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Long before the 1947 Roswell incident brought “little green men” into the public consciousness and prompted an explosion in UFO sightings, writers and scientists have speculated about the existence of life beyond our planet. H. G. Wells laid the groundwork for modern science fiction with novels like The War of the Worlds (1898), one of the first books to imagine an extraterrestrial invasion. Before Wells, Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli (1835-1910) sparked the imagination by discovering “canals” on Mars. But for the first recorded instance of humanity pondering the possibility of alien life, we have to go all the way back to ancient Greek and Roman times. In the first century B.C., Roman poet Lucretius wrote, “Nothing in the universe is unique and alone and therefore in other regions there must be other earths inhabited by different tribes of men and breeds of beast.” Not exactly a controversial supposition; still, whether or not such tribes have come to our planet remains impossible to prove, and those who claim to have encountered alien beings have long been dismissed.
That said, in recent years, the concept of otherworldly visitors has begun to shift toward the mainstream. In 2022, the U.S. Department of Defense established the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, the latest governmental entity devoted to investigating unexplained sightings. Even the term of choice, “UFO,” has given way to “UAP”—unidentified aerial (or anomalous) phenomenon. And just this June, former U.S. Air Force officer and intelligence official David Grusch claimed that the U.S. government had retrieved remains of several aircraft of “non-human” origin. The fallout from Grusch’s claims is yet to be determined—as is their veracity—but it seems likely that, in the end, the world will settle back into the binary of believers and skeptics, with no concrete evidence to settle the debate. Regardless of which camp you fall into, some of us will always look skyward with hope; we may never be able to scour the entirety of the universe, but it’s hard not to thrill to Lucretius’ logic. In the meantime, the longform articles collected here offer a fascinating glimpse into the UFO community and the stories that have shaped our modern understanding of the topic.
For me, what makes alleged alien encounter testimony so compelling is that—regardless of whether I believe the person’s interpretation of events—the incident had an undeniable and profound effect on their lives. This may not be true in every case, but even if you write off many accounts as delusion or whimsy or simply fiction, you’re still left with a legion of people who have been dramatically changed by their perceived experiences. It’s comforting to know, then, that for those such as Jason Guillemette, a character in this piece about amateur ufologists, communities exist where one can share their experiences without judgment.
In Guillemette’s case, that community is the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), a non-profit, volunteer-run organization active in more than 40 countries—and one whose members are as rigidly skeptical as Guillemette. For most MUFON alumni, this is a quest for truth, not validation; members work rigorously to find earthly explanations for reported sightings. And as Badelt widens his scope to other folks in other organizations, you can’t help but be moved by people’s stories. After all, if you were to have a life-changing close encounter, with whom would you share that knowledge?
Most of the time, he’s able to find an explanation, he says. He often sends videos to other volunteers at MUFON who specialize in analyzing computer images. He refers to websites that track the flight patterns of satellites and planes and the International Space Station—the usual suspects when it comes to UFO sightings, he says. Guillemette described a recent case in which a couple reported seeing strange lights hovering above a nearby lake. The lights circled above the lake and then dropped down into the water, only to rise up a moment later and zip away. It turned out to be a plane, he says—filling up with water to fight a nearby forest fire. “Not everybody likes what we come up with,” he says, “but sometimes it’s really evident.”
The history of UFO sightings in New Zealand dates back to the early 20th century. It seems such a tranquil and unassuming country—cinematic hobbit history notwithstanding—which perhaps makes the events recounted here even more unsettling. These are all-too-human tales of altered lives. Some cases, such as that of Iris Catt, a self-proclaimed alien abductee whose nightmarish encounters go back to her childhood, are heartbreakingly tragic. Others follow more positive narratives, believing that aliens are beaming down rays of positivity and openness, gradually bringing humanity to a point where it is ready for formal communication.
