts University

Panelists: Nada Al-Wadi, Independent Journalist, Writer and Researcher

Dr. Howard Barrell, Senior Lecturer at Cardiff University

Date: Wednesday, June 19th, 2013
Time: 11:00am – 12:30pm

Description: Activists and organizers need to get their messages across to domestic audiences and the wider world to grow in strength and influence. The local and international media can play important roles in helping them do so. But the media can seem unreachable or can misinterpret a movement’s actions. In response, nonviolent action-takers can use opportunities to develop their own media and bring out their message directly to a larger audience. This session will discuss the role of mainstream, citizen and social media in civil resistance and the challenges that media face in covering a movement as well as obstacles and benefits for the movement in devising effective strategies, including organizing alternative media.

The James Lawson Awards

Date: Wednesday, June 19th, 2013
Time: 12:30pm – 2:00pm

This year, four distinguished people receive the James Lawson Award, in the presence of us all.

Breakout Session: Civil Resistance in Secession Struggle – The Case of West Papua

Presenters: Jason McLeod, Lecturer in Community Development, University of Queensland

Benny Wenda, West Papuan Independence Leader

Date: Wednesday, June 19th, 2013
Time: 2:00pm – 3:30pm

Description: Mainstream research into the dynamics of civil resistance has been built around investigations of how ordinary people remove dictatorships without resorting to violence. One particular area neglected is independence or secessionist struggles. Current examples include those in Palestine, Tibet, Western Sahara, and West Papua — all situations where an indigenous population is attempting to overthrow what is perceived to be a foreign occupation, or separate from an existing state in order to create a new state. One reason secession goals are more difficult to win than anti-dictatorship struggles is that they challenge the prevailing international order and require more complex strategies. Protagonists wanting to secede from an existing state need to wage nonviolent resistance in three distinct domains: the occupied territory, the territory of the occupier, and the societies of the occupier’s international allies. Through participatory and experiential methods and through using West Papua as a case study, this session explores the concept of “expanding the nonviolent battlefield”.

Breakout Session: The Arab Spring and Civil Resistance

Presenter: Arwa Hassan, Regional Outreach Manager MENA Region at Transparency International
Date: Wednesday, June 27th, 2013
Time: 2:00pm – 3:30pm

Description: The revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt in 2011 took the world by surprise. Yet, even activists on the frontlines did not initially anticipate the power that the protests would mobilize. Egyptians had effectively used civil resistance to fight against corruption and oppression for years, and these movements culminated in the bringing down of the respective corrupt dictators. The revolutions had spin-offs in other countries too, such as Jordan and Bahrain, and even Saudi Arabia has seen ripples of discontent.

Although President Mubarak and President Ben Ali have gone, threats still remain, with the old guard resorting to corrupt tactics to perpetuate their hold on power. The Military Council and the subsequent Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt clamped down further on civil rights.

People are again taking to the streets. What kind of tactics do civic movements need to deploy now in order to fight? What can activists do today to ensure that hard-won victories are not sabotaged by corrupt powers?

Breakout Session: Civil Resistance and Human Rights

Moderator: Nicola Barrach, Director of Civic and New Media Initiatives at International Center on Nonviolent Conflict

Date: Wednesday, June 19th, 2013
Time: 2:00pm – 3:30pm

Description: This session is a panel discussion with selected participants 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. A number of cases highlighted in this session will illustrate how civic movements and campaigns can benefit from and use human rights-related legal and institutional frameworks to advance their goals.

External Factors in Civil Resistance

Presenters: Dr. Maria Stephan, Lead Foreign Affairs Officer at the US Department of State’s Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations

Rob Wilkinson, Lecturer in International Negotiation and Global Aid Management at Fletcher School for Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University

Date: Wednesday, June 19th, 2013
Time: 4:00pm – 5:30pm

Description: “The tasks of democratic governments is to pay attention to change, and in a spirit of solidarity of free peoples, support legitimate aspirations of people everywhere to widen their democratic space.” -A Diplomat’s Handbook for Democracy Development Support

Local nonviolent activists and movements, along with the tactics and strategies they use, will always be the primary drivers of bottom-up change. However, external actors, both governmental and non-governmental, can play an important role in supporting those activists and movements and shaping the environment for civic activism. Effective 21st century diplomacy, notably, must emphasize development and civilian power as much as military might.

