• ICAR's Applied Practice and Theory Program (APT) Awarded $92,000 by Surdna Foundation
• ICAR: Commonwealth Center of Excellence
• Director's Column: ICAR's Fifteenth Anniversary: 1982-1997
• ICAR at Fifteen
• The Real Origins of ICAR: An Experiment in Conflict Resolution Archaeology
• Mary Lynn Boland Award
• Lessons Learned: Conflict Resolution and the Media, The Voice of America Experience
• African Peacemakers Encounter
• In Different Voices: Gender and Cultural Diversity in Conflict
• ICAR Alumni Send Congratulations on ICAR's 15th Anniversary
• Peace and Conflict Studies and The International Journal of Peace Studies
• Duquesne University Hosts National Conference on Peacemaking
• Faculty Updates

With a Surdna Foundation award of $92,000, ICAR's Applied Practice and Theory Program (APT) expanded its work at several area sites, more than tripling its on-the-ground program activity during 1996-1997. Surdna funding and support made possible the hiring of two new faculty and the assignment of a graduate research assistant to each of the three local area APT Teams. With this expanded work force, the APT Teams built on previous activity in their respective communities and initiated a number of new projects.

Rewards of this expansion were the APT Program's ability to exceed its earlier commitments to deliver conflict resolution services at selected sites and to advance ICAR's academic and theoretical work. The Surdna Foundation's grant has additional value in that it will provide opportunities to publish and to enrich ICAR's Conflict Curriculum and theoretical models. APT Governance Team Leader Professor Wallace Warfield's recently published article, "Building Consensus for Racial Harmony in American Cities: A Case Model Approach" in The Journal of Dispute Resolution, analyzes response to a troubling community crisis; the article parallels some aspects of his APT Team's experience in Arlington County, Virginia.

Since 1993 ICAR has maintained three Applied Practice and Theory Project Teams: the APT Divided Societies Team, active in inner-city Washington, D.C.; the APT Governance Team, working with the Arlington County, Virginia, Department of Parks and Recreation; and the APT Racial and Ethnic Conflict in Schools Team (formerly Identity and Conflict Team), conducting a range of projects and trainings in Northern Virginia and Washington, D.C., metropolitan area schools and their local communities.

This year, with partial support from the Surdna grant, ICAR's APT Teams brought on board Clinical Professor Dr. Sandra I. Cheldelin, Coordinator of ICAR's Divided Societies Team, and Professor Marsha Blakeway, Coordinator of ICAR's Racial and Ethnic Conflict in Schools Team (Professor Blakeway serves during Professor Frank Blechman's absence on sabbatical); additionally, each team and its community was assigned an ICAR graduate research assistant. Professor Wallace Warfield continued to serve as Coordinator of ICAR's Governance Team.

The APT Divided Societies Team expanded its presence and added new projects in Washington, D.C.'s Mt. Pleasant district. Expanding from four to seven, its new members are faculty advisor and team coordinator Dr. Sandra Cheldelin; graduate research assistant Nike Carstarphen; ICAR doctoral students Davin Bremner and John Windmueller; and master's students Maile Beers, Anthony Kargbo, and Barry MacMillan. During summer and fall 1996, the team met weekly to create a cohesive and productive working group and expand its knowledge of community agencies, organizations, and service providers in its Washington, D.C., neighborhood.

Community Services and Conflict Resolution Trainings. Working collaboratively with the Mt. Pleasant Advisory Neighborhood Commission's Sub-Committee on Housing and Economic Development, the team convened community-wide meetings focused on local economic development models and opportunities. The team conducted and participated in a series of Conflict Resolution Workshops for groups of homeless and adult women at a neighborhood service organization, Martha's Table, and conducted a "Mini-Training on Anger Management and Conflict Resolution" for GED students at the Academy of Hope.

Strategic Decision Making. In November 1996 the team refocused its efforts primarily on the District's youth and began to develop linkages with agencies concerned with children and young adults of the greater Mt. Pleasant District. The team designed a new initiative in collaboration with Janet Murdock of the local Latin American Youth Center (LAYC) to offer a series of after-school conflict workshops for Latino youth; topics covered included Mediation; Conflict and Me; Culture and Violence; and How Do We Help People Solve Problems? The team is now developing a Conflict Resolution Manual which includes lesson plans and an evaluation model to assess the team's work with LAYC, in this and in future years.

In January 1997, in collaboration with Ms. Sandra Dang, Director of Washington's Indochinese Community Center (ICC), the team developed a formal proposal to provide a Conflict Resolution Training Program for youths participating in ICC's Youth Leadership Project in spring 1997. The team conducted a "Training of Trainers Program" for ICC youth and staff and integrated this training into a broader training and dialogue project with other youth groups in the Mt. Pleasant, Adams Morgan, and Columbia Heights sections of the District of Columbia.

Meeting the Community's Perceived Needs. Efforts of community leaders advocating on behalf of others to build bridges between people in their communities are greatly enhanced by their ability to understand the root causes of conflicts and violence and their development of skills in communicating how to resolve perceived differences. Using ICAR's Conflict Resolution Training Methodology which teaches these skills, the team is offering training to the community on: Attitudes and Approaches to Conflict; Interpersonal Communication Skills; Collaborative Problem Solving; Conflict Intervention and Mediation; and Violence Prevention.

The Community Service School Project. The team has joined a Working Group which is convening leaders of the District's grass-roots community organizations, service provider agencies, schools, universities, and concerned parents, youth, and local residents in Columbia Heights and Mt. Pleasant to create an after-school and Saturday program a Community Service School. This school will be a hub which will enable the community to expand job skills and provide academic and recreational opportunities to neighborhood youth and adults. The Working Group conducted a needs assessment and held several community-wide meetings throughout the fall; it is now working with the Bruce-Monroe Elementary School to locate the school in its neighborhood. Target date for opening is summer 1997.

Future Directions. Expanding geographical "boundaries," as the team has already begun to do, will be continued; the Mt. Pleasant area's overlapping neighborhoods are very much involved with the divisions and splits in the greater metropolitan district. While community organizations and service providers serving on the Working Group American Friends Service Committee, D.C. Peace and Economic Justice Program, Capital Area Community Food Bank, Community First, Empower America Services, Inc., Good Shepherd, Interfaith Conference of Metropolitan Washington, Jubilee Jobs, Latin American Youth Center, Latin Economic Development Corporation, Sojourners Neighborhood Centerare diverse, all have common goals; expanding and integrating additional neighborhood resource providers into this network is an additional future goal.

The APT Governance Team. APT Governance Team members: faculty coordinator Professor Wallace Warfield; graduate research assistant Marlett Phillips; doctoral students Sharon MacDonald, Giselle Huamani Ober, Linda Johnston; master's students Tracy Breneman, Deirdre Gallagher, Pat Tallarico, Warren Prescott; adjunct student from George Mason's Department of Public and International Affairs, Lee Briggs.

The Team's Goals. The team is assisting the Arlington County Department of Parks, Recreation and Community Resources ("Parks & Rec") in designing a Conflict Prevention and Resolution Training Program to be implemented with identified populations at designated county recreational sites. In 1996 the team provided Conflict Resolution Tools and Clinical Skills Training to Parks & Rec's staff development program to prepare staff to respond to conflicts preventatively rather than on a reactive basis. While continuing its active engagement with Parks & Rec, due to a reorganization taking place throughout Parks & Rec's system, the team has put site or staff-specific training planned for fall 1996 on hold. Because area managers are being transferred or replaced, and field staff shifted as well, training is on hold until the reorganization is completed.

Anticipated Emergent Conflict. The team's monitoring of community dynamics during the reorganization shows that the department has received mixed reviews in affected communities, in part due to negative reaction to field management shifts which have raised community fears that the reorganization will result in the elimination or downsizing of favored programs. Parks & Rec, with the aid of the team, is working proactively to avoid potentially disruptive conflict with diverse community populations across the county.

Working With Parks & Rec's Upper Management. In winter 1997 the team met with Parks & Rec's upper management and with area managers newly in place at four recreational sites, to aid in restructuring Parks & Rec's Policies and Procedures in order to make them congruent with conflict dynamics emerging in the field pursuant to the reorganization. Pairing up with Parks & Rec's four new area managers, it conducted activities which include: 1) designing collaborative approaches to Parks & Rec Policy and Procedures through facilitated dialogue; 2) assisting area managers in facilitating dialogues with community residents to avoid the "Solomon's Trap" of decide-announce-defend, which tends to escalate conflict rather than resolve or mitigate it; 3) conflict prevention by familiarizing Parks & Rec Staff with the spiral of unmanaged conflict, indicating how conflict intervention can be used at various stages and, more importantly, underscoring the value of conflict prevention; 4) designing Parks & Rec User Survey Instruments that staff will use to evaluate current levels of user receptivity to Parks & Rec programs.

Intercultural Cooperation: The Nauck Community. The team is designing conflict resolution approaches to reduce conflict and promote intercultural cooperation in South Arlington's Nauck Community (one of the four sites mentioned above). It will assist the area manager in spring 1997 to conduct a user survey of diverse community residents to aid staff in reducing cross-cultural competition and divisiveness among facilities users and expand opportunities for cross-cultural cooperation.

The Racial and Ethnic Conflict in Schools APT Team members: faculty coordinator Professor Marsha S. Blakeway; graduate research assistant Mara L. Schoeny; doctoral students Robert Harris, Craig Zelizer; master's students Kris Butler Mejia, Laura Marshall, Karen Stapleton.

The Team's Mapping Project. During fall 1996 the team interviewed school, government and juvenile justice officials, community activists and others in the District of Columbia, Prince George's County and Montgomery County, Maryland, and in Fairfax, Arlington, and Loudoun counties and the city of Alexandria, Virginia, to develop information on sources of youth violence, use of intervention methods and local alternatives, and the existence of communication links between groups. The team drafted analyses linking its findings to relevant theories in the field of Conflict Analysis and Resolution. Contact information was used to develop a database and a directory of regional contacts and resources.

The team is now preparing a resource paper discussing relevant theories and their application to intervention strategies in addition to a networking directory for school and community leaders to promote increased communication between the major public and private parties and agencies in the region.

APT Teams Fall 1997 Conference. In fall 1997 the team, working in collaboration with the Divided Societies and Governance Teams, will conduct the Institute's Annual 1997 Conference, "Youth Violence: Integrating Community Approaches." The teams have convened an innovative pre-conference planning group which brings area youth together with local educators and representatives of grass-roots organizations, law enforcement, and local government agencies, for a series of monthly roundtable sessions leading up to the conference. The goal of this process is to create a lasting network of people who will seek ongoing ways to link and integrate efforts to address youth violence. At the first pre-conference roundtable, held in Washington, D.C., participants enthusiastically expressed support for the project's goals and objectives, engaged in a broad discussion of youth violence, how it is presented in the media, and ways that schools and communities can collaborate to address the problem. Upcoming sessions will focus on: Mapping Our Communities Challenges and Resources; Sources of Youth Violence; and Intervention Strategies Integrated vs. Single-Track. The information generated from these discussions will be integrated into the final preparations for ICAR's Fall 1997 Conference.

