Fall/Winter 1996 <> Volume 8<> Number 1
Fall/Winter 1996 <> Volume 8<> Number 1
Gala
Dinner Welcomes
New ICAR Students,
George Mason President
ICAR's annual Welcoming Dinner for entering students was a multiple-purpose event this year-and a great success. More than 150 guests (ICAR faculty, students, staff, alumni, advisory board members, and friends) donated $50 each to establish a new graduate research assistantship at the Institute. In addition to renewing old friendships and greeting incoming students, they heard an address by George Mason's new president, Alan G. Merten, and welcomed President Merten and his wife, Sally, to the community.
The site of the September 6 gala, Gunston Hall, was the former home of patriot George Mason at Mason Neck, Virginia. In their after dinner remarks, Ph.D. candidates Tracy Breneman and Mara Schoeny, cocaptains of Graduate Students in Conflict Studies, noted the contradictions inherent in Gunston Hall. They pointed out that the former plantation was owned by a slave holder who was the author of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, a bill that played a major role in obtaining approval for the U.S. Bill of Rights. "ICAR teaches us to recognize and deal with serious contradictions like this,"said Schoeny.
ICAR Director and Lynch Professor Kevin Clements served as master of ceremonies. In addition to describing ICAR's current work and mission, Clements announced that an anonymous donor has made a major gift to the Institute, the John Burton Endowment, for the purposes of establishing student scholarships and supporting faculty research. To the audience's delight, Clements then played auctioneer, auctioning off a set of books, secured through the good offices of Ph.D. student Linda Harned, which were donated to ICAR for fund-raising purposes.
Welcoming remarks were offered by student organization leaders Breneman and Schoeny, ICAR's Conflict Resolution Alumni Chapter President Christopher Koomey, and ICAR Advisory Board Chair James Hobson. Professor Richard Rubenstein provided a refreshingly comedic look at "the Spirit of ICAR," roasting more than a few of the faculty and some other key figures who have contributed to the development of the ICAR personality and character. President Merten concluded the program by presenting his vision of George Mason-in-the-making: a great university driven by ideals of leaming and service, and intimately linked to local, regional, national, and global communities.
Our guests appeared to enjoy themselves greatly. The main reason for this, we suspect, was their delight in discovering so many old and new friends devoted to a common purpose. President Merten stated later that he hoped the dinner would serve as a model for other organizations and departments of the university. The Institute is most grateful to the Advisory Board for helping to make this a successful event and board members Mariann Laue, Lester Schoene, Valerie Clements, and ICAR's Adminstrative Officer, Joan Drake.
Transitions
"Not here and not there
but truly beyond.
Beyond what?
Beyond that question."
From Spells for Coming Out by Ian Wedde, New Zealand
This verse from Ian Wedde's "Old Man of the Mountain " reminds us that behind presenting problems lie underlying problems; that underneath deep-rooted conflicts lie unmet human needs; that not here, and not there, but truly beyond all these things, are unasked and unanswered questions that conflict resolutionaries must pose in order to understand the origins and dynamic of conflict.
The theme of this ICAR Newsletter is transitions. The Oxford English Dictionary cites the following definitions of transition: "passing or passage from one condition,action, or place to another; passage in thought, speech, and writing from one subject to another; passage from an earlier to a later stage of development or formation --change."
Transitions lie at the heart ofconflict resolution. Those who wish to understand conflict and design creative responses to it need to understand its genealogy, contemporary significance, and probable outcomes. Doing this involves the delineation of some meaningful historical stages and the location of conflicting parties in time. Managing, resolving, or transforming conflicts requires a clear sense of transition from one state to another (e.g., from violence to nonviolence and from destructive to constructive conflict, or vice versa). Indeed, the question of timing and ripeness for useful intervention is one of the key problems confronting conflict revolvers.
Constructive transitions, however are not the sole preserve of the
conflict resolution community. For individual self-actualization, one must
have a strong sense of one's personal passages or the key transition points
from childhood to adulthood. Similarly, political empowerment requires
an understanding of what is possible in the context of particular kinds
ofpolitical development. Political pundits, for example, explaining President
Clinton's re-election to a second term in office, might frame their remarks
in terms of his biography and the general socio-political and historical
context in which his re-election occurred. Superficial commentators may
concentrate on Clinton's electoral style with little attention to his past;
the more sophisticated will dig deeper into his past (and that of his opponent),
looking for those events and processes that help explain the outcome of
their differing world views and behavior. Locating both candidates in history
provides us with more than background contextualization of their behavior,
it makes it meaningful. The concept of transition, therefore, has both
analytic and evaluative significance. To make sense of it, we must decide
whether or not to employ a linear or nonlinear concept of history and what
values and world views we wish to apply to make ethical or normative sense
of the changes taking place.
All this is a segue into some of the transitions that we are dealing with
this year at the Institute. We have been going through some significant
changes since the last newsletter was published Over the summer we moved
from 4130 Chainbridge Road to 4260 Chainbridge Road. Like most people,
we have discovered that moving from an old place to a new one involves
preparatory removal time, psychic and material dislocation, and a lengthy
resettlement process. We are now more or less settled into our new accommodations,
which our old friends will recognize as the former site of the ICAR Conflict
Clinic. It is important that we remind ourselves that this transition (and
our discombobulation at moving a couple of miles up the road) is nothing
compared to that experienced by those who lose their homes and livelihood
through famine, war, or social disruption. In the process many of the world's
25 million refugees never recover either their homes or their sense of
belonging, both of which are crucial components of individual and collective
identity.
Along with ICAR's move, George Mason University is now experiencing a leadership and organizational transition with the arrival of Allen Merten who succeeds George Johnson as president. George Mason's transition is resulting in some consolidation and rationalization of university activities. Fortunately, the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution is strong and well positioned to play an important role in the next phase of George Mason's development. I am now working to ensure that all of ICAR's constituents--students, faculty, alumni, affiliates, and Advisory Board--work closely together to ensure that the Institute fulfills its role in Northern Virginia, the nation, and the world. ICAR's Welcoming Dinner, held at Gunston Hall Plantation, former home of George Mason, author of Virginia's of Declaration of Human Rights, reminded us of the contradictions that we as conflict resolutionaries confront in our daily lives. It also reminded us all at ICAR of the need to work cooperatively, combining our individual strengths and talents, in order to successfully manage the transitions underway both within our university and the larger society.
ICAR's incoming students, as they adjust to a new learning enviwnnient, are in transition as well. At ICAR we are challenged by our students' concern that ICAR play a major role in promoting diversity, fostering civil discourse, and applying conflict resolution techniques within the Institute and the university as a whole. Over the past several months, ICAR has convened four working groups to prepare background briefings and recommendations on a wide range of topics essential to the good functioning of the Institute to:
The recommendations of each of the working groups were discussed at an ICAR community nweting of all our constituents held an campus in October. They are nowin the process of being implemented. In addition, ICAR's December faculty retreat will focus on the development of a five-year strategic plan to equip ICAR for its move into the 21st century.
Balancing our nation's quest for community and inclusiveness while
encouraging and celebrating cultural diversity is of paramount importance
these days as anxiety increases about the recent upsurge in hate crimes
and the large number of arson attacks on Black churches. The growing importance
of identity politics, both within the United States and abroad, offers
us important theoretical and practical challenges in preparing for the
next century and expanding ICAR's role as a major player in the field of
Conflict Studies. I am confident that the Institute is well positioned
to make a critical contribution to the understanding and transforming of
negative conflict and dysfunctional relationships both internally and externally
over the next five years. To do so effectively, however, requires a keen
awareness of history and its habit of repeating itself. Furthermore, overcoming
ethnic and cultural enmity requires clear goals and a willingness to break
old patterns. It takes movement toward the development of a communicative
politics, aimed at transcending sterile opposition and emphasizing the
positive value of differences.
Kevin P. Clements, Ph.D.
Director
Sandra I. Cheldelin
A native Oregonian, Professor Cheldelin received her bachelor's degree in Sociology from Oregon State University and her master's and doctoral degrees in Educational Psychology from the University of Florida at Gainesville. She was active at the University of Florida in the development of the humanistic psychology movement.
At ICAR, as professor in the clinical Applied Practice and Theory (APT) Program, she will reach graduate courses on interpersonal and organizational conflict, reflecting her almost three decades of experience as a psychologist, organizational clinician, and consultant. She will also supervise the work of a team of ICAR students engaged in an APT practicum in the inner-city neighborhood of Mt. Pleasant in Washington, D.C. The team is studying issues and conflicts in this divided community while working to create peaceful strategies to assist the community's efforts at living and working together.
A licensed psychologist, certified to perform psychological and organizational
assessment, Professor Cheldelin has an extensive background as a faculty
member, administrator, and consultant. She began her teaching career at
an inner-city college in Columbus, Ohio, and has served on the faculties
of Columbus State College, Ohio State University, the California School
of Professional Psychology, and Antioch University. Her administrative
career includes serving as of Educational velopment and Research at Ohio
University's newly founded medical school. 
In the 1980s, as dean of Academic and Professional Affairs at California School of Professional Psychology at Berkeley, she created and taught organizational behavior programs at the master's and doctoral levels. After completing a national study of medical education for the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching at Princeton, she moved to Yellow Springs, Ohio, where she served as interim provost at Antioch University.
