Good morning. Good morning, everyone. And a very warm welcome to the conference today.
I hope you enjoyed last night those many of you who were there. It seems to have been a very good opening for our conference.
A special welcome to those who come from far to join us and to our speakers.
Scott has come all the way from the states. Some of you have flown in from different parts of the world.
We have people from Jerusalem, Johannesburg. It's great to see all of you.
Please feel very welcome here. The purpose of this conference.
Is to showcase what happens when you make peace. The focus and bring people from different disciplines to pool ideas and expertise.
It's fully supported by the chancellor of Oxford University and read out his message.
Chris Patten says, I'm sorry, I cannot be with you for your important conference.
I will be in the USA as part of our appeal activities for the university.
Sometimes when you read the newspaper headlines, it appears that the world is becoming more and more violent.
The truth is rather different. The number of serious conflicts has fallen over the last half century.
And we have become better at preventing and resolving conflict. Jonathan, Powell's presence at your conference is an example of that.
But as I know from my work as co-chair of the International Crisis Group,
there is much more that we could do to resolve conflicts and avoid the conditions which helped produce and sustain them.
We need to be much more creative and effective in joining the dots in diplomacy and security policy.
Paul Collier, for example, has done groundbreaking work on the relationship between conflict and poverty.
We have here this morning Dr. Angka Hoffler, who will be speaking in in substitution for Paul Collier.
But I'm sure on exactly the same level. Thank you.
Thank you very much for coming.
Paul has been unable to join us because he is adopting two children and they are spending their first weekend with his family this weekend.
And so he has very kindly sent Dr. Hoffler to be with us instead.
But to continue, Chris, patterns message.
I am sure that working across academic disciplines will help to open up, provide input to governmental and NGO policymaking in this crucial area.
This seems to me especially important at the beginning of a much tougher period economically around the world.
And when we were thinking about a missions mission statement for this conference,
we came up with the statement that goes after Chris Patten's message on your programmes, and I just read out the final paragraph of that.
The object of today's conference is to gather scholars from disciplines across
the university and beyond with the aim of focussing on the study of peace,
exploring some of its depths and its potential as an interdisciplinary focus should this experience prove creative.
It is hopes that further initiatives will emerge both within and across disciplines in Oxford University during the course of today.
We want to capture some ideas for going forward.
Please, will everyone have in mind this question for us here in Oxford and indeed, perhaps for you where you are?
How can we advance the serious study of peace here and wherever you are?
Can we think of new course offerings within existing degree courses or new courses, new institutes, new centres, new posts, new seminars?
What practically can we do to advance the study of peace, peacemaking, peacekeeping and peace building here and elsewhere?
We hope to capture some ideas in the final session and a continuing group.
We'll be discussing and carrying things forward. And if you'd like to be in that continuing process, you are very welcome.
Please speak to any of us with the kind of orange surround to our names.
I'm Liz Karmichael. I'm here. I'm the chaplain and tutor in theology and have experience of peacemaking in southern Africa in particular.
And I'm interested in the Middle East that any of us with this orange surround, please speak,
give your name and contacts and we'll be in contact with you to help to carry things forward here.
A little bit of housekeeping. Plenaries are here this morning, and the final plenary lunch will be in the reception room where you had coffee.
It's a sandwich lunch.
The breakout sessions in the afternoon will be here and in the reception room where you have the coffee and lunch and in the lock in room,
which is very close, and you have labels, notices and help us to help you to find the lock in room.
We've asked you to sign up for sessions. You can indeed change your mind.
But the only critical thing is that we can't have more than 40 people in the locking room.
Other places are fine for as many as we'd like to come.
Toilets are in that direction. There are several sets of them in this building.
Helpers have pink surrounds on their badges. The organisers have orange ones.
Please keep all valuables with you. We have had things pinched from these rooms.
So unfortunately, nowhere is quite safe just to dump stuff.
So please keep anything valuable with you. I'd like to draw your attention to the fact that in the session, which is chaired by Jason Hart,
he has been put down as operating from the Refugees Study Centre.
Well, he doesn't actually teach language to refugees in a study centre.
He is at the Refugee Studies Centre.
So please note that it's an offshoot of Queens of the House, the Department of International Development in Oxford.
So Refugees Refugees Studies Centre at one.
Advertize speaker is not able to be with us. She is in that session, chaired by Jason Hart.
Elizabeth Becker, unfortunately, has hurt her back and was not allowed to fly from the states to be with us today by her doctors.
But the session will be a very full one, I think, even lacking that paper on Guatemala.
So without more or do let me introduce our first speaker this morning.
Our first keynote speech comes from Professor Scott Appleby, the director of the Kroc Institute at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana.
The Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies Professor Appleby examines
the roots of religious violence and the potential of religious peace building.
He has written a magisterial tome on that, on both aspects, conflict and peace building called The Ambivalence of the Sacred.
He has also taken part in a large study on fundamentalism, resulting in five volumes of the fundamentalism project.
And he is director of the Kroc Institute now. And we'll speak this morning on strategic peace building for the 21st century.
Scott, thank you very much for being with us. We look forward to. Thank you.