Still, there are challenges to state support for indigenous movements. These include constraints imposed by normal bilateral relations and conflicting geo-strategic interests. This module will address the following questions:

– What are the pros and cons of external support (notably governmental support) to nonviolent activists?
– What tools do diplomats and other external actors have at their disposal to enhance the effectiveness of nonviolent activists and movements?
– Where have those tools been used effectively or not effectively?
– What are key lessons for future engagement between diplomats/policy-makers and nonviolent activists?

Additional Resources:

Presentation slides

Economic Self Organization by Movements

Presenter: Kim Wilson, Lecturer in International Business at Fletcher School for Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University
Date: Thursday, June 20th, 2013
Time: 9:00am – 10:30am

Description: This session exposes participants to the idea of economic (financial and non-financial) self-organization in the context of strategic nonviolent conflict. We explore how civil resistance movements engage in and benefit from alternative economic organizing, what impact this type of self-organization has on mobilization and sustainability of nonviolent resistance, and what the challenges and obstacles are for pursuing grassroots economic independence in order to gain a greater strategic advantage in a civil resistance struggle. We look to specific examples from Haiti, Poland, South Africa and India to inform our thinking. We will pose a theoretical framework on self-organizing in civil resistance in general and specifically in economic and financial spheres and ask participants to respond and help reshape the framework.

Civil Resistance Versus Corruption

Presenters: Shaazka Beyerle, Senior Advisor at International Center on Nonviolent Conflict
Date: Thursday, June 20th, 2013
Time: 11:00am – 12:30pm

Description: Corruption remains one of the greatest stumbling blocks to democratic governance, power-holder accountability, human rights, and social and economic development. It’s intimately linked to violence, poverty, impunity, and oppression. Nonetheless, around the world, citizens are refusing to be victims, and literally millions are protagonists in nonviolent campaigns and movements targeting graft, abuse and organized crime. In this session we’ll consider alternative definitions of corruption; examine innovative cases (some currently underway); identify common attributes and general lessons learned; and explore together the dynamics of people power to confound corruption and gain accountability, rights and justice.

Why Skills Can Make Civil Resistance a Force More Powerful

Speaker: Dr. Peter Ackerman, Founding Chair of International Center on Nonviolent Conflict
Date: Thursday, June 20th, 2013
Time: 12:30pm – 2:00pm

Breakout Session: Struggles in Africa

Presenters: Jenni Williams, Co-Founder of Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA)

Mkhuseli Jack, Veteran of South Africa Anti-Apartheid Struggle

Date: Thursday, June 20th, 2013
Time: 2:00pm – 3:30pm

Description: The human potential and economic power of Africa are growing faster than ever before, but so too are threats to the freedom, safety and social justice sought by its people. Authoritarian rulers, corrupt officials, violent transnational traffickers, sectarian extremist groups, and foreign governments and corporations that wish to extract even more of its resources are competing for control of the continent’s future with the people of Africa. The people’s power has to be organized and applied to all these challenges, and there are many signs that this can be done. Where should civil society groups, local campaigns and larger movements focus their attention? What are the best issues to confront first? How can civil resistance be used as the chassis for practical action? Jenni and Khusta will lead a creative, open discussion of these and related questions.

Breakout Session: Civil Resistance and Corporate Action

Speaker: Althea Middleton-Detzner, Senior Advisor for Education and Field Learning at International Center on Nonviolent Conflict
Date: Thursday, June 20th, 2013
Time: 2:00pm – 3:30pm

Description: Laws, voluntary agreements, and corporate social responsibility mechanisms have failed to adequately regulate international extractive and development companies and their effects on local communities. Inadequate respect for the international norm of “free, prior, and informed consent,” human and worker rights abuses, environmental damage, and poor compensation are grievances faced by many communities. From Shell’s operations in the Niger Delta to Freeport Mining in West Papua, and the Belo Monte Dam in Brazil, nonviolent struggles have emerged to hold corporations and local governments accountable to the people. This session will explore these ideas and some of the cases where civil resistance has challenged power-holders responsible for the unjust practices.