Dr. Cheldelin conducts an extensive clinical conciliation practice, has co-edited two books on teaching in higher education and a book on clinical teaching, and is the author of numerous articles in her areas of interest including mediation and conflict resolution.
Ho-Won Jeong
Prior to joining the ICAR faculty, Professor Ho-Won Jeong taught Peace and Conflict studies at Ohio State University, University of Missouri-St. Louis, and Antioch College. He was also a nonresident associate faculty member for the graduate program in Conflict Resolution at Antioch University, where he supervised graduate students' projects in a variety of areas including community conflict prevention, labor-business disputes, design of mediation programs for social welfare agencies and training programs for schools, and women's roles in the Northern Ireland peace process.
In the field of development and conflict, Ho Won Jeong has published articles on sustainable development, the impact of World Bank programs on basic human needs, the struggle between the goveniment and trade unions in Ghana, reform for global economic governance, the application of basic needs theories to conflict analysis, and the role of indigenous culture and local institutions in development. He has written extensively in other areas of peace and conflict studies including future directions for conflict analysis and the assessment of theoretical development in peace research; edited Peace Research: Past and Futureand Theories and Applications in Conflict Studies, published by the Network of Peace and Conflict Studies; and also prepared a manuscript on peace building strategies. His current interests focus on political economy approaches to conflict analysis, social and economic injustice as structural causes of conflict, power imbalance in various conflict situations, conflict in the global political economy, global environmental movements, and community development and reconstruction.
Professor Jeong is the editor of two journals, Peace and Conflict
Studies and International Journal of Peace Studies. He is also
a founding director of the Network of Peace and Conflict Studies, which
is designed to promote cooperation in theory development and policy-oriented
research among major graduate peace and conflict research programs around
the world. The other goal of the Network is to build strong relationships
between research institutions and global nongovernmental organizations
in the areas of environment, development, and security. He is serving as
convener of the Global Political Economy Commission of the International
Peace Research Association and editor of its newsletter, Peace and Development,
which publishes research notes, academic articles, and reports on new events.
He has chaired panels and presented papers on peace building and conflict
resolution, third-world development, economic sanctions, and trade disputes
at a number of conferences sponsored by the International Peace Research
Association, the Association for Humanist Sociologists, International Studies
Association, the American Political Science Association, and the Association
for Third World Development Policies. He recently received the Best Conference
Paper Award from the New Political Science Section of the American Political
Science Association.
Moorad Mooradian
ICAR's most recent Ph.D., Dr. Moorad Mooradian, graduated in August after successfully defending his dissertation topic, "Third-Party Mediations and Missed Opportunities in Nagorno Karabakh: A Design for a Possible Solution." Mooradian is now acting director at the Center for Conflictology at Yerevan State University in Yerevan, Armenia, in the absence of Center director Ludmila Haroutunian, who is a visiting scholar-in-residence at ICAR until March 1997.
Professor Mooradian was born in Providence, Rhode Island, and is a graduate of Rhode Island College. While serving as an officer in the U.S. Army, he earned a master's degree in History and International Relations from the University of Rhode Island in 1962. He was professor of History and International Relations at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point from 1969 to 1973. While on the faculty at West Point, he also taught evening classes in History at Orange County Community College in New York. From 1978 to 1980 he served on the faculty as a professor at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Mooradian retired as a colonel from the U.S. Army after 30 years of service.
His dissertation is available at George Mason's Fenwick Library and in ICAR's Resource Room Library.
ICAR
Students and Alumni Participate in Dispute Resolution Conference
ICAR was represented at the University of Massachusetts conference, "Conflict Studies: A New Generation Of Ideas," October 4-5, with papers presented by doctoral students Jayne Docherty, Robert Harris, and Susan Allen-Nan; by ICAR alumni Rachel Goldberg and Dana Milburn; and by Alma Abdel-Hadi Jadallah, who recently completed a master of arts in Interdisciplinary Studies at George Mason, with a concentration in conflict resolution.
Susan Allen-Nan's paper, "Examining Cumulative and Interactive Effects of Multiple Conflict Resolution Activities in Intergroup Conflict," was awarded an honorable mention for the best paper presented at the conference.
The theme of the conference was reflected in Jayne Docherty's graduate student address, "Moving Forward by Circling Back: Revisiting Our Roots in Search of New Horizons." Jayne Docherty says, "I [am] concerned about the gap between our theoretical models of the person as an actor in conflict settings and my experience of the way people really do act in conflict situations ... [while] books talk about People as motivated by their positions, interests, basic human needs, and values, [we] sometimes seem to be driven by a desire to identify the most fundamental source of human behavior during conflict.
"Positions, needs, interests, and values are often discussed in an 'archeological' fashion ... [with] positions ... seen as the most superficial motivator. If we can peel away that layer, we get to the parties' interests. And on the basis of interests, we can craft better, longer lasting, more satisfactory resolutions to a conflict. John Burton, who greatly influenced...[our] program at George Mason, adds another layer-basic human needs, [arguing] that real resolution depends on meeting the parties' 'ontologically given basic human needs' and not just their interests. Others claim that the behavior of parties in conflict cannot possibly be understood without first explaining their values. [In my view] people are not motivated by any single factor such as positions, interests, needs, or values...In real life, people make complex decisions based on their 'naming' of the world. Their understanding of how things in the world are categorized and organized, the values they place on a wide variety of things and relationships, and their assumptions about what constitutes valid and meaningful knowledge all combine to impact their decision-making and actions in conflict settings.
"...on the basis of interests, we can craft better, longer lasting, more satisfactory resolutions to a conflict."
"The Image: Knowledge in Life and Society, by Kenneth Boulding, anticipated by almost 40 years [this] theoretical and practical puzzle...What does this imply for explaining conflict? First, and most obviously, that no interactions among the parties can be understood separately from their respective and combined images of the world...Image is even more complicated than this, however. It involves beliefs or subjective knowledge about 'what is,' but it also includes a great deal of 'normative knowledge'...what many people try to capture under the term values.... An image of the world includes 'knowledge' or 'beliefs' about what ought to he as well as what is. The emotional or affecfive attachment to this image of how things ought to be forms an essential 'connector' between image and action. We act to bring the world into compliance with our normative image of how the world ought to be. In this respect, Boulding anticipated a great deal of the recent research on the active dimensions of cognition.
"The human fascination with conflict...reflected in literature, art and drama, is not simply a matter of academic interest, [it] may be traced to the fact that conflict exposes our images of the world. When the other party to a conflict does not share my fundamental understanding of the world, I can dismiss that person as 'evil' and 'ignorant,' or I can reexamine my own assumptions about what is 'out there' in the world. I have an opportunity to become conscious of my own creative imaging process...threatening, but in many ways...liberating conflict can free me to entertain other images offer[ing] alternative possibilities for action in the world. It is precisely this rich potential for experimentation and creativity that makes conflict a positive as well as a negative force...
"In this framing of the problem, conflict resolution practitioners and the parties to a conflict--face a dual task. Assessing the sources of the conflict as objectively as possible--insofar as the conflict has a material base--and helping parties work together to construct an accounting of the world in which diversity of beliefs or images need not lead inevitably to conflict. The complex relationship between the material and the socially constructed or cognitive sources of conflict is one of the pressing puzzles of our time."
Back
to the Future: The Origins of Diplomacy
ICAR Professor Dan Druckman, and professor Kevin Avruch of the George Mason Department of Sociology and Anthropology, participated in the Bellagio Conference on the Origins of Diplomacy, held at the Rockefeller Foundation's Villa Serbelloni, September 16-20. This interdisciplinary conference was attended by I 8 scholars with backgrounds in such fields as ancient near eastern civilizations, Egyptology, philology, international relations, anthropology, and social psychology. The purpose of the conference was to analyze the 382 letters sent among kingdoms during the Bronze Age--known also as the Amarna Period (1400 B.C.). These messages, written originally in Akkadian on clay tablets, were first discovered in 1887 in El-Amarna, a plain on the east bank of the Nile about 190 miles south of Cairo. They were translated first into French (Lettre d'El-Amarna, appearing in 1987) and then into English by William Moran whose book, The Amarna Letters, was published by Johns Hopkins University Press in 1992. The letters provide valuable information about diplomatic relations among the kingdoms of the period, including the Egyptian, Assyrian, Mittanian, Babylonian, and Hittite kingdoms.
The conference organizers, Professor Raymond Westbrooke of Johns Hopkins University and Professor Raymond Cohen of Hebrew University, asked participants to interpret the letters in terms of contemporary theories of international relations or related fields. In his paper with former ICAR visiting fellow, Serdar Guner of Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey, Professor Druckman analyzed the letters from the perspectives of social psychology and strategic-choice analysis. They conclude that the kings functioned as unitary actors who played a competitive game for status conferred by the kinds of exchanges made between theirs and other kingdoms and by wealth accumulated and displayed. Despite the "brotherhood" rhetoric used by the kings, it was clear that they were not acting as part of a communal system where each king tried to secure the welfare and security of the other kingdoms. Rather, they operated as if they held views of international relations consonant with a realpolitik frainework. This conclusion derived from an appraisal of the situation in terms of the emphasis on competing interests rather than shared values, the role played by partisan biases in evaluating the equivalence (or reciprocity) of exchanges, strategic decisions that produced equilibrium solutions that invariably favored the hegemonic actor, Egypt, and the frequent use of tactics designed to manage impressions in order to preserve or enhance one's status in the system.