Falls Church, Va., Community Coalition. The team is collaborating with Fairfax County Public Schools' "Safe and Drug Free Schools Program" to help develop a Falls Church Schools/Community Coalition. Fairfax County's school system is divided into three areas. Each has a pyramid consisting of a high school, an associated middle school, and a number of linked elementary schools; while some have successfully developed and implemented School/Community Coalitions, others have encountered difficulties in establishing a program. In December 1996 team members met with representatives of the County Schools Administration and attended its Coalition-Building Workshops to define areas in which the team could potentially be of assistance. The team is now working with the Falls Church Pyramid to develop and maintain a coalition, assessing its previous efforts and the experience of other coalitions which might provide a basis to launch the Falls Church program. Team members are meeting with local leadership to facilitate organization of the coalition structure with an emphasis on developing strategies for youth participation.

Youth/Gang Dialogues. The team developed a successful series of dialogues between Fairfax County Police and youth with previous or current ties to gangs or gang activities and has expanded the dialogue format to include potential dialogues between gang-involved youth as well as between non-gang-involved and gang-involved youth. The team is now determining how to select youth participants and develop appropriate methods to ensure the safety of participants and facilitators. The dialogue project presented unanticipated logistical challenges resulting from a need for increased security based upon gang members' participation in the project. To meet safety and voluntary participation issues, which are complicated outside a framework involving police, the team is incorporating probation officers and community leaders into the dialogues. It will continue to build additional community and institutional relationships in order to expand this project in the future. The dialogues have reinforced collaborative strategies to address youth violence and demonstrated ICAR's importance as a community resource in this process.

Involving Youth in Conflict Resolution. The Schools Team has integrated the involvement of young people in its projects, particularly in its pre-conference round-tables, so that youth may partner with adults to address issues of common concern. Their participation in this process reinforces the team's commitment to talking "with" youth rather than "about" them and helps establish and enhance youth's role as partners with adults in crafting solutions.

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The Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution has been designated a Virginia Commonwealth Center for Excellence and awarded $325,000 by the Virginia State Assembly. This award will be used to expand ICAR core faculty and to provide graduate student support.

The Virginia State Council of Higher Education's Commonwealth Center Award is in recognition of ICAR's "existing excellence in its interdisciplinary field," and for ICAR and its faculty's "top ranking in the field, both nationally and internationally." The council has stated that the "essential attribute with which a Commonwealth Center is identified is knowledge its discovery, development, application, and transfer to students and others for enlightenment, further analysis, refinement, and use."

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The fifteenth anniversary of the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution offers an excellent opportunity to reflect back on the major issues on the global agenda in 1982 and what has happened to the world and to the Institute in the interim.

Between 1982 and 1997 ICAR became a highly respected international leader in the newly expanding academic field of Conflict Analysis and Resolution. Its curriculum is now emulated by programs worldwide and its graduates are in high demand. ICAR receives requests from around the globe to help design and implement processes that will aid in the resolution of deep-rooted and intractable conflicts. The Institute's teaching, research and practice program has evolved, in a delicate counterpoint, in the context of major national and international crises.

In 1982, as the Center for Conflict Analysis and Resolution began to establish itself, the world was racked by a number of conflicts, many of which, not yet finally resolved, continue to generate a malign influence over national and global affairs.

In Israel, Menachem Begin, Prime Minister in 1982, ordered the invasion of Lebanon and told his Knesset that the West Bank which he labeled Judea and Samaria "would belong to the Jewish people for all generations." Israeli forces moved into the Christian sector of Beirut, bombing the Muslim-dominated Western part of the city for most of the summer of 1982. While the Israeli Army succeeded in driving more than 11,000 Palestinian fighters out of Lebanon, they also established a political atmosphere that made possible the Sabra and Shatila UN Refugee Camp massacres and the creation of a malign cycle for the ensuing peace processes. Despite the heady optimism generated by the more recent Oslo initiatives, those 1982 events continue to cast a deep shadow over Israeli-Palestinian relations. They have obstructed the long-term transformation of hostile relations between Israelis and Palestinians. Paradoxically, the invasion of Lebanon and expulsion of the PLO generated additional insecurity for Israel and made the possibility of a permanent land settlement for the Palestinians more difficult.

Over the years the Institute has grappled with the elusive quest for a compassionate peace in the Middle East and in the last two years has been engaged in a collaborative partnership with Palestinian scholars at the University of Bethlehem to develop conflict resolution programs within the university and the community. Thus, an opportunity exists in Palestine for the Institute and others to help all parties move toward a more stable peace in the region.

1982 was also the year when British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher restored her flagging political popularity by dispatching a task force of more than 100 British naval vessels to repel the Argentinean invasion of the Falkland Islands. This "last hurrah" of empire was an anachronistic show of force against Argentinean President Leopoldo Fortunato Galtieri, described by the British as "a tinpot dictator." The battle for the Falkland/Malvinas Islands lasted seventy-four days and resulted in the loss of 255 British and up to 1,000 Argentinean lives.

Although Britain's war succeeded in removing the Argentinean troops from the islands, it did not result in any solution of the underlying conflict over sovereign right to the territory. After the invasion, current ICAR faculty member Chris Mitchell and former ICAR faculty member John Burton were involved in a series of second-track initiatives aimed at restoring civil relations between Argentina and Britain. Although in the short term these discussions did not succeed, the problems they identified as requiring a solution remain on the active agenda, which demonstrates that even when force seems to work, it normally leaves a range of unresolved issues to address at a later stage.

In 1982 another major war erupted in the Middle East when Ayatollah Khomeini's Iranian Army invaded Iraq to capture Basra and counter the 1980 Iraqi invasion of its territory. This invasion aimed to overthrow President Saddam Hussein and create an Iraqi Islamic Republic modeled on Iran's. It aroused widespread concern about challenges to "moderate" Arab states from militant Islam. Again, the more peaceful processes of conflict resolution were ignored as land battles since World War II, killing thousands on each side.

The legacy of this conflict and its Gulf War sequel continues to exert a negative influence over inter-Arab relations and Israeli-Palestinian peace processes and remains an issue which must be addressed if there is to be any chance of a lasting peace in the Middle East. Although these conflicts are complex, the Institute (with more resources and an expanded faculty) has the experience to help diagnose and design processes that may advance post-conflict peace agreements, peace building, and reconciliation in that part of the world.

When ICAR was established the Soviet Union was still in existence; President Brezhnev had died and been succeeded by President Andropov who in turn was replaced by President Chernenko who three years later, was replaced by Mikhael Gorbachev. Thus the Institute's significant expansion coincided with the ending of the Cold War and the unraveling of the Soviet empire. Since 1989 ICAR faculty and many of its students have been involved with the conflicts that have emerged out of the transition from a command Communist economy to capitalism. Several faculty have worked on the development of new security architecture in Europe and Asia and on the evolution of conflict resolution and confidence-building measures within the OSCE and the ASEAN Regional Forums in South East and East Asia.

ICAR faculty have helped develop conflict resolution programs in partnership with universities in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Turkey, and, most recently, the Republic of Georgia. These programs are a direct response to the expansion of the diverse irredentist identity conflicts which accompanied the collapse of the Soviet Union. In all these efforts the Institute has tried to play a role that is analytic, neutral, and useful to the key players in the region. In January 1997 the Institute facilitated an interactive problem solving workshop between Georgian and Abkhazian Parliamentarians as part of an effort to try to prevent the resurgence of civil war in Georgia.

What has become apparent over the years since 1982 is that conflicts, such as those in the former Yugoslavia, in Cambodia, or in Afghanistan, do not resolve themselves. Unless facilitated transformational processes take place, these conflicts mutate and continue to wreak havoc on citizens. In Afghanistan, for example, following the Soviet Union's withdrawal in 1988, diverse militia fought for dominance. The supremacy of the Taliban has now resulted in the radical reassertion of Sharia law in Afghanistan, which is generating a quite different set of conflicts for Afghanis and their regional neighbors.

While it is impossible for the Institute to be involved with every conflict that materializes, where conflicts interlock, as they do in the Middle East or in Central Asia, it is important that faculty and students are informed enough to make positive analytical and critical contributions when called upon to do so. The Institute has observed the evolution of many national, regional, and global conflicts since 1982. Those outlined above were of direct interest and engaged both faculty and students in analyzing the situations and in designing specific "small scale" interventions. In others, such as those brokered by United States Assistant Secretary of State Chester Crocker in relation to the Angolan, Cuban, and South African conflicts, the Institute was on the sidelines keeping a watching brief.

Whether the Institute has taken an active and direct role or not in the diverse national and global conflicts of the past fifteen years, it has been challenged and changed by each one. Each victim of a violent conflict or war diminishes us all as human beings. Each of these conflicts, and there are many others the American invasion of Panama, the Chinese destruction of the democracy movement in Tien An Min Square, the nightmares of Bosnia, Croatia, Serbia, and Nagorno-Karabakh and the wholesale slaughter in Burundi, Rwanda, and now Zaire (to name a few) forces us to question whether our theories are adequate to confront the magnitude of the world's current calamities.

The Institute and the field are challenged over the coming years to ask if our academic curricula and our intervention and conflict system designs are adequate to the tasks of pre-empting, managing, and eliminating violent conflict. There are some more general questions to be addressed as well. How do we ensure that human beings gain control over their limbic systems, the hypothalamus, hippocampus, and amygdala where aggression is catalyzed, so that they may respond to problems in an ethically informed and principled fashion? How do we ensure that our theories and practice are adequate to resolve conflict nonviolently? How do we evaluate and refashion our work to ensure that ICAR's next fifteen years is as progressive as the last? Finally, how do we all ensure that the 21st century will be one of maturity, wisdom, and the ascendence of civil society rather than one of continuing barbarism?

Kevin P. Clements, Ph.D.
Director

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We have all read articles that mark a certain passage of time since an institution's founding which trumpet its achievements, flatter its personnel, cheer on its faithful supporters, and pretend that its most ambitious dreams have been realized. In this space an institution less adventuresome than the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution might publish such an "anniversary piece"--a public relations handout masquerading as an objective appraisal. As for ICAR, that is not our style. Our fifteenth anniversary provides us with the welcome opportunity to reflect on a course of development that has fulfilled some of our fondest hopes, while falling short of the mark in other respects. As we rededicate ourselves to carrying out our chosen mission, we need to clearly assess where we have succeeded and where major new efforts are needed.

ICAR's intention has been from the beginning to create a community of scholars and activists, theorists and practitioners, teachers, students, alumni, and friends, able to make a substantial contribution to deepening the understanding of deep-rooted social conflicts and effective ways of resolving them. Peace has been our mission, not just the absence of war and certainly not the absence of conflict but the humanization of conflict and its redirection toward the goal of satisfying basic human needs. With these aims in mind, how are we doing? What obstacles have we encountered? How can we strive to overcome them in the next fifteen years? This essay represents one participant's perspective on ICAR's performance to date and its prospects for the future. Needless to say, my views do not necessarily reflect those of my colleagues, of the Institute, or of George Mason University.

