6 March 1985: a large, airy classroom in the Mills Building, Sydney University. Seventeen fourth-year social work students are filing in, chatting animatedly, keen to get going in this final year of their social work degree – four men, thirteen women, and a mix of mature-aged and younger students.1 I am already in the room, perched beside a table with a pile of information about the Community Work course upon which we are about to embark. I am welcoming the students, none of whom I have met before. My greetings perhaps reveal a touch of apprehension as I am planning a learning experience quite different to that usually associated with universities.

We begin … and unbeknown to us then, so does the story of CPACS.

164The Community Work class, an option in the fourth year, undergraduate Social Work Practice 2 course, drew on the principles of experiential, dialogical and participatory education. I had long been attracted to John Dewey’s ideas about experiential learning, and Paola Freire’s dialogical, participatory approaches (Dewey 1963; Freire 1972, 1974). These had significantly influenced my previous community work practice and teaching. The option however, was the first time I endeavoured to fully embrace ‘learning through doing’ in a university-based course. I wanted the students to learn about community work by actually doing it. Involvement in a ‘real life’ project would be the means for gaining skills, knowledge and conceptual understandings about community work – a means for linking theories and practices. Something on campus should be manageable, I thought. The course handout described what I had in mind:

The open-ended nature of experiential learning created an edge of anxiety for all of us. So did the challenge of doing a group project which students realised would be demanding of time and effort. Nevertheless, they were excited by the idea of a course with a difference and we set off with enthusiasm towards our unknown destination.

Initially, I was uncertain about how far I should adhere to dialogical experiential learning, knowing that students were far more familiar with teacher-directed, didactic approaches. I, too, found it hard to let go of the idea that there was a body of explanatory theories and practice strategies which I should impart to students, particularly at the beginning of the option, as background to their future thoughts and actions. Would project happenings provide enough opportunities for me to weave in such material along the way?

I took a cautious approach, easing us into experiential learning by allocating time in the first three sessions for ‘conventional’ teaching about community work concepts, theories and strategies (lecture/165overhead format), as well as time for project discussion. I soon found though, that I could link material I was introducing with the class discussions about a project, which at this stage was about finding an issue. For example, using each of their project suggestions, I asked them to consider: the aims, values and political ideologies behind their proposals; who or what they saw as ‘community’; how the need or issue they suggested had been identified and by whom; what community work strategies might be involved and what they were most interested in – social action, service development, advocacy …?

These early sessions thus helped me to see how I could match my input with project happenings. From then on, I was able to put aside the idea that I should provide blocks of information separated from lived experience. I became more adept at weaving in community work theories and practices as situations arose, encouraging discussion and analysis and drawing attention to appropriate readings as we went.

Looking at the way we learned is one of the stories to be told about the class of ’85. It is a way consistent with community development processes and values whereby participation and equality amongst group members is nurtured through emphasis on consensus decision making and the sharing of tasks and roles. The focus of the story I tell here is, however, not about analysing the educational process itself; it’s more about describing happenings, that is, what we did and how this led to the birth of CPACS.

Our doings can be seen as a classic piece of social action characterised by several identifiable stages. I note though, that whilst emphasis was on particular tasks at particular times, stages and tasks overlapped and events were sometimes cyclical. Goals were continually being refined, actions evaluated, and resources sought – information, people and material resources. Further, the crucial issue of group maintenance defies description through a ‘stages’ approach. As with all sustainable groups, ensuring positive group dynamics was an ongoing task always needing attention. My role was one of the questions the group had to address throughout, as was the need to maximise inclusion and to work out ways of sharing tasks and information. Later, we struggled with tensions between informal/formal ways of running the group, and dealt with frustrations about the length of time tasks were taking. All these 166issues were typical of those which arise in community groups at any, and often all, stages of action.

Nevertheless, analysis of the comprehensive records kept from day one2 reveals an unfolding of events which lends itself to description through reference to certain stages and tasks typically associated with community action: identifying an issue; informing ourselves about that issue; contacting people to assess interest and identify allies; maintaining the group; bringing people together to form an action group; building resources and broadening support; refining strategies; achieving goals.

