The Fletcher Summer Institute for the Advanced Study of Nonviolent Conflict (FSI) is the leading executive education program in the world focusing on the advanced, interdisciplinary study of civil resistance.
Civil resistance campaigns for rights, freedom, and justice are capturing the world’s attention as never before. Campaigns to protect democracy in Hong Kong, for women’s rights in India, for indigenous rights in Latin America, for police accountability in the United States, against violence in Mexico, against corruption in Cambodia, against growing autocracy in Ukraine and against dictatorship in Burkina Faso are all examples in the last year of a profound global shift in how political power is developed and applied.
Since 2006, over 400 participants from more than 90 countries have gathered at FSI to learn and share knowledge. The program is taught by leading international scholars, practitioners, organizers and activists from past and current struggles. It provides both a firm academic grasp of the subject of civil resistance as well as a practical understanding of the use of nonviolent struggle in a variety of conflicts for a wide range of goals.
Organized in conjunction with the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, the program offers a certificate in the Advanced Study of Nonviolent Conflict.
When: June 7-12, 2015
Where: The Fletcher School, Tufts University, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
The James Lawson Award
Wednesday, June 10th, 2015
1:00pm – 2:15pm EST
Description: In the 1960s, the Reverend Dr. James Lawson organized and led one of the most effective campaigns of nonviolent civil resistance in the 20th century: the Nashville lunch counter sit-ins, which added significant momentum to the US Civil Rights Movement. In the years that followed he was involved in strategic planning of other major campaigns and actions and was called “the mind of the movement” by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
The James Lawson Award for Achievement in the Practice, Study or Reporting of Nonviolent Conflict is presented annually by the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict during the Fletcher Summer Institute. It is awarded to practitioners, scholars, international actors and journalists whose work serves as a model for how nonviolent resistance can be developed, understood and explained.
This year, Palestinian activist Iyad Burnat received the 2015 James Lawson Award. Steadfastly leading nonviolent resistance since 2004, Iyad Burnat is head of the Bil’in Popular Committee against the Israeli Wall and Settlements, which campaigns against Israel’s plan to replace the village of Bil’in with Israeli settlements. As dominant narratives of Israel and Palestine have focused on the threat of violence on both sides, Burnat has exercised outstanding leadership in nonviolent resistance, achieved victories for his community, and remained steadfast in his commitment to nonviolent means. While he, his family, and friends have been subject to life-threatening violence for their actions, Burnat insists: “We are not against the Jews. We are against the occupation.”
Introduction to Civil Resistance
Presenter: Hardy Merriman, President of the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict
Date: Monday, June 8th, 2015
Time: 9:00am – 10:30am
Description: Nonviolent civil resistance movements around the world are a growing force in shaping geopolitics. In movements over the last two decades in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Europe, Latin America and North America the world has witnessed how ordinary people have used nonviolent tactics — such as strikes, boycotts, mass demonstrations and other actions — to achieve rights, freedom and justice. Yet, this critical phenomenon is often overlooked or misunderstood by external observers. It defies conventional wisdom that unarmed people mobilizing by the thousands or millions can defeat armed, wealthy and organized adversaries who seem to have all the advantages. This presentation will focus on why civil resistance works, what its long-term record and outcomes are and how it will increasingly affect social, economic and political change.
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Movement Emergence
Presenters: Dr. Maciej Bartkowski, Senior Director for Education and Research at the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict
Ivan Marovic, Academic Advisor at the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict
Date: Monday, June 8th, 2015
Time: 2:00pm – 3:30pm
Description: Using a number of examples in the last few decades, we will lay out instances when hardship endured by a population leads to grievances and when grievances and protest give birth to civil resistance movements. These movements may emerge spontaneously or as a reaction to outside events but they are sustained by using their internal attributes, mainly their capacity to mobilize people and resources. This is why we will focus on the process of transformation of a protest to a movement where a strategic approach is being adopted and long-term planning and coalition building are being developed.
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Sustaining a Movement
Presenters: Dr. Mary King, Distinguished Scholar at the American University Center for Global Peace
Philippe Duhamel, Academic Advisor at the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict
Date: Monday, June 8th, 2015
Time: 4:00pm – 5:30pm
Description: Great expectations without the ability to sustain a movement will not produce tangible change. Most successful movements—those that can bring about comprehensible and tangible social and political change through focused efforts—have been shown to have a capacity to sustain mass participation, often over a number of years. The question: What are some of the skills, approaches, understanding, and practices that support movement resilience and success? In this session, we will throw light on the remarkably important challenge of sustaining a mobilization. The session’s organizers will share some firsthand insights, and include a small-group exercise to elicit knowledge from the experiences of participants.
