The Tübingen University (Germany) magazine published an article in its December 2013 edition about graduate students taking part in the study program onboard Peace Boat’s 80th Global Voyage. In August 2013, 20 students of Tubingen’s Peace Research and International Politics Masters Program joined Peace Boat as it traveled through Europe, participating in a program together with Iranian students and Japanese participants.
The program covered diverse topics such as nuclear issues including energy, disarmament and testimonies of Hibakusha (atomic bomb survivors), the Arab Spring, and dealing with war history. Tübingen University and Peace Boat have regularly organized joint program since 2005. According to this article, “today this voyage is a flagship of the MA Peace Research and International Politics”, says Maike Hans, a coordinator of the August 2013 program. The article goes on to share that this is the only such offer to university students in Germany.
In ports of call, students visited several refugee and asylum seekers centers, who explained their reasons to leave their home countries and their current situation living in foreign countries. Anne Romund, another coordinator of the 2013 program, said “We can read reports and statistics, but when we talk directly to people, that has completely another dimension”.
“It is so valuable for students once to leave the university with its models and theories and to see real life”, says Maike Hans. “They can see how theories can apply to reality and how the reality can fit into framework of theories”. Evaluating her experience on Peace Boat, Maike Hans concludes at the end of the article “You learn incredibly a lot about yourself and about other people. This will give me a permanent orientation and will influence my future choice of my career”. Read the rest of the article, “Kreuzfahrt mit friedenspolitischem Anspruch” in the Tübingen University magazine here (in German).