When I was at university in the 1990s, “regression therapy” became big news, with countless stories of trauma-blocked memories and past-life remembrances unearthed through hypnosis. Just as suddenly, regression therapy drowned in a flood of peer-reviewed criticism, relegated to yet another pseudoscience. The concept never went away entirely and it pops up again in Vaughan Yarwood’s story, cautiously approved by academic institutions for its utility in specific circumstances. It’s complex territory, but Yarwood navigates it with clarity and sensitivity.
Iris Catt, a mild-mannered, unprepossessing woman in her 40s, then introduces herself. She is an abductee. It appears certain aliens have had their eye on her from an early age. She recounts her night horrors calmly, the way people do who have learned to accept their scars, to make their hurt and anguish a part of themselves.
“It is happening every day, and it is happening in New Zealand,” says Iris. “It is not going to go away. I truly believe that more and more people are beginning to remember what is happening to them because the time is getting closer when we are going to have to recognise that we are not the only intelligent form of life in the universe.”
Her audience understands. She is among friends.
Harvard Medical School psychiatrist John Edward Mack spent many years engaging with people who claimed to have been abducted by extraterrestrials, in the process becoming a pioneer in his field. Not surprisingly, he attracted resistance from the scientific community—less because of his work than because, over time, he came to the startling and highly controversial conclusion that a number of alleged abductees were telling the truth. Mack’s research may be little remembered by his profession at large, but his warmth, humanity, and faith continue to inspire hope in a small community that gathers annually in Rhode Island. They prefer the term “experiencer” to “abductee,” and in this Vanity Fair feature Ralph Blumenthal interweaves their stories with Mack’s.
For more about one of the characters in Blumenthal’s story, a 1994 feature in Omni details Linda’s alleged experience.
Once again, for me, the fascination of this piece lies in the stories of these everyday folks. To some degree, it doesn’t matter what they actually experienced. What counts, as Mack understood, is they have experienced something, and that something left a profound mark on their lives. In seeking to apply rigor and structure to the stories he was collecting, Mack plowed a hard path with poise and compassion. As this piece eloquently shows, his work was not in vain.
“Nothing in my nearly 40 years of familiarity with psychiatry prepared me,” Mack later wrote in his 1994 best-seller, Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens. He had always assumed that anyone claiming to have been abducted by aliens was crazy, along with those who took them seriously. But here were people—students, homemakers, secretaries, writers, businesspeople, computer technicians, musicians, psychologists, a prison guard, an acupuncturist, a social worker, a gas-station attendant—reporting experiences that Mack could not begin to fathom, things, he reflected, that by all notions of reality “simply could not be.”
I have long been fascinated with the so-called Wow signal, received in 1977 by Ohio University’s Big Ear radio telescope, which was then being used to search for evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence. The tale of the signal makes for a great story in itself, but Keith Cooper’s piece sees that as merely a starting point. His narrative finds a central character in a man named Robert Gray: While the scientific community, including SETI (the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence), gradually lowered the Wow signal to the status of “interesting curio,” Gray remained convinced that there was more to uncover.
Gray’s tenacity and belief in the face of mounting opposition is remarkable. Struggling for funding, unsuccessfully attempting to enlist help, and bartering for much-needed time on a limited number of radio telescopes, the frustrations he must have experienced make the twists in his story all the more poignant. Just when his enthusiasm began to wane, his work seemingly at a dead end, an exoplanet scientist reached out to Gray with a fresh idea, breathing new life into the man’s relentless quest. There is no neat, satisfying definitive end to this tale, but perhaps therein lies the true glory of Gray’s work. In the face of uncertainty, he carried on until the very end.
Nobody knows what the Wow signal was. We do know that it was not a regular astrophysical object, such as a galaxy or a pulsar. Curious the frequency that it was detected at, 1,420 MHz, is the frequency emitted by neutral hydrogen atoms in space, but it is also the frequency that scientists hunting for alien life listen to. Their reasoning is that aliens will supposedly know that astronomers will already be listening to that frequency in their studies of galactic hydrogen and so should easily detect their signal – or so the theory goes. Yet there was no message attached to the signal. It was just a burst of raw radio energy.