Identifying an issue

In the first few weeks the dominant task was finding a project issue. By the third week, student suggestions had boiled down to three: tertiary education fees, racism on campus, and peace – the latter as yet perceived very generally apart from one suggestion about seeking a nuclear-free university. One of the students supporting peace came well prepared, arguing that this would be particularly appropriate as it was International Youth Year and the themes for the year were participation, development and peace. Her opinions seemed to carry a lot of weight in the group.

In a more detailed account, I have described the process of issue selection (Lane, forthcoming). I quote from that part of the account which refers to the final moments of the process, as we can now see that this was a crucial time in the history of CPACS. The room is tense, class time is running out and people are weary after a lengthy session trying to reach consensus:

Voting has winners and losers but the group accepted the decision, being relieved, I think, to have at last made a start on finding an issue. I tried to lessen any fall out by pointing out that anti-racism and peace were closely connected; we might find we could deal with racism within the peace issue. For the moment, we needed to inform ourselves about ‘peace’ and come up with a more specific focus for our project. Our peace research began.

Informing ourselves

I was pleased the group chose peace. Before the vote I had concealed my preference, knowing that if they were to own the project and maintain enough enthusiasm to carry it through, they would have to choose it themselves. Fortuitously though, peace was also an issue of much interest to me; I had been involved in the peace movement since the Vietnam War years. Initially, I had associated peace with anti-war activity but over time my understanding had broadened. I owed much to Stella Cornelius for my education about peace and conflict. In the early 1980s, as a member of the National Women’s Advisory Council, I managed to get peace on to the Council’s agenda (NATWAC Annual Report 1982–83). Whilst helping to organise a seminar on peace for the June 1983 meeting, I contacted Stella and other key figures in the Australian peace movement, including Nancy Shelley, a Canberra

168peace activist.4 These people introduced me to a breadth of literature and ideas. You can’t have sustainable peace without social justice, they argued; the absence of war is not enough. The knowledge I gained gave me confidence that I could resource our class project about peace.

It was a good time to be doing something about peace, a time of much public and government activity around disarmament and anti-nuclear issues. The Federal Labor government, elected in 1983, had taken some important initiatives (Hayden 1983). An Ambassador for Disarmament had been appointed, and the government was supporting the setting up of an independent peace research body at the Australian National University. It was also supporting a comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty and looking at ways to introduce peace studies into schools and tertiary institutions.

Expanding our conceptual understanding of peace and gathering information about peace initiatives, particularly within universities, were major tasks for the group. Apart from one or two students, the group had limited understanding of the conceptual complexity of peace and only vague ideas about what was happening around peace issues on campus.

We began by pooling knowledge and material we already had – literature, an audiotape Stella had given me, and a video brought in by the student who had originally suggested we work on a peace project. The information reflected broad conceptualisations of peace and broad goals for action, such as campaigning for disarmament and a nuclear-free Pacific, and setting up a Ministry of Peace. Significantly for us though, suggestions for action also included those ‘closer to home’: setting up peace research centres at universities, promoting peace studies, seeking nuclear-free universities, and reducing racial discrimination at universities.

We also tuned into our networks for ideas about specific projects. This had a ‘snowballing’ effect leading us to people who were pursuing peace

169initiatives at universities.5 We found, for example, that there was a peace studies course at Macquarie University in Sydney, and further afield a university which had set up a thriving Peace Studies Department and a comprehensive peace library – Bradford University in England. We couldn’t find any courses specifically labelled as such on our campus but we started to uncover some interest in peace issues, including within our own department.6

In some ways our initial information gathering made it harder to find a specific focus for a peace project. There were so many possibilities. Time for decision making was proving a problem for us too. Two visits to the field in these early weeks broadened student knowledge about community work practice but limited time for project discussion. By the seventh week frustrations were running high. To this point, I had adopted non-directive roles trying to encourage students to find their own way, but I now decided to push things along – using my change of style as a topic for discussion about directiveness and non-directiveness in community work. I listed all the project possibilities students had suggested, the most favoured of which were peace studies, a nuclear free University, and racism on campus, and I bluntly pointed out: “We can’t do it all. What’s the issue? What are our aims?”