Some modem scholars would argue that not much has changed in international
relations; others contend that there is a noticeable shift among nations
away from jockeying for competitive advantage toward attempts to solve
common problems cooperatively. Lively discussions of these issues were
interspersed with discussions of proper analytical frameworks for capturing
the interactions (realism or constructivism), the deeper linguistic meaning
of the communications, the way that the kings signaled their intentions,
the extent to which diplomatic relations were "primitive" compared
to the modem system, and the role of intelligence in ancient diplomacy.
A particularly interesting analysis of the metaphorical meaning of the
Amama Letters was presented by Avruch. The papers will appear in an edited
volume published by the Johns Hopkins University Press in fall 1997.
(RETURN TO TABLE OF CONTENTS)
In June 1996, Palestine's
Bethlehem University faculty representatives were in residence for four
weeks at the Institute, participating in meetings and workshop sessions
hosted by Professor Christopher Mitchell. They engaged in discussions about
the field of Conflict Studies and the teaching of Conflict Analysis and
Resolution, familiarizing themselves with the range of independent and
university-linked institutions that form the "practice arm" of
the discipline. Under the guidance of Mitchell and his 
assistant,
Alma Abdel-Hadi Jadallah, the three visiting professors from the West Bank,
Dr. Vivienne Kharnis, Chair of the School of Social Sciences, Professor
Mai Alqasasfa of the English Department, and Professor Marouf Dweikat,
Chair of the Business School, were briefed on ICAR's academic and practice
programs by members of the faculty, directors of Northern Virginia Mediation
Service, Consortium on Peace Research Education and Development, University
Dispute Resolution Program, National Conference on Peacemaking and Conflict
Resolution, Institute for Multi-Track Diplomacy, and the host of other
organizations connected with ICAR, and on how George Mason's curriculum
in Conflict Studies might fit into a proposed curriculum at Bethlehem.
This visit represented the second stage of a developing relationship between George Mason University and Bethlehem University aimed, primarily at fostering an appropriate undergraduate program in Conflict Analysis at the latter, and at developing joint research projects. Early on, it became apparent that faculty members from both ICAR and Bethlehem share an interest in studying indigenous methods of conflict resolution starting with those cormnonly used among Palestinian communities on the West Bank and ultimately all societies in the Islamic and Mediterranean worlds.
The present faculty exchange program is funded by a grant from the U.S. Information Agency's Office of Citizen Exchanges. It will result in similar summer visits to ICAR in 1997 and 1998 by faculty members from a variety of Bethlehem University departments. The faculty members will be guided in the development of Conflict Studies curricula, suitable teaching materials, and scenarios for role plays and simulations.
Their visits will be returned by visits to Bethlehem each spring semester by ICAR faculty/student teams to learn about local conditions and conflicts, to participate in workshops and training sessions, and to "field test" some of the material developed for use in the program.
To some degree, the successful completion of even the initial stages of this program will depend on the political situation on the West Bank. Apart from the normal stresses and strains of university life, faculty and students at Bethlehem University have had to cope in recent years with numerous interruptions and disruptions to the contemplative life, occasioned by the vicissitudes of the Israeli-Palestine conflict. The university has been closed down, semesters necessarily extended, graduations delayed, and travel to and from the university constantly disrupted. Listening to our colleagues from Bethlehem, we realized that--as stressed out as everyone is at ICAR--we live a relatively straightforward academic life.
ICAR'S Annual Conference:
"Zones of Peace"
The subject turned out to be much wider and more interesting than they had originally envisaged, with conference presenters addressing topics as diverse as protective accompaniment, Red Cross relief corridors, UN operations in the Congo in the early 1960s, nuclear free zones, and the various efforts to establish safe zones in the former Yugoslavia.
The speakers were as varied as the topics discussed and included soldiers, such as Major General Indar Jit Rikye, commander of the UN Force in the Congo, and Colonel Peter Leentjes, only recently returned from the former Yugoslavia to the UN Department of Peacekeeping. Contributors with personal and practical experience of establishing local zones of peace in the midst of civil wars included Liam Mahony, Ramon Lopez Reyes, and Frank Sieverts of the International Committee of the Red Cross. Visiting academics included Elise Boulding, former president of the International Peace Research Association (IPRA), Ramon Lopez Reyes of the International Center for the Study of Zones of Peace in Hawaii, and Robert Gravelle, who together with ICAR faculty and students, completed the list of presenters.
As in past conferences, ICAR students acted as discussants for the presentations, which are now being revised, written up, edited, and readied for the spring 1997 publication of Peace Review.
Preparing
the Next Generation of Conflict Researchers
One of the curriculum innovations at ICAR this year is a full-year course on research methods. This course is intended to provide doctoral students with the skills and tools needed to do research, critique research proposals and journal articles, and prepare a dissertation project. Using the methods textbook by Colin Robson, Real World Research (Blackwell, 1993), the course surveys a dazzling array of qualitative and quantitative approaches to research in the social sciences. Students are introduced to ethnographic field methods, comparative case study approaches, survey sampling, experimentation, quasi-experimentation, and simulation as ways of generating new knowledge about conflict processes and behavior. They learn about the epistemological foundations of these methodologies, explore their use in current published research, and have an opportunity to use at least two approaches in research projects that they design and implement. Coordinated and taught by Dan Druckman, the students also benefit from guest lecturers, including Professors Kevin Avruch and Tom Dietz of George Mason's Sociology and Anthropology Department, and Juliana Birkhoff, formerly with ICAR's clinical program. That the course has already made an impact is indicated by a fair amount of enthusiasm expressed by students for doing research and being part of a larger research community.
Funded with a major grant of $92,000 by the Surdna Foundation's Program for Effective Citizenry in June 1996, ICAR's Applied Theory and Practice Program (APT) Teams have expanded their operations in three major areas.
The APT "Schools" Team
The APT Schools Team under the direction of Professor Frank Blechman, conducted policc-youth dialogues in spring 1996, bringing youth who areactive in gangs and hostile to the police into a nonconfrontational dialogue about why each party behaves as it does. Gradually, each group came to understand the "rules" under which each operates-the rules of police procedure and the rules of the street. The dialogues reduced tension between the two, improving the environment for everyone in the Fairfax community. An article describing the dialogue process is now being prepared for publication.
The APT Schools Team also helped design and conduct a community meeting for parents concerned about youth violence in another area of Fairfax County. The meeting, conducted simultaneously in Vietnamese, English, and Spanish, introduced parents to issues surrounding gangs and school discipline and the role that facilitated mediation can play in helping parents and youth deal with both.
The Schools Team also developed a curriculum on conflict resolution for use in English as a Second Language (ESL) classes in a local Northern Virginia high school. The curriculum integrated conflict-resolving skills and processes into a series of multicultural discussions about the cultural barriers that students coming from outside the United States confront when working with a standard model of mediation. The team's recommendations for modification of the school's Peer Mediation Program were written up in English as language building exercises and the information has been used to modify the school's peer mediation practices.
In May 1996, ICAR hosted more than 1,450 students, teachers, and parents at the Fourth Annual Conference on Peer Mediation in Schools. Produced in conjunction with the Fairfax County Public Schools Office of Conflict Resolution Services and the Fairfax County Police, the event featured Robin Delaney-Shabazz, of the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. Delaney-Shabazz is the coordinator a joint project of the U.S. Departments of Justice and Education related to peer mediation in the schools.
The Arlington APT "Governance" Team
Under the direction of Professor Wallace Warfield, the Arlington APT Team is assisting the Arlington County Department of Parks, Recreation, and Community Resources to design and implement a Conflict Prevention and Resolution Training Program, which win be implemented with identified populations at designated recreational sites.
The team is also developing tools and clinical skills to respond to conflicts preventatively rather than on a reactive basis. In the spring and summer of 1996, in two separate sessions, faculty and graduate student members of the Arlington APT Team provided Conflict Resolution Training to selected Parks and Recreation Center managers, field monitors, and park rangers to increase their awareness of conflict indicators and build skills in initiating preventative measures against escalation. Using conflict theory and role play scenarios of responses to actual conflict situations that Parks and Recreation staff were likely to encounter in field sites, the training program provided a baseline for developing conflict indicators and an understanding of the dichotomy between policy formulation at the central office level and its implementation in the field. Anecdotal post-training feedback from park rangers encountering conflict situations indicates that the APT Team training program has measurably increased their ability to head off the escalation of conflict.
Along with these activities, the APT Team assisted the Parks Department in restructuring it's policies and procedures to make them congruent with conflict dynainics taking place in the field. Preliminary discussions were held with Parks and Recreation staff at the deputy director level and with midlevel field managers. At this point, there are two possible directions the team intervention can take:
Continue
on a relatively narrow focus of conflict between first line Recreation
staff and youth who use various facilitics; these conflict interactions,
more volatile in nature, are articulated as youth-to-youth or youth-to-staff.
Policy reconciliation could begin in the field and percolate up to central
office management.
