Center for Applied Conflict Management
321 Bowman Hall
330-672-3143 (phone)
330-672-3362 (fax)
e-mail: cacm@kent.edu
| The Center for Applied Conflict Management (CACM) is Kent State University's original "living memorial" to May 4, 1970. The Center was established in 1971 as a "living memorial" and as KSU's first institutional response to the shootings on May 4, 1970, when Ohio National Guardsmen killed four and injured nine Kent State University students during a student protest against the United States' war in Vietnam and Southeast Asia. Immediately following the shootings, a university-wide commission was charged with recommending long-range institutional responses. The commission's consensus recommendation was that KSU should establish a living memorial in the form of a Center to study and to promote peaceful mechanisms of change. Thus the Center for Peaceful Change was established in 1971, later renamed the Center for Applied Conflict Management. The Center's undergraduate degree program in peace and conflict studies was established two years later, in 1973, making it one of the oldest in the country. Today it is also likely the country's largest, regularly enrolling more than 1,000 students in its courses each academic year. Thanks to the Center for Applied Conflict Management, Kent State students learn—and practice—applied skills in negotiation, mediation, community collaboration, workplace conflict management, dispute systems design, and nonviolent action.
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| CACM Points of Pride | ||
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Patrick Coy co-authors new book, Contesting Patriotism
Review of book on History News Network
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Landon Hancock co-edits new book, Zones of Peace
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Patrick Coy's co-authored book, Contesting Patriotism: Culture, Power and Strategy in the Peace Movement, analyzes activism during war when space for political debate shrinks. Narrow ideas of patriotism and security marginalize opposition to militarism abroad and repression at home. This book shows how these ideas were resisted across five U.S. wars. Concepts of culture, power, strategy, and identity are used to explain how the peace movement contributes to social and political change. 
Assistant Professor Landon Hancock's new book, Zones of Peace, co-edited with Christopher Mitchell, examines sanctuary as it relates to historical and modern conflicts from the Philippines to Colombia and Sudan. It charts the formation and evolution of these varied "zones of peace," using case studies to highlight efforts by local people to achieve safety and democracy amid and following violent civil conflict, and attempts to arrive at a "theory of sanctuary" that may allow for new and useful peacebuilding strategies.