About 40 students attended a presentation hosted by Dr. John Haas, where he introduced the impact that women have made in Ireland as peacemakers.

On Thursday, April 14, History Professor John Haas begun displaying Ireland’s beautiful scenery, by featuring images in power points slides.

A short video was also shown demonstrating the amount of violence that went on during 1968 to 1998, which showed the contrast between the beauty of Ireland.

Dr. Haas shared videos of three women he interviewed, and explained the reasons why these women made such an impact in Ireland during these very difficult times.

Women peacemakers included; Monica McWilliams, Bernadette Devlin and Mary Montague.

Along with other women they helped give Northern Ireland the peace it acquired.

For Northern Ireland the biggest issue was identity, either people were Catholic or protestants as well as either Irish or British.

Haas shared the reason why he got so interested in Northern Ireland and its violent conflicts, “I heard about Mary Montague and I wanted to get more interested in Ireland, the more I spoke to Montague the more attractive Northern Ireland was.

“I started to learn more about the history and she just opens up her world it is so amazing how respected she is. When I say respected I mean that she can easily say, John this is a police officer and they know Montague and all a sudden I am friends.

He continued, “I just got fascinated specially when I heard that women are written out of history, I see that and I feel like it is my job to remedy that.”

The violence has diminished drastically after 30 years, but if anyone visits Northern Ireland today they will see the walls separating certain areas to set people aside from each other and to basically prevent violence from happening.

Little by little these walls are coming down, like Mary Montague said “peace is a process” it does not happen from one day to the other.

The efforts are still there to make Ireland a better place.

Joseph Gustamante, paralegal major, shared his experience, “I have Dr. Haas for History 245 and I just kind remember growing up and always hearing in the news about Northern Ireland and all its conflicts but I never really knew the dialogue or knew what it was all about so it was really interesting.

“I learned a lot after the presentation, for example I did not know that the women were involved with the peace protest going in Ireland. It was really interesting to see women come together to help a big issue like this.

He continued, “One thing that is still happening everywhere really is how identity is a major issue all over the world. It something similar to Mexican Americans, when you go back to Mexico you get discriminated because they consider you to be American and when you come here you are discriminated because you are Mexican so your identity is between both nations it is a unique situation to be in, where your home country rejects you and your adopted country rejects you as well.”

For history major, Veronica Rodriguez, this event opened her eyes to the segregation happening in Northern Ireland.

“I did not know much of the country at all, that was interesting to learn. I’m probably going to go buy a book on it now.

“I did not know there was so much conflict with a community that is similar in ethnicity but to have such a conflict with religion, that was pretty shocking to me.