We may begin with a brief sketch of the Institute's history. The Center for Conflict Resolution (CCR), as ICAR was first called, was founded in 1981 by an interdisciplinary group of George Mason University faculty from the departments of Sociology and Anthropology, Communications, Psychology, and Public Affairs. (Persons important to ICAR's development are listed in the box below.) Led by psychiatrist and peace theorist Dr. Bryant Wedge and governed by a faculty advisory board, CCR's primary mission was to design and teach an interdisciplinary master's level curriculum in Conflict Studies and to undertake original research in this newly emerging field. Its leaders also hoped to provide a home for the proposed National Academy of Peace and Conflict Resolution then being considered by the United States Congress.

The master's program developed by CCR's innovative scholars was initiated in the fall semester of 1981 and taught on a part-time basis by faculty members from other George Mason University departments. With its interdisciplinary input and mix of theoretical and laboratory-simulation courses, the curriculum later served as a prototype for subsequent curricula at ICAR and, indeed, at many other universities. The National Academy of Peace eventually became the United States Institute of Peace (USIP). While they are not formally affiliated, ICAR and USIP have engaged in collaborative work over the years. ICAR's structure of an academic "core faculty" working collaboratively with affiliated organizations survived; our affiliates have included the Conflict Clinic, Inc., the Consortium on Peace Research, Education, and Development (COPRED), the National Conference on Peacemaking and Conflict Resolution (NCPCR), and the Northern Virginia Mediation Service (NVMS).

In 1986 an institutional revolution of sorts occurred when John W. Burton, former Head of the Australian Foreign Office and founder of the University of London's pioneering Conflict Resolution Program, joined the Center as Distinguished Visiting Professor. A man of broad experience, innovative ideas, and strongly held opinions, Burton's overall goal was to help establish Conflict Analysis and Resolution as an autonomous discipline liberated from the assumptions and methods governing other disciplines. His particular aims, which strongly influenced the Center's work, were to focus research on long-term conflict resolution, not just temporary settlement of disputes; to develop the theory of Basic Human Needs as a basis for understanding deep-rooted social conflicts; and to put theory to the test of practice by developing and facilitating analytical problem-solving workshops.

In 1987 CCR became CCAR: the Center for Conflict Analysis and Resolution. With Director Joseph Scimecca and Professor Dennis Sandole, John Burton drafted a major grant proposal that was funded by the Hewlett Foundation and later renewed. Additional funding, which was provided by the University and by our benefactors Edwin and Helen Lynch and Drucie French and Steven Cumbie, made it possible to hire four senior faculty members committed to teaching full-time in the program. Meanwhile, an active community-based advisory board raised funds locally to support student research assistants and helped connect the Center more closely to its Northern Virginia constituency.

The Center's PhD Program--the first doctoral program in Conflict Analysis and Resolution in the United States--was launched in fall 1988. In that same year the Vernon M. and Minnie I. Lynch Annual Lectures were inaugurated with a lecture by our late colleague, Professor James H. Laue. John Burton remained at the Center until 1990, long enough to see his four-volume Conflict Series, written and edited with ICAR graduate Frank B. Dukes, to completion and publication by St. Martin's Press. During this period, the Center sponsored conferences which led to important publications on Basic Human Needs Theory, Mapping the Field of Conflict Resolution, and Interpreting Violent Conflict (the last a conference for journalists and conflict specialists). Joseph Scimecca was succeeded as director by Richard Rubenstein (1988-91), Christopher Mitchell (1991-95), and current director Kevin P. Clements, who joined us in 1995.

In 1991 the Center was reorganized as the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution (ICAR), a free-standing Institute reporting directly to the provost and president of George Mason University. A year later, ICAR's Applied Practice and Theory Program (APT) was initiated by three new faculty members specializing in clinical education; in 1993 the master's curriculum was substantially revised. Increasing numbers of applicants to ICAR's MS and PhD programs brought student enrollment to its present level of approximately 120, and a corresponding increase in the size of the full-time faculty brought that body to its current level of eleven members. Meanwhile, the Institute was strengthened by the development of a capable contingent of part-time professors, visiting professors, and visiting fellows.

ICAR faculty have published extensively in recent years (see the ICAR Publications List included in this issue). With students and colleagues, they have facilitated processes aimed at resolving conflicts in Northern Ireland, Spain, Liberia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, the Horn of Africa, Georgia/Abkhazia, Israel/Palestine, Bosnia/Herzegovina, and Canada as well as across the United States and in the national capitol area in Northern Virginia and the District of Columbia. They have conducted annual conferences on Ethnic Conflict and Xenophobia (1994), Conflict and Gender (1995), Flexibility in International Negotiation (1995), and Zones of Peace (1996). The two latter gatherings led to the publication of two volumesof edited papers and proceedings. ICAR students are now taking a lead role in organizing ICAR's Annual Conference on Responding to Youth Violence scheduled for fall 1997.

Approximately 150 Institute alumni staff many of the most active and important conflict resolution organizations in the United States and several foreign countries; they work for government agencies, international organizations, private companies, and trade unions. Of the ten graduates of ICAR's doctoral program, six teach Conflict Analysis and Resolution full-time at the university level, three have produced major books in the field, and four specialize in conflict intervention activities. The Institute has developed Conflict Analysis and Resolution curricula and courses at six foreign universities and is linked through its faculty, students, and alumni with conflict resolution organizations around the world.

In 1993 ICAR was designated a Commonwealth Center of Excellence by the Virginia State Commission on Higher Education--the only institution that year so honored. The commission recommended that the Institute be awarded $2.5 million in additional funds over a period of five years. While several years of budget cuts delayed this funding, an initial installment of $325,000 has been approved by the state legislature for academic year 1997-98. This award makes it possible to hire new faculty, increase student enrollment, and undertake new research and conflict intervention projects. In 1997 applications for admission to the program reached a new high--a promising development, considering that there are now other institutions in the field competing with ICAR for graduate student candidates.

The Institute's most unambiguous achievement to date has been the creation of rich, diversified, high-quality master's and doctoral curricula reflecting the institution's commitment to analyzing and resolving serious social conflicts. With its mix of theoretical courses, hands-on laboratory-simulation classes, Applied Practice and Theory education, internships, and doctoral seminars, its teaching program is a model for other Conflict Studies Programs here and abroad. Furthermore, ICAR's courses are well designed and taught by the Institute's unusually dedicated teaching faculty, whose performance is consistently rated higher by ICAR students than university-wide norms.

Closely connected to its success has been the Institute's ability to attract a highly committed, talented, energetic, and diverse student body--in many ways, ICAR's chief glory. ICAR's student organization, Graduate Students in Conflict Studies, participates in institutional decision-making at all levels, sponsors periodic town meetings to deal with important internal issues, and conducts independent evaluations of all ICAR courses. It produces a professional-quality collection of student papers each year, sponsors training and conference activities, and staffs the University Dispute Resolution Project. ICAR students, with faculty and alumni, participate in research projects and conflict intervention efforts, as well as in our weekly Brown Bag Seminars and social events. This partnership makes ICAR a genuine community as well as a university department.

A list of ICAR's achievements must include its faculty's production of significant books, articles, and conferences as well as their participation in important conflict intervention efforts and the work of building the field globally. However, problems must also be identified and dealt with if the Institute is to realize its ambitious goals. I will briefly discuss three related areas in which further effort seems warranted: 1) building conflict theory; 2) linking theory with practice; and 3) crossing the domestic/international divide.

Theory Building. The Institute's primary product, the sine qua non that will ultimately determine its success or failure, is transformative ideas. How far have we come in developing ideas that illuminate the causes, nature, and consequences of serious social conflicts and best methods of resolving or transforming them cooperatively? Here the balance sheet is mixed. Since Burton and Dukes' four-volume Conflict Series, ICAR has produced several important books and Working Papers containing useful insights (these are included in ICAR's Publications List). Publication of other books in progress is eagerly awaited; these include Christopher Mitchell's Gestures of Conciliation and Dennis Sandole's The Genesis of War. But the insights generated thus far remain scattered. The search for "generic" theories that will illuminate the causes of serious conflict across many levels (interpersonal, community, and transnational) has not advanced much since John Burton's work on the theory of Basic Human Needs. Why not? Although some might consider the quest for generic theory quixotic, there is evidence that this is not the case. Basic Human Needs theory has already proved useful in conflict analysis and could clearly be developed further by interested theorists. Furthermore, promising efforts have been made by some ICAR teachers and students to develop Worldview Theory as a method of analyzing conflicts based on conflicting frames of reference. Most important, perhaps, significant sources of theory relatively unexplored by conflict specialists could be used to illuminate a broad range of social conflicts. These include Critical Theory, Feminist Theory, Depth Psychology, and the analysis of the Theory of Deep Culture. A problem here may well lie in the very diversity of interests and talents represented by the ICAR faculty and our tendency to scatter our energies across a broad field of conceptual and practical concerns. If so, the solution may be a combination of new hires and more focused theoretical work by the faculty and its network partners. An example: ICAR faculty members should now be engaged in producing the definitive textbook on analyzing and resolving deep-rooted social conflicts; this is the sort of work that could help refocus our attention on theory-building.

Linking Theory with Practice. What makes the theory/practice linkage a more complex matter than it might seem is ICAR's commitment to study and to practice long-term conflict resolution, as opposed to temporary dispute settlement. Where the goal of practice is to terminate hostilities, to help negotiators reach agreement, or to enhance the capacity of public and private institutions to "manage" conflicts, the Institute has made progress toward linking theory with practice. But the resolution of serious social conflicts poses special problems since it often requires broad and deep structural changes amounting to system transformation. System transformation is not something that can normally be accomplished by a few parties meeting with a facilitator; it requires not only good theory and good facilitation but political action. For example, where is the link between theory and practice when it comes to resolving conflicts between criminals and the state, between immigrants and natives, between hostile religious groups, or between alienated social classes? The answer, I fear, is that since conflict theory in these subject areas is weak and practice almost non-existent, the links are few and far between. Furthermore, even if theory and practice were stronger, it would require a political movement of some strength to implement the agreed-upon system transformations.

When we deal with a problem area, for example, crime and police violence, we can sometimes assist the parties to reach agreement on the social causes of their conflict and the changes necessary to eliminate or mitigate them. But to carry through the kind of socioeconomic and political reconstruction that could provide alternatives to criminal behavior and state violence, a political movement is required. The understandable impulse among many conflict resolvers to avoid partisanship has inhibited us (not just at ICAR, but throughout the field) from moving to create the political base necessary to transform malfunctioning or collapsed systems. Overcoming this inhibition may be an important task for us all in the years ahead.

