Professor Aldo Civico brings a journalist’s acumen to his work
as a cultural anthropologist specializing in urban political violence. That’s hardly
surprising. He cut his teeth as an intrepid reporter in his home country, Italy,
for many years before moving into academia.
His flair for combining the two approaches to grasp the nature
of violent conflicts, as well as the potential for peace building, has resulted
in a unique brand of research, and an International Institute for Peace that is
just getting off the ground at Rutgers-Newark.
“Our focus will be on urban violence and youth-violence
prevention around the world,” says Civico, “as well as the role of women in
peace building.”
Civico began his career as a freelance correspondent for Vatican
Radio at the ripe old age of 18. He had enrolled at the University of Trento to
study sociology around the same time, but a college degree would have to wait:
Civico the journalist was taken with the burgeoning anti-mafia movement in Sicily,
at the other end of the country.
prevention as well as the role of women in
peace building. It will work in synergy with the the newly created master's program in conflict resolution at Rutgers-Newark.
He parlayed an interview with the movement’s leader, Leoluca
Orlando, into a job in Sicily that lasted three years and gave him a front-row
seat to the historic changes taking place: As La Casa Nostra intensified its assassination
campaign of state officials, the Sicilian populace took to the streets en masse
for nonviolent protests, a sign that public opinion had finally shifted against
the mafia.
“To see the capacity of a social movement to bring about change
was a very valuable lesson for me,” says Civico, “as was having the opportunity
to work with extraordinary individuals who put their life on the line for the
common good.”
Civico moved on from his job with Orlando in 1993 and, for the
rest of the decade, worked as a journalist while finishing his studies.
In 2000, he moved to New York City to study international
affairs at Columbia University. He met an Italian professor who ran the Center
for International Conflict Resolution on campus, and began working there,
designing peace-building trainings for religious leaders who had survived the
1990s Balkan Wars, then conflict-resolution workshops for victims of violence
in Medellin, Colombia.
He had found his calling.
He completed his doctorate at Columbia in applied anthropology
and, from 2003 to 2007, spent every spare moment doing his dissertation field
work in Colombia, interviewing survivors of that country’s long- simmering civil
war, then venturing into the mountains to land a rare interview with a paramilitary
leader who had massacred those victims’ families. He ended up getting the leader’s life story, plus that of 12 other group members.
“I figured it would be interesting to do field work among
victimizers,” says Civico. “This is difficult, challenging, unusual research
that I thought I could offer insights on.”
Civico then scored another plum interview: this one with an
insurgency [ELN] leader residing in a high-security prison cell. Visits
continued over the course of months, with Civico looking on at one point as the
first conversations of peace talks occurred between the ELN leader and government
officials.
Civico went on to facilitate discussions between the Colombian government
and the guerilla group, organized workshops for the negotiating team, and worked
as a communications channel between parties and the U.S. ambassador in the 2005-2008
peace talks, which broke down, unfortunately.
Upon returning from Colombia, he became CIRR’s director and
shepherded the center through three years of expansion before coming to
Rutgers-Newark in 2010. The idea for the International Institute for Peace, “a
think-tank/do-tank bridging theory and practice,” as Civico describes it, came
about in discussions with deans and colleagues in the sociology and
anthropology department.
The institute will work in synergy with the newly
created master's program in conflict resolution, giving students and faculty the
opportunity to produce cutting-edge research while engaging in peace-building
projects around the world.
Civico co-founded the institute with Academy Award-winning actor
Forest Whitaker, who’d heard Civico speak about the project at this spring’s
Newark Peace Education Summit. Whitaker, having grown up in South Central Los
Angeles, has been working to curb youth violence for years and is a goodwill
ambassador for UNESCO. A partnership between that U.N. organization and the
Institute is in the works.
For Civico, it’s been a very fulfilling life.
“I love to interact with students and be out in the field
changing the lives of folks caught in challenging conditions,” says Civico. “I’m
not sure you can ask for more in a lifetime.”