*Video Coming Soon

Breakout Session – The Arts of Resistance: The Nonviolent Power of Music, Movement, and Imagery

Moderator: Daryn Cambridge, Senior Director for Learning and Digital Strategies at International Center on Nonviolent Conflict

Panelists:

Pimsiri Petchnamrob, MA Candidate at University for Peace

Ramson Chimwaza, Kumukoma Community Radio, Zimbabwe

Benny Wenda, West Papuan Independence Leader

Date: Thursday, June 20th, 2013
Time: 2:00pm – 3:30pm

Description: This session explores the role of music in nonviolent struggle and the various artistic/cultural elements that accompany it (poetry, visual arts, dance/movement, etc.). Daryn Cambridge will offer insights gained from an ICNC project that is obtaining music from bands and artists who are creating music in various regions and struggles around the world, and from selected participants who have also done so or used music in their struggles.

Download Podcast of this Panel

Leadership in Civil Resistance

Moderator: Dr. Deborah Nutter, Senior Associate Dean and Professor of Practice at Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy of Tufts University

Panelists:

Evgenia Chirikova, Russian Environmental Activist

Mkhuseli Jack, Veteran, South Africa Anti-Apartheid Struggle

Date: Friday, June 21st, 2013
Time: 9:00am – 10:30am

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 leaders 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: Evgenia Chirikova of Russia and Mkhuseli Jack of South Africa.

Syria: From Civil Resistance to Civil War

Presenter: Bassam Ishakm Member of Syrian National Council

Date: Friday, June 21st, 2013
Time: 11:00pm – 12:30pm

Description: What began as a mixture of spontaneous and planned nonviolent resistance to the Syrian regime in early 2011, on the heels of other Arab Spring uprisings, and then developed into a robust and mainly nonviolent challenge to the authoritarian control of the Assad regime, became by the end of 2011 an increasingly violent insurrection that many scholars and observers of civil resistance viewed as a tragic mistake. But the early stakeholders in a nonviolent revolution in Syria have not abandoned the long-term struggle for rights and democracy in their country. One of their leaders is Bassam Ishak, an alumnus of the Fletcher Summer Institute and a skilled thinker about how civil resistance can be taken up and applied, even in treacherous times and circumstances.

Breakout Session: Women in Civil Resistance

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

Dr. Anne-Marie Codur, Co-Founder of Newscoop

Date: Friday, June 21st, 2013
Time: 2:00pm – 3:30pm

Description: Most women’s activism has historically been nonviolent direct action, which has helped develop the technique of civil resistance. Movements for abolition of slavery and women’s suffrage made common cause in the nineteenth century. Women’s activism has been the galvanizing force in several civil-resistance movements, for example, the Montgomery bus boycott (1955–1956) that launched the U.S. civil rights movement was sparked by JoAnne Robinson and the city’s black women’s political council.

Women can sometimes exploit traditional political space as wives, mothers and nurturers, as did German gentile women married to Jewish men, who in 1943 saved their husbands through street protests in Berlin. Las Madres de la Plaza de Mayo dared to march weekly in Argentina’s capital, 1977–1983, seeking acknowledgment that their children had been “disappeared” by the military generals. Their audacious demonstrations created the dynamic that would lead to the fall of the regime. Women have sometimes been able to accomplish what their male peers could not, as with the Palestinian women who led popular committees in the 1987 intifada. Israeli women’s activism in the Israeli “Four Mothers Movement” exerted such pressure on the Israeli government that the IDF withdrew from Lebanon in 2000.

The significance of women’s leadership, decision-making, strategy, organization, communications, networking, and tactics needs to be more systemically surveyed and acknowledged, as their role is critical in the success of any movement of civil resistance.

Breakout Session: Civil Resistance and Democratic Transitions

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

Dr. Erica Chenoweth, Assistant Professor and the Josef Korbel School for International Studies at University of Denver

Date: Friday, June 21st, 2013
Time: 2:00pm – 3:30pm

Description: Institutional and economic concerns dominate the debate about democratic transitions. Constitutional reforms, the independence of the judiciary, civilian control over the military, free media, and honest elections are often the focus of continued activism. But how can civil resistance have a serious impact before and after such reforms? This session will explore the evidence that successful nonviolent campaigns tend to usher in more durable and internally peaceful democracies, which are less likely to regress into civil war than cases where violent insurgents succeed. Even the long-term effects of failed nonviolent campaigns are more favorable to democracy than the long-term effects of successful violent campaigns.

