University of California, Irvine, Associate Professor, Cecelia Lynch, Spoke at PI Irvine
Pacifica Institute welcomed Professor Cecelia Lynch for the luncheon forum on May 20th, 2009. Cecelia Lynch is Associate Professor of Political Science, School of Social Sciences, and Director of the Center for Global Peace and Conflict Studies, University of California at Irvine.
Prof. Lynch presented her current research topic titled “Religious Humanitarianism and Global Governance” that is ongoing at University of California at Irvine.
She first started her talk by describing the purpose and the functionality of the Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO)s around the world and in general how their ethics make a difference in the third world countries. She mentioned that her research is mainly focusing on the Christian and Muslim humanitarian and development groups working in multi-religious or Muslim-majority societies to solve questions on poverty, famine, humanitarian crisis, conflict. Prof. Lynch said she had conducted approximately 100 in depth interviews including in Africa, Middle East and in the US, and still the interviews are continuing in Southern California area to o support her research. She said that she is also planning on visiting to Gulen movement inspired schools in Africa to interview teachers and students to better understand the movement’s message and dedication on the education around the world.
She said that are so many NGOs and Faith Based NGOs (FBO)s over the world. Especially the number of FBO exceeding the number of NGO in Britain was quite interesting to see she added. She claimed that the FBOs existed since 15th century and pointed out the significant impact on help and contributions they do to those counties in need in health, education, conflict resolution and food supply.
She also went over the implications of Global War on Terror (GWOT) and its effect on the Muslim activists and Islamic NGOS. She expects that Obama administration will throw out the term GWOT that has negatively affected the interfaith activities.
The luncheon forum came to an end with the Q&As. She answered and expressed her opinion on the intra/inter dialogue issues and what triggered her interest in the study of conflict resolution. Later the attendees were invited for the self served lunch.