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Strategy and Tactics
Presenters: Hardy Merriman, President of the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict
Ivan Marovic, Academic Advisor at the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict
Date: Tuesday, June 9th, 2015
Time: 9:00am – 10:30am
Description: In this session, we will introduce strategic planning, campaigning and tactical choice as essential components of effective civil resistance and offer a strategic framework for analyzing social movements. We will also examine different tactics available to organizers and explore issues involved in tactical choice and effectiveness. Special emphasis will be put on strategic goals and campaign objectives, against which movement’s success should be evaluated.
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Repression and Backfire
Presenter: Erica Chenoweth, Academic Advisor at the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict
Date: Tuesday, June 9th, 2015
Time: 11:00am – 12:30pm
This session will discuss how repression affects nonviolent campaigns. It provides empirical evidence that nonviolent movements are still effective even against brutally oppressive opponents. It discusses how movements “manage” repression through the promotion of backfire, as well as the strategic options movements have in dealing with repression. It also provides evidence suggesting that nonviolent movements that adopt violence or develop armed wings are not usually advantaged relative to nonviolent movements.
Why Skills Can Make Civil Resistance ‘A Force More Powerful’
Speaker: Peter Ackerman, Founding Chair of the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict
Date: Tuesday, June 9th, 2015
Time: 12:30pm – 2:00pm
Description: Nonviolent conflict is a contest between nonviolent civil resisters and their (often violent) adversaries. In this contest, each side has different strategies and tactics that they can employ. Civil resistance movements wage their struggle through political, economic, and social pressure, and they have a wide variety of tactics at their disposal. A movement’s adversary often tries to wage its struggle through violent means, which has a completely different dynamic and tactical repertoire. In this asymmetric contest between violent and nonviolent actors, the side that is best organized, most skillful, and most strategic, is more likely to prevail. Therefore, the skillful and strategic choices that civil resistance movements make are of critical importance to their outcome.
External Actors
Presenter: Maria Stephan, Academic Advisor at the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict
Date: Tuesday, June 9th, 2015
Time: 4:00pm – 5:30pm
Description: Local nonviolent activists and movements, along with the tactics and strategies they use, will always be the primary drivers of bottom-up change. However, external actors, both governmental and non-governmental, can play an important role in supporting those activists and movements and shaping the environment for civic activism. At the same time, there are challenges and risks inherent in external support for local nonviolent movements. This session will problematize external support and address the following questions: What are the principles that should guide external support? Which criteria should be used to determine which groups/movements to support? What are some of the most important external actors? Which tools do governmental and non-governmental actors have to support nonviolent activists and movements? What are examples where those tools have been used effectively, or ineffectively? What are the most significant risks and opportunities involving external support to movements? How can the former be mitigated and the latter seized upon?
Nonviolent Discipline and Radical Flanks
Presenter: Dr. Erica Chenoweth, ICNC Academic Advisor and Assistant Professor at the Josef Korbel School, University of Denver
Date: Wednesday, June 10th, 2015
Time: 9:00am – 10:30am
Description: This session will look at the impact of violent flanks on the success rates of unarmed mass movements. What happens when groups start using violent means of insurrection — such as targeted kidnappings, assassinations, guerrilla ambush, etc. — alongside civil resistance movements? What happens when less lethal forms of violence — such as the use of projectiles against police lines or indiscriminate and anonymous vandalism against public and private goods — start to fray nonviolent discipline? Do violent flanks increase the leverage of nonviolent campaigns? Or does violence against the regime, even when provoked, undermine the necessary public participation, and the potential for regime repression to backfire? This session will present the latest research about the interplay between unarmed civil resistance movements and violent flanks. Finally, an exercise will invite participants to look at potential ways nonviolent discipline can be buttressed and sustained by specific interventions.
