[The] chair of Berkeley's Peace and Conflict Studies Department, said the university's program has increasingly been accepted by the academic community as a serious area of study since it was founded 25 years ago. He noted interest in the program has been bolstered by intellectual interest in the Sept. 11 attacks, Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Social critic Herb London, president of the Hudson Institute, a domestic and international policy think tank, said the programs are based on the flawed assumptions that conflicts conform to objective rules that can be analyzed and differences that can be talked out.

"There's a flaw that rational discourse always gives you an understanding of world affairs, but it doesn't because people don't always act rationally," he said.

Some think the idea of peace programs is so good they want a federal agency dedicated to it.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, who hopes to win the Democratic nomination to run against President Bush in 2004, wants to take peace education to the next level by creating a Department of Peace in the president's executive cabinet.

Kucinich has introduced legislation to create the department and wants to establish a 'peace academy' modeled after military service academies that will provide a four-year concentration in peace education.