If SETI had a mythology, then the Wow signal would be its number one myth. And while it has never been forgotten by the public, the academic side of SETI has, by and large, dismissed it, quite possibly because it hasn’t been seen to repeat, and therefore cannot be verified—the golden rule of a successful SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) detection.
Celebrities who have copped to believing in UFOs are numerous enough to populate a listicle. Politicians? Not so much. Yet, the U.S. Congress’ House Oversight Committee has announced plans for a hearing regarding UAP reports, and if you trace the conversation back a few years, you’ll find that this shift is at least partly thanks to the protagonists in this story: former U.S. senator Harry Reid and Tom DeLonge, a founding member of pop-punk band Blink 182.
There’s a lot to digest here. It’s a wonderful example of hidden history: a small group of like-minded individuals working behind the scenes to advance their cause, with potentially wide-ranging repercussions. That history would be far less engaging, however, were it not for Tom DeLonge’s gregarious personality and indefatigable belief in alien visitors. His company, To The Stars, devotes considerable time and money to researching UAPs and extraterrestrial matters in general; Bryan Bender’s feature tells the story of how the singer managed to recruit experts and politicians to his cause.
Hanging on DeLonge’s wall was what might be considered the medals he’s collected in his struggle: a display case filled with dozens of commemorative coins from his meetings with generals, aerospace contractors and secret government agencies. They trace his visits to the CIA, to the U.S. Navy, to the “advanced development programs” division at Lockheed Martin’s famously secretive “Skunk Works” in Southern California, where some of the world’s most advanced spy planes were designed.
Chris Wheatley is a writer and journalist based in Oxford, U.K. He has too many guitars, too many records, and not enough cats.
Editor: Peter Rubin
Copy Editor: Krista Stevens
We’re probably all in need of a break about now. And there’s nothing like the heat of the summer months to underscore the point.
Statistics confirm we’re overdue for a break. This is particularly true of Americans — according to Pew Research Center, only 48% of Americans use all their vacation days each year. On average that’s 9.5 unused vacation days per person.
Take a second to think about that! People have untold numbers of reasons (and excuses) for not taking time off, among them real fears about falling behind on projects or job stability.
But the question you also have to ask, if you’re risking not giving yourself a break because of those anxieties: How much is it costing you NOT to take a break and necessary rest?
Failing to take sufficient time for yourself to recover between big projects, or from a daily grind, is one of the chief underlying causes of burnout in the workplace. If you’re not taking the time off you’re entitled to, then your work is likely suffering as much as you are.
OK, so hopefully now you’re onboard with the idea: you need a vacation. The question remains: how do we prepare for that break in our normal routine that doesn’t make it more stressful than just staying home?
Angela took to the blog a few weeks ago to write about Productive Flourishing’s Level Up Your Life and Leadership retreat, coming up in September 2023. She wrote in part about how often PF retreat participants report that it’s one of their first experiences of feeling truly restored by a vacation. (Hint: see suggestions 5 and 6 for some of the reasons why.)
Here are some simple steps you can implement that will help your time away be more relaxing, because you’ve prepared yourself to be away, you’ve disconnected effectively, and you’ve found ways to truly enjoy the time you’re spending out of the office and away from home.
Taking time away from your normal nine-to-five and routine does not have to be an unpleasant experience. Consider it a way to re-enrich your life and infuse yourself with fresh energy and new realizations to bring back to your day-to-day life.
Following the suggestions above can make summering/holidays/vacations/breaks be the liberating, renewing experience they’re meant to be.
The post Permission to Summer (Whatever That Means for You) appeared first on Productive Flourishing.
Relying on the private sector to decarbonize is a recipe for abandoning workers.
Our culture glorifies youth. Even the word “old” is one we would prefer to avoid. Negative messages about age come at us our entire lives.
Throughout my life, I have heard people say: “So-and-so can’t do that, they’re too old.” Or there’s the notion that as a woman, you shouldn’t say your age. But the stigma around age is such nonsense, because getting older is a natural part of life. It happens to every person on the planet! Getting older should not be something to be feared.
