New Student Orientation Freshman Reading

If you are from the United States, your relatives may remember where they were when John F. Kennedy was shot or the space shuttle Challenger exploded in the sky. The first momentous experience most of you shared was the tragedy now known as 9/11. The crash into the Twin Towers, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania marked the end of an era—a period of insularity and invulnerability—that most Americans took for granted. If you were a child in the United States when the towers fell, you were doubtless affected by that experience. Everything you have lived through since has been changed by that day.

It was “a date which will live in infamy,” said Franklin Delano Roosevelt, speaking of the December 7, 1941, bombing of Pearl Harbor that preceded the U.S. entry into World War II and changed the world for another generation. War does that. History repeats itself. In 2001, a fight was brought to American soil and the reaction was visceral. Debate was short. Questions linger.

“It was my view then, and still is, that you don’t make war without knowing why. Knowledge, of course, is always imperfect, but it seemed to me that when a nation goes to war it must have reasonable confidence in the justice and imperative of its cause.”

—Tim O’Brien, author of The Things They Carried, an award-winning book of stories about American soldiers during the Vietnam War. O’Brien will give a public reading on the Bloomington campus October 19.

War and peace are not natural phenomena. They are made. Decisions to wage war or sustain or broker peace are made by leaders, by societies, by individuals coming together to speak with one voice or groups forming to produce a cacophony of voices—voices at odds about actions and values. Societies are moved to

make these decisions by tragedy and terror, by concern for the future and respect for the past, by the passion of belief and worries over resources.

And you, in such a society, are pushed on all sides by friends and family, by pundits and presidents, late-night comedians, YouTube videos, and Facebook posts. You are inundated. The images and voices of war and peace are all around. If you have lived 18 years in the United States, your country has been in a state of war for more than half your life.

“As America enters the twenty-first century, the scene is being set for a paradoxical and simultaneous normalization and spectacularization of war. Instead of war being an exceptional state for America (which has been at war for roughly one quarter of its existence), war is becoming the normal state of affairs for the U.S.A., which is currently still engaged in its longest-ever war, in Afghanistan.”

—IU Professor Jon Simons in his description of the research forum “Images and Public Culture: Understanding Images Across the Humanities.” The forum will bring five speakers to campus this fall to discuss the in/visibility of war.

For those of us not in or near the line of fire, the distant military actions abroad are, oddly, both visible and invisible. War has become your reality, but for most of you it is a distant reality. While you are starting college, some of your high school peers, however, have graduated to a different kind of education. The military becomes a profession for some, a detour for others. Many will find it a final destination. For a small group reading this, those of you done with your tour of duty or taking a break from the frontlines, the war is all too real, all too unforgettable.

Making War, Making Peace, Exploring Issues

“Americans have always felt pretty invulnerable here at home—until we were violated on our own territory in a way we have never been. In September more Americans died than on any other day in our history—and that has changed the way we look at things. In some ways we need to change. This attack was so awful that if we don’t change, the lives lost will be without vindication. I obviously can’t identify with what happened to those who lost their lives—but in a way I was in those buildings, you were in those buildings, every American was.”

—Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in an interview with Oprah Winfrey, December 2001. Albright is scheduled to speak on the Bloomington campus this fall.

As part of Indiana University (IU) Bloomington’s New Student Orientation experience, all freshmen will take part in small-group discussions that center on the concepts shared in the reading below. These issues will return throughout the fall semester as part of the Themester 2011: Making War, Making Peace. Themester (theme + semester), spearheaded by the College of Arts and Sciences, explores the important issues of our time through courses, public activities, and events dedicated to the theme. This article will be discussed during your student sessions on the first day of your New Student Orientation program. Please read this and be prepared to participate in the discussion.

“In making the portraits I wanted to look into the face of a young person who had seen something unforgettable. . . . I created the Soldier Billboard Project in order to encourage a dialogue about art and soldiering. Viewers are asked to think about the psychological struggles of veterans and their families, and reach their own conclusions.”

