Peace Studies and the Jesuit Mission

The Program on Justice and Peace (JUPS) engages Georgetown University’s Jesuit mission to understand and solve global problems. It is an interdisciplinary program drawing on the strength of university faculty in areas such as international relations, ethics and values, social analysis, community based learning, human rights, and social responsibility. Although the Program’s objectives include teaching about avoiding war and transforming conflicts nonviolently, our fundamental goal is to understand the structural injustices that cause war and violence and to alter them so as to realize positive peace.

JUPS has borrowed from Jesuit pedagogy in structuring its curriculum at four levels:

• at the introductory level, students develop the analytical skills and concepts to understand the structural sources of war, oppression, and violence;
• students engage in service and social action to help address those problems;
• students reflect on their actions and undertake social analysis within a moral framework; and
• as a capstone exercise, students develop a sustained original analysis of a theoretical or practical issue.