At 43, I love my age.
Almost all of us know that ageism is out there. It’s a type of discrimination that touches almost every person at some point in their life or career.
Discrimination is unfortunately a subject I know far too much about — not only when it comes to age, but also because of my gender and race.
I live as a black woman in America. My race and gender are two things in this country that are constantly under examination. Every time I walk in a door, who I am and my capabilities are perceived differently once people see my face.
Having been through that my entire life, not only my adult life, but also as a child, I used to get so exhausted by the burden of caring what others thought. But what I learned from it was that being too tired to care anymore can be a powerful thing.
It’s good when you don’t want to put up with it anymore — that same old thing the world is giving you. Then it’s time to change the world.
My experiences inspired me to not care what people thought of me, and that remains the case now, with my age. I no longer allow myself to be limited by other people’s perceptions of me. Instead I focus on my inner strength, and the part of me that says, “I have to do this.”
Age Is Just a Number
Many people encounter ageism at some point in their career. And it’s not only reserved for women, or older people.
In a survey by Glassdoor, 30 percent of workers report experiencing ageism at some point in their careers, and most of the people who report it are actually younger (between ages 18 and 34).
Ageism is also insidious because it’s difficult to identify. Age means something different for everyone. Being a particular age doesn’t reveal a static truth about your person, your experiences, or your skills. As a black woman over forty, I reject people treating me worse or differently for my race or my gender, but I also reject discrimination based on my age — in the workplace or anywhere else.
When I had the life-changing opportunity to go to Africa last year for the first time, I witnessed firsthand that age there is associated with wisdom, as it is in many other places around the world. If you’re over the age of sixty, you are revered as a walking source of information, wisdom, knowledge, and life lessons.
You’re a living lesson for your children and grandchildren. We ought to respect that older individuals are sources of wisdom since they’ve been here longer. There is value in the time they’ve put in on this earth.
Younger people also have a different type of insight to share. Diversity of age, like every type of diversity, enriches our lives and the organizations we work in.
Embracing and Valuing Aging
Ten years ago, I likely wouldn’t have told you my age. Now, on the contrary, I am proud that I’m 43 and thriving. Age is not a curse; it’s a blessing. That I’ve been able to live for 43 years in this body with this face, these hands, or these teeth is a gift.
I’m grateful for the fact that I’ve lived this long, and come this far in the world — and I don’t take it as a given.
Your age is part of the magic about what and when you came into being on this earth. Your particular place and role on this planet, including how long you’ve been here, is all a part of what makes you special.
That’s how I always chose to confront racial discrimination when I encountered it. Instead of letting myself take on shame, or other people’s feelings about how I look, I chose to view my skin color as part of what makes me special.
I see my age as a sign of wisdom, which is built on a set of important experiences and years of building skills. I was not created to be anyone but me.
Coming Into My Own Power
The invisible ageism that we know is so widespread in society was still stuck in my head when, at age 29, I decided I wanted to become a fitness model.
At that point, I never told anyone how old I was. I knew in theory no one ought to be denied opportunities based on age. But the negative culture surrounding age has had an impact on me, as it has for so many of us.
In the modeling world, fifteen is considered the ideal age to start out.
At some point, I had to decide that my will was stronger than just a number. Part of it was I wanted to change the fitness modeling world so girls like me would be given more of a chance. I didn’t worry about how it was going to happen.
What motivated me was remembering how as a teenager, when I looked at fitness magazines in the checkout aisle, there were never faces that looked like mine. I remember thinking, why shouldn’t there be women who look like me? And after that: Why can’t it be me who proves that a woman who looks like me can be featured in a spread in a magazine?
Back then, I didn’t have an agent. I didn’t know anybody in the fitness industry. There was no blueprint.
Oxygen is one of the most influential fitness magazines for women of any skin color. I decided to contact the magazine directly with my portfolio. I created a mega-sized poster, superimposed with my own face and body, wrapped it in cellophane, and shipped it to the editor-in-chief of the magazine.