—Photographer Suzanne Opton to National Public Radio’s blog The Picture Show, March 2010. Opton will speak on the Bloomington campus on October 10 as part of the Images and Public Culture forum.

Among the incoming class of 2011 are veterans and the children of veterans, refugees and immigrants—individuals who have seen war, who can provide a perspective to their peers and a kind of expertise, the expertise of experience that can itself be strengthened by distance and study and by the exploration of new perspectives.

Indiana University is a place for that kind of exploration. This fall’s Themester on Making War, Making Peace, sponsored by the College of Arts and Sciences, invites IU students to examine the human causes and consequences of war and the meaning and possibilities of peace. It aims to promote thoughtful dialogue about the impact of war on individuals and societies, to investigate the challenges and possibilities of peacemaking, and to reflect upon the cultural significance and artistic representations of war and peace. Opportunities to study the human forces and choices that contribute to the making and meaning of war and peace are abundant.

Formal courses designed specifically for Themester are offered in multiple fields of study. Throughout the semester, IU faculty members, guest scholars, and political leaders will address questions of war and peace in public lectures and forums. A student-designed workshop will examine the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from the perspective of restorative justice. A full slate of theatre productions, film screenings, musical events, and art and museum exhibits will probe the personal and cultural consequences of war.

An educated citizen needs to be prepared to engage in the discussion of Making War, Making Peace in all of its complexities.

The decision to make war or make peace is never clear-cut, never black and white. To make war and to make peace are thus often difficult decisions. There is no more important judgment made by the citizens of a democratic polity—individually or collectively—than the decision to go to war or, alternatively, to make peace. In the very near future, these decisions will be made by you—as constituents, as representatives, as letter-writers, as kitchen-table debaters, congregation members, and protesters. These decisions are yours as citizens and as leaders.

A goal of Themester is to foster a culture of constructive debate and informed discussion on the Indiana University campus and in the Bloomington community that would encourage thoughtful and reflective consideration of the issues relevant to such civic deliberation and individual decision making.

We hope you join this discussion.

War by the Numbers U.S. Civil War (1861–65): More than 500,000 American combatants killed1

World War I (1914–1918): More than 100,000 American combatants killed;1 estimated 15,000,000 total deaths2

World War II (1939–1945): More than 400,000 American combatants killed;1 an estimated 38,000,000 total deaths3

Vietnam Conflict (1964–1973): Nearly 60,000 American combatants killed;1 an estimated 1,700,000 total deaths4

War on Terror (2001–present): More than 6,000 American combatants killed;5 over 100,000 Iraqi civilians killed,6 Afghan deaths unknown (2,777 killed in 2010)7

1. “American War and Military Operations Casualties: Lists and Statistics,” Congressional Research Service, last modified February 26, 2010, http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL32492.pdf.

2. “World War I casualties,” Twentieth Century Atlas, accessed April 26, 2011, http://necrometrics.com/20c5m.htm.

3. Ian Dear, ed. “Demography of War,” Oxford companion to World War II, Oxford University Press, 2001, Online edition.

4. “Death Tolls for Major Wars and Atrocities of the Twentieth Century,” Twentieth Century Atlas, accessed April 26, 2011, http://necrometrics.com/20c1m.htm.

5. “U.S. Department of Defense Casualty List,” United States Department of Defense, accessed April 26, 2011, http://www.defense.gov/news/casualty.pdf.

6. Iraq Body Count, accessed April 26, 2011, http://www.iraqbodycount.org/.

7. “Afghanistan: Annual Report 2010 on Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict,” United Nations, http://unama.unmissions.org/Portals/UNAMA/human%20rights/March%20PoC%20Annual%20Report%20Final.pdf.

Discussion Questions1. What are the motives, aims, costs, and consequences of war?

2. When and how is war deemed necessary and just?

3. How has warfare changed over time?

4. Beyond the absence of war, what is the positive meaning of peace?

5. What makes peace more (or less) possible?

6. Is poverty more often a consequence or a precondition of war?

7. What, if any, role do individual citizens play in the making of peace?

8. Is democracy more prone to peace than other political systems?

9. How does religion influence attitudes toward war and peace?

Recommended Reading

The following selections offer perspectives for further exploration and discussion. The Themester faculty advisory committee offers these questions to consider as you read.