Breakout Session – People Power in the Digital Realm: ICT Strategies and Innovations

Moderator: Daryn Cambridge, Senior Director for Learning and Digital Strategies at International Center on Nonviolent Conflict

Panelists:

Amara Thiha, PhD Candidate at Coimbra University

Dallia Abdelmoniem, Freelance Journalist

Dan Thompson, Europe Region Chief of Public Affairs at US Department of Defense

Date: Friday, June 21st, 2013
Time: 2:00pm – 3:30pm

Description: This session explores how the internet, social media, and digital technology have spawned new methods of resistance, or enhanced and innovated “older” forms of resistance. It will also explore the ways in which governments and private companies (oftentimes in collusion with one another) are using digital tech and social media tools to advance their own agenda and to attack, hack, block, and intimidate resistance movements.

Listen to this Panel Discussion

Fletcher Summer Institute 2012

February 8, 2016 by intern3

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

Additional Resources

- Lawson, James. Lawson on Gandhi and Nonviolence (interview). June, 2009
- Lawson, James. Lawson on Training for Nonviolent Resistance (interview). June, 2009.
- NPT. A Conversation with James Lawson (interview).

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

- - Presentation Slides
  - DuVall, Jack. Civil Resistance and the Language of Power. OpenDemocracy.net. November 19, 2010
  - DuVall, Jack. Why Learn about Civil Resistance? (interview). June, 2009.
  - Merriman, Hardy. Why Learn about Civil Resistance? (interview). June, 2009
  - Zunes, Stephen – Why Learn About Civil Resistance? (interview). June, 2009.

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

- - - Presentation Slides
    - Hardy Merriman – Foundational Ideas of Civil Resistance (interview). June, 2009.
    - Hastings, Tom. The Anishinabe and an Unsung Nonviolent Victory in the Twentieth Century. OpenDemocracy.net. November 17, 2010.
    - Dr. Peter Ackerman – Key Elements of Civil Resistance (interiew). June, 2009

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

- - - - Presentation Slides
      - Sharp, Gene. 198 Methods of Nonviolent Action.

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

- - - - Presentation Slides
        
        Ackerman, Peter. Key Elements of Civil Resistance (interview). June, 2009.
        
        Cherry, Janet. Consumer Boycotts and the Anti-Apartheid Struggle (interview). June, 2009.
        
        Hastings, Tom. The Anishinabe and an Unsung Nonviolent Victory in the Twentieth Century. OpenDemocracy.net. November 17, 2010.
        
        Merriman, Hardy. The Trifecta of Civil Resistance: Unity, Planning, and Nonviolent Discipline. OpenDemocracy.net. November 19, 2010
        
        Merriman, Hardy. Foundational Ideas of Civil Resistance (interview). June, 2009.

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:

- - - - Presentation Slides (Radical Flank Effect)
        
        Presentation Slides (Violent Flanks and Anti-Apartheid Struggle)
        
        Shock, Kurt. Unarmed Resistance: People Power Movements in Nondemocracies.
        
        Walker, Jesse. Who Killed Apartheid? An Interview with Howard Barrell. Reason.com. February 11, 2010.

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:

- - - - Egypt: Seeds of Change (video). Al Jazeera.
        
        Kurtz, Les. Repression’s Paradox in China. OpenDemocracy.org.
        
        Kurtz, Les. When Repression Backfires (webinar). March, 2010.
        
        Kuzio, Taras. Security Forces Begin to Defect to Viktor Yushchenko. The Jamestown Foundation.
        
        Kirk, Michael. Revolution in Cairo (video). PBS Frontline

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:

- - - - Presentation Slides (Fragile and Conflict-Affected States)

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:

- - - - Bajaj, Vikas. Climate Prophet in Hot Water: “The Island President” and Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives. The New York Times. March 28, 2012.
        
        BBC News. Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed Resigns Amid Unrest. BBC News. February 7, 2012.
        
        Shenk, Jon. The Island President. AfterImage Public Media, 2011.

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:

- - - - Abrash, Abigail and Kennedy, Danny. “Repressive Mining in West Papua.” Moving Mountains: Communities Confronting Mining and Globalization. Oxford Press.
        
        Perlez, Jane and Raymond Bonner. Below a Mountain of Wealth, a River of Waste. New York Times. Dec 27, 2005.
        
        Rayfield, Alex and Claudia King. Strike Pressures PT Freeport Indonesia into Serious Negotiations. Aug 11, 2011. openDemocracy.net.

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.

