Dr. Greg Cran - Faculty, School of Peace and Conflict Management
The journey from being a graduate of RRU`s first MA program in Leadership and Training to my recent appointment as director of the School of Peace and Conflict Management (PCM) has been an exhilarating experience that links together a rather fulsome career in government with my career as an academic. Part of this journey has enabled me to revisit my early experience as a conflict practitioner and to examine questions about conflict that have been nagging me for most of my career.
My first assignment while working for the British Columbia government back in the late 1970s was to design an intervention process that would help bring an end to 80 years of burnings and bombings among the Russian Doukhobors.
It did not take me long to realize that there was no model or best practice that one could simply pick up and use and expect conflict to be resolved. I learned that one cannot apply a rational approach to an ‘irrational’ situation with the current tools we have available. So when I joined the MACAM faculty in 2000 and learned that other faculty shared similar insights and concerns, I knew that a new approach to how we think about conflict and intervention was needed.
As faculty, we recognize the need to assist learners in developing analytical skills before stepping into the fray. We hope they can examine how they came to view the conflict setting and the assumptions they are making on that situation. We also recognize the need for understanding the importance of co-managing conflict, rather than assuming that any one group or individual has the solution, or that it is any one group’s responsibility to manage conflictual relations alone.
Yes, the bombings and arson among the Doukhobors did end, but only through the concerted effort of all the groups and government at the time.
In the School of Peace and Conflict Management, faculty are both conflict practitioners and academics that have direct experience in complex conflict situations throughout the world. They have mediated land use and apartheid issues in South Africa, served as consultants on mining and environmental conflicts in South America, negotiated land claims and self government agreements with First Nations in Canada and participated in post conflict reconstruction projects in various regions. Faculty have worked with parliamentarians from conflict-affected countries such as Africa, Central Europe and Asia on violence prevention and governance and, as well, have recently been training Thai legislators, senior civil servants, military and others on conflict management strategies and other intervention processes.
Learners to our programs are from numerous conflict affected countries. Some are from the Philippines, Indonesia, Africa, Israel, Bangladesh, Jamaica, Sri Lanka, Israel, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Peru to name a few. They come from a multitude of backgrounds and experience making it both challenging and invigorating for both faculty and learners.
The Thai-Canada MA in Conflict Analysis and Management program allows Canadian and Thai learners, as well as faculty from three Thai universities, to work together during their first residency in Thailand. They examine border disputes in the north and recent insurgencies in the south. In the second year Thai learners will join their Canadian counterparts here at Royal Roads to provide an intercultural experience for all participants.
In the School of Peace and Conflict Management, conflict is seen as an opportunity for change, rather than something to be avoided. For this reason, we see our role as assisting learners to increase their capacity to assume more conflict and uncertainty. In this way they create a social benefit for both themselves and others they engage.
