Professor Profiles – Robynne Healey
Mars’ Hill: So I understand you were recently on sabbatical. What were you working on during that time?
Photo credit: twu.ca
My goal on my sabbatical was to do projects that very specifically developed my global expertise.
And when you do something like that … you’ve got to start from your area of expertise. I personally have an area of expertise in Quaker studies, so that’s where I started. I decided that I was going to look at the evolution of the Quaker Peace Testimony.
What keenly interests me is pacifism. Because, I don’t know if I can be one. I’m keenly interested, very sympathetic, but I don’t know if I can commit to something like that. And that’s why even though I’m what they call “friendly inclined” or very interested in the Quaker faith, I am not a Quaker.
So I decided I wanted to look at the evolution of the Quaker Peace Testimony because it shifted from “We’re staying out of war,” during the 19th and 20th century, to now in the 21st century where Quakers have been at the forefront of peacemaking process. Look at the Christian peacemaker teams in the Middle East, like Tom Fox; the Quaker who was held hostage and killed in Iraq in 2006, and others who risk their lives for the sake of their faith. These were the stories that intrigued me and sent me to South Africa where they have a Quaker Peace Centre. It is one of the only places in the world that has developed a centre specifically aimed at developing peaceful means of dealing with conflict. And while no war had spurred the development of this centre, since apartheid, it is an area that has certainly seen and experienced conflict at a deep level.
Frankly, when I went I had no idea what I would find. I was hopeful. I had a general idea what was there. But it was better than I thought.
Quakers developed their approach to peace during times of war as conscientious objectors but also during “conflicted peace” such as the apartheid; a time of conflicted peace when people died and took their lives into their own hands. And what I discovered at the Quaker Peace Centre is that there was a huge conflict between South African Quakers and a group called the American Friends Service Committee. The AFSC is the project arm of the Quakers in the states, like the Mennonite Central Committee is for the Mennonite Church.
So after the Vietnam War a lot of pacifist-leaning people, who did not classify themselves as Quakers, got involved with Quakers and in fact got hired by the American Friends Service Committee. This group of people were sympathetic to Quaker principles, so they decided to take on this issue of apartheid and the conflicts were huge. The South African Quakers were saying, “You don’t know what it’s like to live here,” and then a bunch of Americans were saying, “There has to be economic disinvestment and boycotts.”
So what was occurring was—I don’t even know what to call it because it’s not really religious imperialism but it was kind of like ideological imperialism.
But what occurred to me was that the South African Quakers were pretty sure, no, they were certain that you had to be a Quaker to be a pacifist. That pacifism was religious or faith based. But I think that’s what was really important. Which, of course makes me think, “Wow! What does that mean for me?” Because it is a commitment.
What was interesting about the project, and as I continue to build on the project is that it allows me to combine my fascination with war and peace and global history and politics with a real awareness of the role that faith plays in the decisions people make on a daily basis.
MH: What is your vision and passion for the coming year?
First of all, I’m passionate about the need to understand the past in order to understand the present. I get frustrated when I hear folks talk as if this is the first time this has ever happened—whatever “this” is. I don’t study history because I like looking backwards… [Historians] study the past in order to look into the future.
I’m excited about sharing the things I’ve learned this year. When you’re so busy simply teaching and making deadlines, you don’t have time to fuel the fires of what interests you. But being away on sabbatical gave me the chance to fuel the fire again.
And also just to communicate my passion for my discipline, because I love my discipline. And I love being back at TWU. It’s an exhausting place but that’s why we love it. I feel as if we get to the end of the year and every graduation the students and the faculty feel as though they left it all out on the floor. It’s walking that journey with the students. That’s what can really make you excited about your work.
Michael Biornstad
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