The phrase "in times of war" suggests that there are also times of peace. War and peace are much more complex social and political phenomena than simply armed militaristic conflict between and among nation states or the lack thereof; their complexity lies in the fact that victors of "war" inevitably determine the substance of "peace." As such the absence of armed conflict does not necessarily mean that the war is over. It simply means that one faction has the power to control their "enemy" to the extent that the enemy no longer has the resources or the will to fight back on a scale recognized by the victors as war. This state of war might be called the "hegemony of peace," because it signals the domination of power in the service of social and political order. The hegemony of peace makes invisible asymmetrical relations of power and thus narrates a story of social order, the ruling formation being the benefactor of "social integration." When violence does erupt during these periods of apparent calm, it is usually repressed in the name of order or isolated in areas and among people who are repeatedly victimized by the hegemony of peace. Another way to come at this problem is to disentangle the notion of order from the notion of peace. The outward appearance of both might be quite similar. However, underlying order, especially order dictated from above or through force and/or persuasion (i.e., propaganda, schooling, media, etc.) is often a quiet war of resistance. Peace, by contrast, signals in the best sense, a degree of order that has been shaped through agonistic or respectful struggle. In this context, times of peace are animated by a substantive degree of mutual respect among competing parties. In this article, the author refers to both the hegemony of peace, as well as armed militaristic struggles to critically reflect upon and pedagogically examine the concept of "innocence" as it was taken up in one of his most recent graduate seminars. He begins, however, by discussing what he sees as some of the unique challenges and questions for critical teaching during these times of war. (Contains 19 notes.)