About Pax Mundo

Pax Mundo is an independent project of Dr. James Hayes-Bohanan, a geographer, educator, and activist. See the biographical note at the end of this page for more information. For further information about the project, see the FAQ page.

Background

The terror attacks of September 11, 2001 were, of course, a shock to a country that had never endured an attack of this magnitude against its civilians at home. The fact that someone could wish U.S. citizens harm was genuinely puzzling for those who had grown up on a steady diet of exclusively positive views of the U.S. role in the world. Those who think that U.S. foreign policy has been confined to feeding the hungry, curing the sick, and ending the Holocaust were genuinely surprised by the attack, though it was the second attack on the same address in New York and one of many throughout the world against U.S.-associated targets in recent years.

The international response to the attacks was initially very supportive of the United States. Hundreds of memorials were held throughout the world, messages of sympathy flooded in, and the international community generally supported the U.S. military response in Afghanistan. By early 2003, however, international support for some U.S. policies was softening. The treatment of detainees was being questioned, as was the proposal to move to Iraq as the next step in the “War on Terror.”

Immediately after the attacks, the question “Why do they hate us?” drove many to the bookstores and libraries, often with a focus on Islam. Two years after the attack, at least 20,000 web sites mention this exact question. Perhaps more telling, a Lexis Nexis search of the phrase finds in connection with the word “Islam” or “Muslim” reveals 116 newspaper citations between September 11, 2001 and early 2004, but only 11 such citations in the decade prior to the infamous date. The meaning of the question, however, has come to encompass much of the world, not just Islam. For many in the U.S., international reluctance to join the war against Iraq is seen as an inexplicable hatred of the United States. Those holding the rather naïve views of U.S. foreign policy described above have seen this lack of cooperation as not only hateful, but also ungrateful**. The French, of course, bore the brunt of this hostility, but international opposition to the war in Iraq has contributed to a much more generalized alienation of average U.S. citizens from the world community. Moreover, many in the U.S. readily confuse disapproval of U.S. foreign policy with hatred for such U.S. ideals as freedom and equality.

The Pax Mundo Project

Ignorance of foreign affairs and even basic world geography has been well documented in the United States, but the reasons for it and the consequences of it are less widely discussed. Remedies have been proposed, including the strengthening of geographic education in primary and secondary schools, and some of these measures are gradually being implemented. The Pax Mundo project does not address geographic ignorance in general terms, but rather intends to focus on those aspects of geographic ignorance raised by international resistance to the Iraq war and the naïve and offended U.S. reaction to that resistance. The purpose will be to develop readily useable teaching materials that will better enable college students and other adults in the U.S. to understand international opposition to the war.

This research project builds upon a presentation made on Cape Cod in late 2003, at the annual conference of the Massachusetts Council on International Education (MaCIE). The presentation, entitled “Is War the Only Way that Americans Learn Geography?” describes U.S. ignorance about foreign affairs in the context of a global power in deep denial of its imperial role. That work presents an introduction to the scale of U.S. power and a sampling of  some of the past uses and abuses of that power.

Pax Mundo is intended to further develop the research presented to the MaCIE audience. The objectives of the project are:

• to develop an exhaustive list of U.S. military interventions in other countries.
• to document past and present U.S. support for dictators as fully as possible.
• to develop specific strategies for making this information about the U.S. role in teh world very accessible to students and the general public in the United States. These strategies could include:
• A web-based fact-gathering effort, based on message boards or related technology.
• Custom cartography to create a visual impression of U.S. activities abroad.
• Curricular materials for use in secondary education classes
• A web-based data-sharing effort
  

It is important to be clear about the purpose of this project and the tone of the educational materials it will generate. Critiques of current U.S. foreign policy already abound in print and on the Internet.  The purpose of the Pax Mundo project is not to enter such policy debates, but rather to focus on helping U.S. citizens who have not thought about such matters from an outside perspective to begin doing so.  In other words, the goal would be to foster some degree of empathy for people outside of the U.S. who hold critical views.As the Pax Mundo project continues, the curricular material that is developed will be made available directly through the web site and through presentations for educators.

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE Dr. Hayes-Bohanan is Associate Professor of Geography and Coordinator of Latin American and Caribbean Studies at Bridgewater State College. He holds geography degrees from the University of Maryland Baltimore County, Miami University of Ohio, and the University of Arizona. His teaching and research interests include Amazon deforestation and land management in New England. He frequently presents faculty workshops on the use of the internet in college teaching, and provides guidance on college success to undergraduates throughout the United States. His peace advocacy began in the Washington, DC area with the SANE/FREEZE and Central American sanctuary movements in the 1980s. As a graduate student in the 1990s, he became deeply involved in work for social justice at the local level in Tucson, through the Pima County Interfaith Council, a project of the Industrial Areas Foundation. More recently, he has actively promoted improved understanding of such Latin American crisis spots as Haiti, Colombia, Mexico, and Cuba, by fostering direct dialog between U.S. residents and people who have worked or lived in these places. The Pax Mundo project began on Cape Cod in late 2003, as a seminar for educators at the Massachusetts Council for International Education.

Notes