Crossing the Domestic/International Divide. The field of Conflict Resolution has generally treated domestic and international conflicts differently. Where in-country conflicts are concerned, the theories and processes employed are those suited to dealing with "interest groups"; for example, power bargaining, Alternative Dispute Resolution techniques, and power politics. Where international or transnational conflicts are involved, i.e., where there is no accepted "sovereign" or legal order able to manage the conflict, there has been more openness to the use of structural change theories, analytical problem-solving techniques, and political mobilizations. To put it crudely, we tend to approach domestic conflicts like moderate reformers and transnational conflicts like (nonviolent) revolutionaries.

An unsolved problem for ICAR, and, I believe, for the field, is how to cross the domestic/international divide without abandoning our commitment to long-term conflict resolution and the serious structural changes needed to effectuate it. Conceptualizing these changes may require in-depth political discussions of a sort that we have seldom engaged in at ICAR. The results of such discussions could enable us to deal far more effectively with domestic conflicts involving race and gender issues, worker-company relationships, paramilitary organizations and ideologies, crime and prisons, immigration and nativism, spouse and child abuse, and other manifestations of endemic domestic violence. It is now time for ICAR and the field to deal with conflicts whose resolution may require significant political change, hence, increased political conflict. This is no paradox; it is inherent in the idea of resolving, not just settling, serious conflicts.

The position ICAR has carved out for itself in the field of Conflict Analysis and Resolution is an enviable one, but difficult to maintain. While many other conflict studies centers specialize in developing alternatives to litigation or legislation useful tasks, to be sure we focus on developing alternatives to violence and war. While many other institutions ignore or blur the line between conflict resolution and dispute settlement, we attempt to clarify it. Despite pressures to become technical trainers of our students, we have remained educators. Despite invitations to become intellectual "beltway bandits," captives of the Washington, D.C., power structure, we have retained our political and operational independence. This course of action has at times created tension between ICAR and certain other institutions in the field, but it is a creative tension which enables us to play comradely and critical roles at the same time. Needless to say, we have a great deal to learn from other conflict studies centers, particularly those which have taken the lead in developing new approaches to reconciliation, psychological and spiritual healing, and socioeconomic development. Still, we seem to have become, in a sense, the conscience of our profession as well as its premier teaching institution, which may explain why we are asked to evaluate so many other conflict studies programs around the country.

Maintaining this position requires that ICAR recommit itself to aspects of its mission still unfulfilled: developing better conflict theories, linking theory more successfully with practice, and crossing the domestic/international divide. It also requires that the Institute continue to diversify racially, ethnically, culturally, and in terms of gender, nationality, and intellectual commitments. The relative absence of people of color from the profession of conflict analysis and resolution is a scandal, but ICAR is now in a unique position to integrate change-oriented thinkers and activists from diverse racial and ethnic groups and social classes into the profession.

Fifteen years from now, success on this front will really give us something to boast about. (The author and ICAR would be happy to hear readers' own analysis of the Institute's successes and failures over the past fifteen years and its prospects for the future. Please write or e-mail us.)

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Institutions come out of people and ideas, not out of other institutions, and ICAR is no exception to this rule. Its real origins go much further back than the fifteen years we are celebrating in this volume--this voluminous issue--of the ICAR Newsletter. "Great things are done when men and mountains meet," proclaimed the poet (obviously a blatant sexist), "that are not done by jostling in the street," a sentiment with which we mundane street jostlers can only agree.

To start at the beginning, two founding--how shall I say it--"originators of the male persuasion," Bryant Wedge and John Burton, can be credited (to some degree) with starting up the field of Conflict Analysis and Resolution and--much, much later--ICAR. Both had points at which they became interested in the idea that conflicts could be studied and resolved, and it was these ideas that led them to found the field and our Institute.

Bryant Wedge, ICAR's first director, was, in spite of appearances, a closet romantic. (One day I may reveal in these pages the truth about Bryant, the beautiful Muscovite, and the American Express card.) He always used to say that his moment of revelation occurred in 1954 when, in spite of the fact that his true calling lay in the field of psychiatry, he somehow found himself in the middle of the Eisenhower/Dulles administration's efforts to overthrow the vaguely left-leaning regime of Guzman Arbenz in Guatemala, an effort which involved, inter alia, many students whom Bryant had been teaching on the one hand and the United States Marine Corps (minus only John Wayne) on the other.

Bryant found himself literally "in the middle," acting as a go-between for the students and for the United States Embassy in Guatemala, which--he was only later to find out--had been heavily involved in planning this U.S. intervention, a Cold War success that set back the fortunes of most people in Guatemala by several decades. Thus, he was engaged in Track Two activity before that phrase had even been invented.

"It seemed to me," he said many years later as we sat in a Washington bar, drinking white wine and getting to know one another, "that there had to be a less wasteful way of dealing with conflicts--and maybe psychology and psychiatry could help."

Pinning down John Burton's moment of revelation is more difficult. There probably wasn't one single thing that turned him, the other major influence on ICAR, away from power politics--conflict resolution by winning--and the then widespread worship of great power manipulation and "leverage." That he was a representative of a small power like Australia in the 1940s obviously helped, but not to be forgotten was his original doctoral dissertation which dealt with the way in which Western economic policies in Asia and the Pacific had narrowed down the options open to Japan's decision makers and set them on a military road toward the then Dutch East Indies by way of Pearl Harbor. Not a popular thesis in 1942, but a signal and original contribution to the literature on how not to achieve "conflict prevention."

By the time I got to know John in the 1960s, he had at least two previous careers--diplomat, then politician--and always, as a backup, farmer. By the sixties he was reading books on social work, industrial problem solving, systems theory, and other bizarre subjects for a professor teaching in a Department of International Law and Relations and, as a result, experimenting with ideas for small-group problem solving based upon decision-making theories that had little to do with power, leverage, threats, or deterrence.

I believe that the real impetus, however, came from the rivalry that existed between two competing schools of thought in international relations: the "Realists" of the London School of Economics and the "Behaviouralists" of University College, London, where Burton taught--although there were one or two renegades and cross-overs within both camps. When challenged to apply his behaviouralist ideas to a "real" situation--using the Arab-Israeli conflict in the Middle East was artfully suggested as a "reasonable" test case--John declined the suggested arena but took up the principle of a test. Rather than the Middle East, he returned to a part of the world he knew well where, as a young diplomat, he had won notoriety by supporting the cause of Indonesian nationalism against the returning Dutch colonialists. He traveled to Indonesia and Malaysia, then locked in a minor but protracted conflict known locally as Konfrontasi (confrontation).

Using his ability to gain entry to top decision makers on both sides (soon to become three with the breakaway of Singapore from the Malaysian Federation), John persuaded the leaders in conflict to send representatives to an informal academic forum in London to discuss the origins of the conflict and possible solutions. The first series of what later came to be called "problem solving workshops" took place in the fall of 1965 and the spring of 1966. Konfrontasi ended in the summer of 1966.

Of course, as a somewhat elderly undergraduate student, I knew very little of all this. Lecturers would suddenly cancel classes only to reappear later, smiling mysteriously and looking slightly smug. John circulated some of the documents and reactions of the panel to our senior class with names ostentatiously whited out. However, we knew that those involved had included Eric Trist and Fred Emery from the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations (which is why I occasionally smile sadly when reading papers that comment on problem solving's neglect of the human relations dimension of conflict transformation); a youngish State Department lawyer named Roger Fisher; and a junior minister from the British Foreign Office. (So much for not mixing Track One and Track Two!)

Later that year, I had the chance to participate, as a very junior assistant, in the second of these exercises, this time involving the communities on Cyprus. I always love it when visiting speakers talk about the pioneering Cyprus Workshops "conducted by Chris Mitchell and John Burton in the 1960s"! But even if the details are wrong, they are indeed referring to one of the seeds from which ICAR grew, planted back in London in that now distant decade and later developed by Burton and Wedge here in Fairfax, Virginia, twenty years ago.

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On April 2, 1997, the ICAR Alumni Chapter presented the Mary Lynn Boland Award to Ms. Allen-Nan (MS '95) who is currently a doctoral student at ICAR. Over the years, Ms. Susan Allen-Nan has served in many roles in the Graduate Students in Conflict Studies (GSCS) Group, and this year she is the PhD representative to ICAR's Faculty Board. She serves on the Steering Committee for George Mason University's Dispute Resolution Project, which provides mediation services to the university community. Additionally, she is editor this year of ICAR's Annual Collection of the year's best ICAR student papers. She has contributed many hours to organizing and maintaining ICAR's Student Resource Room, which is a research library for students and professors. Her commitment to excellence in many areas over the years demonstrates outstanding service to the ICAR community.

This is the sixth year that the ICAR Alumni Chapter has given the award to the individual or individuals nominated by members of the ICAR community who have demonstrated a commitment to the success of ICAR. Last year's winner, George Mason Librarian Maureen Connors, has helped ICAR students with research and resources for most of the past decade.

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The role of the media in conflict situations is a topic that may conjure up two negative images. The first is one of nationalistic propaganda aimed at heightening tensions among ethnic and religious groups, which serves as a catalyst for violence, as was the case in Bosnia and Rwanda. The second is of CNN-TV quickly rushing to a scene of conflict in order to provide extensive and graphic minute-by-minute reporting--only to quickly leave the scene once the bloodshed is over.

Academics and communications experts have begun to study the media's potential for ameliorating conflict and healing the social wounds of war. New York University's Center for War, Peace and the News Media and the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University are two institutions now exploring this timely question. Non-governmental organizations, e.g., the Media Peace Center in South Africa and Search for Common Ground based in Washington, D.C., are using the mass media to broadcast messages of peace and reconciliation through song and other forms of entertainment in such diverse settings as South Africa, Burundi, and Macedonia as well as a round-table format which brings adversaries together to engage in seeking common ground.

These communication methodologies differ from the Voice of America's latest effort at conflict resolution reporting. On June 1, 1995, the Voice of America received a grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York to supplement the cost of developing and producing a special series of programs which would introduce its worldwide audience to the theory, principles, and practice of conflict resolution. From the beginning of the project, VOA editors and reporters questioned the wisdom of pursuing "conflict resolution" stories. Their concerns centered on the possibility that the project might promote advocacy journalism or "good news" journalism, and as such would be in conflict with journalistic standards of impartiality and objectivity. In general, journalists tend to view themselves as extremely practical in their approach to their craft while they are at the same time fiercely and rightfully protective of their journalistic independence. As a result, they are often suspicious of "academese," of what they consider to be overly abstract approaches, and certainly of anything that smacks of advocacy, as was the case in this project. The use of the term "conflict resolution" itself appeared to have created a healthy dose of suspicion. The term, or rather the cluster of concepts behind it, seemed to be at the root of the difficulty.

VOA project coordinators responded to these legitimate journalistic concerns by de-emphasizing the term and by embracing a number of the themes that VOA journalists and conflict resolution experts created during a day-long organizing workshop; these included counting the human costs of conflict, profiling bridge-builders, rebuilding civil society, and the examination of peace processes, to name a few. Using these themes, VOA reporters quickly locked on to the concepts embodied in the conflict resolution paradigm. Many skeptical editors and reporters found it an illuminating experience to approach story assignments allowing these themes to guide their own journalistic skills. By reporting on conflict resolution and having the opportunity to write features on how people solve their problems, their interest in conflict resolution reporting grew and they developed a plethora of fresh stories.

