Requirements for the program
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Students are to take six required courses, configured this way:
A. Two core requirements (comprehensive course or project).
- SOC 119a (War and Possibilities of Peace)
- Either PAX 92a/b (Internship in Peace, Conflict, and Coexistence Studies) or a senior honors thesis.
- The internship consists of at least 10 hours a week in a social change organization in the greater Boston area, elsewhere in the United States or, if the student is abroad, an appropriate equivalent. The intern is supervised by a PAX professor or staff person, keeps a daily journal, presents and does the reading of a bibliography on the topic of the internship and its larger framework, and writes a paper of 15-20 pages at the end of the internship. The student is expected to meet weekly or biweekly with the supervisor and to e-mail weekly or biweekly if doing the work away from Brandeis. Internships are organized around but not limited to those we find through the Hiatt Career Center. Please see our Internship List. Internships in the Sociology Department (Soc 92a and 89a) with a PAX focus will be evaluated for credit on a case-by-case basis.
- The senior thesis is undertaken in the student's department of concentration, on a topic central to Peace, Conflict, and Coexistence Studies. With the department's permission, a member of the PAX Faculty Committee will serve on and represent the PAX Program on the thesis committee.
B. Two or more core electives.
- At least two courses (and up to four) from the list found in the University Bulletin. Core electives must be taken in at least two different departments.
- Core electives include courses that offer critical analyses of violence and non-violence and that consider information, ideas, and examples of productive ways of resisting violence and working toward peace and justice (what in the peace studies field is called "positive peace," as distinct from "negative peace," which is the absence of war but not of conditions that appear to lead to war). These courses offer perspectives on major institutions and possible alternatives, explore some strategies for change, and encourage students to envision and work toward a world based more on positive peace than on negative peace or war.
C. Maximum of two related electives.
- No more than two courses from this list can count to meet program requirements, and they must be taken in different departments.
- These courses relate directly or indirectly to international, domestic, organizational, intergroup, interpersonal, or personal conflict and also include consideration of perspectives that promote understanding, reconciliation, and transformation. They need not focus on violence and non-violence, positive peace or encouraging students to envision positive peace. Students may apply courses from the "core electives" list that they have not taken to fulfill core requirements, to this requirement.
D. Students are urged to take at least one course from a school other than Social Science to fulfill their PAX requirements.
E. Students may petition the PAX Committee for special consideration of courses not listed here that the student wishes to propose as appropriate for her/his PAX program.