Skip to main content
  • Home
  • About
  • Faculty Experts
  • For The Media
  • ’Cuse Conversations Podcast
  • Topics
    • Alumni
    • Events
    • Faculty
    • Students
    • All Topics
  • Contact
  • Submit
Arts & Culture
  • All News
  • Arts & Culture
  • Business & Economy
  • Campus & Community
  • Health & Society
  • Media, Law & Policy
  • STEM
  • Veterans
  • |
  • Alumni
  • The Peel
  • Athletics
Sections
  • All News
  • Arts & Culture
  • Business & Economy
  • Campus & Community
  • Health & Society
  • Media, Law & Policy
  • STEM
  • Veterans
  • |
  • Alumni
  • The Peel
  • Athletics
  • Home
  • About
  • Faculty Experts
  • For The Media
  • ’Cuse Conversations Podcast
  • Topics
    • Alumni
    • Events
    • Faculty
    • Students
    • All Topics
  • Contact
  • Submit
Arts & Culture

Q and A: Humanities Center’s Gregg Lambert speaks on peace

Friday, August 31, 2012, By Kelly Homan Rodoski
Share

Gregg Lambert, Dean’s Professor of the Humanities and Founding Director of the Syracuse University Humanities Center, answers questions on the topic of world peace.

What is your perspective on world peace and how it can be achieved?

In her filmed segment for the Perpetual Peace Project (PPP), the renowned French writer and feminist Hélène Cixous spoke of the need for another horizon for explaining the idea of peace. The practical objectives of personal security and human rights are certainly important, and everyone can agree that they are preliminary conditions for peace, but they do not actually define the positive conditions of what it would mean to live in a peaceful society. The 9/11 attacks brought home for Americans what, for the most part, the rest of the world already knew: there is no safe territory, no security zone. It is for this reason that the idea of what philosopher Immanuel Kant called “perpetual peace” is becoming less an abstraction, and more of a practical necessity. My goals for this project are very simple: start to imagine what it would be like to live in a peaceful society.

You are one of the founders of the Perpetual Peace Project—an international partnership that is revisiting the prospects for world peace in the 21st century. What have been some of the outcomes of this project so far, including the unexpected?

The project actually began several years ago with a conversation that took place between an academic (myself), a curator and a working diplomat in the United Nations. We were inspired to start a “peace movement” and took Kant’s 1795 manifesto “Toward Perpetual Peace” as a conceptual platform for launching different events and exhibits. We approached the International Peace Institute, saying that we wanted to organize a conversation between philosophers and diplomats around the concept of peace, and we even traveled to Geneva in the spring of 2009 to present the project at the 10th session of the Human Rights Council . We also mounted exhibits at the New Museum and at the Utrecht University, in the Netherlands. Last spring, I even traveled to Seoul, Korea, to engage in a public conversation with the presidential candidate of the Progressive Party, and visited the DMZ to film a new segment for the video installation of the project.

His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama will visit the Syracuse University campus in October, a collaboration of Syracuse University and the One World Community Foundation. What kind of impression do you hope His Holiness leaves on our campus and community?

I think the scale of the event that has been imagined testifies to the continued importance and power of massive demonstrations for peace, and this is not entirely unrelated to what took place in the streets of Cairo during the Arab Spring. People can be motivated by an idea to come together to express a desire for something that transcends their everyday lives defined by anxiety and self-interest. The action of coming together is always invested with hope that something will change. Maybe that’s how transformations happen, in fits and starts. After the Dalai Lama’s visit is over, people in Syracuse and elsewhere in the region will return to their normal lives, but maybe something will have changed for us as well.

A weeklong series of Eat Together For Peace (ET4Peace) events—exhibits, performances and meals–will culminate in the International Day of Peace on Sept. 21 on the Kenneth A. Shaw Quad. Why are food, arts and culture good vehicles to promote discussions about peace?

There are many etymological and social origins for the concept of peace and they are often the most common. Almost universally, the word of greeting in many languages is an expression of peace. Eating together or sharing a common meal or breaking a fast is at its origin a ritual of hospitality that actually existed before the idea of religion. It’s a ritual of peace. In this program, organized by Marnie Blount-Gowan, we have even removed food as a necessary ingredient. It is simply the act of coming together of those who don’t necessary have anything in common to begin with, that is the most fundamental and basic ingredient for a peaceful society, the first course in the meal of perpetual peace.

Note: More information on PPP and clips of interviews can be found here.

  • Author

Kelly Rodoski

  • Recent
  • Sean O’Keefe G’78 Joins Government Hall of Fame
    Tuesday, June 6, 2023, By Jessica Youngman
  • From Academic Advising to Multicultural Affairs: Practicums Help School of Education Students Explore Higher Education Careers
    Tuesday, June 6, 2023, By Martin Walls
  • Ana Caliz Casanova Joins Libraries  as Monograph Cataloging Librarian
    Tuesday, June 6, 2023, By Cristina Hatem
  • Yvonne E. Hyland Joins Libraries Advisory Board
    Tuesday, June 6, 2023, By Cristina Hatem
  • Free Trolley From Campus to Downtown Farmers Market Will Begin June 13
    Tuesday, June 6, 2023, By Jennifer DeMarchi

More In Arts & Culture

Ana Caliz Casanova Joins Libraries  as Monograph Cataloging Librarian

Ana Caliz Casanova recently joined Syracuse University Libraries as monograph cataloging librarian in the acquisitions and cataloging department. In this role, she is responsible for maintaining bibliographic and authority records for single subject works in the Libraries’ principal (non-special) collections…

Yvonne E. Hyland Joins Libraries Advisory Board

Syracuse University Libraries is pleased to announce that Yvonne E. Hyland recently joined the Libraries Advisory Board. Hyland is a senior international advisor with corporate, entrepreneurial, intrapreneurial and venture capital experience. She has worked with global organizations including IBM, SAP…

Free Trolley From Campus to Downtown Farmers Market Will Begin June 13

The Syracuse University community is invited to visit the Downtown Farmers Market in Clinton Square this summer, with free transportation provided by Parking and Transportation Services (PTS). The market runs from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. every Tuesday beginning June…

Syracuse Views Summer 2023

We want to know how you experience Syracuse University. Take a photo and share it with us. We select photos from a variety of sources. Submit photos of your University experience using #SyracuseU on social media, fill out a submission…

Providing a Voice for the Systemically Suppressed With Erykah Pasha ’24 on the ‘’Cuse Conversations’ Podcast

From an early age, Erykah Pasha ’24 has been driven to help provide a voice for those who have been systematically oppressed and suppressed in her community. Originally when Pasha enrolled, she felt passionately that becoming a lawyer was the…

Subscribe to SU Today

If you need help with your subscription, contact sunews@syr.edu.

Connect With Us

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Youtube
  • LinkedIn
Social Media Directory

For the Media

Find an Expert Follow @SyracuseUNews
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Youtube
  • LinkedIn
  • @SyracuseU
  • @SyracuseUNews
  • @SUCampus
  • Social Media Directory
  • Accessibility
  • Privacy
  • Campus Status
  • Syracuse.edu
© 2023 Syracuse University News. All Rights Reserved.