Peace & Justice Studies is an interdisciplinary academic field that emphasizes the study of nonviolent and transformative approaches to problems such as injustice and violence. Areas of study include the following:
1. Nonviolence, violence, and civil resistance: theories and meanings of nonviolence and violence; history, principles and methods of dissent, communication, art, organizing, and indiv
idual and social change.
2. Peacemaking: seeking to prevent, resolve, or transform conflicts -- including war, genocide, human rights violations, non-state and state terrorism, and ecological destruction -- through nonviolent means.
3. Transformative justice: liberation, restoration, reparations, healing, and reconciliation as alternatives to retribution.
4. Well-being: creating and sustaining health and quality of life in individuals, groups, societies, and ecosystems. Peace+justice (or "peace & justice") is a hybrid concept that combines peace with justice, as these terms are usually understood. It is the concept of "true peace" referred to in the 1958 quote from Martin Luther King, Jr.: "True peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice." The Peace+Justice Studies Initiative focuses on the methods and obstacles for achieving peace justly and for achieving justice peacefully, encouraging openness and a critical, rigorous perspective that can help us to learn and become wiser.