The experience of Pamela Taylor, a reporter for VOA's Current Affairs Division, exemplifies how most reporters came to appreciate the opportunity to do this type of reporting. "It is virtually impossible," said Taylor, "to convey how invaluable this [experience] was for someone like me who has been writing about the breakup of the former Yugoslavia since war broke out in 1991. Not only did I learn more than I would ever have dreamed possible but quite a lot of myths were exploded in the process, several of which made me appreciate the value of conflict resolution reporting. Before I left [to cover the story], I expressed the thought to several colleagues... that I was afraid I would find a lot of 'conflict' but very little 'resolution.' In fact, the opposite was the case, to my surprise."

Convincing skeptical editors and reporters to be open to the conflict resolution paradigm by using a journalistic, thematic approach to reporting was another valuable lesson learned in this project. We noted that reporters shifted their reporting emphasis toward an examination of local agency and initiative in the resolution of conflicts. From the start of the project, those involved, particularly VOA's Language Services, recognized that to be effective conflict resolution reporting needed to be grounded in the coverage of grass-roots activities. As their stories became focused on personal testimonies and reports which sought to put a human face on conflict and its resolution, reporters' use of conflict resolution experts and academic commentary in their coverage of conflict situations began to disappear.

VOA audience feedback began to reinforce the reporters' instincts to emphasize how real people were solving real problems. Anecdotal reports flowed in from listeners eager to hear stories of reconciliation and of development projects occurring in different regions of their country. We found that there was a healthy interest in stories that illustrated efforts to return to normalcy and to long-term healing and reconciliation. Furthermore, we found that people in one country often would identify with those in another in similar situations. For example, VOA's coverage of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission was in high demand by VOA's French-to-Africa, Kinyarwanda/Kirundi, and English-to-Africa Language Services during the opening weeks of the International War Crimes Tribunal in Rwanda. In addition, with nearly 100 stories produced so far, ranging from reconciliation projects in Bosnia to environmental disputes in the Pacific Northwest to the stalemate between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabackh, interest in the project continues to grow.

VOA's experience with conflict resolution reporting has had a somewhat transformative effect on the organization. VOA's Carnegie grant has helped inspire and facilitate the development of two major VOA programming initiatives on conflict in Africa. With the support of a $1.2 million grant from USAID, VOA has launched a new radio show in Portuguese designed to coincide with the United Nations-supervised peacekeeping operation in Angola. VOA currently employs about a dozen freelance Angolan journalists in Luanda, the capitol, and elsewhere in the country to develop innovative programs for the new radio show. In a country where the media operates under conditions of considerable self-censorship and official restriction, this new programming is providing Angolans with a wealth of news and information unknown to them in the history of their country. After an initial start-up phase, the Angolan Project is now beginning to develop conflict resolution-type programming, drawing upon material produced under the Carnegie grant, to develop conflict resolution programs for an Angolan audience.

In mid-July 1996, with a $1 million grant from USAID, VOA launched a daily radio show in the Kinyarwanda/Kirundi language directed to Rwanda and Burundi which will contribute to the stabilization of the volatile Central Africa region. The recent successful reporting trips of VOA's French-to-Africa Language Service's Ferdinand Ferrela and English-to-Africa's William Eagle provide a foundation for reporting on Conflict Resolution topics in the region.

VOA's experience with this project is important for others who seek to create "conflict resolution" media projects. A recent report by Gordon Adam and Raj Thamotheram, "The Media's Role in Conflict," identifies three roles that the media can take in conflict; these are: 1) Media as Mediator, as demonstrated in the Pulitzer Prize winning Akron Beacon Journal's "Coming Together Project" that brought Black and White community members together to discuss race relations in the wake of the Rodney King trial; 2) Media as Social Educator, as demonstrated by the UNICEF-funded Radio Voice of Peace in Ethiopia; and 3) Media as Pro-Social Propaganda, as demonstrated by UN Peacekeeping Radio in Namibia, Cambodia, and elsewhere.

All these have achieved certain degrees of success in their own right, but the limited reach across populations and ethnic groups due to perceived reporting biases, limited distribution outlets, and credibility problems can in general dampen the effectiveness of such projects. The problems that restrict these projects are not a problem for VOA; broadcasting in fifty-two languages through a worldwide network of affiliates and satellites and bound by its Charter to provide comprehensive, accurate, and objective news and information, VOA is often the only source of news in a world dominated by censorship and state-controlled media outlets. Furthermore, VOA's use of conflict resolution reporting has transcended all three of the categories that Adam and Thamotheram delineate. VOA's commitment to comprehensive and balanced reporting can have a mediating effect on a conflict by providing radio forums for newsmakers and citizens involved in conflict and in rebuilding and reconciliation before, during, and long after the peace treaties are signed.

VOA's experiment in conflict resolution reporting is the first of its kind for a major international media organization, and it has succeeded in breaking new ground in conflict reporting. As far as we know, no other international news organization has successfully blended conflict resolution themes into its feature news reporting. We hope the lessons learned from this project can help inform others interested in deploying the power of the media for constructive purposes.

		About the Authors: Thaddeus Penas (left), a 1993 Master's of Science graduate from the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University, is currently the Project Officer of VOA's Conflict Resolution Project.
Gregory Pirio (right), Ph.D, former Chief of VOA's English-to-Africa Language Service and currently Senior Business Development Officer for the International Broadcasting Bureau of the United States Government, is Project Coordinator of VOA's Conflict Resolution Project.

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Thirteen Africans and others interested in peace on that continent met on April 4, 1997 at Our Lady Queen of Peace Church in Arlington, Virginia, and on April 5, at the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University. Ten countries, including Burundi, the Congo, Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Tanzania, and Uganda, were represented by a diverse group of students and faculty from Duquesne University, Eastern Mennonite University, and George Mason University.

Presentations were made about each university's Conflict Resolution/Conflict Transformation Program, and African Peacemakers shared specifics about ongoing conflicts in their home countries and efforts underway to bring about peace. Two Catholic activist-educators--Sister Maura Browne, Executive Director of the Africa Faith and Justice Network, and attorney Terence Miller, Director of the Maryknoll Justice and Peace Office in Washington, D.C.--presented summaries of their organizations' work on African issues.

Discussion followed each presentation. A number of issues and concerns were raised including: 1) the need to ensure participation of African nationals in formulatation and subsequent "ownership" of documents on African issues which inform policy-makers in the United States; 2) tension between those holding that justice is a necessary prerequisite for true peace and those who prioritize peace above justice in the Conflict Resolution field--consensus in this group was that the two are inextricably linked; 3) tension between those whose peace-building work is informed by a spiritual sense of "calling" and those doing conflict resolution work from a secular perspective; 4) tension between those believing that any interest in Africa from the U.S. (especially on the part of Track One leaders and the media) is a positive step and those who believe that any program for Africa funded and/or initiated by non-Africans must meet the complex criterion of being culturally appropriate to the people it is trying to reach; and 5) realization that Africa is a huge and vastly diverse continent which requires more than one model of appropriate peacemaking techniques.

There was agreement on a number of points, e.g., on the significant influence of colonialism across the continent; on the negative impact of the Western political-economic model imposed on many African countries since independence; and on the need for more contacts and sharing of resources among peace builders within Africa as well as between Africans and non-Africans.

The African Peacemakers Encounter ended on a high note and with the hope that contacts arising out of the weekend encounter will be sustained while the African participants are in the U.S. and after they return to their home countries. Plans were made for further contact via e-mail and for follow-up meetings, one at NCPCR in Pittsburgh in May and another later in October.

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In recent years, we in the field of Conflict Studies have moved from a one- size-fits-all mentality in which dominant cultural models and frameworks were thought universal to an awareness that cultural differences necessitate customized design. When disputants are ethnically or culturally different from them, many mediators consider adjusting the process to accommodate expectations, needs, and values. However, mediators tend to disregard other common differences. The most pervasive of the unaccommodated differences is gender.

I will briefly discuss here why gender is a difficult and uncomfortable issue for conflict theorists and practitioners and how dialogue is a critical tool in expanding our awareness of gender issues. Gender is a difficult idea to pin down. The basic understanding that sex relates to biological characteristics and gender to socially constructed roles is constantly blurred. When we discuss gender differences using the categories "men" and "women," gender is being identified with sex. We continually encounter books about the differences between men and women as communicators, as negotiators, as managers. Stereotypes are played out and ideal identities constructed against which we unconsciously measure ourselves. Those writers who would have us accept that men and women have difficulty communicating because we are from "different planets" invite exaggerated expectations of differences, which in turn fosters greater conflict. Moving away from this essentialist view that gender is a fixed, reliable difference that corresponds exactly with sex, that men are masculine and women are feminine (whether born or socialized into the role), we come to an understanding of gender as something that is constantly being invented. If gender is constructed, then it must be dynamic, changing, and diverse within the many human contexts where it is experienced. Describing such a dynamic and complex phenomenon is much more challenging than one in which men and women can be sorted into two readily identifiable groups.

Gender is difficult to talk about, to teach about, and to attend to because it is both the most obvious difference among us and, at the same time, the least visible. Gender pervades all aspects of our lives and is interrelated with other dynamics and roles in a way that makes it difficult to perceive and study. It is interwoven with the concepts of multiple identities, interpersonal dynamics, and the exercise of privilege. Unacknowledged cultural biases and classist and sexist perspectives are prevalent and affect the way in which gender and conflict is discussed. While many sources treat gender like a self-help topic, very few discuss gender as a system of behaviors, some of which are privileged for men and some for women in different contexts. Similarly, very few writers and researchers have considered the effects of the intersection of gender with other aspects of identity including race, class, and generation.

Because gender is inadequately discussed in the literature, it has also been difficult to address in teaching. Construing gender only as difference, with the focus on uncovering the nature and effects of the variances, or only as sameness, with the focus on establishing commonality, oversimplifies the concept of gender; both ends of this continuum obscure the complexity of human action. Both approaches use men as the reference point (without recognizing the inherent inequality of this) and treat gender as a dichotomous attribute rather than a dynamic of interaction.

So, how can we usefully discuss gender in a way that gets us out of the narrow confines of this continuum? In talking about gender as a verb and about gender as a dynamic rather than as two fixed points, we reframe deep assumptions and ways of perceiving. To develop a more dynamic framework requires conscious dialogue, the willingness to explore the effects of patriarchal privilege associated with gender, and the openness to consider the gender boxes constructed around both men and women in our social, political, and professional interactions. Gender is central to an understanding of conflict dynamics in our society and in our interpersonal interactions. It shapes how we attribute meaning to our experience and how we analyze and intervene in conflict. Gender is the seam that defines power dynamics, a seam sewn deep into the fabric of our culture as manifested in its institutions and practices.

