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Resting on a convincing body of evidence that violence is not a nec- essary component of conflict among states and between states and non-state actors, World Beyond War asserts that war itself can be ended. We humans have lived without war for most of our existence and most people live without war most of the time. Warfare arose about 6,000 years ago (less than 5% of our existence as Homo sapiens) and spawned a vicious cycle of warfare as peoples, fearing attack by militarized states found it necessary to imitate them and so began the cycle of violence that has culminated in the last 100 years in a condition of permawar. War now threatens to destroy civilization as weapons have become ever more destructive. However, in the last 150 years, revolutionary new knowledge and methods of nonviolent conflict management have been developing that lead us to assert that it is time to end warfare and that we can do so by mobilizing millions around a global effort.
Kent D Shifferd
The late Kent D. Shifferd taught for 35 years at Northland College, the University of Wisconsin, Ripon College, and United Theological Seminary. He was a founder and former executive director of the 21-school consortium, the Wisconsin Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies.
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Patrick Hiller
Patrick, a former member of World BEYOND War's Board, is a peace scientist who is committed in his personal and professional life to create a world beyond war. He is the Executive Director of the War Prevention Initiative by the Jubitz Family Foundation and teaches conflict resolution at Portland State University. He is actively involved in publishing book chapters, academic articles and newspaper op-eds. His work is almost exclusively related to the analysis of war and peace and social injustice and advocacy for nonviolent conflict transformation approaches. He studied and worked on those topics while living in Germany, Mexico and the United States. He talks regularly at conferences and other venues about the "The Evolution of a Global Peace System" and produced a short documentary with the same name.
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