Fletcher Summer Institute 2011

February 4, 2016 by intern3

Keynote Address – Rev. James Lawson

Speaker: Rev. James Lawson, Distinguished Scholar at Vanderbilt University

Prolific civil rights leader and trainer of nonviolent action, Rev. James Lawson, delivers the opening banquet keynote address talking about his experience organizing and training the Nashville lunch counter sit-in campaign. Reverend Lawson’s remarks will be preceded by a showing of the Nashville, Tennessee video segment from “A Force More Powerful.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkXKam9LfL0

Additional Resources:

Civil Resistance: A First Look (video)
Lawson, James – Gandhi and Nonviolence (video)
Lawson, James – Training for Nonviolent Resistance (video)
Merriman, Hardy. The Trifecta of Civil Resistance: Unity, Planning, and Nonviolent Discipline. OpenDemocracy.org.

The Dynamics of Civil Resistance

Presenter: Jack DuVall, President of the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict

The modern practice of civil resistance sprang from 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:

DuVall, Jack. Civil Resistance and the Language of Power.
Hardy Merriman – Why Learn About Civil Resistance? (video)
Jack DuVall – Why Learn About Civil Resistance? (video)
Dr. Stephen Zunes – Why Learn About Civil Resistance? (video)

Forming a Movement

Presenter: Hardy Merriman, Senior Advisor at the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict

Given political oppression in many regions of the world, what explains the emergence of nonviolent movements in some countries but not others? Furthermore, what are the skills that nonviolent movements use in order to build movements and unify populations? This session will examine these and related questions, and address issues such as the development of movement discourse, capacity building, and the creation and expansion of political space.

Additional Resources:

Hardy Merriman – Foundational Ideas of Civil Resistance (video)
Hastings, Tom. The Anishinabe and an Unsung Nonviolent Victory in the Twentieth Century.
Dr. Peter Ackerman – Key Elements of Civil Resistance (video)

Film Screening: Bringing Down a Dictator

Bringing Down a Dictator tells the inside story of how Milosevic was brought down — not by smoke and flames– but by a courageous campaign of political defiance and massive civil disobedience. Winner of a Peabody Award, the film was narrated by Martin Sheen and premiered on PBS in March 2002.

Sustaining a Movement

Presenters: Ivan Marovic, Core Systems Designer (People Power Game)
York/Zimmerman Productions

Hardy Merriman, Senior Director or Education & Research at International Center on Nonviolent Conflict

Civil resistance movements must be durable and resilient enough to engage in a struggle with entrenched adversaries. What sustains such movements in the face of both internal pressure (in the form of disunity) and external pressure (in the form of repression)? To address this question, Ivan Marovic, drawing from his own experience in the Serbian youth movement that brought down Slobodan Milosevic, examined issues of tactical sequencing and innovation, movement risk assessment, and looked at how movements galvanize support and maintain momentum and initiative against their opponents. In addition, Hardy Merriman examined issues of tactical sequencing and innovation, movement risk assessment, and looked at how movements galvanize support and maintain momentum and initiative against their opponents.

Additional Resources:

Dr. Janet Cherry – Consumer Boycotts and the Anti-Apartheid Struggle (video)
Merriman, Hardy. The Trifecta of Civil Resistance: Unity, Planning, and Nonviolent Discipline.

Nonviolent Struggle and Radical Flanks

Presenter: Dr. Howard Barrell, Senior Lecturer at Cardiff University

Dr. Barrell discusses how the struggle against apartheid in South Africa demonstrated that civil resistance can be a more resilient and effective form of struggle against oppression than military action. The case of South Africa shows how the leadership of the ANC, the preeminent South African liberation movement, saw the role of civil resistance as subsidiary to, and creating fertile political conditions for, armed struggle. But events produced an entirely different outcome. Civil resistance that came to be coordinated by the United Democratic Front ended up displacing armed struggle as the main weapon against the oppressive state. This shift occurred through the 1970s and 1980s, the decisive period in the struggle to end racial oppression of black people in that country.

Additional Resources

Schock, Kurt. Unarmed Resistance: People Power Movements in Nondemocracies.
Walker, Jesse. Who Killed Apartheid? An Interview with Howard Barrell.