A few students wanted to further explore the meaning of peace before making a decision. The majority argued, “let’s get on with it” (the words of one of the more task-oriented students). That approach prevailed, and by the end of the session the group had chosen a priority. We would seek the introduction of peace studies at Sydney University.

With renewed energy we went into task mode to gather more information about peace studies courses at universities, identify people who might lend support, and explore possible funding sources. Six of us visited Gary Simpson who co-ordinated the course at Macquarie University. Gary was located in Education but many Schools were involved in the

170teaching and supplying of students. He emphasised the importance of a multidisciplinary approach, argued for a social justice viewpoint, and advised against nuclear sensationalism and a statistical perspective. He told us that evaluation highlighted their course should be more feministoriented and include more on environmental issues. Gary’s ideas gave weight to the values and directions towards which we’d been leaning. From that meeting too, we realised that an important question for us would be the location of courses. At Sydney there wasn’t the flexibility between Faculties that Macquarie had between its Schools.

New challenges arose when we sought a small grant from International Youth Year to assist our activities and start building a peace library. We were not a constituted body so we needed a sponsor. The Social Work Student Association agreed to do this, but who were we? Poring over the submission, the discussion went like this:

“We’ll have to have a name.” Momentary silence. Then, quick as a flash, Ric piped up, “SCIPS – Student Committee for the Introduction of Peace Studies.” Laughs and yeses all round. Great Ric!

SCIPS was launched!

It was 22 April, a day that we also refined our tactics. We would find out more about what was happening in different Departments at Sydney University and see if interested staff would come to a meeting in second term to discuss campaigning for peace studies. It was a tangible goal to work towards.

Contacting, contacting and more contacting …

By the end of first term, extensive contacting had revealed considerable interest in the teaching of peace and conflict studies on our campus. In community work language the class was building a ‘community profile’ of what was happening, and what might be possible. Interest was multidisciplinary, supportive people being identified in a range of Departments including Government, Education, History, Medicine, Social Work and Sociology, Political Economy, Chemistry, and Law. Some were already teaching courses related to peace. The notion of a separate centre for peace studies within the University was raised by at least two of the people contacted. All in all, the students found that 171interest in peace was more prevalent amongst academics than they had thought; the problem had been a lack of publicity about what people were doing and no identified network. There was now much support for the idea of a meeting to bring interested people together.

It was a good note on which to end the term. There was a feeling of promise that we were involved in a movement which would not be stopped.

Maintaining ourselves

Group maintenance was ongoing, but there were several points in our project when it became an urgent issue requiring special attention if we were to move on effectively. Throughout the project we endeavoured to work in participatory ways which would nurture group cohesion and individual satisfaction. Efforts to promote participation and consensus were, however, sometimes in tension with getting tasks done, particularly when there were time pressures. Frustrations would emerge requiring us to review our way of operating. Such had been the case when we resorted to a vote when choosing peace for a project. A more serious challenge to group cohesion arose when we met in early June after the term break. I recount what happened as project outcomes might well have been different if we had not resolved this and other group tensions along the way.

We were at a crucial stage of the project and the way forward was clearer, though somewhat daunting, the meeting with interested staff needing to be held before the end of July when the Option finished. But there were other reasons contributing to the student frustrations which now burst out:

“We’re not getting anywhere”; “I feel alienated, some are doing all the work”; “when you miss a meeting you don’t know what’s going on – the telephone tree isn’t working”; “there’s too much chaos”; “we want more fun”.

When I asked what we needed to do,7 they were just as forthcoming:

172“Group efficiency needs looking at”; “we need clearer roles for people”; “we need to plan our time better”.

A more formal group structure was worked out, one which sought to increase both participation and efficiency. This included identifying a convenor and minute taker for each session (both tasks to be rotated weekly; the convenor responsible for drawing up an agenda), and arranging a more efficient system for distributing minutes and other information.

