Give Peace an Institute

Give Peace an Institute

Dreams of a peace academy are almost as old as the nation. In 1793, Astronomer Benjamin Banneker bemoaned the four-year-old Constitution's failure to create an agency to check and balance the Department of War. Banneker's noble if somewhat woolly ambition lingered through two World Wars, Korea and Viet Nam: between 1 955 and 1968 alone, 85 different bills in support of a peace academy entered Congress, only to languish there. It was therefore somewhat of a surprise last week when after a long night of haggling over a $297 billion military authorization bill, members of a House and Senate conference approved $16 million toward the creation of a U.S. Institute of Peace.

The new Washington-based institute would function like an academic foundation, disbursing grants to universities and scholars. Though Congress must first formally appropriate the money, many legislators are convinced that the Peace Institute is at hand. "The price is right," explains Kansas Congressman Dan Glickman, a Democrat. "The funding for the first year is about one-fifth the cost of a single F-15." Around midnight, after a full day of work without a dinner break, the peace-loving conferees were supplied with one of war's little horrors: the latest in C rations, featuring ham loaf with beans and tomato sauce.