The first step in discussing gender meaningfully is to move beyond the stereotypes and to seek greater awareness through dialogue. One feature of dialogue is the opportunity to share and listen to firsthand accounts; in sharing stories, differences within groups will surface and will have the effect of moving participants away from an us/them construction of gender dynamics. Shared meaning and empathy are generated when speakers tell stories situating them in a context involving interpersonal dynamics, personal and group histories, multiple identities, role expectations, and countless other factors. Gender then is understood in a context of lived experience and as a series of choices shaped by cultural and personal influences. Through a process of dialogue, men and women can become allies in creating the structural change needed to address gender inequities.

Conflict resolution processes tend to strive for more immediate results and agreement; letting go of this "results" orientation is difficult. Dialogue with the uncertain hope that the issues at hand will be reframed feels risky, yet the apparent risks may translate into many benefits, both more and less tangible. Dialogues on abortion conducted through the Network for Life and Choice in Washington, D.C., are an example. Abortion is a social issue where the construction of power relations played out through gender is central. In a recent evaluation of dialogue among activists on either side of the abortion issue, dialogue was identified as instrumental in reframing the way the abortion conflict is being experienced, discussed, and acted upon in several communities in the United States and Canada. As participants engaged in a process of examining stereotypes held about the other side and dialogue about personal experiences in a safe and structured environment, they developed empathy for each other and reported significant reductions of the de-personalization that existed on both sides before these authentic relationships had been established.

Although the dialogues do not have the objective of changing people's minds about abortion, participants' behavior regarding the abortion issue is in fact changing. Collaborative work on adoption and the prevention of unwanted pregnancies has been initiated; a voice that advocates, yet respects other opinions, has emerged. It is important that the new and different voice evolving from dialogue is one that embraces and values diversity. Black feminists have reminded us powerfully that both race and gender create bases for domination. If conflict processes were seen as dialogic and educational, providing a supportive forum for the appreciation and honoring of differences, how would they be different?

Perhaps such processes could result in deepening the connection between the participants, encouraging change within structures and within one's self, or defining a wider range of acceptable gender-related behaviors within a group or organization. With this, the focus of inquiry becomes not ferreting out the differences between men and women but admitting and incorporating diverse voices in our research, in our classrooms, and in our practices. It means admitting the complexities of gender as we discuss, enact, and study it and refusing to allow this complexity to discourage us in our efforts to understand and question unexamined privilege attached to theory and prescriptions for practice. It means cultivating an awareness in ourselves and in our programs of the dynamics of gender and applying this awareness intentionally to our pedagogy, research, and practice. Finally, we are challenged to invent new metaphors for our work, to create lenses that admit a prism of perspectives rather than refracting difference.

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Latest Alumni Community Reports:

Gina Bartlett (MS '94) is now a facilitator and trainer in the Violence Interruption Process in Chicago; she works in criminal justice, school, and community settings nationally.

Stefan Belwald (MS '94) is currently finishing a political science degree (equivalent to a MA) at the University of Zurich. He will marry Judith Frossard on June 21st; they are in the middle of wedding preparations.

Nike Carstarphen (PhD candidate) is teaching Introduction to Peace and Conflict Resolution (to undergrads) and Building Peaceable Schools (to grad students) at American University; she is currently a graduate assistant to Professor Sandra Cheldelin working with ICAR's Mount Pleasant APT Divided Societies Team.

Jayne Docherty (PhD candidate) is writing her dissertation analyzing the Branch Davidian/FBI negotiations transcripts. She was invited to meet at Michigan State University in March with the Critical Incident Analysis Group (CIAG) which was formed after Waco to bring law enforcement officials, academics, and practitioners together to evaluate the management of critical incidents involving law enforcement agencies. With ICAR graduate Don Bassett (MS '88), Jayne is working to establish dialogues between members of the militia movement and law enforcement agencies; with Steve Garon, Jarle Crocker, and Frank Blechman she continues to study environmental conflicts through the Worldviews and Forest Management Conflicts Project.

Suzanne Ghais (MS '96) is a project assistant at CDR Associates in Boulder, CO.

Rachel Goldberg (MS '95) is working on her PhD at PARC at Syracuse University and is coordinator of the Campus Mediation Center and the Conflict Resolution Consulting Group. Her dissertation research deals with Native American-U.S. Park Service conflicts; she is busy researching and interviewing many of the stakeholders and teaching her first college level course this summer and fall at LeMoyne College in Syracuse.

Alma Abdel-Hadi Jadallah (MAIS '95) is Director of Cultural Connections, Inc., a privately owned consulting company offering conflict resolution services in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area, and is working with Dr. Chris Mitchell as a research scholar at ICAR to develop and design conflict studies curricula for Bethlehem University in Palestine.

Heideh Kabir (MS '96) moved to Seattle, WA, last summer where she is working as a volunteer for the research director of the Committee for Children which is studying children in area schools to determine whether its violence prevention curriculum, Second Step, leads to reduced violent behavior. She is interviewing teachers to determine how invested they are in this curriculum and if they have incorporated it into their lesson plans. She is also volunteering at Mediation Services for Victims and Offenders.

Eri Kimura (MS '95) is working at NHK-TV (Japanese Television) in Washington, D.C.; she recently covered her second presidential campaign and inauguration.

Chiray Koo (MS '95) is continuing her work with inner-city schools in Los Angeles and is conducting a number of conflict resolution programs; she recently worked with CDR Associates training U.S. Postal Service employees.

Chris Koomey (MS '92) has recently merged his law practice with A. Hugo Blankingship, Esq.; the name of their firm is Blankingship & Associates, P.C.

Susan Allen-Nan (MS '95) is currently in the ICAR PhD program, working as a graduate assistant with Chris Mitchell on the Georgia-Abkhazian Parliamentarians' Workshop.

Jane McCluskey (MS '93) is working with Ron Fisher on the Network for Interactive Conflict Resolution (NICR), stewarding NICR to self-sufficiency as a self-maintaining organization; to learn more about NICR, contact Jane at janemc@conciliation.org. She is also a consultant for the Fairfax County Schools and a mediator for the Multi-Door Program in Washington, D.C.

Jamie Notter (MS '93) turned his internship into a full-time job as program director at the Institute for Multi-Track Diplomacy. His work has focused on IMTD's long-running Cyprus project, where he is in charge of evaluation. Jamie became a father in 1994 (Taylor Kathleen); he and his wife expect their second in April.

Gloria Rhodes (MS expected '97) works in Eastern Mennonite University's Conflict Transformation Program as coordinator of EMU's Summer Peacebuilding Institute; she develops program materials and assists with curriculum development.

Victor Robinson (MS '90; PhD candidate) is teaching in George Mason's New Century College, an experimental interdisciplinary undergraduate program focused on collaborative and experiential learning, and finishing a project with Dan Druckman, supported by a USIP research grant, translating published negotiation and conflict resolution research findings into training applications for diplomats and peacekeeping personnel. He has a chapter with Gwen Whiting in a NIDR book to be published by Jossey Bass; tentative title "When Power and Prejudice Are on the Table: Effective Approaches to Resolving Deep Conflict." He continues to do diversity-related and intercultural conflict resolution work and says of his dissertation, "I'm going to go at it until I finish, give up, or they throw me in debtor's prison!"

Carolyn Rodenberg (MS '93) will be commuting to Kansas to work with Lance Woodbury; she and Jim are the proud owners of the beautiful Belle Hearth Bed and Breakfast in Waynesboro, VA.

Mary Rupert (MS '96) is back in Spokane, WA, on a conflict resolution team for the Unitarian Universalists' Regional District, assisting UU congregations in that district that are in conflict; she says, "I'm rabble-rousing for more collaborative processes!" She is also involved in a project to improve race relations between Spokane's police force and its black community and was recently quoted in an article about citizen militias in The Christian Science Monitor.

Thad Penas (MS '95) is working at Voice of America and collaborating with Richard Rubenstein to produce a handbook for journalists on the coverage of conflict situations.

Cynthia Sampson (PhD candidate) is now an associate at Eastern Mennonite University's Institute for Peacebuilding working on the development of a new Conflict Transformation Program. She is co-editor with John Paul Lederach of the forthcoming From the Ground Up: Mennonite Contributions to International Peacebuilding, and has a chapter "Religion and Peacebuilding," in USIP Press's forthcoming Peacemaking in International Conflicts: Methods and Techniques. With Douglas Johnston she has authored a chapter and co-edited a volume of case studies of religiously motivated peacemaking, Religion, the Missing Dimension of Statecraft (Oxford University Press, 1994).

Mara Schoeny (MS '96) entered ICAR's PhD program last fall and is currently Co-Captain of GSCS.

Lisa Schirch (MS '94; PhD candidate) is working on her dissertation "Exploring the Role of Ritual in Conflict Transformation," and will be an assistant professor at Eastern Mennonite University's Conflict Transformation Program, starting in fall 1997; with Victor Robinson she worked in summer 1996 in the World Vision Youth Ambassador Program in Taiwan.

Jerri Shevlin (MS '92; former ICAR Newsletter Editor) is continuing to mediate and to work with a Quaker program for prisoners in Jessup, MD.

Pete Swanson (MS '88) works at the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service and was a trainer with the U.S. Institute of Peace's InterAmerican Defense College's Training in Conflict Resolution.

Hugo van der Merwe (PhD candidate) has worked, since leaving ICAR in 1992, as research coordinator at the Community Dispute Resolution Trust in Johannesburg, South Africa, on community justice program evaluation and development; he resigned at the end of last year (thanks to a scholarship) to finish his dissertation research on "The Role of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa." Also new in Hugo's life is Max, who has just turned one.

Kerry Wicker (MS '96) is hitting the pavement looking for work on land use, environmental, and agricultural issues.

Lance Woodbury (MS '93) is director of the Conflict Resolution Group affiliated with Kennedy and Coe, LLC, an accounting and consulting firm dedicated to helping preserve the family-owned business. Carolyn Rodenberg (MS '93) joins Lance in April 1997 in this endeavor to provide conflict resolution training, mediation, and strategic planning.

Rumor Has it That...

Dave Dalke (former ICAR student) is now with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's Human Rights Division and that he attended the ICAR Gala Welcoming Dinner last fall.

John Link (MS '90), a consultant and principle at VOLVOX, is doing organizational development work.

Simona Sharoni (PhD '92) is now on the faculty at American University's Washington Semester and World Capitols Program.

John St. Denis (MS '91) is an ombudsman for the Housing Authority in the city of Long Beach, CA.

Gwen Whiting (PhD candidate) is working for the Community Relations Service.

Lastly, I (Rachel Barbour, MS '95) left the USIP Education and Training Program after almost two years for a position at the Center for the Strategic Initiatives of Women (CSIW), a project of the Fund for Peace, based in Washington, D.C. I work with an amazing group of people in the Horn of Africa, setting up peace centers and establishing networks of women who are interested in conflict resolution, human rights, and increasing political participation of women at the community and national level.

IMPORTANT NOTICE!

