Charles Thomas William Curle (4 July 1916 – 28 September 2006), better known as Adam Curle, was a British academic, known for his work in social psychology, pedagogy, development studies and peace studies. After holding posts at the University of Oxford, University of Exeter, University of Ghana and Harvard University, in 1973 he became the inaugural Professor of Peace Studies at the University of Bradford, following the establishment of the University's Department of Peace Studies. Curle's works included several books on education, including Educational Strategy for Developing Societies (1963), and a number of books on peace and peacemaking, including Making Peace (1971). He was also, throughout his career and after his retirement in 1978, active in peacemaking and mediation, and visited Nigeria and Biafra several times as part of a Quaker contingent during the Nigerian Civil War of 1967–70.
Early life and education Charles Thomas William Curle was born in L'Isle-Adam, Val-d'Oise, France, on 4 July 1916, as the Battle of the Somme raged nearby. His father was the British author, critic and journalist Richard Curle. His mother was Cordelia Curle (née Fisher), whose siblings included the historian H. A. L. Fisher, the cricketer and academic Charles Dennis Fisher, the naval officer William Wordsworth Fisher, the banker Edwin Fisher, and Adeline Vaughan Williams, the wife of the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams. Their other relatives included the historian Frederic William Maitland, the photographer Julia Margaret Cameron, the author Virginia Woolf and the painter Vanessa Bell. He was named after three of his mother's brothers, and took the name Adam, after his birthplace, after returning to France in 1919.
He grew up in Wheatfield, Oxfordshire, where he developed an affection for animals and a sensitivity to landscape. Richard Curle was not a frequent presence in his son's childhood; Adam did not meet his father until he was three years old. Curle later described how they became closer in Richard's later life, however, "on a man-to-man basis," having "somehow missed the father–son phase". Curle attributed his pacifism to the influence of his mother, who lost three of her brothers to war and instilled a hatred of war in her son. Woodhouse argued that Curle's mother was also responsible for the "self-confidence which was to enable him later to make a series of unconventional moves at critical turning points in his life". His "inclination to kick against convention", however, was identified by Woodhouse as closer to that of Richard Curle.
Curle attended Charterhouse School, where he was unhappy, later recalling having "survived a dreadful conventional schooling ... by playing the flute (mainly Bach), writing poems and reading the mystics". From 1935 he attended New College, Oxford, at first studying history with the intention of becoming a civil servant, then switching to anthropology. He continued his studies at Exeter College, Oxford and the Oxford Institute of Social Anthropology, and in 1938 travelled to Sápmi and the Sahara Desert on field trips.
Career Britain and Pakistan Curle served in the British Army for six years during World War II, rising to the rank of Major and becoming a research officer in the Civil Resettlement Units (CRUs). In this role he was involved in the development of a residential rehabilitation programme which provided counselling, skills training, medical and recreational facilities, and opportunities for social contact, and was tasked with evaluating the effectiveness of the CRUs' work. In this period he developed an interest in psychology, in particular the integration of psychological and anthropological approaches to society, and the psychological effects of traumatic experiences. He received a postgraduate degree in anthropology in 1947, having drawn on his experiences with the CRUs in his work. He began his academic career with a series of journal articles also drawing on those experiences, the first of which was a paper in Human Relations on the experiences of prisoners of war in returning to their communities and the relationship between individual and community.
In 1947 Curle took up a position at the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations, where he researched rural decay in South West England. This work led to his appointment, in 1950, as a lecturer in social psychology at the University of Oxford. While at Oxford in the early 1950s he developed an interest in the connections between social psychology and education policy. While he remained interested in the social psychiatry approach that Tavistock Institute emphasised, he also came to believe in the necessity of education for individuals' psychological stability and positive relationships with others, and published several articles on education policy. His work at Oxford led to his appointment in 1952 to the Chair in Education and Psychology at the University of Exeter, where he remained until 1956.
While at Exeter he became involved in a project focused on development in Europe, and his work took on an international dimension. In 1956 he was invited, via Harvard University, to advise on education policy in Pakistan. Initially planning to stay in Pakistan for a year, he later decided to remain for two additional years, and resigned from his position at Exeter in order to do so. From 1956 to 1959 he was an advisor to the Pakistan Planning Board, in which capacity he travelled in Pakistan (including present-day Bangladesh), including in the Hindu Kush. In addition to education policy, his work in Pakistan concerned health care, housing, labour relations, welfare and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, where he worked among the Pashtun and Kho peoples. He would later frequently refer to his experiences in Pakistan in his lectures and books.
