Giving Peace a Chance

Dec. 13, 2013

The Perpetual Peace Project explores how to move the world away from a constant state of war.

Although the Perpetual Peace Project’s (PPP) coming-out party was the 2010 Syracuse Symposium, Professor Gregg Lambert says the initiative can trace its roots to an event some 13 years earlier in South Africa.

The event in question was the commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the death of anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko. The speaker that day was 79-year-old Nelson Mandela, who deemed it time to “redress the legacy of oppression.”

“[It] will be achieved by each of us respecting ourselves … and respecting the humanity in each one of us,” he told a rapt audience in the coastal town of East London. “It means an attitude of mind and a way of life that appreciates the joy in the honest labor of creating a new society.”

Mandela would retire from active political life less than three months later, but not before his Biko speech went down in history. Many consider it one of the high-water marks of his presidency.

Read the full article at SU News.