Language and Meaning in Movements
Presenter: Jack DuVall, Senior Counselor and Founding Director of the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict
Date: Wednesday, June 10th, 2015
Time: 11:00am – 12:30pm
Description: Effective nonviolent movements have to develop sizable participation by people who fervently want their rights, justice or other changes in their lives and country. To summon the protracted commitment that is needed by a movement, organizers and leaders have to offer more than restating familiar grievances or touting new policies. A unifying proposition that resonates with people’s most deeply rooted beliefs about their aspirations, identity and future has to be offered to those who may have to give years of their lives to the cause. This session will explore the content of the language that such a proposition, and the ongoing dialogue that a movement has with the people, should reflect.
Loyalty Shifts and Defections
Presenters: Dr. Maciej Bartkowski, Senior Director for Education and Research, International Center on Nonviolent Conflict
Stephen Zunes, Professor of Politics and International Studies, University of San Francisco; Co-Chair of ICNC Academic Advisors Committee
Date: Wednesday, June 11th, 2015
Time: 2:30pm – 3:30pm
Description: A key variable determining the likelihood of success by nonviolent movements, particularly in authoritarian situations, is defections by government supporters. The enforcement power of the state ultimately depends on the cooperation of security forces and other government officials. “Defections” by security forces and other personnel does not necessarily mean stripping off uniforms and joining protests; it can also include decisions to quietly not carry out orders, leak information to the opposition, engage in work slowdowns, to “lose” paperwork and delete computer files and other less overt acts of defiance. Movements which maintain nonviolent discipline have been shown to dramatically increase the rate of defections due both to allowing for greater sympathy for the opposition as well as a sense that defectors would be welcomed instead of punished.
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Anti-Corruption Campaigns
Presenter: Shaazka Beyerle, Senior Advisor at the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict
Date: Thursday, June 11th, 2015
Time: 9:00am – 10:30am
Description: Now that the links between corruption and violent conflict, authoritarianism, poverty, inequality and human rights abuses are clear, the key issue is how to curb it. What options exist beyond traditional approaches? What strategic value do citizens bring to the anticorruption struggle? How do bottom-up campaigns and movements complement and reinforce top-down anticorruption efforts? In this session we’ll consider these questions, explore how people power impacts corruption and impunity, analyze a few of the creative tactics carried out by millions of citizens around the world, and apply what we’ve learned in an interactive, group format.
Struggles Against Unjust Industry Practices
Presenters: Althea Middleton-Detzner, Senior Advisor of Education and Field Learning at International Center on Nonviolent Conflict
Maira Irigaray Castro, FSI 2015 Participant
Date: Thursday, June 11th, 2015
Time: 11:00am – 12:30pm
Description: From Shell’s oil drilling in the Niger Delta to Freeport McMoRan’s mining in West Papua, to the Belo Monte Mega Dam construction in Brazil and in communities all over the world, nonviolent struggles have emerged as a means for holding multinational corporations, international finance institutions, and governments accountable to the people whose livelihoods are directly affected and negatively impacted by unjust industry practices. In this session we will present an analytical framework for understanding the role of civil resistance in corporate accountability and governance. We will explore cases where civil resistance has contested power-holders involved in unjust industry practices, and we will engage in an interactive activity and simulation challenges that will require the synthesis and application of a number of theories and practices covered throughout the week.
Watch this Presentation (Part I)
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Lunch Panel: Civil Resistance in the US
Panelists: Austin Thompson, Nickie Sekera and Conrado Santos
Date: Thursday, June 11th, 2015
Time: 12:30pm – 2:30pm
Description: The United States has a long tradition of civil resistance. Through this method of struggle, women achieved the right to vote in 1920, workers achieved the right to unionize, African Americans struggled for equal rights under law, pressure has been brought on the US government to stop wars and to cease its support for violent insurgencies in Central America and other parts of the world, the US government’s plans to build 1,000 new nuclear power plants were curtailed, and numerous other objectives have been furthered or achieved. Currently in the United States, the Immigrant Rights Movement has been struggling to achieve rights for immigrants, environmental organizers have been campaigning on causes as diverse as addressing climate change to blocking the privatization of water supplies, and African Americans have been at the forefront of fighting against police brutality, the biased implementation of criminal justice policies, and the marginalization of their and other communities. On this lunch panel, we will hear about these and other struggles.