Respond
to Parks and Recreation staff's request for training in conflict indicators
in the Departunent's newly reorganized field divisions; this is conflict
articulated in a broader sense that involves various levels of field staff
who engage in a range of contacts with diverse community populations. Such
a conflict indicator training program would deal with how these diverse
populations signal dissatisfaction with Parks and Recreation policies.
The team planned to explore these two possibilities further in the second grant quarter during 1996, using an emphasis on community empowerment and "voice" to guide its decision.
In addition, the team is designing conflict resolution approaches to reduce conflict and promote intercultural cooperation in South Arlington's Nauck community. While no specific intervention activity for this project was undertaken in the first grant quarter, in the second quarter the Arlington team will conduct research to map intercultural conflict dimensions and propose specific interventions.
The Washington, D.C.,-Based "Divided Societies" APT Team
The Washington-based APT Team, under the direction of Sandra Cheldelin, was active over the summer of 1996, maintaining continuity in i s relationship wi th the conimunity and with locally based key organizations, offering conflict resolution workshops and training. The team continues to make contact with leaders in the community and has identified a series of projects that include conducting Conflict Resolution Workshops for a group of adult women at Martha's Table, a neighborhood service organization, mini-training on "anger management and conflict resolution" for adult GED students at the Academy of Hope, and on "conflict resolution" for teenagers at the Indochinese Community Center.
The team is now in the planning process of working with Barrios Unidos leadership to provide Conflict Resolution Facilitation and Training for members of their board and staff, and to facilitate dialogue between organizations and with police and youth. The team is also creating a component of a larger curriculum being developed with the Indochinese Community Center and is offering process consultation and mini-training at Washington, D.C.'s Latin American Youth Center.
ICAR
to Publish Conflict Resolution
and Social Justice: Essays in Honor
of James H. Laue
ICAR professors Richard E. Rubenstein and Frank 0. Blechman are editing Conflict Resolution and Social Justice, a collection of essays by leading scholars and practitioners in the field of conflict resolution that honors the memory of our late colleague, Lynch Professor James H. Lane. The contributors to this book-to name just a few-arc well-known theorists such as Louis Kriesberg and Peggy Herrman; scholar/practitioners such as Roger Fisher, Guy and Heidi Burgess, and Frank Dukes; and a number of active members of the ICAR community.
While the contributions reflect strong differences of opinion and philosophy, there are also common concerns that approached with honesty and good will promise to generate greater intellectual coherence and moral direction in the future. Conflict Resolution and Social Justice represents a first step, but an important one, on the way to a much-needed continuing discussion.
From the Introduction to Conflict Resolution and Social Justice: Essays in Honor of James H. Laue by its editors, Richard E. Rubenstein and Frank O. Blechman:
The task undertaken by the authors of this volume is to examine the relationship between Conflict Resolution and social justice. For most conflict specialists this is far more than an 'academic' exercise. Many have been drawn into the field by the conviction that coercive ways of resolving disputes and dealing with conflicts--in particular, the use of military force, the coercion of minorities by majorities, and the resort to formal judicial processes--produce neither pleasing short-term settlements nor effective long-term resolution of conflicts.
A longing for justice animates much of the work in the field, even though certain factors militate against discussing such matters openly. What are these factors? To begin with, the profession of Conflict Resolution is relatively new. Its academic theorists do not wish to be considered 'woolly-minded' by their colleagues in the social sciences and law, nor do its practitioners care to be labeled 'utopian,' overly politicized, or--heaven forbid!--overly spiritualized by their clients and colleagues in government and the private sector.
Furthermore, since conceptions of social justice are, to some extent, culturally and politically conditioned, some conflict specialists argue that they are relevant only to the extent that they influence the thinking and behavior of conflicting parties, as opposed to 'third party' mediators or facilitators. Others argue that given the 'blooming, buzzing confusion' that characterizes much contemporary thinking about social justice focusing attention on such a controverted topic has the potential to magnify disagreements within the field and to make it less coherent as a discipline.
As the essays in this volume show, this last fear is both warranted and unwarranted. Strong differences of opinion, reflecting variations in political philosophy as well as diverse professional perspectives, are reflected herein. But with them are also common concerns that approached with the honesty, good will, and delicacy of expression that characterize many of these contributions promise to generate greater intellectual coherence in the future. This is a first step, but, we think, an important one on the way to a much-needed continuing discussion.
The essays in this volume suggest that certain types of Conflict Resolution thinking and practice can be linked to specific conceptions of social justice. As a rough framework for understanding these correlations, we offer the following observations. The discussion focuses on four models of Conflict Resolution: alternative dispute resolution, public dispute resolution, analytical Conflict Resolution, and communal reconciliation processes. We understand that this designation of models is incomplete and, perhaps, overly schematized. But it may help bring our subject into better focus.
Alternative dispute resolution (ADR) refers to a body of thought and practice that aims at assisting conflicting parties to reach mutually satisfactory agreements without invoking coercive legal or political procedures. Its forms are multifarious, including mediation and other forms of facilitated negotiation, arbitration, mock trials, and numerous hybrid procedures (Goldberg, Sander, & Rogers, 1992). The disputes at issue are generally conceived of as conflicts of interest; the parties are taken to share common legal, ethical, and social norms; and the processes utilized are designed to facilitate the negotiation of differences by the parties within the context of these shared norms.
The visions of social justice linked to ADR praxis are largely procedural. ADR specialists tend to believe that formally uncoerced agreements negotiated by the parties themselves (often with the aid of an impartial 'third party' facilitator) are more likely to prove mutually satisfactory than agreements imposed by officials applying legislative or precedental rules. This suggests an implicit ethic of procedural justice that values:
The
impartiality of the facilitator and the decentralization of decision-making,
to the extent possible, to the level of the parties;
A
focus on the unique equities involved in each dispute rather than on rules
of law common to similar disputes; and
The
minimization, again to the extent possible, of legal coercion (although
not necessarily of the exercise of social or economic power) by the conflicting
parties.
What defines the 'extent possible' in this largely procedural conceptualization is an existing distribution of values--wealth, power, prestige, etc.--that is generally taken as given or as changeable only by processes other than conflict resolution. This flows from the initial premise that the parties in conflict share common social norms.
On the other hand, the vision of social justice linked to ADR is not entirely procedural. To the extent that it promotes the values of compensating injuries and restoring each disputant to its rightful position, it aims at achieving restitutive justice or what Auerbach (1983) has called "justice without law." And to the extent that it aims at vindicating the particular interests of the disputing parties rather than applying rules of general applicability to their case, it seeks 'equity': a form of restitution based on factors unique to each dispute rather than on a law common to all similar cases.
Public dispute resolution (PDR) is that branch of Conflict Resolution which seeks to supplement formal legislative, administrative, and judicial processes in forming and implementing public policies. Its forms are as varied as those used in ADR, perhaps more so, since they are frequently improvised. They include regulatory negotiation and enforcement; multi-agency and private/public task forces, community boards and other community problem-solving agencies; negotiated investment strategies; and other forms of consensus-building practice.
PDR has developed as a response to administrative and political stalemates caused by the overuse of power--political and legal instrumentalities in complex, multi-party disputes. Like ADR, it assumes the existence of conflicting interests and common legal, political, and ethical norms. But, unlike ADR, it does not view conventional administrative or legal techniques as an acceptable last resort in resolving difficult disputes. Rather, PDR seeks to reform and reconstruct more formal decision-making processes.
The ethic of social justice correlated with PDR is also primarily procedural, but its hallmarks are inclusiveness--the inclusion of all affected parties (stakeholders) in the decision-making process; participation, meaning that all parties have opportunities to be heard and to engage in meaningful policy negotiations; and transparency: a more generalized version of 'open covenants openly arrived at.' Some specialists insist that, properly conceived, PDR practice implicates one aspect, at least, of distributive justice: the 'empow-erment' of weaker parties. As several essays in this book indicate, empowerment has several possible meanings:
At
a minimum, it means that parties whose voices may not be heard or heeded
in conventional policymaking forums are to be given the opportunity to
be heard. The mediator or facilitator also undertakes to ensure that parties
will not be disadvantaged because they lack well-developed negotiation
skills.
More
broadly, empowerment may mean not only that 'weaker' parties (as defined
in power-political terms) are listened to, but also that their views are
reflected and their interests protected by the policies arrived at as a
result of these processes. This implies at least a temporary accommodation
of weaker parties' interests by stronger parties.
More
broadly still, empowerment may mean the redistribution of decision-making
power in a way that, over the long run, leads to an equalization of power
relations between competing groups. The PDR specialists who take this view
(a number that included our late colleague, Jim Laue) advocate equality
in the qualified sense proposed by John Rawls in his philosophy of justice
(Rawls, 1971). They define
a just society as one in which changes in individuals' and groups' 'original
positions' tend over time toward social equality, even though they may
never reach that goal.
Analytical conflict resolution (ACR) confronts questions of distributive justice more directly. In this field, conflict analysts and facilitators assist parties engaged in protracted, violent--or potentially violent--social conflicts to identify the underlying causes of these struggles and to agree on methods of eliminating or ameliorating them. Facilitated analysis is necessary, since these conflicts have ordinarily proven 'non-negotiable' in the normal sense of negotiation as power-based bargaining.