The Palestinian 1987 Intifada

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

The history of Palestine is by no means dominated by violence. In fact, Palestinians used various methods of nonviolent actions such as protest and persuasion, boycotts, strikes and parallel institution building from the 1920s onward — only to face repression indifference from the colonial British authorities prior to 1948, or from Israel was established. Disregard for historic Palestinian civil resistance had the effect of strengthening Palestinian factions that advocated violent resistance. During the 1970s and 1980s, however, inside the territories militarily occupied by Israel, an extended, multi-year process built the civic capacity of the Palestinians through thousands of committees, thereby enabling the coming mass nonviolent movement. Activist intellectuals spread knowledge about nonviolent strategies throughout Palestinian society, shaping a new politics, with changes in popular thinking about how to transform their situation, including withholding cooperation from a belligerent occupation.

Additional Resources

King, Mary Elizabeth. Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.: The Power of Nonviolent Action.
Dr. Mary King’s website

Backfire and Security Divisions

Presenters: Dr. Lee Smithey, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Swarthmore College

James Greene, Head of NATO Liaison Office in Ukraine

Dr. Smithey explains how nonviolent civil resistance movements that challenge autocratic governments must often deal with repression and intimidation. Regimes depend on the legitimacy they can cultivate. However, when faced with popular resistance, they are forced to weigh the costs and benefits of escalating their use of coercive security measures, and even outright violence, to chill dissent. Though such repression can successfully raise the cost of movement participation and thus undermine challenges, it can also “backfire” and enhance popular mobilization. We consider how the strategic application of nonviolent methods can take advantage of this paradox of repression and raise the likelihood that violence will trigger further mobilization. Much depends on the ability of civil resisters to maintain nonviolent discipline, frame repression, and choreograph actions that help ensure repression will be widely interpreted as reprehensible.

Mr. Greene describes how the effect of backfire can extend beyond civil society to include elements within security institutions that see repression as opposed to their professional ethos and institutional or personal interests. As nonviolent movements seek to shape the environment in ways that maximize the possibility for backfire, it is important that they consider the values, interests, mind-set, and working environment of those who serve within the security sector. These factors vary widely among different institutions (e.g. armed forces, police, and internal security) and elements within these institutions (e.g. conscripts, professional soldiers, and officers at various levels). Various elements also have differing levels of identification with the regime or dissonance in values with it. Nonviolent movements that are willing to take a nuanced view of security institutions, understanding them and relating to them as something other than a monolithic oppressor can use these divisions to reduce the effects of repression and undermine political support for a regime within its own institutions.

Additional Resources

Egypt: Seeds of Change (video). Al Jazeera.
Kurtz, Les. Repression’s Paradox in China. OpenDemocracy.org.
Kurtz, Les. When Repression Backfires (webinar)
Kuzio, Taras. Security Forces Begin to Defect to Viktor Yushchenko. The Jamestown Foundation.
Kirk, Michael. Revolution in Cairo (video). PBS Frontline.

Transitions and Negotiations

Presenter: Dr. Maciej Bartkowski, Senior Director of Education and Research at the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict

Negotiations and use of nonviolent actions are interlinked and play an important role in forcing bottom-up and also top-down, elite-actor transitions will be reviewed as a segue to a discussion about movement-centered attributes and mechanisms, including openness to negotiations, consultations and coalition building –by which broad-based nonviolent movements facilitate democratization and successful democratic transitions. The talk will draw on historical cases as well as current cases of transition to democracy in the Middle East.

Additional Resources

Bartkowski, Maciej & Kurtz, Les. Egypt: How to Negotiate the Transition. Lessons from Poland and China.
Tregub, Olena & Shulyar, Oksana. The Struggle After People Power Wins.

Success in Civil Resistance: The Necessity of Skills

Presenter: Dr. Peter Ackerman, Founding Chair of the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict

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 to do this. A movement’s adversary often tries to wage its struggle through violent means, which has a completely different dynamic and tactical repertoire than nonviolent methods.

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.

Additional Resources:

Ackerman, Peter. Skills or Conditions: What Key Factors Shape the Success or Failure of Civil Resistance?

Third Party Actors and Transnationals

Presenters: Dr. Ian Johnstone, Professor of International Law at Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy

Dr. Stephen Zunes, Professor of Politics and International Studies at the University of San Francisco

The first part of the session examines the role of international organizations in democracy promotion. It begins by asking whether there is a growing global consensus on the value of democratic governance – perhaps even an emerging “right to democracy.” We then consider how international organizations are both contributing to and acting on that consensus through their normative and operational activities. Among the operational activities, we look at electoral assistance, the good governance agenda of development agencies, peacekeeping and peacebuilding. In addition to these non-coercive approaches, we consider cases of military action to uphold democracy – most recently in Cote d’Ivoire. The central objective of the session is to explore the global normative and political context in which democratic action by non-state actors occurs.

