PCJ Alum Ray Acheson is the Director of Reaching Critical Will at the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom and recently published "Banning the Bomb, Smashing the Patriarchy." We caught up with Ray to learn about their journey in the PCJ program and how it has impacted their career.
From meetings at the United Nations to a Nobel Prize winning campaign, Ray has fervently advocated for the disarmament of weapons and shed light on feminist issues in politics. Time and time again, this has been at the core of Ray’s activism, having worked with campaigners around the world and activists on the ground. Ray’s degree in Peace and Conflict Studies has helped them use an interdisciplinary approach to their work and connect these issues of disarmament to broader social movements.
When did you graduate from PCJ and what other programs did you study at U of T?
I graduated from U of T in 2005 with an honours bachelors in Peace and Conflict Studies (PCJ’s former name!). For my degree, I did a mix of political science and political theory, as well as history, philosophy, and sociology.
What was your favourite aspect of PCJ?
One of the best things about PCJ is the flexibility of the program design, which allowed me to explore different interests. What also made PCJ such a cool program was that you had core courses where you’d be engaging with your cohort. Through this experience, we were able to bring in lots of different perspectives and learning into just one course and I really appreciated that.
PCJ is such a broad and interdisciplinary program. How were you able to explore your interests and find a path that suited you?
During my studies, my interests changed so the flexibility and ability to adapt my program design was great. I started out with a heavier program in terms of political science, but then as I went along, I found history and philosophy to be just as important for me because I wanted to look deeper into the different theoretical perspectives and historical ideas and contexts underlying issues relating to peace, conflict and justice.
What influence did PCJ have on your path both at U of T and beyond?
I knew that I wanted to do something that was related to what I had studied and ended up getting a position with an organization in Boston called the Institute for Defense and Disarmament Studies that was run by a woman who was instrumental in the nuclear freeze movement in the 1980s.
I learned so much at that position that after I graduated from U of T, it made me realize that I wanted to do something in disarmament, even though that hadn’t necessarily been a huge part of my education. After that internship, I ended up at the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) and I’ve stayed there ever since.
What does your day-to-day work entail?
On behalf of WILPF, I’m on the steering groups of three different global civil society campaigns, one of them being the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017 for our work with governments on the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
I’m also on the steering group of the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, which is trying to prevent the development of autonomous weapon systems, and the International Network on Explosive Weapons, which is trying to end bombing in towns and cities. A lot of this kind of work involves organizing internationally and advocating directly with governments at the United Nations to foster dialogue and achieve action on disarmament and demilitarization. I also work with campaigners in different countries around the world to elevate national policies, education, and awareness efforts, including connecting with students and other activists to talk about what is happening in the United Nations and to connect up with other movements for social justice.
What is something that you wish you knew when you were in PCJ?
I wish had studied more about disarmament and feminist theory — to get as broad an understanding as possible and to fill in gaps in my knowledge of justice, and to challenge the lack of diversity in what we were reading and learning. In hindsight, it would be good to have sat down and checked the syllabus every semester to see how diverse the readings are in each course.
Do you have any last piece of advice for current students?
Personally, engaging with different social justice initiatives on campus really helped me contextualize what I was learning in class and it also gave me the desire to be involved in activism and organizing and advocacy even after I graduated, so I’d encouraged current students to get involved with issues that they’re passionate about.
Another thing to keep in mind is that we have to be relentless in our advocacy and activism. So even when it feels like we’re probably going to “lose” or no one is listening to us, we have to keep trying, because if we’re not saying anything that no one’s saying anything and then nothing can ever change. If you don’t know the issue, it can feel like change happened overnight, but for people that have been working at it for long time, they can see the trajectory and how they’ve built that shift overtime. I think the unpredictability of change requires us to keep going even when it feels like all is lost, because it probably isn’t.
To add to that point, I want to stress the importance of working in coalitions, because if we are just doing this alone as an individual activist, it can get very lonely and disheartening, but if we’re working with others, then we can step back and take a break when we need to, and can be can be the ones providing inspiration and energy when others need to step back. We can hold each other up, and we can build community with each other.