Chris Koomey will step down from his position as president of the ICAR Alumni Association in May. Responsibilities of the position include communicating with alumni, attending GMU Alumni Association Board meetings and ICAR Advisory Board meetings, participating in ICAR ad hoc committees, helping organize the Annual Welcoming Dinner for incoming students, coordinating the Alumni Directory and alumni discussion panels, and providing information to potential ICAR students regarding what career paths ICAR alumni are following; the most important responsibility is providing input to ICAR faculty regarding programs and the future direction of ICAR. Several people can do this job: if you are interested in this position, or are willing to take on any of the tasks listed above, contact Chris Koomey at 703-739-7621 or at Koomey@erols.com.

Community Notes is an informal arena for sharing personal and professional news about alums and ABDs. Please let us know where you are and what you are doing; to have an entry in the next ICAR Newsletter, please contact Rachel Barbour by e-mail at: rbarbour@4access.org or by phone at: 202-223-7956 x220.

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Peace and Conflict Studies and
The International Journal of Peace Studies

by Dr. Ho-Won Jeong

The December 1996 issue of Peace and Conflict Studies published articles by Bjoern Moeller, Jan Oberg, Ramesh Thakur, Sean Byrne, and Takashi Hiraoka. This issue highlights a wide range of diverse themes, ranging from social models of ethnic conflict; reconstruction and development in conflict mitigation; nuclear disarmament; to the use of non-offensive defense for assisting in humanitarian intervention. To a great extent, these themes suggest directions for peace-building efforts in the post-Cold War period.

Bjoern Moeller, Secretary General Elect of the International Peace Research Association, focuses on how the military can be reorganized to perform functions other than destruction. Dr. Moeller suggests that defensive restructuring of armed forces worldwide, as envisioned by non-offensive defense theories, should be linked to peace support operations. While non-offensive defense is opposed to building offensive capabilities, it is suitable for such operations as humanitarian interventions.

Legal and moral doubts about nuclear weapons are raised by both Ramesh Thakur, head of the Peace Research Center at the Australian National University, and Mayor of Hiroshima, the Honorable Takashi Hiraoka. Thakur sheds light on regional and global security risks posed by the acquisition and retention of nuclear stockpiles. The main thrust of his argument is that the military and political utility of nuclear weapons is very limited and that there is a need to reconsider current strategies for non-proliferation of nuclear weapons. Mayor Hiraoka conveys the message of the urgent need to abolish nuclear weapons. He writes convincingly that the human suffering caused by atomic bomb exposure of women, children, and other unarmed civilian populations can occur again in the future should efforts toward the abolition of nuclear weapons fail.

In "Conflict Mitigation in Reconstruction and Development," Jan Oberg, director of Sweden's Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research, argues that conditions for a more humane, just, and democratic future can be created by recognizing diverse roles of conflict in human development and social change. Conflict resolution needs to be reconceptualized in terms of reconstruction of community relations and peace building, he says, and for that purpose, conflict training and education programs by NGOs and international organizations must give serious attention to the role of reconciliation, economic cooperation, and democratic governance in conflict resolution.

Sean Byrnes, professor of Dispute Resolution and International Relations at Nova Southeastern University, is co-author of an article on social forces affecting ethno-territorial politics in Northern Ireland and Quebec. He and his colleague Neal Carter focus on the social cube model of conflict which has six interrelated facets or forces, including history, religion, demographics, political institutions, economics, and psychocultural factors. Through this model, they describe how the six forces combine to produce patterns of intergroup behavior which perpetuate conflict in Northern Ireland and Quebec.

In the latest issue of International Journal of Peace Studies (January 1997) is a collection of papers by scholars who have been engaged in peace research over the last several decades. In the field of Conflict Analysis and Resolution, Raimor Vayrynen (director, the Institute for International Peace Studies, University of Notre Dame) and Luc Reychler (director, the Center for Peace Research and Strategic Studies, University of Leuven, Belgium) offer insights on conflict prevention and the role of religion in conflict generation and resolution. Vayrynen discusses political, economic, and military instruments in conflict prevention, applying his model to conflict in the former Yugoslavia. Reychler describes how religious organizations can act as conflicting parties, bystanders, peacemakers, or peace builders in varying circumstances.

Economic and social justice, an important field in peace research, is addressed by political economist Miles Wolpin, who links deteriorating human rights conditions to competition in a free market economy. The role of communication in the maintenance of a hierarchical world order has not been sufficiently researched, and Majid Tehranian (former director, University of Hawaii's Peace Research Center) fills the gap, examining the way expanding global communication has contradictory effects in centralizing and dispersing power, homogenizing and pluralizing societies, and globalizing and localizing cultural identities.

Glenn Paige (director, Center for Global Nonviolence) and Michael True (convener, the Nonviolence Commission of the International Peace Research Association) explain major characteristics of nonviolence and apply nonviolence principles and policies to recent student uprisings in China. Paige explains nonviolence in terms of non-death dealing public policies and institutions, and the spiritual heritage of humankind. According to True, the history of previous dissent can be explored in an analysis of the dilemmas faced by Chinese students in their 1989 democratic uprising.

The journal advances knowledge in the field of conflict prevention; forms of third-party interventions; training, education, and community building; sustainable development and ecological security; human rights and reconciliation. To promote the understanding of conflict dynamics and the process of peace building, it invites new perspectives and diverse methodologies, including post-modernist ethnography, hermeneutics, feminist critique of the world order, critical pedagogy, and post-structural interpretation of global problems.

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About 1,500 participants from around the world are expected to attend the National Conference on Peacemaking and Conflict Resolution to be held at Duquesne University, May 23-27, 1997. Conference participants include local and international practitioners, teachers, researchers, policy-makers and youth who work on conflict resolution, violence prevention, diversity and other issues with families, courts, community mediation centers, congregations, businesses, workplaces, schools, colleges, and universities, in neighborhood centers and war-torn regions across the globe.

The 1997 conference is dedicated to healing, growth, and action; sessions related to the theme include community building and mediation; disability/ability issues; diversity/inclusion and prejudice reduction; family and divorce mediation; problems of violence; youth and schools; and many other topics. The event will also feature a special youth conference organized by local youth on May 23rd and a Social Justice Day on Race Relations on May 24th. The Rev. William Headley, C.S.Sp., is heading up Duquesne's efforts to coordinate this important conference.

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In addition to serving on diverse faculty and university committees and participating in extracurricular projects, Dr. Clements, with doctoral student Susan Allen-Nan, spent ten days in Georgia and Abkhazia in December 1996, organizing ICAR's first Problem Solving Workshop for Georgian and Abkhazian Parliamentarians. In January, with ICAR's "Georgian" team, he helped facilitate the workshop at Airlie Foundation in Virginia and gave a major keynote address to United States Peace Corps senior management staff on "The Relationship between Conflict Resolution and Development." He presented a paper "Conference Resolution Theory and Training" to the Hewlett Foundation's Annual Conflict Centers Meeting in Palo Alto, California.

Dr. Clements served on the Provost's Review Committee on the Future of Centers Within the University during January and February and participated in the ICAR Faculty's Strategic Review and Budget Committees in preparation for the March budget hearings. He was on a panel in February at USIP's Workshop for Decision Makers Working on Humanitarian Relief and Peacekeeping with Hon. Chester Crocker and Dr. Eileen Babbitt. With Richard Rubenstein, Franklin Dukes, and Herb Kelman, he participated in a nationally broadcast discussion of Conflict Resolution Theory and Practice on NPR's Derek McGinty Listener Call-In Show.

In the Netherlands in February, at the Dutch National Council of Development Organizations' Conference on Development, Preventive Diplomacy and Conflict Resolution, he presented a paper "Conflict Resolution, Education and Training in North America," and later facilitated a Conflict Resolution Mapping Exercise for the Kontakt Kontinenten's Seminar on Conflict Resolution Training. Dr. Clements chaired a meeting of the Executive Committee of the International Peace Research Foundation (IPRA) in March and attended the International Studies Association's (ISA) Annual Conference in Toronto where he was a panelist on Evaluating Peace Keeping Training.

In April Dr. Clements attended a meeting of the Minority Rights Group in London on Conflict Resolution Training for Minority Groups. His most recent publications include "North East Asian Regional Security and the Role of International Institutions: An Australasian Perspective" in T. Inoguchi and G. Stillman's North East Asian Regional Security: The Role of International Institutions, published by The United Nations University Press, and "The Future of Peace and Conflict Studies" and "Okinawa in the 21st Century" in Peace and Policy.

A 1986 master's graduate of ICAR (then CCAR), Marsha Blakeway is teaching part-time as clinical faculty during Frank Blechman's sabbatical. Since graduating, Professor Blakeway has worked extensively in Conflict Resolution Education in Washington, D.C., area schools and served for four years as coordinator of the Regional Branch of Children's Creative Response to Conflict.

In addition to co-teaching ICAR's Laboratory and Simulation in Community Conflict with Professor Warfield, Blakeway is working with ICAR's APT Schools Team on projects primarily concerned with efforts to address youth violence. She is providing logistical coordination for the Fairfax County Public Schools Mediation Conference which will be held on the George Mason campus under ICAR sponsorship on May 16, 1997. Approximately 1,800 students and sponsors are expected to attend.

Professor Blakeway, as a Fellow of the National Peace Foundation, is continuing her work on the foundation's Adopt-A-School Program, a pilot project which is exploring ways to deepen and broaden existing conflict resolution programs according to the identified needs of the school. In a collaborative effort with the Center for Dispute Settlement (CDS), she trained mediators at Lincoln Junior High School in Washington, D.C. United States Attorney General Janet Reno visited the school, as she has other CDS programs, to talk with student mediators, to get ideas from them, and to encourage them in their work.

Additionally, Professor Blakeway is consulting and providing training for a project at Washington, D.C.'s Murch Elementary School. The school has about twenty CCRC trained staff and is focusing on enhancing and linking staff development efforts.

She also completed a ten-week continuing education program for teachers through the Montgomery County Education Association; the Illinois Institute for Dispute Resolution's curriculum "Creating the Peaceable School" and other models were used. She worked extensively with staff at the National Institute for Dispute Resolution (NIDR) to update their publications catalog for the Conflict Resolution in Education Network (formerly NAME). The catalog can be ordered from NIDR's Education Network. Professor Blakeway will coordinate Conflict Resolution in Education Research panels at the NCPCR and at the Education Network Conference later this year.

Adjunct Professor Marc Gopin designed and is teaching two ICAR graduate seminars, "The Moral and Philosophical Foundations of Conflict Resolution" and "World Religions and Conflict Resolution Theory." Dr. Gopin conducted a training workshop in 1996 for a group of international students on Religion and Conflict Resolution at Eastern Mennonite University and will offer the workshop again in summer 1997. He taught a group of international students at the Caux Scholars' Program in Switzerland and will offer this training again next summer. He presented at a seminar of COPRED's fall 1997 conference and at the Association of Jewish Studies and spoke at the United States Institute of Peace on March 19th on Conflict Resolution in Religiously Divided Societies. He will conduct a training at NCPCR's May 1997 conference with Cynthia Sampson and will be a panelist there on the issue of International Development and Conflict Resolution. He is slated in June to deliver a keynote address in Belfast at an ecumenical conference, "Boundaries and Bonds: Sectarianism, Identity and Peacemaking."