Opting for more structure was an interesting turn of events – and a common one in groups when time is limited and the need to get tasks done calls for emphasis on increased efficiency. We were under pressure. We had floated an issue, raised expectations and set a date for the meeting, 2 July. We had just four weeks to organise it.

Bringing people together around a common interest

In preparing for the meeting we continued to inform ourselves about the conceptual complexities of peace, gather further information about what was happening at universities around Australia, and seek advice about the best ways of getting peace studies going at Sydney University.8 A key contact at this stage was Keith Suter, whom we invited to a class session. Keith was based at Wesley College, Sydney University, and was well known, nationally and internationally, for his work in peace and conflict.9 His view was to aim for a peace with justice perspective and to have “a smorgasbord of content” – a perspective further reinforcing the directions we had been developing.

Keith told us about earlier efforts at Sydney University to introduce

173peace studies, including those of Peter King in the Department of Government. Peter was coming to our July meeting and had assured us of his support. We were alerted to finding out more about these previous attempts.10

Another crucial meeting task was to clarify our aims and hoped-for outcomes. We sought a sharing of information about what we and others were already doing about peace studies at Sydney University and elsewhere; and we sought to look at ways in which the work on our campus might be extended. If the movement was to continue, we needed to ensure follow up from the meeting. We were all too aware that the Community Work Option would finish soon and the students would leave campus for their final fieldwork placement. Would any remain involved? This created a feeling of panic in me particularly! To whom would the mantle be passed? One idea floated in class discussions was to try and come away from the 2 July meeting with a staff/student working party.

The meeting day arrived, 2 July 1985. We were quietly confident, extensive contacting having confirmed considerable staff interest in our purposes. But we were also apprehensive, wondering whether interest would translate into action to carry the movement forward. We had prepared well for this moment but much was at stake.

All seventeen students in the SCIPS group and ten academics were present.11 Information sharing revealed initiatives already happening: courses on war and peace in the Departments of Social Work and of History; a course on the consequences of ionising radiation run by the Institute of Molecular Biology; and a $60,000 International Year of Peace (IYP) grant received by Charles Kerr to research people’s thinking about nuclear war. Next year (1986, IYP year), the Asian Peace Research

174Conference would be held at Sydney University, and the Department of Government was planning a peace studies course.

The educational value of an interdisciplinary approach was emphasised. Whilst organisational difficulties were foreseen with inter-faculty courses, ongoing contact between staff teaching peace-related courses in different Departments was seen as important, as was the notion of setting up a working party to establish an interdisciplinary Peace Research Centre which would offer postgraduate research opportunities. A further suggestion, one more easily attainable in the short term, was to run lunchtime seminars on peace issues. SCIPS was delegated the task of drawing up an agenda for future action and calling another meeting.

It was a very positive response to our meeting purposes. Soon afterwards, our efforts were further heartened when the research officer in the Department of Social Work, Annette Hay, offered to collect information for us and build up a research file on peace issues – the beginnings, as we saw it, of a resource centre. She had already gathered some readings including some from Great Britain forcefully arguing against peace studies – a perspective we needed to consider, and counter, when presenting our arguments for peace studies at Sydney University.12

Hanging over these positive outcomes, though, was the spectre of time. The Community Work class was due to end 31 July. It was urgent that we now focus on the question of who would be left to ‘carry the baby’. Some of the SCIPS group needed to move on; others, including myself, were committed to carrying on the project but our numbers would be small, just six or so of us. If we were to maintain a strong student component in the movement, as we wanted, we needed to direct our efforts to seeking their involvement. To this end, the final weeks of class saw us organising meetings with second and third year Social Work students. A handful of third years responded13 and joined up with SCIPS

175people to continue the outreach to students and prepare for the follow up meeting with staff. The future of SCIPS itself in events to come was unclear but all were agreed that decisions about its future should be made by the continuing members.

We said our farewells. It had been a challenging course, with huge commitment from this small bunch of students. For some it was now over. For others, it was just the completion of the first chapter of the SCIPS story.