1. Douglas P. Fry, Beyond War: The Human Potential for Peace (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 1-32, 193-233.

What is war? From an anthropological perspective, how accurate is the “man the warrior” model of human conflict? Is war a universal and inevitable feature of human societies?

Is war obsolete? What is the difference between abolishing the institution of war and eliminating violence in human affairs? How does conflict management relate to promoting justice, human rights, and security?

What is the human capacity for peace in the twenty-first century—for realizing conditions of interdependence, promoting crosscutting ties, and creating institutions of peace?

2. John Paul Lederach, The Moral Imagination: The Art and Soul of Building Peace (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 3-74.

How does the creative capacity to imagine and generate relational interdependency make peace-building possible?

How can an attitude of paradoxical curiosity help to transcend violence?

How might the practice of constructive pessimism, the art of deep listening, and the aesthetics of metaphor exercise the moral imagination for realistic peace-building?

3. Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried (Boston: Houghton Mifflin/Seymour Lawrence, 1990).

“A true war story, if truly told, makes the stomach believe,” O’Brien writes. By this measure, is O’Brien’s book a true war story? If so, does your stomach believe, and why must it be your source of knowledge and trust? If not, what’s missing in O’Brien’s story?

Suggestions for Additional Reading

Fiction1. Joseph Heller, Catch-22, a Novel (New York: Simon &

Schuster, 1961).

2. Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front, trans. by A. W. Wheen (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1929).

Nonfiction1. Cynthia Enloe, Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist

Sense of International Politics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), pp. 1-18.

2. Chris Hedges, War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning (New York: Anchor Books, 2003).

3. Michael Herr, Dispatches (New York: Knopf, 1977).

4. James Hillman, The Terrible Love of War (New York: Penguin Press, 2004).

O’Brien mentions many things that his fellow soldiers carried, some of which had little to do with their own self-protection. What do those things reveal about the challenges of war?

O’Brien writes the book at the age of 43, well after the Vietnam War ended. What does he continue to carry, and why?

4. Nancy Sherman, The Untold War: Inside the Hearts, Minds, and Souls of Our Soldiers (New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 2010).

According to Sherman, what inner battles do soldiers fight, and why?

Soldiers carry around guilt, among other things, even soldiers who fight justly. What questions are they asking about themselves? What’s at stake in their questions?

College• War and Peace: Ethical, Political, and Economic

Considerations—COLL-T 200

College Critical Approaches • The Science of War and Peace—COLL-C 105• King Arthur of Britain: The Once and Future Hero—

COLL-C 103• Origins and Aftermaths—COLL-C 103• Music, War, and Peace—COLL-C 103• War as Experience, Representation, and Idea—COLL-C 103

Collins Living-Learning Center• Biomedicine and Nuclear Science during the Cold War—

CLLC-L 100• The Art of War and Peace—CLLC-L 210

History• War and Violence in Twentieth-Century Europe—

HIST-B 200• War and Peace in Twentieth-Century Africa—HIST-E 200

History and Philosophy of Science• The Scientist and the Cinema: War Films—HPSC-X 100

Hutton Honors • Literature of Time and Place: Anne Frank and Hitler—

HON-H 234 (29006 only)

Honors Eligible• Critical Approaches: King Arthur of Britain: The Once

and Future Hero—COLL-C 103 (29197 only)

Jewish Studies• Guns and Roses: Representations of Soldiers and War in

Modern Hebrew Literature—JSTU-L 285

Political Science• Introduction to International Relations—POLS-Y 109• Contemporary Political Topics: Terrorism of Old and

New Generations—POLS-Y 200• Contemporary Political Topics: War and Peace in

International Politics—POLS-Y 200

Themester Courses at the 100 and 200 Level

More courses can be found at http://themester.indiana.edu/curriculum.shtml.