Psychology professor travels India

Psychology professor Paul Bueno de Mesquita has recently returned from a two-week trip to India, and in particular, the remote northeast region of India of Nagaland.

As well as being the instructor for intro-level psychology (PSY 113), Mesquita is Director for the university’s Center for Nonviolence and Peace Studies. Started by Bernard LaFayette, who came in 1999, this program has grown over the years. LaFayette stayed on campus for ten years as a distinguished scholar, in which time he became good friends with Mesquita and his wife who were some of the only professors who partook in his programs.

When LaFayette was getting ready to leave in 2009 for Emory College, where he would continue his teachings of nonviolence, he asked Mesquita if he would continue the Center here at URI.

“I couldn’t refuse him, it was a great honor,” Mesquita said. “In the process I’ve met people from all over the world who have come for our international nonviolence summer training.”

As the director for the Center, Mesquita oversees a lot of programs that they offer, as well as the interdisciplinary minor that students are able to acquire in nonviolence and peace studies. One program is the alternative spring break program that has been held in Nepal the past five years.

Due to the earthquake and difficulties which soon followed in Nepal over the past year, a trip could not be scheduled for the 2016 Spring Break. Despite this setback, Mesquita and his wife were offered to go on a once in a lifetime opportunity in India.

“We were invited by one of our own certified nonviolence trainers,” explains Mesquita about his trip to India. “It began when a young priest by the name of Anto [short for Antonio] came to our center’s annual International Nonviolence training program in the summer of  2014.”

The International Nonviolence Summer Institute, now in year 17,  brings together people from all over the world to learn the teachings from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. These teachings include learning the skills that promote nonviolence, peace, civil resistance, and social change that the participants can bring back to use in their local communities, region, or on a global scale.

As a catholic missionary in the remote northeast India, Father Anto incorporated the methods he learned at URI and came back again this past summer to complete the level two training, which is where he was taught methods for organizing and mobilizing nonviolence programs. In India, he works with the 16 different tribes located in the Indian State Nagaland.

“The people that live in this part of northeast India are disconnected,”  Mesquita says. “Some would say they’re the forgotten people of India… for a number of years it was almost closed to travelers and tourists because it was considered somewhat dangerous.”

In fact, Father Anto has been kidnapped and held at gunpoint multiple times while promoting peace and nonviolence in India.

“Father Anto developed the first masters of social work program,” explains Mesquita. “It was approved two years ago, about the time he took our training here, and he embedded in that masters of social work (which is approved by the Indian Government and affiliated with the University) …a focus, a specialization, in peace and conflict studies… some of our nonviolence training methods he learned here with us have been brought there into their curriculum.”

Mesquita and his wife were invited to speak in two peace conferences in India. Their last week was spent in Nagaland where they were guest lecturers at the second Indian National Peace Convention. They spent a lot of time with Father Anto’s students, showing them the methods that they teach at the Summer Institute in URI. Mesquita explains how these students of Nagaland, “are committed to going back to their tribes as social workers with a conflict and peace skillset to help their communities.”

Right now Mesquita is in the midst of planning a small psychology experiment for his beginning students about smiling and laughter.

“There is some research about laughter and humor that it not only makes us feel good but there are also some other psychological benefits,”  Mesquita said. “It has an evolutionary function, otherwise it wouldn’t be something that humans do all over the world.”

Though the Nepal trip was canceled for this year’s Spring Break, Mesquita is hoping to continue this program and have this alternative spring break trip implemented again for Spring Break in 2017.