Glen Kuecker, Ph.D.

About Professor Kuecker:

I originally became interested in Conflict Studies because the university administration asked me to serve as program coordinator. This task required that I teach both the introductory course and the senior seminar. In the process of learning this new field, I became keenly interested in the ways conflict analysis could assist me with better understanding the great damage caused by corporate driven, neoliberal globalization in Latin America, as well as some of the great issues facing humanity in the late 20th Century. Teaching Conflict Studies resulted in my doing engaged research and publication on grassroots resistance to globalization in Latin America, and led me to develop research and publications in the topic of catastrophic systemic collapse (see canaryinstitute.org), which has fed back into my teaching. I carry an interest in Conflict Studies because it enables me to be a teacher-scholar, and it allows me to push the boundaries of traditional methods of producing and reproducing knowledge, something I call "academic activism." But, my deepest interest in Conflict Studies has always been the exceptional students who end up being majors. They are models of interdisciplinary explorations of the human condition, a passion for understanding the great problems facing the world, and most often represent the best that liberal education has to offer. Without the students, I'd have little interest in teaching Conflict Studies at DePauw.