In August 2025, David Cline was named as the new Hansen Chair of Peace Studies for two years. Among the initiatives are two focusing on issues of peace and potentials for peace building through grassroots community projects along the US-Mexico border. One project, “Boarder Crossings: Patinetas, Paz y DIY Democracy,” is a skateboard-art project by the border community for the border community. In the face of increasingly violent border and immigration policies and rhetoric that multiply the divisions between our communities by portraying the border as an impenetrable barrier, we believe that a peaceful alternative is modeled by a number of binational grassroots communities. Among them is the community of skaters, a community that is built daily by many young and not-so-young people on both sides of the border. Skateboarding—as a subculture, sport, and popular culture—has always been an element of exchange, cross-pollination, and sharing between California and Baja. Often, this reality has been recounted from only one side, or it’s been obscured by policies that increasingly paint the border as a wall, rather than an interface for building grassroots community that offer an alternative to the narratives of those in power. With Boarder Crossings, we have asked artists, youth, and activists connected to skateboard culture to imagine and represent a different border, starting from their own iconic objects: the skate decks. Twenty-six skateboarder artists from both countries are using skateboard blanks — the the initial stage of a board after it leaves the factory but before having colors, graphics, etc. applied — as canvases on which to create original work commenting on the border and issues of peace and violence. Two international exhibitions of the boards and other artworks will be held in Spring 2026, one at Centro Cultural de la Raza in San Diego, and one at Centro Cultural Tijuana (CECUT). These exhibitions are being supported by programs of lectures, films, skate sessions, and community gatherings.

The other major project is “Stories from the Border,” a collaborative project of the SDSU Center for Public and Oral History, the SDSU University Library, and the Instituto de Investigaciones Historicas at the Universidad Autonoma de Baja California. The purpose of this pilot project is to create online access for researchers to an unparalleled archive of over 700 oral histories about the border region, created and recorded by historians and researchers in Mexico over the last 70 years, while also continuing to record and collect vital oral history interviews about border issues. The first round of new interviews, in 2026, will focus on housing in the border region and connections to violence and peace building. In addition to being supported as part of the Fred J. Hansen Peace Studies initiatives, it is being supported by the Office of the President, San Diego State University.