The second talk critically examines some recent cases where there have been charges of foreign interference in popular nonviolent uprisings by foreign governments, NGOs, and other outside actors; explores how outside support can actually harm a movement’s chances of success; and, under what circumstances outside actors can make positive contributions to nonviolent struggles for freedom and justice. In general, autocratic governments, regardless of ideological orientation or geopolitical alliances, have traditionally blamed real or perceived hostile powers for indigenous nonviolent challenges to their regime. However, unlike military coups and armed rebellions, the degree of influence a foreign power can actually have on a popular civil insurrection is rather minimal.

Citizen Journalism and Movement Media

Presenters: Al Giordano, Founder of School of Authentic Journalism

Greg Berger, Independent Media Maker and Founder of Gringoyo.com

Movements that do their own journalism and make their own media have a much greater chance at success than those that rely on commercial or state media. From Mexico to Egypt, Greg Berger and Al Giordano have reported extensively and also studied how journalists and media makers have helped – or hurt – the movements that they cover. Through the Narco News School of Authentic Journalism, they train independent media makers in how to report stories about social movements and nonviolent civil resistance, and how to bring the message to a wider public audience through techniques developed to make videos and news reports “go viral.”

**Video Coming Soon

Additional Resources

Giordano, Al. Authentic Journalism: Weapon of the People.
Narco News. How Egyptians “Televised” the Revolution when the Media Would Not (video)

Conventional Media and Civil Resistance

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

Dr. Cynthia Boaz, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Sonoma State University

In this session, Dr. Boaz introduces several common media frames (or “biases”) that lead to distortions in coverage of civil resistance. She also discusses the role of meta-frames, i.e. deeply held beliefs and assumptions about concepts such as power, conflict and violence, which reinforce misperceptions in media reporting of civil resistance.

Dr. Barrell examines strategies that were developed by two groups of journalists in different parts of the world struggling to reach their audiences despite severe repression. One group was Burmese, the other South African. In Burma, opposition journalists set out in the 1990s to find a way to bypass their government’s tight grip on the media in their country. They ended up creating something entirely new, free of control by the government, that exploited advances in broadcasting technology and the credibility that derives from a ‘public service’ ethos in journalism. In South Africa in the 1970s, there seemed little chance of developing an effective opposition media outside of the state-approved system. A group of journalists asked themselves if they could work within government-imposed constraints yet still get across a militant opposition message.

Civil Resistance and Extreme Violence

Presenters: Dr. Erica Chenoweth, Assistant Professor of Government at Wesleyan University

Nichole Argo, PhD Candidate at The New School University

Dr. Erica Chenoweth contests myths about the effectiveness and necessity of violence as a method of resistance. She also presents evidence that shows that nonviolent resistance can be a superior method of resistance, even against regimes who try to use extreme brutality to silence dissent. She distinguishes between insurgencies (and “terrorist” groups) who may be open to the idea of abandoning violence, and those who are likely to maintain violence even when other alternatives are possible. Chenoweth also discusses how to increase awareness among the policy community and the public about the strategic advantages of nonviolent resistance.

Nichole Argo speaks about the role of sacred beliefs and the impact they have on whether or not movements choose to use violence or nonviolent in their struggle.

Additional Resources:

Chenoweth, Erica & Stephan, Maria. Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict.

Keynote Address – Gene Sharp

Presenter: Dr. Gene Sharp, Senior Scholar at Albert Einstein Institution

Gene Sharp, Senior Scholar at the Albert Einstein Institution and one of the foremost authorities on nonviolent struggle in recent decades, gives a keynote address to discuss the relevance of civil resistance to the continuing global fight for human rights, democracy, and freedom.

Additional Resources

Arrow, Ruaridh. How to Start a Revolution (film website)
Sharp, Gene. The Politics of Nonviolent Action (Part One).
Sharp, Gene. The Politics of Nonviolent Action (Part Two).
Sharp. Gene. The Politics of Nonviolent Action (Part Three).
Sharp, Gene. Waging Nonviolent Struggle: 20th Century Practice and 21st Century Potential.

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The Fletcher Summer Institute 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. This institute runs from June 19 – 25, 2011 at the Fletcher School (Tufts University) in Medford, Massachusetts, USA.