There were many great break-out session talks at the Life and Learning Conference earlier this month. I was unable to attend them all, but in the next few posts I will give a description of some of them that I did hear.
Because of the multidisciplinary nature of UFL, one can hear talks from a great many disciplines. One interesting talk was by psychologist Rachel MacNair, president of the Peace Psychology division of the American Psychological Association. McNair is heading an APA presidential task force which deals with three areas: weapons drone, capital punishment, and abortion. She described the highly charged process of getting the abortion paper written.
The subtopics of the abortion paper are: domestic violence, coercion, and genocide/sex selection. It is written in part as a response to the APA Task Force on Mental Health and Abortion, which took a strong pro-abortion stance. MacNair hopes the paper will give a new perspective to some members of APA who are pro-abortion, but have not heard of the extreme psychological effects of abortion from a peace psychology approach.
MacNair is looking for reviewers of the three papers (Drones, Capital Punishment, Abortion). They can be from any discipline. If you would like to be a reader, e-mail her at rachel_macnair@yahoo.com.