The VIP Lab aims for innovation

What to expect from the KIPJ’s newest development

HALEY JACOB / FEATURE EDITOR / THE USD VISTA

The University of San Diego has always been a leading advocate for political and social awareness. The Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice (KIPJ) continues pushing boundaries in the education and opportunities it provides; such cutting-edge work is reflective of the institute’s initial groundbreaking nature. The KIPJ was founded in 2001, which led to the Joan B. Kroc School of Peace Studies’ establishment in 2007, putting USD on the map for housing the first standalone school of peace in the country.

The Violence, Inequality, and Power Lab (VIP Lab) is the newest addition to the KIPJ. Founded in January, the lab is currently located in the Kroc IPJ Suite and follows the KIPJ’s mission of using applied research to end cycles of violence. The lab will work with cutting-edge research paired with a hands-on approach to confronting local and global issues, hoping to bring people together to discuss and drive change in new ways.

VIP Lab Director Rachel Locke discussed her reasoning for starting the lab.

“There’s this closing of democratic space and a huge rise in popular mobilization and demand for increased justice and reform to the institutions both here in the U.S. and around the world, and those forces are impacting both the possible and the challenges of achieving the possible,” Locke said. “Our intention is to engage these forces, to think about how these forces are fundamentally about power and inequality, and how that shapes not just individual acts of violence, but also the responses that are being proposed to address those individual acts.”

The VIP Lab replaced the previous “Impact:Peace” program at the KIPJ. Executive Director of the KIPJ, Andrew Blum, shared why he expects the lab to bring about more substantial change.

“The Impact:Peace program was an interesting approach,” Blum said. “There was a good underlying theory behind it, but it didn’t work that well in practice. What the lab is, in contrast to that, is that it’s a platform. It’s not a specific program or specific approach, but it’s a platform and almost like an ethos that we’ll do different things with depending on the news we see.”

Locke also provided her take on why the lab holds more promise for concrete action.

“Impact:Peace was more of an initiative; it was about generating evidence but also bringing evidence that others were generating to bear on the most urgent issues in the peacebuilding and conflict and violence prevention space. This is doing that as well, but by creating it as a lab, we’re able to be very explicitly intentional about the experimentation aspects,” Locke said. “So it’s going to be a lot of iteration; we’re going to put something out and then ask questions. We’re also primarily going to be short term, so we’re not going to be creating a project that’s going to be a 10 year-long project, and that’s a bit different than what Impact:Peace could have been doing.”

The execution of these short-term projects will involve expertise from outside partners who will aid the VIP Lab in thinking about new approaches to prevent and reduce violence. Currently, the lab is beginning to work on the issues of climate change, migration, cities and violence, and identity-based mass violence. 

The VIP Lab plans to participate in projects in the San Diego area that allow for student involvement.

“Our work in San Diego specifically would involve students, both graduate and undergraduate students, so we’ve budgeted for student involvement,” Locke said. “The hope is that we would have recurring projects here locally that students could be research assistants in or support events that we’re having that are associated, so there will be many opportunities like that.”

Blum also encouraged students to reach out to the lab and share perspectives and input that will help their team gauge the type of projects the community wants to see happen.

“If students have ideas, reach out to us,” Blum said. “We don’t know exactly what students are passionate about, so we welcome students coming and asking questions, providing input, or giving us ideas about how to get students involved because we don’t deal with undergraduates day-in and day-out. We would love to get good ideas from you all about how to get you all involved.” 

Overall, the main objective of the lab is to normalize and centralize conversations around power inequalities as core to conversations around peacebuilding and violence prevention. It’s essential to address and understand how structural and institutional forces are the leading barriers to achieving progress toward concrete change. 

“More and more talks of power and inequality are being sprinkled into conversations, and I think with that we can do a lot more institutional change about what gets funded, what gets supported, who has a seat at the table, and whose voices matter and all of that other work,” Locke said. “But first, you have to sort of push the conversation forward.”

The Violence, Inequality, and Power Lab is an exciting development for the university and the global effort toward peacebuilding and violence prevention as a whole. As a changemaker campus, USD has a responsibility to lead meaningful conversations about political and social issues that impact our community  and world ­ — imperative  to changemaking at USD. The introduction of the VIP Lab is another powerful step in the right direction.