The practical procedures most commonly associated with this praxis are the analytical problem-solving (or 'interactive') workshop, facilitated intergroup or communal dialogues, and a number of other procedures often grouped under the heading of 'second-track diplomacy.'
Some specialists conceive of these pro-cesses as efforts to identify the basic human needs of parties that, if unsatisfied, generate serious social conflicts and to conceptualize the system--changes that may be required to satisfy them. Others have adopted different theoretical frameworks to guide their search for sources and remedies. But virtually all assume that 'deep-rooted' conflicts require (a) extended analysis to identify their causes, and (b) significant political and social changes to uproot them. Since facilitated analysis often traces the sources of conflict to some serious institutional or constitutional dysfunction, the solutions evaluated by the parties frequently involve proposed changes in the psychological, political, or socio-economic system that embraces (or imprisons) them.
The terrain, then, is distributive justice. Even so, no particular vision of the 'good society' compels the practitioners of analytical conflict resolution. Some emphasize the importance of satisfying identity needs by maximizing group autonomy and self-determination, while others focus on proposed changes that might help to eliminate or ameliorate other perceived sources of social conflict: socio-economic inequality, physical insecurity, psychological alienation, cultural incoherence, etc. Perhaps because of this diversity of views, ACR specialists frequently invoke a pragmatic, procedurally defined notion of justice to suggest that, properly facilitated, the conflicting parties alone can identify the relevant sources of the conflict. Only the parties, it is held, can identify their own unsatisfied needs and do the 'costing' necessary to determine which proposed solutions are in their mutual interest and most feasible.
This deference to the parties' judgment is reminiscent of public dispute resolution praxis. A crucial difference is that here the parties are operating in an analytical rather than a bargaining mode. Even so, this suggests a faith not entirely dissimilar to that animating ADR and PDR that the right process will, in the end, produce the right (or just) outcome.
Finally, although our list of Conflict Resolution models could be greatly lengthened, we can consider reconciliation processes or, more broadly, ideas and procedures aimed at transforming individual and intergroup relationships by helping conflicting parties to experience needed psychological and spiritual changes. Specialists in this field include psychotherapeutically oriented theorists and practitioners, persons committed to religious worldviews and activities, experts in trauma and 'victimology,' and those with a particular interest in intragroup and intergroup reconciliation, particularly when the parties have been historical enemies. The processes include psycho-political workshops, facilitated dialogues reflecting religious approaches to atonement and forgiveness, 'truth commissions,' encounter groups, and communal rituals.
The social justice correlates of this praxis are procedural, restitutive, and distributive. Procedurally, reconciliation specialists believe processes that are intensely personal and carry a high (controlled) emotional or spiritual charge can open the door to peacemaking transformations. One aim of these processes is restitution--in the psycho-spiritual sense of making amends, of forgiving one's enemy and oneself, and of recapturing one's own sense of wholeness and relatedness to other human psyches. A less individualized, although somewhat vague, idea of distributive justice is also common among reconciliation practitioners. In this vision, akin to Martin Luther King's 'beloved community,' the good society is characterized by cultural diversity, nonviolent politics, empathetic relationships, and greater social equality.
The mention of Martin Luther King leads us to recall the man to whom we dedicate this volume, our late colleague and friend, James H. Laue, who was a close associate of Dr. King during the last years of King's career. Jim earned his spurs as a conflict resolver working for the Community Relations Service of the U.S. Department of Justice during the Civil Rights revolution--a mediating role that he envisioned as inseparable from the pursuit of social justice. Like Dr. King, Jim worked for the achievement of a more peaceful, loving, and egalitarian society, an outcome that he considered the likely result of empowering socially disadvantaged groups to advance their interests through nonviolent politics and principled negotiation. As president of The Conflict Clinic, Inc., in St. Louis, chair of the campaign for a U.S. Peace Academy, and Lynch Professor of Conflict Resolution at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, Laue worked to advance this vision.
As we noted earlier, the ethic of social justice that animated Jim Laue has been embraced, in particular, by a number of theorists and practitioners in public dispute resolution. But one characteristic, common--for better or worse--to many sectors of the field, is the argument from means to ends. With few exceptions, conflict resolvers of various types tend to combine strong, well-defined process commitments with optimistic but vague visions of the 'good society' that these processes are alleged to nurture or produce. Throughout the field there has been a tendency to assume that, Good means make good ends, a position (or faith) that is, perhaps, not as meaningful as it might be if the envisaged good outcomes were better defined and the relations between means and ends subjected to more intense and revealing scrutiny.
The editors of this volume therefore challenged the contributors to confront this problem directly, first, by attempting to articulate their visions of the good society, as far as they thought it possible and useful to do so, and, second, by subjecting the connection between processes and outcomes to more intensive analysis. The results of their efforts, it seems to us, are well worth the costs in energy and hard work, even if they may not succeed entirely in bridging the gap between what Arthur Koestler called the 'Yogi' and 'Commissar' approaches to social justice (Koestler, 1967).
Arthur Koestler's famous essay describes two characteristic and opposite types of social activism. The Yogi values means, devalues ends, and sees vast changes in society occurring as the result of spiritual growth manifested by individuals. The Commissar ranks ends over means and considers the transformation of socio-economic and political systems the key to personal transformation. Although Koestler's own inclination, after his disenchantment with Stalinism, was toward the Yogi pole, he put the comparison in the form of a dilemma. Yogis tend to be spiritually developed but socially ineffective; Commissars are just the reverse. The problem lies in how to synthesize these apparently incompatible models of social activism.
This, in a nutshell, is the question that we put to the writers of this book and to ourselves. How, if at all, does Conflict Resolution bridge the gap between the Yogi and the Commissar? Jim Laue would have found the diverse answers contained in this volume both stimulating and significant. With the hope that readers will want to participate further in the discussion, we dedicate this volume to his memory.
Sources:
Jerold Auerbach, Justice Without Law, New York: Oxford University Press, 1983. (BACK)
Goldberg, Sander, and Rogers, Dispute Resolution: Negotiation, Mediation, and Other Processes, 2nd ed., Boston: Little Brown, 1992. (BACK)
Arthur Koestler, The Yogi and the Commissar, and Other Essays, New York: MacMillan, 1967. (BACK)
John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1971. (BACK)
A Handbook of Conflict Resolution: The Analytical, Problem Solving Approach
Mitchell, Christopher & Banks, Michael, A Handbook of Conflict Resolution: The Analytical, Problem Solving Approach, London & New York: Cassells, 1996, pp. 187. $26.00
Publishing a book is a very odd business. I don't mean writing a book, that can be one of the hardest things anyone can ever attempt and imposes a strain on one's sanity that should be avoided unless one is absolutely sure that what one wants to say is so important it literally must go between covers. No, I mean actually publishing a book with a publisher.
Take my very first book. I went about it all wrong. First, I should have sounded out a publisher before even starting chapter one, simply to find out whether anyone would publish a book about the then virtually unknown field of conflict research, tentatively entitled "Parties in Conflict"- a title I still regard as far more accurate and euphonious than the one the publisher finally inflicted on me "for marketing reasons." Then I should have obtained a contract and as large an advance as I could screw out of a publisher. (My record to date is 165 pounds-about $200-for a book I still haven't delivered!) Then I should have dealt with the difficult part and written the book.
Instead of this, I wrote the book first, feeling that conflict research needed a text that tried to summarize the then state of knowledge in the field and presented the manuscript to a somewhat bemused social sciences editor at a well-known London publisher who said (he or she) would "look at it." Two and a half years passed during which I did other things like getting married and starting to raise a daughter. Occasional letters to the publisher disappeared, apparently into some publishing black hole. One was answered by the social sciences editor to the effect that the book was still "under consideration," but after two and a half years of "consideration," I decided enough was enough. We Mitchells are capable of drastic action when aroused. So I marched down to the publisher and asked to see the social sciences editor. A totally different individual appeared, wearing what I was now beginning to recognize as the traditional bemused look, and said he was the "new" social sciences editor, that the previous one had been fired (they didn't use the euphemism of "downsized" in those more honest days) but unfortunately-and I think he had the grace to blush-his predecessor had also lost my manuscript. Did I have another copy?
I was too modest to inquire whether his predecessor had been fired because he had lost my manuscript (I later found that several other people had seen their work vanish in this way), so I said that I found this unconscionable in a respectable publishing house and thereafter used this blackmailing argument every time they suggested anything untoward like reducing the length of the book or cutting out one of my diagrams. Eventually six years after the first manuscript was delivered and in the same year my second book was published, the book finally came out and is still-just about-in print, making a modest amount (about 75 pounds a year) for its author, which is more than I can say for my second book which made the worst-seller list for 1981.
The Handbook that came out this year has had a somewhat similar checkered history. In the early 1980s, a group of conflict researchers and international relations specialists in London, envious of the success of Roger Fisher and Bill Ury, decided to write up their experiences of using problem-solving approaches in tackling protracted and violent conflict. The result was intended to be a kind of British reply to Getting to "Yes"-how it should really be done when focusing on the problem not the people or when investigating both sides' BATNA's or WATNA's proved ineffective, as it frequently had been in our experience! Punchy, based on real-world examples, but with some real theoretical depth, we thought, and of course sales of more than 200,000 in the first year.