Building resources, broadening support: from SCIPS to SSCIPS

The immediate focus for the now smaller SCIPS group was the second meeting with staff, set for 13 September.14 Our main aim was to encourage the emergence of a working party of students and staff that would follow up ideas flagged in the initial meeting. Again, we prepared well, gathering further information about initiatives at Australian universities to set up peace research centres and organise seminars on peace.15

A small but enthusiastic group of staff turned up to the meeting. The multidisciplinary aspect, which SCIPS had worked so hard to achieve, was reinforced; staff attending came from Social Work, Chemistry, Economics, Government, and Medicine.16 A working party of staff and students began work immediately, organising a series of four lunchtime seminars about the arms race to be held in October.

176We were now SSCIPS – Staff/Student Committee for the Introduction of Peace Studies. Student involvement remained influential, with social work students (including several from the original SCIPS group) taking on the roles of convenor and minute taker, as well as being involved in organising other activities.

Lunchtime seminars soon became a regular feature of SSCIPS work. They were a particularly useful means for catching the interest of students and staff and spreading the word about SSCIPS’s ultimate goals – the promotion of peace studies and the establishment of a Peace Centre. Achieving these long-term goals received a boost when Roger Wescombe, at that time Deputy Director of International House at the University, joined SSCIPS and organised a Peace Studies Workshop in June 1986 to explore strategies. Forty-five people attended, and staff from a range of Departments spoke about the possibilities of introducing peace studies into their courses. The culmination of the workshop was agreement through a formal motion that a Peace Centre be established at Sydney University (Interim Council CPACS minutes, 25 February 1988). I remember well the euphoria I felt at that moment.

With in-principle support from a wide range of disciplines, focus for SSCIPS was now on the detail of establishing a Centre. Obtaining the agreement of the Vice-Chancellor and drawing up a constitution were key tasks. Being aware of possible opposition from the University hierarchy to the study of peace, we changed the name of the centre being sought to the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies – conflict, it seemed, having more credibility in academia! (SSCIPS minutes, 11 September 1986).

It was almost two more years though, before the long-term goal of a Centre was realised. A constitution which would reflect SSCIPS’s values of participatory democracy at the same time as being acceptable to the University administration took months to negotiate. Letters from SSCIPS to the Vice Chancellor’s office went unanswered for weeks, and things dragged on. It seemed the Vice Chancellor and other hierarchy were unconvinced about the academic credibility of peace studies;17

177perhaps SSCIPS was not forceful or smart enough in its advocacy. Whatever the reason, little was happening in terms of gaining the Vice Chancellor’s approval for a Centre and our energy was being sapped by frustration. It was as well that our hopes were kept alive by committed staff and students, the success of the lunchtime seminars, and a visit in May 1987 from world renowned peace scholars, Elise and Kenneth Boulding.

Refining strategies, achieving goals

It was clear we needed to rethink our strategy and seek more effective ways of achieving our primary goal. Someone who might help was ‘under our noses’ – Stuart Rees, Professor of Social Work and Head of Department. The Department had been supportive of the movement since its very beginnings, supplying the venue for the group’s meetings, housing the resource library, and absorbing many of the day-by-day administrative costs. Most recently, the Department had been approached with a request from SSCIPS for space to locate a Centre. Social work students had always been at the heart of the cause and continued to play vital roles, contributing especially to administrative tasks, organising seminars and building support for a Centre. Social Work staff were also prominent players. Roger Wescombe (now in the Department as the Administration Officer),18 and myself were members of SSCIPS; others, whilst not directly involved, had followed the movement with keen interest, lending advice and support when called upon. One of these was Stuart. Politically ‘savvy’ and a member of the University governing body, the Senate, he had access to the top echelons of the University. Now was the time to seek his more direct involvement.

