M. Ayaz Naseem (right) with the Mayor of Braunschweig. | Photo courtesy of M. Ayaz Naseem
During Naseem’s two stays in Braunschweig, he worked on a number of projects, including a book manuscript entitled The Digital Commons and Commoners: Exploring The Potential of Social Media For Sustainable Peace, and a co-edited volume, Peace 2.0: Social Media as a Space for Peace Education (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Germany, 2015).
He also delivered the keynote address to the participants of the First Arnhold Summer School for early career professional and doctoral students. He concluded his stay in Braunschweig by organizing a two-day international symposium on social media as a space for sustainable peace education.
Here are Naseem’s recollections about his tenure as the First Georg Arnhold Research Professor of Education for Sustainable Peace in Germany:
The Arnhold Professorship is a visionary project and a fitting tribute to the pacifist spirit of Mr. Georg Arnhold. It holds the promise and the potential of, in Mr. Georg Arnhold’s words, “building bridges” between the self and the other at all levels of human behaviour and interaction.
Through its spirit of educating for sustainable peace, it invites us to build bridges — where they have been destroyed, where none have existed — that connect the local to the global, personal to the collective. It is also reflective of the spirit of discernment, of resisting the impulse to understand the acts of few as acts of the whole.
My inspiration in carrying out research on educating for sustainable peace comes from the words of the benefactor Mr. Henry Arnhold when he said, “I do not believe in collective responsibility.” Coming from a man whose family was persecuted and was chased out of their homeland, these are indeed guiding words. They show me the spirit of peace education — the ability to rise above the personal anguish and think of reconstruction and healing.
Winner of the UNESCO Peace Education Prize, the Georg Eckert Institute is a unique institution.
Housed in the historic Villa von Bulow, the institute has been at the forefront of textbook research since 1970s. GEI projects include the Franco-German Textbook Commission, the German-Polish Textbook Commission and the Israeli-Palestinian Textbook Project.
Working at an institute that has been committed to exploring the role of educational media as a space for deconstructing enemy images and for constructions of peace was a unique and rewarding experience.
Social media and peace education
The First Arnhold Symposium brought together a diverse group of scholars, practitioners, policy makers and social media analysts interested in how social media can be used in the service of sustainable peace education.
Some of the leading global experts in the field of social media and peace education gathered at the GEI to present their expertise and engage in conversations and discussion on the symposium theme.
The symposium was attended by the representatives of the U.S. mission in Berlin, along with a cross-section of scholars and other stakeholders from various parts of Germany. The symposium focused on the role that social media plays in civic engagement, activism and peace building.
The three main themes of the symposium were the conceptualization of social media as a space for peace; explorations of social media as pedagogical intervention; and policy dynamics. Discussion was wide-ranging.
Topics included the role that social media played during the Arab Spring and the Brazilian students demonstrations; social change in Africa; religious meaning-making in social media environments; societal regeneration in South Asia; and the propagation of extremism on social media.
There was a tacit consensus among the delegates and the participants that the potential social media holds in creating conditions and providing spaces where peace-building can take place warrants a deeper examination. The delegates saw the Georg Arnhold Professorship and my project on social media as a space for sustainable peace education as an important step in this direction.
Representing Concordia internationally through this professorship was a deeply rewarding and intellectually nourishing experience for me. It was also satisfying to note that my research on social media as a space for sustainable peace education generated deeper interest in the research community internationally.
Vielen Dank Braunschweig, vielen dank Georg Eckert Institute.
Read about the upcoming Graduate Symposium on Sustainability organized in part by Dr. Ayaz.