The actuality proved more difficult than we had imagined. If it is difficult to write a book oneself, it is exponentially more difficult to write one with eight authors. In the end, we divided up the various chapters and sections among the eight of us, produced and discussed our various manuscripts, then handed the whole lot over to one of our number to write up the final version, and arrange details with our publisher--this time one had been approached well in advance of writing the actual book.
Advertisements duly appeared in the publishers catalog under "Forthcoming." Several years passed but no final version. The eight authors scattered to various points of the compass, some even to a new center for conflict analysis at an obscure university in Virginia. I started to teach CONF 633 at ICAR and began looking around for a suitable text. Nothing. So I started to use versions of the draft manuscript, adding ideas and (now) training exercises so that gradually, my version of the work turned into a teaching manual rather than a version of Getting to (or Somewhere Near) Resolution.
...conflict research needed a text that tried to summarize the then state of knowledge in the field...
Finally after four years of using and changing the manuscript, I contacted Michael Banks, another of the original eight authors, at the London School of Economics and suggested that we forget about supplanting the Fisher-Ury partnership (who had produced several more Getting books in the meantime anyway) and go for a useful teaching aid. Michael agreed, so we went back to our original publisher (who was initially not all that glad to hear from us) and suggested that she think about bringing out a slightly different version of our original work. After some persuasion and several sessions of breaking saucers and swearing on the Bible that we would this time produce a book, the publisher agreed to let us go ahead, and the story might have ended there but for the vagaries of publishing (as opposed to writing). For of course the firm got taken over by a larger publisher just after I delivered the final manuscript to their offices in London.
A long silence ensued. Then totally different people from Cassells, the new publisher, began to write and fax to the two authors. They were going to publish the work (a lot of other pending authors were not as lucky, I understand). They would put in the maps (if we paid to have them reproduced as camera ready copy). They would put in the cartoons from The New Yorker, but we finally decided that they had to be left out--at $200 dollars each we figured we could afford two but couldn't choose between the one showing a young man asking a florist for "A Perfect Olive Branch" and the one showing the indignant drunk telling two bouncers from the gutter into which he has just been hurled that he "was just about to sound a note of conciliation." Damn this intellectual property fraud!
So, the book is finally out and I have been asked to review it for the Newsletter. I really can't do this, so I have told the story of how it came to be written in the first place and then how it came to be published beginning in 1981-which makes about 15 years, start to finish. One of these days, I really must try to get out a book in less than a decade.
So, as I say, it's a funny business, publishing a book. But do buy it. After all, we are aiming for sales of 200,000 in the first year. CRM
The 1997 edition of ICAR's popular publication by Professor Frank Blechman, Understanding Intergroup Conflict in Schools: Strategies and Resources, is now available. Revised and updated, this guide is an excellent resource for schools with interpersonal peer mediation programs who are interested in expanding to handle larger issues.
Peace and Conflict Studies, edited by Dr. Jeong, is the international journal of the Network of Peace and Conflict Studies. Its purpose is to stimulate conceptual development and understanding of peace policy issues and to serve as a forum for theoretical debates on peace building and conflict resolution and the discussion of serious policy alternatives. The majority of its editorial board members are directors or chairs of Peace and Conflict Studies Programs at prominent international education and research institutions. Members include Paul Rogers (Bradford University, U.K.), Bjoern Moeller (University of Copenhagen, Denmark), Ramesh Thakur (Australian National University, Australia), Ake Bjerstedt (Lund University, Sweden), Magnus Haavelsrud (University of Tromsoe, Norway), Morris Bradley (University of Lancaster, UK), Hanna Newcombe (Peace Research Institute, Canada), Karlheinz Koppe (Information Unit Peace Research, Germany), and Robert Rubinstein (Syracuse University, U.S.). To widen its impact on public discourse, the journal is now being posted on the World Wide Web (http://www.trenton.edu/~psm/PCs/).
The journal has published articles on conflict and cooperation, peace education, human rights, indigenous development strategies, and environmental problems by Chadwick Alger, Johan Galtung, Paul Rogers, Paul Smoker, Hanna Newcombe, and other leading scholars. In the areas of global peace policies, such as the assessment of the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons and reform of the world order, contributors to the journal have been by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND, based in the U.K.) and Sir Shridath Ramphal, Co-Chairperson of the Commission on Global Governance.
In its forthcoming December 1996 issue Peace and Conflict Studies will include articles on Conflict Resolution in Reconstruction and Development (Jan Oberg), Non-Offensive Defence (Bjoern Moeller), Nuclear Non-Proliferation Policies (Ramesh Thakur), Six Social Forces Contributing to Ethno-Territorial Politics (Sean Byrne, Neal Carter), Nonviolence and Peacekeeping (Michael Nagler), and the Rationale for the Illegality of Nuclear Weapons (the Mayor of Hiroshima, Japan). The annual subscription rate for hard copies of Peace and Conflict Studies is $15 (U.S.). Inquiries can be made to Professor Charles Snare, Middle George College, 111 Jackson, Sarah Street, Cochran, GA 31014. Fax: (912) 934-3199; Phone: (912 )934-3150. E-mail: "csnare@warrior.mgc.peachnet.edu."
The International Journal of Peace Studies, also edited by Jeong, has been published in association with various study commissions of the International Peace Research Association. Its inaugural issue included articles by John Burton, "Civilization in Crisis: From Adversarial to Problem Solving Process"; Johan Galtung, "Peace and Conflict Studies in the Age of the Cholera"; Birgit Brock-Utne, "The Challenges for Peace Educators at the End of a Millennium"; Paul Smoker and Linda Groff, "Spirituality, Religion, Culture and Peace: Exploring the Foundations for Inner-Outer Peace in the Twenty-First Century." Its second issue published Chadwick F. Alger, "The Emerging Tool Chest for Peacebuilders"; Magnus Haavelsrud, "Learning Democratic Global Governance"; President Nelson Mandela, "Quest for Peace in Africa"; UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Jose Ayala Lasso, "Human Rights in the United Nations"; UNESCO, "Culture of Peace Programme in El Salvador"; Imtiaz Ahmed, "Communal Conflict in Modern Sri Lanka"; and articles from other prominent scholars and groups worldwide.
The January 1997 issue of the International Journal of Peace Studies includes articles by Raimo Vayrynen, Luc Reychler, Glenn Paige, Majid Tehranian, and Miles Woplin on many themes, including conflict prevention, nonviolence, economic well-being and human rights, global communication and international peace, and religion and conflict. Elise Boulding is currently editing a special theme issue on Conflict Resolution and Peace Building to be published in July 1997. The journal will continue to publish articles from leading scholars in the field and contribute to the building of a wider peace research community. It has exchange relationships with several journals, including the Journal of Peace Research, published by the Peace Research Institute in Oslo (PRIO, Norway). Annual subscription to the International Journal of Peace Studies is $20 (U.S.), pay-able by Visa card. Subscription requests can be made directly to Professor Cheng-Feng Shih, Grassroots Publishing Co., P.O. Box 26-447, Taipei 106, Taiwan; fax: 886-2-707-7965.
Just Solution Approach to Resolution of Conflict: Dov Ronen's Call for Reactions
By Dov Ronen, Harvard University
E-mail: dronen@warren.med.harvard.edu
propose
what their party thinks might be a just solution of that specific conflict
or dispute
explain
to each other why they consider their solution just.1
Here are a few words on what I think are the two pivotal elements of the approach: First, I speak of justice, not fairness; these two words are not synonyms. Fairness is a more elastic, more loose, and more general concept than justice. While "fair," according to the dictionary, means unbiased, impartial, "just" implies adherence to a standard. A fair decision or agreement is an impartial one; a just decision or agreement is not only impartial, it also measures up to a standard of rightness. I propose an approach that tries for a high standard of justice (e.g., striving for a resolution agreement that the parties might agree is inherently or morally just, right, correct).
The obvious question is whether or not such a standard of justice exists or may be agreed upon. Specifically, the question is whether or not conflicting parties (especially those from different culture/value traditions) share, or might eventually agree upon, a more or less universal conception of justice. I believe it is possible; I am convinced it should be tried. The parties are asked to explain to each other why they consider their solution just.
Second, interest vis-a-vis needs. Interest, again, is a more elastic concept than needs, a far more loose and more general one in my view. "Interest" is the desire to have more and/or better of something; "need," on the other hand, in my vocabulary, is a rather fixed requirement (e.g., for survival, well-being, or peace). The issue of "less" or "more" is secondary, if at all relevant, to such an interpretation of "need." Without elaborating further, the notion of justice would probably pertain to a similarly restricted notion of needs, thus excluding relational justice and tending toward universal justice.