178It was late 1987. I knew Stuart was overstretched for time, but determination to gain a Centre gave me confidence to put the question. I found the appropriate moment in the early morning quietness of the photocopying room before the Department erupted into busyness – a mundane context for what was to be an important conversation for the future of CPACS: “We’re not getting anywhere fast with the Centre, we need your assistance; we’re setting up an Interim Council until the constitution’s formalised and we want you on it; you could push things along – it would be great if you’d come to SSCIPS meetings”. He did so and was there at the next meeting in December.

Stuart’s proactive involvement from that time on was to prove the boost we needed. He agreed to convene a small group to get things moving. Together with long-time SSCIPS members, Peter King and Bob Hunter, and SSCIPS convenor Igor Gonda, he wrote to the Vice Chancellor in early February 1988 putting the case for a Centre and requesting a meeting. There were strong arguments including broad interdisciplinary support from within and outside the University, promise of a location in the Mills Building, and precedents for such centres in several prestigious universities in North America, Britain and Scandinavia. Adding further credibility to the group’s efforts was the arrival of the first visiting scholar, Dr. Gordon Rodley, a New Zealand specialist on deterrence and disarmament.

It was a well-organised group of about ten SSCIPS supporters that eventually met with the Vice Chancellor on 28 March 1988. It seems our efforts had already been successful, and needing no further convincing the Vice Chancellor agreed with the setting up of the Centre. After three years of trying, it was an unexpectedly easy meeting – a denouement par excellence!

And so … to CPACS

The rest is well-known history: the announcement by the Vice Chancellor to the Senate on 5 April that a Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies had been established in the University; the launch of the Centre on 16 May by the then Minister of Defence, Kim Beazley; the winding up of SSCIPS, its work now done, at the first Annual General meeting of 179the Centre on 14 July; and the struggles of the infant CPACS to survive with few resources and tensions within the organisation over priorities and ways of going about things (Rees 1990, pp. 19–25).

There was, however, a firm foundation upon which to build the organisation. The legacy bequeathed to CPACS was more than a group of people committed to seeing it flourish; it was to do with certain values and principles which guided the work of the original student group (SCIPS) and then the staff/student group (SSCIPS). I mention here just three influential aspects. Firstly, the peace with justice perspective. Adopted initially by the student group, it survived the challenges posed when SCIPS expanded to include staff from many disciplines and diverse theoretical backgrounds. It was then that differences emerged as to where the emphasis of peace work should lie. For some, emphasis was on the study of war, nuclear disarmament and deterrence; others favoured emphasis on the structural and cultural aspects of peace and violence, such as tackling poverty, promoting democracy and building civil society. Differences of emphasis sometimes led to tensions but there remained general agreement that the pursuit of sustainable peace entailed a peace with justice perspective and a broad understanding of factors associated with peace and conflict. It was a perspective carried over to the fledgling CPACS.

Hand in hand with this conceptualisation of peace went the notions of interdisciplinarity and multidisciplinarity. From the very beginnings of the movement, co-operation between people from different, and many, disciplines had provided theoretical and strategic strength. Inter- and multidisciplinarity were well established aspects of the movement, modelling the way for baby CPACS.

A third legacy was evidence of the importance of group maintenance. Early in the movement the student group had identified this as something requiring ongoing attention. Lapses in attending to group maintenance occurred later in the staff/student group (SSCIPS) when differences arose about priorities, and tensions were exacerbated by the frustrations of a drawn out campaign. The message for CPACS was that both SCIPS and SSCIPS worked most effectively and happily when they did so in ways consistent with the Gandhian notion of ‘peace is the way’. It was 180an understanding which nurtured maximum participation, consensus decision making, sharing of responsibilities, open flow of information, and airing and negotiation of differences through fair process.

Reference to the old cliché, ‘from little things big things grow’ may seem corny but it fits the story of CPACS. Achievements over the last 20 years have been impressive, among them the spawning of the Sydney Peace Foundation and CPACS’s growth as a nationally and internationally respected teaching and research centre. It’s a great story and it’s remarkable to think that it all started with a small bunch of students in the Class of ’85. We did John Dewey (1963, pp. 27–28) proud:

This volume is testament to the ongoing work of CPACS in thinking about war and crafting peace.