Professor Gopin's article, "Religion, Violence and Conflict Resolution," published recently in Peace and Change, has been accepted as an ICAR Working Paper. His chapter, "International Development and Conflict Resolution: Problems and Possibilities," is to be published in Conflict Resolution and Social Justice, the commemorative volume dedicated to James Laue. His chapter on evaluating Mennonite conflict resolution is to be published in a forthcoming volume sponsored by USIP, From the Ground Up: Mennonite Contributions to International Peacebuilding. He is also writing a book, Between Eden and Armageddon: The Future of World Religions, Violence and Peacemaking.

Professor Gopin's tenure at the Center for Strategic and International Studies as a Senior Scholar in Religion and Conflict Resolution has recently received generous support from the Foundation for the Carolinas. He participated on a panel in Switzerland in summer 1996, with the Dalai Lama and Cardinal Joseph Koenig, on Peacemaking and World Religions in the Next Century. His work on this issue was subsequently highlighted in an editorial that appeared in the Times of London; he was also interviewed by Swedish Public Radio, the Christian Science Sentinel, and The Christian Science Monitor.

Dr. Gopin appeared recently with Shukri Abed on the cable TV show The Global Village, on the subject of Middle East peace. He is also informally consulting with Kramer Associates, which is funding the creation of an industrial college in Gaza. He maintains regular contact with the Israeli Embassy on the subject of Jewish culture and peacemaking.

Professor Gopin recently returned from delivering a keynote address at a conference in India directed by Rajmohan Gandhi. An interview conducted with him there on the state of religion and society appeared shortly thereafter as an editorial in The Times of India.

He has been consulting and developing a working relationship with the Bureau of Rights, Democracy and Labor and the U.S. Department of State on Bosnian reconciliation strategies and on the relationship between religion, violence, and conflict resolution.

He is a consultant to the Forgiveness Institute, which is planning an international conference, Forgiveness and Reconciliation in the Christian Faith, in Kansas City in fall 1997 and in Jerusalem in the year 2000; he will be a featured speaker at the Kansas City conference. In addition, he is working with the Faith and Politics Institute in Washington, D.C., meeting with members of the U.S. Congress in sessions dedicated to reflection on ethics and public life. His activities as a peacemaker are featured in Michael Henderson's recently published book, The Forgiveness Factor, and will be included in a volume on the same subject by Dr. Robert Enright, a psychologist affiliated with the Forgiveness Institute.

In the last several months Dr. Jeong has published several articles in academic journals, edited two issues of International Journal of Peace Studies and Peace and Conflict Studies, and engaged in consulting and advising activities.

Dr. Jeong was consulted recently by a Kurdish human rights group concerned that internal conflicts within the Kurdish population require facilitation workshops with consultation mechanisms built in to reduce suspicion among different factions. He was also consulted by the Korea Information Center on various issues following industrial conflicts in Korea which drew international attention last January. Korean workers are concerned that laws allowing companies to hire replacement workers will significantly reduce the power of trade unions; the process and potential outcome of such industrial conflict reflects power imbalances between different social forces whose positions have been influenced by structural changes in the global political economy.

Dr. Jeong's article, "Politics of Discourse on Liberal Economic Reform," published last autumn in Quest, analyzes how the logic of a free market economy can generate marginalization for the poor. It suggests, as an alternative strategy, sustainable development. In "Evaluation of Development Strategies for Africa: Human Needs Perspectives," published in Journal of Global Awareness (Fall 1996), Jeong draws attention to the significance of cultural dimensions of development and argues that indigenous social institutions and norms are important in strengthening civil society. His article, "Ghana: Lurching Toward Economic Rationality," in World Affairs (Fall 1996), argues that stable social order is not always compatible with economic rationality.

Professor Jeong's articles focus on destabilizing social and political effects of liberal economic reform and show that since the pursuit of macroeconomic balance is not based on the consideration of human factors, it often becomes a structural source of conflict. He argues that an important dimension in various types of social conflict is related to the repression of human needs and the exclusion of key social groups from the policy-making process and that the implementation of the World Bank/IMF version of free market reform in several Third World countries has led to conflict between workers and the government.

Professor LeBaron continues work on gender and cultural dynamics in conflict. With ICAR Masters candidate Cheshmak Farhoumand, she is completing an update of the Conflict and Culture Annotated Bibliography and Literature Review first published in 1993. She is also collaborating with Professor Nancy Adler of McGill University to produce a course titled Women as Global Leaders. Professor LeBaron has been appointed by President Merten of George Mason University to a faculty committee to study and propose future directions for the University. This committee is employing wide consultation and interdisciplinary inquiry into the evolution of the University and its social, economic, cultural, and educational mission. Professor LeBaron also serves on the University's Committee on Effective Teaching which has recently directed its efforts to the production of materials to support faculty development.

A great deal of Dr. Mitchell's time has been taken up recently with the task of editing papers, many of them authored by ICAR faculty and students, from ICAR's Spring 1996 Conference on local "Zones of Peace." He is preparing these, with ICAR doctoral student Susan Allen-Nan, for publication in a forthcoming issue of the journal Peace Review. This is the first time that Peace Review has been issued under guest editors. This issue will provide a wide range of views on some very different conceptions of peace zones.

Dr. Mitchell has also been involved in preliminary efforts to establish a Center for Conflict Prevention and Resolution in Africa [CPRA] which will use indigenous African methods of dealing with the many conflicts that currently plague that continent. This project involves a number of African scholars (and scholars of Africa) in the Washington, D.C., area, including ICAR's Dr. Hamdesa Tuso and Mr. Jannie Botes. Progress has been slow, but expressions of support have been obtained from Archbishop Desmond Tutu and President Nelson Mandela, and there are indications that such a center would be welcomed in Lusaka, the capital of Zambia.

In October Dr. Mitchell spent one week at the University of Helsinki where he delivered five lectures on Methods of Helping to Resolve Conflict in Divided Societies to doctoral students in the Helsinki Program in Political Science and International Relations. Earlier he had delivered a guest lecture to students on the new Conflict and Peace Studies Program at Rockford College in Illinois. In February he participated in a conference in Atlanta, Georgia, on "Development and Conflict Resolution" sponsored jointly by the World Bank and the Carter Center. He is continuing his work as a member of President Carter's International Negotiation Network. Dr. Mitchell's recent writings include a chapter which describes and analyzes Mennonite peacemaking practices for a book to be titled From the Ground Up: Mennonite Contributions to International Peacebuilding, edited by Cynthia Sampson, and a revised version of "Protracted Conflicts: Keys and Treatments," an address given to the conference organized at the annual Gernika "Jornades" in April 1996 by the Gernika Peace Center. Work continues, slowly, on his manuscript "Gestures of Conciliation."

He will devote time in the spring 1997 term to planning and preparing two Conflict Resolution Training Workshops to be conducted for faculty at Bethlehem University on the West Bank by ICAR students Alma Abdel-Hadi Jadallah and Robert Harris. In summer 1997, Bethlehem faculty will again visit ICAR to plan and prepare for the new program in Conflict Analysis at their university.

During October 1996 Dr. Dennis J.D. Sandole traveled to Malaysia and to Germany as part of the U.S. Speakers Program of the United States Information Agency.

In Malaysia Dr. Sandole traveled to Kota Kinabalu in North Borneo, where he presented "Conflict Resolution in Human Rights Issues" at the Institute of Developmental Studies and "Conflict Resolution and Trade Issues" at the Center for Borneo Studies. He presented "Conflict Resolution in Human Rights Issues" at the Universiti Kebaangsan in Kuala Lumpur; conducted a day-and-a-half "Workshop on Conflict Resolution" at the National Institute of Public Administration; presented "New Trends in Managing International Conflicts" at the Institute of Diplomacy and Foreign Relations; and presented "U.S., NATO, and the Bosnian Crisis: The America Experience in Conflict Resolution" at the University of Malaya. And in Penang, he discussed ICAR's programs in Conflict Analysis and Resolution at the Research and Education for Peace Unit, Universiti Sains, Malaysia.

In Germany he traveled to Bonn, where he participated in an informal roundtable discussion at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation on "The Interplay of NATO and OSCE in Preventing Conflict in Eastern Europe." While there he had a working luncheon on the OSCE with a parliamentary staffer in the Bundestag and participated in an informal roundtable discussion at the Friedrich Ebert Foundation on "Conflict Prevention in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS)." In Frankfurt he had a working luncheon with journalists and associates of the Peace Research Institute at Frankfurt, dealing with the war in Bosnia. In Leipzig, he met with journalists and military officers to discuss "Bosnia and the Future of Peacekeeping" and participated in a working meeting on "Peacekeeping in Eastern Europe" at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation.

On March 13, 1997, Dr. Sandole attended and participated in a discussion "NATO Enlargement and Public Diplomacy," organized by the U.S. Information Agency, at the White House Conference Center in Washington, D. C.

Dr. Sandole has recently published "Ethnic Conflict as Low Intensity Conflict in Post-Cold War Europe: Causes, Conditions, Prevention" in The First International Workshop on Low Intensity Conflict (ILIC '95), edited by Alexander E.R. Woodcock, S. Anders Christensson, Henrik Friman, and Magnus Gustafsson, Stockholm: Royal Swedish Society of Naval Sciences, March 29-31, 1995; and "Conflict Resolution: A Unique U.S. Role for the 21st Century" in U.S. Foreign Policy Agenda (special issue on "American Perspectives on Conflict Resolution"), An Electronic Journal of the U.S. Information Agency, vol. 1, no. 19, December 1996.

Professor Warfield has three articles that are due to be published this spring: "Building Consensus for Racial Harmony in American Cities" in the Missouri Journal of Dispute Resolution; "The Development of Pedagogy and Practicum," co-authored with Juliana Birkhoff, in Mediation Quarterly; and "From Civil War to Civil Society: The Potential of Local Zones of Peace" in Peace Review.

Professor Warfield served on the facilitation panel for ICAR's Georgia-Abkhazian Parliamentarians' Joint Problem Solving Workshop held at the Airlie Conference Center in Leesburg, Virginia, in January 1997 and is participating in the planning group that is designing the next workshop and other follow-up activities.

In addition to his academic teaching schedule, Professor Warfield has conducted Conflict Resolution Trainings for the Neighborhood Leadership Institute (NLI) established through George Mason's Urban Alternative Grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). A Vietnamese youth who participated in the first training cohort has been accepted at the University of Virginia. She credits her involvement in the NLI Workshops and Professor Warfield's letter of support as part of the reason for her acceptance. A Somali teenage participant, a recent immigrant, was inspired to run for class president in her high school; she came in second, but vows to try again. In the second cohort, which this year's Arlington Governance APT Team is facilitating, the mixture of Somali, Sudanese, and Latino participants has been highly interactive. Two members (originally from the Horn of Africa) traveled from Richmond to Arlington during Ramadan to participate. Dr. Hugh Sockett, who heads the Urban Alternative Learning Team, has asked Professor Warfield to make a presentation on th