Lastly, there is little chance that the Just Solution Approach (JSA)
would be welcomed by all parties to any of the various international conflicts
and disputes. In the prevailing international climate, "just and lasting
peace" will likely remain only a slogan on many lips. However, JSA
may prove to be useful as a possible supplement to other approaches. Above
all, it may have the potential to "heighten consciousness about what
exactly makes a solution a good and just one."2
1 In practice, the parties must
first identify the central issue(s) of the conflict. On the other hand,
it is also likely that this two-step approach may prove to be more useful
in regard to negotiations on each specific issue rather than on the conflict
as a whole. However, I restrict my comments here to the overall theoritecal
sphere in which the two steps are central. (BACK)
2 Kevin Clements, in personal correspondence.
I also want to use this opportunity to express my thanks for his comments
on the original version of the idea. (BACK)
Professor John W. Burton's latest book, Conflict Resolution: Its Language and Processes, is being offered at a pre-publication discount by Scarecrow Press of Lanham, Maryland. This introductory text provides a solid understanding of the history, basic theory, and practice of conflict resolution for students in the field of conflict studies as well as for decision makers and policy-makers in industry, law, and government. Among the books written for scholars and practitioners on the theory of conflict resolution and the use of alternative methods in the suppression of conflict, this book addresses the special needs of the general reader. It provides, in easily understandable terms, definitions of the many new terms that are now in the standard lexicon of the rapidly developing field of Conflict Analysis and Resolution.
Professor Johan Galtung was Bryant Wedge Fellow-in-Residence at ICAR in spring 1996. On March 20, 1996, he delivered the Ninth Annual Vernon M. and Minnie I. Lynch Lecture on Conflict Resolution, "Global Projections of Deep-Rooted U.S. Pathologies." His lecture will be published this fall as ICAR's Occasional Paper 11 and is also available on video- and audiotape.
Professor Galtung, born in Oslo, Norway, is one of the founders of peace
and conflict studies. He founded the International Peace Research Institute
in Oslo (PRIO) in 1950 and The Journal of Peace Research in 1964.
The author of more than 50 books and numerous articles in the field of
peace, development and social science theory, his latest book, Peace by
Peaceful Means, was published this year by Sage Press. 
Galtung is currently a professor on the faculty of the European Peace University in Austria and at the Universität Witten/ Herdecke. He holds the title of Honorary Professor at the Universidad de Alicante, the Freie Universität Berlin, Sichuan University, and the Universität of Witten/Herdecke. He also holds the title of Dr. Honoris Causa at the University of Tampere, the University of Cluj, Uppsala University, Soka University, and the Universität Osnabrück. He is the recipient of the Right Livelihood Award (1987), the Norwegian Humanist Prize (1988), the Socrates Prize for Adult Education (1990), the Bajaj International Award for Promoting Gandhian Values (1993), and the Aloha International Award (1995).
Plans are underway for the Eighth National Conference on Peacemaking and Conflict Resolution (NCPCR) to be held May 23-27, 1997, at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The conference will bring together more than 1,200 practitioners, teachers, researchers, program administrators, policy-makers, and students for five days of workshops, seminars, and meetings of organizations and interest groups.
Special features of the 1997 conference will be a Youth Conference, Friday, May 23, organized for young people by local youth, and Social Justice Day on Saturday, May 24, a day designed to provide opportunities for deep transformation and healing work around race relations. Other conference sessions will focus on the application of Conflict Resolution research, theory, and practice to a wide variety of interpersonal, intergroup, and international disputes.
Preliminary conference programs and registration materials will be mailed
in January. For more information, contact Linda Baron by phone at (703)
993-2440; by e-mail at lbaron@gmu.edu;
or by completing and returning the form to NCPCR.
Three scholars, now in residence at ICAR, are supported by ICAR's Transcaucasus Project through a grant from the U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP), which was secured by principal investigator, Professor Dennis J. D. Sandole.
ICAR continues its "Brown Bag Seminar Series" of regularly scheduled Thursday noontime presentations by distinguished guests, visiting scholars, faculty, and students. Speakers this past year included Mary Clark, Josi Kostiner, Tom Dunne, Anne Maydan Nicotera, Kamran Mofid, Serdar Guner, Mahalia Joseph, Gyorgi Otyrba, Giorgi Gogsadze, Kemal Kirisci, Anna Borgeryd, Jean-Nicolas Bitter, Johan Galtung, Ada Aharoni, Eric Sterling, Brigadier Michael Harbottle, Andrew Mack, Charles Chartouni, and Bhikhu Parekh.
ICAR expanded its efforts toward new student recruitment this year. In September, Professor Jeong and ICAR doctoral student Linda Johnston participated in George Mason's Graduate Student Open House, handing out packets of information, ICAR Newsletters, and brochures to prospective students. On October 19 Linda Johnston participated in student recruitment at the North Carolina Graduate Student Open House held at the Omni Hotel in Durham.
On October 30 she took ICAR's brand-new table top display and informational materials to the Annual Five College Graduate and Professional Schools' Information Day at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, distributed ICAR materials, and talked with prospective student applicants.
In 1997 ICAR will
celebrate its 15th year. An anniversary celebration fund-raising drive
is underway and a series of anniversary celebrations are scheduled for
this milestone year, including a Gala 15th Anniversary Reception in conjunction
with ICAR's Annual Lynch Lecture in spring 1997.
Ludmila Hakob Haroutunian
Professor Ludmila Hakob Haroutunian, Chair of the Department of Sociology and Director of the Center for Conflictology at Yerevan State University, Yerevan, Armenia, arrived at ICAR in November 1996. In residence through March 1997, supported by ICAR's USIP-funded Tran-scaucasian Project, she will be working on program design for the Center for Conflictology.
Professor Haroutunian is a former member of the Supreme Soviet of the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) where she chaired the USSR Parliamentary Committee on Inter-Ethnic Conflict and Its Prevention and served as a member of the Commission on Nationality Relations and Nationality Policy. She is the first conflict scholar with whom Dennis Sandole and Christopher Mitchell met in 1991 to discuss the initial developments of what has become ICAR's "Transcaucasian Project." After completing her Ph.D. in Economics at Yerevan State University, Haroutunian pursued a program of post-graduate studies at the Sorbonne Univer-sity in Paris. She is the author of more than 40 scholarly publications on the theme of individual, ethnic, and nationality conflict. She has participated on a number of commissions, including one engaged in resolution of German and Meskhetian-Turk minority issues, and another devoted to the examination and effort to resolve the conflict over Nagorno-Karabkh in the USSR Supreme Soviet.
Acting Director of the Center for Conflictology during Haroutunian's absence is ICAR's most recent Ph.D. alumnus, Moorad Mooradian, who will also be continuing his work with Sandole and Mitchell on the Transcaucasian Project.
Kamal Mamedzade
Under the auspices of ICAR's USIP-funded Transcaucasus grant, Mr. Kamal Mamedzade, master's student in International Relations from Khazar University's School of Law and Social Sciences, Baku, Azerbaijan, is in residence at ICAR this semester. He is currently engaged in research and study of conflict resolution theory and practice and auditing classes at ICAR's graduate studies program. Upon his return to Khazar University, he will work with former visiting scholar, Nurlan Aliyev, to develop course offerings in Conflict Studies at Khazar University.
Zeynep Selcuk
Ms. Zeynep Selcuk, master's student in International Relations from Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey, is now at ICAR, along with Professor Ludmila Hakob Haroutunian and Mr. Kamal Mamedzade, under the auspices of ICAR's USIP-funded Transcaucasus grant. Ms. Selcuk is engaged in research in Conflict Studies. She is also completing her thesis on
Pre-Negotiation Theory, investigating the variables involved in getting
to the table from a state of coercion to actual cooperation and negotiation.
She is conducting her observation of the ICAR academic program so that
upon her return to Bilkent University she will be prepared to work with
the International Relations faculty to develop a program in Conflict Studies.
Robert Midgley
Robert Midgley, Professor of Law at Rhodes University, spent four-and-a-half months at ICAR as a visiting research fellow. He arrived in mid-July, accompanied by his wife, Trish, and their three children. He was here in residence until the end of November 1996. The Midgley family live in Grahamstown, South Africa, where Trish is a practicing oral hygienist.
Professor Midgley's research has two components. He is first taking a retrospective look at some of the activities of the Peace Accord structures in South Africa in an attempt to establish why they fell from grace after the elections. From 1992 to 1994, he played a prominent role on the Grahamstown Peace Committee, monitoring protest activities and mediating a number of disputes in Grahamstown and surrounding areas. He also served on the Regional Peace Committee in the Eastern Cape area and, as an accredited national peace accord trainer, conducted a number of conflict resolution training workshops.
At ICAR, Professor Midgley analyzed a particular intervention, in which he was involved, between the police and members of the Grahamstown Township community concerning the investigation and prevention of crime, which became a catalyst for an entirely different field of academic and practical interest. During these negotiations, one of the participants questioned why relationships between police and the Black community could not be similar to those he remembered as a child. This question resulted in the appointment of a commission to investigate the possibility of implementing community-orientated policing methods in the Grahamstown area. The commission report and the projects that were generated as a result of it received the attention of policy makers at the national level, and for some time Grahamstown was at the forefront of developing community policing policy in South Africa.
Professor Midgley served on the executive committee of the Grahamstown Community Police Consultation Forum. To ensure that the knowledge gained in the process would not be lost and would be made available to other communities, he has conducted about 60 workshops on community policing throughout the province to both community members and the police. He was responsible for the initial draft of the proposed Provincial Community Policing Policy and served as adviser to provincial authorities in this regard. The community work which Professor Midgley now undertakes is done mostly under the auspices of the Independent Mediation Service of South Africa (IMSSA). He serves as a member IMSSA's Community Conflict Mediation Panel, its Mediation Training Panel, and its Arbitration Panel.