She called me the next day and told me everybody on staff couldn’t stop talking about it. Her exact words were, “You did what you were supposed to do, which was to get our attention.” In the next breath she asked if I could meet her in New York City for lunch; she wanted to see my abs in real life!
After our meeting, she said she didn’t need to see anything else. She was going to feature me. Flash forward a couple of months later; I was flown to Canada for a shoot. I was featured in Oxygen four more times within two years. Then I was featured in Shape magazine as one of the top three trainers in the United States (out of 300,000 trainers). Fitness RX for Women came next, and my portfolio just kept growing.
Why did all of this happen? It was simple. I saw the problem. I didn’t see girls like me and wanted to see a different reality.
What you create, at any age, doesn’t have to reach millions of people.
If there’s something within you that you have to pursue, it’s never too late to do so.
Maintaining Your Power and Tending Your Flame at Any Age
Modeling in my late 20s and early 30s led to other opportunities including, in my late thirties, headlining a major event at ESSENCE Festival — the kinds of achievements I hadn’t even dreamed about when I was younger. I also had my first child at 38.
Everything that’s happened to Nicole Chaplin has always happened later. It’s just always been that way.
And I like to think, what if all this is just the beginning?
People often ask about the choices I make to be as active as I am (and not just “at my age,” either). If I had to distill the mindset that allowed me to embrace my power, regardless of age, it would come down to the following:
Being devoted to a healthy lifestyle at any age often means making different choices.
As just one example, my friends know they cannot invite me anywhere if the event starts late, because I’ll definitely be going home before midnight. 
I value my early mornings; doing otherwise would throw off my whole week.
I live a holistic life, and I’ve been that person my entire life: always active, roller-skating, cheerleading, track and field. I was also a dancer, and a choreographer at the University of Miami. Fitness for me hasn’t been about wanting to be strong for its own sake. It’s about stamina. It’s as basic as this: I like to do a lot of things, and to keep doing all the things I like, I need energy.
As a result of the way that I live, my energy stays high (and sometimes it’s even hard to turn it down). My aim is always to have stamina and endurance, and to be heart healthy. God forbid I trip on the stairs — am I able to catch myself?
It’s the simple stuff. I want and need to be able to keep up with my five year old, Dominic Zion. My own mother used to work very hard, so that on Saturday mornings, she would lie in bed exhausted. I knew I didn’t want to feel like that with my children, and wanted the energy to play with my child.
Now DZ is playing soccer, and I am able to keep up. When he wakes up on a Saturday morning, I’m already up and ready for him. I want to enjoy life to the fullest — going to East Africa, swimming with turtles.
For a lot of folks, if something doesn’t happen by the time you’re like 25, they say, “Oh well, that wasn’t my path.”
What if instead we ask: What if we’re far from done?
The post Owning Your Power at Any Age appeared first on Productive Flourishing.
As much as we tell ourselves that multitasking is productive, we know at an intuitive level that it’s not. The lie of multitasking is that, if we just do it well enough, we’ll be able to get All.The.Things done.
Unitasking forces us to accept that we’re not going to get to all the things we want or feel we need to. That’s a hard truth that we’d rather negotiate with than accept.
But even after we accept that truth, there’s another hard part about unitasking: holding boundaries.
This is coming up for me because, as I type, I’m on a family trip. After spending too much of too many days working during family trips in the past, this time, I decided that I’m not doing that anymore. I neither work well nor am the son/brother/husband I want to be. Nobody and nothing gets what’s needed, including myself.
Because of the nature of my work, being present with family includes not having devices on me. Yes, not having devices on me is about not mindlessly grazing and checking email and Slack, but even more important is it keeps me from starting to write or getting wrapped up in an idea so much that I’m half-hearing conversations and half-present — which means not being present.
To my left, Angela, my sister-in-law, and my mother-law are getting pedicures. They are oblivious to my presence because they’re in pedicure bliss getting their toenails painted, something which I opted out of, which gave me this little bit of focused space and time to write today’s Pulse.
Don’t get it twisted, though: I did get a pedicure.
