Peace Fellows at the 2015 Rotary Convention in São Paulo, Brazil.
By Teree Bergman
When I was an undergraduate, one of my professors expressed the interesting idea that scholars should stop studying the causes of war. He suggested that conflicts occur all the time and that the natural state is war. He proposed that we should be studying the causes of peace, as that is the less common situation.
Paul Harris expressed a similar view in a recorded interview in Tuskegee, Alabama, in 1945: “The way to war is a well-paved highway and the way to peace is still a wilderness.”
While Rotary’s number one objective rightly continues to be on polio eradication, the inception of the Rotary Peace Centers program may be the initiative that secures Rotary’s role in the world. Rotary has a long history of promoting peace, and Rotary Peace Fellowships are the embodiment of this long-term interest. In 1923, Paul Harris offered an opinion as to the real mission of Rotary.
“Is there anything more potent than man’s impulse to hate? I think that there surely is and that it is man’s impulse to love. What have we been advertising throughout the centuries? We have been advertising war. The …read more
Source:: Rotary International Blog
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