A Message from the Fred J. Hansen Peace Chair

Promoting Peace

We are currently living through a moment of profound unrest, division, and polarization. The Fred J. Hansen Peace Chair was founded on the notion that working together toward a common goal can help avert conflict and promote understanding. Since its founding in 1998, this has been one of SDSU’s key platforms to engage and work toward peace and justice in the local San Diego/Tijuana region as well as across the wider world. 

My Vision

For academic years 2025-2207, the Hansen Chair programming will be called "Peace Seen and Heard: Graphic and Aural Images from the US Struggles with Peace and Violence." The years 2025 through 2027 are momentous years in which to reflect on the history of peace and ideas of peace. As a historian, I often find that marking anniversaries prove convenient starting places from which people may connect past events to the present. The year 2025 is 80 years after the liberation of Auschwitz; 75 years after the announcement of the hydrogen bomb; 60 years after the assassination of Malcolm X; and 250 years since the founding of the US Army. The year 2026 is the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, 40 years since the Chernobyl disaster, 50 years since the creation of punk rock; and 60 years since the founding of the Black Panther Party. And 2027 marks 60 years since both the Summer of Love and the “Long Hot Summer” of race riots across the country; 60 years since Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. denounced the Vietnam War, 60 years since the Six Day War in Israel and Palestine; 50 years since the unveiling of the first personal computer; and 40 years since Ronald Reagan challenged Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall.

What did all of this look like and sound like and how was it experienced here in San Diego and on our border with Mexico? What can we learn from the films and comic books and songs of the past as we reflect on ideas of peace in a time period that feels – at the moment – anything but peaceful? And how may we draw on the history and lessons and efforts of the past in addressing this present moment?

2025-2027 Programming: Peace Seen and Heard

The events in 2025-2206 will focus on the visual representation of peace across cultures and over the past 60 years, to include visual artists from a variety of mediums and from film and television. Drawing on SDSU’s initiatives around teaching with comic books and the work of the SDSU Center for Comics Studies, we are developing an online exhibit on graphic visualizations of peace and peace movements from the 1960s to today. We are also working on two major initiatives embracing historical research and community building on both sides of the US border with Mexico.  “Stories from the Border” is a collaborative project of the SDSU Center for Public and Oral History, with the SDSU Libraries and the Instituto de Investigaciones Historicas at the Universidad Autonoma de Baja California. The purpose of this pilot project is to create online access for researchers to an unparalleled archive of over 700 oral histories about the border region, created and recorded by historians and researchers in Mexico over the last 70 years, while also continuing to record and collect–in both countries–vital oral history interviews about border issues. While the older interviews are being processed, new interviews will be conducted by students from the two universities, with an emphasis on grassroots peace in the midst of national conflict. The other transnational project is “Boarder Crossings: Patinetas, Communidad y Paz,” within which skateboarder-artist ambassadors from both countries will work together to build community, produce a zine on border issues, and unite in several exhibitions of original artwork, commenting on issues of peace and the border, that they are creating on blank skateboards. We are working with such community partners as Manos Sucias skate collective in Tijuana and Chicano Skatepark in Barrio Logan, San Diego. This project illustrates how peace and understanding is built from the bottom up, that the skatepark can be not only a place to hang out and skate and learn new tricks, but a place of peaceful international diplomacy. In the second year of the program, we will continue with some of the programming from year one but also feature a series of projects and events united in a focus on the aural, highlighting oral histories, speeches, and “sound culture” around peace and peace building.

In addition, the Hansen Chair will also serve as a hub to connect and foster a community of scholars and community organizers working toward peace at the local level. I am excited to work with grassroots organizations on and off campus connected to immigration policies, border issues, social change, and peace.

About Me

I am a Professor of History who came to San Diego State in 2017, and soon after founded the  SDSU Center for Public and Oral History, and the Advanced Graduate Certificate Program in Public History. I specialize in the history of 20th and 21st century U.S. social movements, religion, sports history, oral history, digital history, and public history. I am very active in community history and public and oral history projects locally, regionally, and nationally. From 2013-2020 I was a Lead Interviewer and Research Scholar for the Civil Rights History Project of the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Institute’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, and I’ve worked on public history projects funded by over $2 million in grant support. I am currently directing an oral history research project with Old Town State Historic Park and. In 2022, I was the recipient of a Public Scholar Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities for work on the book, "The Last Great Trip to Nowhere: A True Story of the Brazilian Jungle and the Final Gasps of the Victorian Age of Exploration."

I am the author of three other books on the civil rights and women’s movements, and a co-editor, with Michael Roberts and Kristin Lawlor, of "Roll and Flow: The Cultural Politics of Skateboarding and Surfing" (SDSU Press, 2023). 

I am thrilled to have the chance to conduct this work on behalf of the Fred J. Hansen Chair in Peace Studies and I invite you to join me with your ideas and actions as together we forge new pathways to peace and understanding over the next two years.

— David Cline, Hansen Chair