They’ll be done soon, which means I’ll be done here soon, too.
In the table-setting portion of our last Level Up Retreat, we informed our participants that we would not have devices on us during the week and we had built the design of the retreat so that none of us would need devices. We let them know that, if it supported them, we would hold their devices for the week so they wouldn’t be distracted. Our rationale was that we wanted to be 100% present for our participants and wanted them to be 100% present for themselves and each other.
No one took us up on the offer, but most of the time, no one had devices on them. The exception was in the evenings because #IslandSunsets.
Many participants commented that they’d never really had a restorative trip before. They thought they had, but then they experienced real presence. One participant realized that just the thought of emails “being there” on her phone made her anxious; she removed her mail client from her phone and hasn’t added it back.
I’m sharing these stories because I hope they’ll get you to think about how you can be more present during the upcoming trips, vacations, and moments ahead of you.
What might you experience if you were 100% there? How would it feel to not half-do and half-be in the moments you’ve set aside to be with the people you love?
Yes, it’s hard to assert and hold that boundary. But it’s worth it.
My time’s up. I hope it helps you enjoy yours more.
The post Boundaries & Presence: The Myth of Multitasking and What It Costs Us appeared first on Productive Flourishing.
Guest post by Sabine Carey, Marcela Ibáñez, and Eline Drury Løvlien
On April 10, 1998, various political parties in Northern Ireland, Great Britain, and the Republic of Ireland signed a peace deal ending decades of violent conflict. Twenty-five years later, the Good Friday Agreement remains an example of complex but successful peace negotiations that ended the conflict era known as The Troubles.
Since the agreement, Northern Ireland has experienced a sharp decline in violence. But sectarian divisions continue as a constant feature in everyday life. Peace walls remain in many cities, separating predominantly Catholic nationalists from predominantly Protestant unionist and loyalist neighborhoods. Brexit and the Northern Ireland protocol increased tensions between the previously warring communities, leading to an upsurge in sectarian violence, which has been a great cause of concern.
In March 2022, we conducted an online survey to understand attitudes toward sectarianism among Northern Ireland’s adult population. Our results show that sectarianism continues to impact perceptions and attitudes in Northern Ireland. The continued presence of paramilitaries is still a divisive issue that follows not just sectarian lines but also has a strong gender component.
Our findings show that the pattern of who identifies as Unionist or Nationalist closely resembles the patterns of who reports having a Protestant or Catholic background. Unionists prefer a closer political union with Great Britain and are predominantly Protestant, Nationalists are overwhelmingly Catholic and are in favor of joining the Republic of Ireland.
Catholic and Nationalist identities appear to have a greater salience for the post-agreement generations than for older generations who lived through the Troubles. For Protestant and Unionist respondents, the opposite is the case, as religious background and community affiliation have a higher salience among older groups, particularly among men. Among the adults we surveyed, for men the modal age of those identifying as Unionists is 58 years, for women it is 46.
When asked about the greatest problem facing Northern Ireland today, sectarianism still features strongly among both communities. Today, the fault lines of the conflict seem to resonate more with those from a Catholic background than with those from a Protestant background. While Protestants were predominantly concerned with poverty and crime, among Catholics sectarianism emerged most often as the greatest concern. Just over 50 percent of Catholic respondents mentioned an aspect relating to the Troubles (sectarianism or paramilitaries) as the greatest problem today, compared to only 39 percent of Protestant respondents. Most Protestant respondents selected Brexit and the Northern Ireland Protocol as the greatest problem, reflecting concerns of the Protestant community discussed in a Political Violence At A Glance post from 2021.
To what extent does economic status drive concerns? Those who see themselves as belonging to a lower-income group were more likely to identify poverty and unemployment as the greatest problem. Concerns about sectarianism and (former) paramilitary groups appeared most prevalent among those who placed themselves in the high-income group.
