Communicate Beyond Words: Investigating the Polarized Discourses of Conflict Entrepreneurs to Secure Peace and Stability in Ethiopian Universities

Abstract

The prominent objective of this paper is to investigate polarized discourses of conflict Entrepreneurs so as to secure peace and stability in the Ethiopian universities. Conflict Entrepreneurs are those who have been fabricating hate speeches, disinformation, hate crimes, polarized ethnocentric and religious discourses to create crisis. As a result, dozens of universities are at different levels of chaos and crisis starting from 2015 than ever before in its severity and calamity. The sources of the problem seemed to be the slanted discourses of conflict Entrepreneurs. To unpack the problem, data were collected in natural settings of universities and other source by using chain or snowballing sampling techniques focusing on crisis and its causes. Key informant interviews, document analysis and reports of all universities at different meetings of universities were employed to gather data. The analysis was done on emerging and existing polarized discourses of conflict entrepreneurs. The overall findings revealed that because of the polarized and pretext discourses of conflict Entrepreneurs, there were crisis on human and non-human elements in dozens of Ethiopian universities. Therefore, pragmatic social vaccines (trainings and education), should be designed and implemented in all universities to secure peace and stability since the sources of the problem and the proposed solutions are almost similar.