Breakout Session: Democratic Transitions
Presenters: Dr. Erica Chenoweth, ICNC Academic Advisor and Assistant Professor at the Josef Korbel School, University of Denver
Stephen Zunes, Professor of Politics and International Studies, University of San Francisco and Co-Chair of ICNC Academic Advisors Committee
Date: Thursday, June 11th, 2015
Time: 2:30pm – 4:00pm
Description: This session will look at the role of strategic nonviolent resistance in transitions from authoritarianism to democracy. Some of these have taken place through dramatic mass uprising with hundreds of thousands occupying central squares in the capital city. There have also been cases of nonviolent struggles against autocratic regimes that were unable to topple the dictatorship in a revolutionary wave, but did succeed in forcing a series of legal, constitutional, and institutional reforms over a period of several years which eventually evolved into a liberal democratic order. Both of these kinds of transitions have taken place across different regions and against different kinds of authoritarian systems. Constitutional reform, the independence of the judiciary, civilian control over the military, free media, and honest elections are often the focus of continued activism.
This session will explore the evidence that successful nonviolent campaigns tend to usher in more durable and internally peaceful democracies, which are less likely to regress into civil war than when violent insurgents succeed. We will both challenge the dominant, top-down, institutional and elite-based approaches to democratization and identify likely pathways through which civil resistance bolsters democratic consolidation and civil peace. Finally, we will observe how even the long-term effects of failed nonviolent campaigns are more favorable to democracy than the long-term effects of successful violent campaigns.
Breakout Session: Unarmed Civilian Protection/Protective Accompaniment: Effective Strategies to Assist
Presenter: Katherine Hughes-Fraitekh, Associate Director, Field Initiatives for the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict
Date: Thursday, June 11th, 2015
Time: 4:00pm – 5:30pm
Description: At a time when human rights defenders, activists and broader civil resistance movements around the world are growing, but concurrently under increased attack, the tried and true methods of unarmed civilian protection, protective accompaniment and proactive presence provide methods for international civil society to assist. These nonviolent methods allow internationals to broaden the political space for civil resistance movements by deterring violence, providing empowerment and hope, and supporting cultural and institutional reforms. International presence as protection is not a new concept, but the modern concept of active, nonpartisan, physical accompaniment by internationals to protect civilians in conflict was pioneered by groups such as Peace Brigades International and Witness for Peace in the 1980s. The field has greatly expanded in the last 30 years.
Protective accompaniment, and the broader unarmed civilian protection, works with a wide array of groups, including those dealing with enforced disappearance, corruption, victim’s and indigenous rights, environmentalists, and gender justice. In doing their work, accompaniers can have similar strategic and tactical considerations to the nonviolent activists that they aim to protect, including engaging in cost/benefit analysis, dissuasion, deterrence, and mobilizing broad networks.
Methods of protective accompaniment have demonstrated impact, and have potential to grow and be utilized much more extensively in conflicts around the world. This interactive workshop will give detailed information, case studies and examples of how protective accompaniment works and in which situations it is the most/least effective. We will discuss what international and regional organizations/mechanisms can be used to support this strategy, issues of relevant international law, and how protective accompaniment locally can have major policy impacts at the regional and international levels. The workshop leader has extensive experience both practically and theoretically in the field.
Economic Self-Empowerment
Presenter: Kim Wilson, Lecturer in Human Security and International Business at the Fletcher School, Tufts University
Date: Friday, June 12th, 2015
Time: 9:00am – 10:30am
Description: In countries like Kenya, Nigeria, Haiti and India, communities have created engines of social empowerment through networks of financial clubs. This session offers examples of self-organization and how it can lead to civic empowerment and ultimately action. We also look at the dark side of microfinance – when it does not lead to empowerment but despair. We hope to spend most of the session hearing experiences and lessons from FSI participants.
Civilian Agency in Disrupted Societies
Presenters: Oliver Kaplan, Assistant Professor in International Security and Human Rights at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies
Alex De Waal, Executive Director of the World Peace Foundation
Date: Friday, June 12th, 2015
Time: 11:00am – 12:30pm
Description: Civilians would seem powerless when facing violent and heavily armed actors in settings of civil conflict, and yet communities in various countries have found ways to avoid violence. This session will examine various strategies that communities from around the world have used to retain autonomy and self-rule in the face of competition among multiple armed groups. Social cohesion in civilian communities affords them greater chances to implement collective strategies to deceive and influence armed actors and defend their communities. We will explore how these strategies vary in their organizational requirements and probable effectiveness, and consider the conditions under which they are most likely to succeed. These strategies illustrate that the unity of civilian moderates can help impede and isolate violent “extremists.”
Watch this Presentation (Part I)
Watch this Presentation (Part II)