I took a Psychology class called Intergroup Peace and Conflict, where we looked at different ideas of peace and the psychological strategies people use to promote peace within and between groups. A big part of the class was questioning what we actually mean when we say a society is “peaceful,” especially when deeper issues like inequality, colonialism, and structural violence are still present.
For this paper, I reflected on my experience attending the United Nations ECOSOC Youth Forum, an opportunity I received through Global Engagement and my connection with Ahmed Badr, the Director of the Patricelli Center. At the forum, I attended sessions on youth, development, conflict, and the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Being in that space helped me see how major international organizations talk about peace, progress, and global change.
I appreciated being able to return to that experience in my Intergroup Peace and Conflict class and think about it through the Lens of Psychology. In the paper, I reflect on how peace is often discussed in international spaces as the absence of direct violence, rather than as something that also requires addressing structural issues. This helped me connect my Global Engagement experience to course concepts and think more critically about what true peace would require, especially for communities still affected by colonialism, racism, gender inequality, and other forms of systemic oppression.