Ghana and Harvard In 1959 Curle was appointed Professor of Education at the University of Ghana. While in Ghana he became a Quaker, which, like his pacifism, he attributed to his mother's influence. He also travelled widely in Africa during this time, and advised the Ghanaian government on education and development. His inaugural lecture, entitled The Role of Education in Developing Societies, was published in 1961. He resigned from the university in 1961, having reached the conclusion that the institution, which was then predominantly white, was "out of place" in a political context marked by the growth of African nationalism. That year he travelled to South Africa with the intention of establishing a college for Black Africans, but was arrested.
Also in 1961 he was appointed director of Harvard University's Centre for Studies in Education and Development, a position he would hold until 1971. While at Harvard he participated in field projects in Barbados, Central America, Nigeria and Tunisia, and returned to Pakistan in 1963 and 1964 as a consultant on education, contributing to Pakistan's third five-year plan. The fieldwork he conducted at Harvard led him to see education policy as vital in achieving and maintaining peace. In 1964 he also became an advisor to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East.
Indo-Pakistani War Curle visited India and Pakistan as part of a Quaker contingent in the wake of the Tashkent Declaration, the January 1966 agreement which ended the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965. The team's roles included gathering information, facilitating communication between the Indian and Pakistani sides, offering assessments of the situation, and proposing possible measures for achieving peace. Curle was selected for the role due to his knowledge and experience of Pakistan. His role involved presenting the case for conciliation to the younger people involved in the conflict and those sceptical of possibilities for peace. The Quakers played only a minor role in maintaining peace in India and Pakistan and did not facilitate a breakthrough in relations, but did help to maintain the less tense relations that had developed. Their report described the history of Quaker activity in the region, outlined Indian and Pakistani viewpoints, and described their own work, and concluded that the onus was on India to take conciliatory measures towards Pakistan.
Nigerian Civil War Known by this time for his work in the fields of pedagogy and development studies, Curle was consulted by governments and charities, and provided mediation in the Nigerian Civil War of 1967–70 as part of a group of three Quakers alongside John Volkmar and Walter Martin. Prior to becoming a mediator in Nigeria Curle had been involved in establishing a model school in Ayetoro, Nigeria. On their initial trip in 1967, their intention was to listen to the parties in conflict and to aid them through conciliation or relief. Arriving before the war began, Curle, Martin and Volkmar met with C. Odumegwu Ojukwu, Hamzat Ahmadu and Okoi Arikpo, and remained hopeful that peace could be maintained; a week after the team left, however, Ojukwu declared the secession of the Republic of Biafra. In early 1968 Curle and Volkmar hosted initial informal talks and met with Yakubu Gowon.
In March 1967 Curle and Martin visited Biafra, where they met with Louis Mbanefo and again with Ojukwu and Gowon. When the Commonwealth Secretariat arranged for public talks to be held in Kampala, Uganda, in May, Curle and his wife Anne were selected to attend as a Quaker delegation. The Curles' role in the Kampala talks involved mediating between Commonwealth Secretary-General Arnold Smith and the Biafrans and proposing possible terms of settlement. In Making Peace Adam described his and Anne's role as involving "persuasion, clarification, message carrying, listening, defusing, honest brokering, encouraging, and liaison with the Commonwealth Secretariat". The Curles then returned to Nigeria, where Adam met again with Gowon. In August 1967 Curle and Volkmar attended the continuing negotiations in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. When Gowon announced a "final push" against Biafra, the Quakers turned their attention to relief operations.
Curle, Volkmar and Martin embarked on another series of trips in September and October 1968. In the continuing impasse, the proposal made by Hamani Diori, the president of Niger, for a Quaker-sponsored meeting was taken up. Ojukwu's representatives expressed interest in Diori's proposal, and Curle discussed the proposal with Smith and a representative of the British government. The stalemate that continued through 1969, however, led the Quakers to once again turn their attention to providing relief. In October 1969, Curle met again with Gowon alongside Volkmar and Kale Williams. In London, Curle and Williams met with Smith and a Biafran representative to discuss issues including the possibility of the Commonwealth Secretariat again becoming involved in negotiations. In January 1970, however, the war ended with the Biafrans' surrender. Curle and Volkmar rejoined Williams on Nigeria days after the surrender, in order to observe the post-war climate and offer conciliation.
C. H. Mike Yarrow, in his study of Quaker reconciliation efforts, argues that the personal qualities and personalities of the Quaker contingent played a pivotal role in their success in building connections with Nigerian and Biafran leaders, though from mid-1968 Yarrow argues the Quaker organisation and the faith it engendered came to play a similar role. While Yarrow argues their listening process was a success, he describes their effectiveness at changing the parties' perceptions of one another in more ambivalent terms. In concluding, Yarrow argued that while the negotiated peace the Quakers sought was not achieved, Yarrow argues that "the peace terms resulting after the military solution were imbued with the spirit of conciliation."