The continued presence of Loyalist and Republican paramilitaries is a noticeable feature in post-conflict Northern Ireland. While they are predominantly associated with violence and crime, some view them as a source of security and stability. While our findings show that concerns about paramilitaries were more prevalent among high-income earners, the perception of paramilitaries has a significant gender component. Nearly 50 percent of male Catholic respondents attributed a controlling influence to paramilitaries in their area. And while most of them saw these groups as a source of fear and intimidation, 32 percent agreed that the paramilitaries kept their local area safe. But only 5 percent of female Catholic respondents felt similarly. This difference is not as stark between female and male Protestant respondents. Both groups were substantially less likely than male Catholics to consider paramilitary groups as a source of safety.
Different perceptions of armed groups by gender are not unique to Northern Ireland. A 2014 study on Colombia found significant differences between female and male perceptions of post-conflict politics and participation. Although there were no substantial gender differences in the overall support for the peace process in Colombia, female respondents reported higher levels of distrust and skepticism toward demobilization, forgiveness, and reconciliation and higher disapproval of the political participation of former FARC members. The effect was even greater for mothers and women victimized during the conflict.
Violent attacks have dampened the anniversary celebration of the peace agreement and 25 years of relative stability. The recent injury of a police detective by an IRA splinter group, reports of paramilitary-style attacks and the use of petrol bombs against the police, coupled with turf battles between Ulster factions are continuous reminders of the presence and power that paramilitary organizations still hold across Northern Ireland. Even today, communities are kept under siege through violence and ransom. The formal termination of violent conflicts through peace agreements, as in the case of the Good Friday Agreement and other prominent examples such as the 2016 Colombian Peace Accord, does not automatically imply the disbandment of armed organizations. The impact of the presence of (former) armed groups in people’s daily lives continues to be high in most post-conflict contexts.
Findings from surveys in other post-conflict environments mirror this long shadow of war. A study of Croat and Serbian youths showed the continued impact of the Yugoslav Wars on ethnic group identities and how continued communal segregation impacts inter-group ethnic attitudes towards out-groups. A recent study finds that a decade after the civil war in Sri Lanka people from previously warring sides have very different views of peace and security. Respondents who belong to the defeated minority ethnic group, the Tamils, provided a more negative assessment of security and ethnic relations than those from the victorious majority, the Sinhalese. They also reported seeing irregular armed groups in a more protective role rather than a threatening one, when they encountered them, as we show here. And in many post-war countries, it’s the police who threaten peace, as discussed in this post. A study on Liberia found that experiences during the war continued to impact perceptions of the police afterwards. Victims of rebel violence were later more trusting of the police, while victims of state-perpetrated violence were not.
Much research is rightly concerned about how to avoid the conflict trap. Yet even countries that avoid falling back into full-scale civil war oftentimes do not offer adequate security and peace for all groups of their civilian population. Continued vigilance of unequal experiences and perceptions of security are necessary to work towards meaningful and lasting peace.
Sabine C. Carey is Professor of Political Science at University of Mannheim. Marcela Ibáñez is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Chair of Political Economy and Development at the University of Zurich. Eline Drury Løvlien is Associate Professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Department of Teacher Education.
This work was supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG) via the Collaborative Research Center 884 “Political Economy of Reforms” at the University of Mannheim.
… have gotten those schools into plenty of trouble. Hired to think and act in terms of social justice, some of these people turn out to be bullies who like to lead Children’s Crusades against perceived enemies.
For Oberlin’s demagogue, the enemy was a bakery. Her vicious crusade against its blameless owners ended up costing that school $36 million.
Stanford’s person led a group of law students in shouting down and forcing out of the room a visiting judge.
Stanford’s dean is not only appalled by this inane and ignorant behavior; she has put the demagogue on leave and apologized to the judge. She has also condemned, in a lengthy letter, the idiots who followed the fool’s lead, and she has mandated, for all current law students, a seminar in free speech.
Meanwhile, some conservative judges are planning to boycott all Stanford law grads if they apply for internships in their offices. Some of those applicants from Stanford will of course be conservatives, which is just too damn bad for them.
So … we can expect smart conservative law school applicants to decide not to apply to Stanford.
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