While here in residence, he will also spend time redesigning the ADR course, which he teaches to law students at Rhodes University, capitalizing on ICAR's experience in curriculum design. Although his research is the main reason for the Midgley's visit, he made his family's stay in Virginia an educational experience. Since the first part of their stay coincided with school vacation and the end of summer, they made the most of the good weather by exploring the Shenandoah Valley, various Washington museums, and spending an exhausting week at Disney World in Florida. Then it was back to more formal education with the children at school and Professor Midgley in front of the computer. Trish Midgely, meanwhile, remained active by registering for evening adult education classes and volunteering for all sorts of Fairfax County community activities.
Although the Midgely family was surprised at the ease with which they had settled in Virginia, the family was looking forward to their return to South Africa. Life is much the same as before, except that Professor Midgley has added administrative responsibility in his new post as Dean at Rhodes University's School of Law.
Amanda Melville
Francois Nsengiyumva
Born and raised in Rwanda, visiting scholar Francois Nsengiyumva was obliged to leave his homeland in spring 1994. He reports: "When the now world-famous 1994 Rwandan tragedy started on the night of April 6, my bags were already packed and my passport, visa, and tickets in my pocket. In just a few hours I was due in Kigali National Airport for an early morning flight, leaving at dawn for America. As a guest of the U.S. government, I was to join a group of international visitors for a four-week seminar on 'The Role of Congress in the U.S. Political System.' At the time I was a journalist in the Rwandan Office of Information, where I served as chief anchorman on Rwanda National Television. By 3 a.m., with explosions rattling my apartment windows, shouts and screams of agony carrying across Kigali's hills, I felt I stood little chance of taking my scheduled flight to America," he said.
"A few hours earlier a plane carrying Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana, together with his Burundian colleague, President Cyprien Ntaryamira, had been downed at Kigali Airport, putting an end to the fragile cease-fire agreement between the Government of Rwanda and the rebel RPF, the Rwandan Patriotic Front. Now warfare was everywhere. I left my house, went into hiding for ten days, and then started a harrowing walk through the hills to neighboring Burundi. I finally left Kigali on April 17, flying first to Brussels, and at last arriving in the United States on April 22. News from home has since told me what I did not want to hear: that many of the people I left behind, including my parents and many of my siblings, were mercilessly slaughtered."
Since his arrival in the United States, Mr. Nsengiyumva has been living under temporary protected status (TPS), and was recently granted political asylum. As a journalist, he is writing articles and has also worked with the Voice of America to broaden the public's understanding of the ongoing Central African crisis. He is supported by a one-year MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, which enables him to undertake research for a book on the origins of the Rwandan tragedy and ways to avert such a tragedy in future. To facilitate his research and writing and to broaden his theoretical understanding of conflict, he has chosen to visit ICAR during summer and fall 1996. He plans to spend the spring 1997 semester at Columbia University School of Journalism and to return to ICAR in fall 1997 to begin work toward his Ph.D. in Conflict Studies.
Frank O. Blechman
In addition to teaching, researching, recruiting, and nurturing ICAR students during the past two semesters, Professor Frank Blechman served on a number of university committees and task forces and provided consultation to a number of outside agencies. He provided consultation on the separation of George Mason's graduate and undergraduate programs in business education and served in fall 1996 on George Mason's "K-16 Committee," examining cooperation and partnerships between George Mason and other educational institutions in Northern Virginia. Dubbed "K-16" because of its focus on integrating Grades K through 12 with undergraduate-level higher education programs, its committee members include representatives of George Mason's Graduate School of Education, College of Arts and Sciences, School of Information Technology and Engineering, Institute for Educational Transformation, and ICAR. Professor Blechman also serves on George Mason's Committee on Responsible Use of Computing, overseeing university policies regarding computer use and helping resolve conflicts.
During 1996 he worked with the Virginia State Crime Commission's Task Force on Youth Gangs on a study of youth gangs in Virginia and helped develop recommendations for the 1997 General Assembly. He served as a member of an advisory group to the Virginia State Crime Commission and the State Commission on Youth and testified before the two commissions at a hearing held in Arlington, Virginia, on October 21, 1996.
As a member of an advisory group on youth violence, working with Kaiser Per-manente's Youth Violence Advisory Board, he participated in designing a July 1996 conference, "Building Hope." Participants included several hundred at-risk youth from Virginia, Washington, D.C., and Maryland.
As an adviser to the Fairfax County Initiative to Reduce Youth Violence, he participated in designing community meetings that will be held across the county between November 6 and December 4, 1996. He also facilitated the Reston Community Center's Annual Retreat.
His outside consulting included health policy collaboration in conferences on interprofessional cooperation in nursing education accreditation; a four-year facilitation of the 301 South Corridor (MD) Transportation Study; consultation with the Fairfax Department of Public Works to develop a training program for senior managers; and with the Fulton County Housing Authority of Georgia to provide training and consulting on mechanisms and skills needed to support tenant-managed businesses in public housing.
With Professor Richard Rubenstein, he solicited and began work on editing the more than 20 manuscripts submitted to date for a volume entitled Conflict Resolution and Social Justice: Essays in Honor of Jim Laue. He contributed a draft chapter for a book, Service Learning in Peace Studies, edited by Robin Crews and Kathleen Weigert. This manuscript draws on ICAR's APT experience to highlight the difficulties faced and our solutions to integrating community service and student learning in conflict resolution.
With ICAR doctoral students Jayne Docherty, Jarle Crocker, and Steve Garon, he wrote a chapter, "Metaphor Dialogue as a Tool for Environmental Policy Dialogue," for a volume edited by Peter Adler.
Sandra I. Cheldelin
Dr. Cheldelin chairs ICAR's Strategic Planning Committee, which is conducting, as its primary kick-off, an all-day ICAR faculty retreat to develop the focus for a one-year and five-year plan for the institute. She is also serving on ICAR's Fund Raising and Curriculum Committees.
This fall Professor Cheldelin facilitated a dialogue among multi-campus leaders about intentional changes in their organizational culture and leadership structure and innovative program development. She also served as a mediator with a board of directors and continues her organizational and clinical psychologist practice.
Cheldelin is currently writing, based on her case-study based research, on the role of leaders in organizations as nonneutral third-party interveners. She will conduct a workshop, "Moving from Conflict to Collaboration," at the Amer-ican Association for Higher Education's Forum on faculty roles and rewards in January 1997; conference participants are college and university presidents, deans, and faculty.
Kevin P. Clements
Over the course of the past year, Professor Kevin P. Clements, along with Professor Christopher Mitchell, has been developing a collaborative research project with the Center for Negotiation and Conflict Resolution of Rutgers State University and individual scholars from Syracuse and Eastern Mennonite University. Their project, "Conflict Transformation: From Civil War to Civil Society," has been submitted to a variety of potential funders, and they hope to begin the research work early in 1997. In March 1996, Clements was one of a four-person review team evaluating the Peace and Conflict Studies Program at Haverford and Bryn Mawr College.
In April he was Siena College Peace Lecturer and delivered the inaugural lecture for Peace Week, "Prospects for a Stable Peace in Bosnia," at Siena College, Albany, New York. On April 29 he presented a lecture to the Program on Conflict at Harvard University, "The Contribution of Peace Building and Problem Solving to Conflict Transformation" and was a guest lecturer at the University of Maryland on May 10 where he spoke on "The Role of the United Nations in Resolving Violent Conflicts." In June, with Professor Mitchell and Ambassador John McDonald, he conducted a four-day ICAR Workshop, "Conflict Resolution for Diplomats and Non-Governmental Organizations." From June 22-25, he delivered a series of lectures to the UNITAR/DPA Conference for Diplomats and UN Officials at Stadtschlaining, Austria; these focused on "Structural Sources of Conflict" and "The Role of the United Nations in
Conflict Resolution." From July 4-12, he attended the 16th General Conference of the International Peace Research Association (IPRA) in Brisbane, Australia, where he was re-elected president of the association for another two-year term. While there, he chaired a plenary session, the annual general meeting of the association, and three meetings of IPRA's Commission on Global Political Economy. Following the IPRA Conference, he flew to Tokyo, Japan, and to Okinawa to give lectures inaugurating the Toda Institute for Global Peace and Security at the United Nations University. On July 15, he was presented with Soka University's Highest Award in Honor of Services to International Peace. In September he attended a conference, "Reform of the United Nations," organized by the Peace Studies Department of Kyung Hee University in Seoul, Korea, and gave a paper titled "The Role of the United Nations in the Asia-Pacific Region." In late September he went to Boulder, Colorado, to take on the position of president of the IPRA Foundation, replacing its former president, Professor Elise Boulding; the foundation is now based at George Mason University.
At the annual meeting of the International Studies Association at the University of Oregon at Eugene, he was both chair and discussant on a panel analyzing "Social Movements on the Periphery: With Special Reference to Indigenous Peoples." While there, he also gave a seminar and had discussions with the Political Science Department on "Conflict Transformation" and "Evolutionary Learning Theory."
In addition to the above, Clements has taught ICAR courses, "Mediating Public Policy Conflicts" and "Theories of Social Change." With doctoral research assistant, Chiharu Okajima, he has facilitated the development of an Asia-Pacific Conflict Transformation Group at the Institute as well as a Middle Eastern Studies Group with ICAR student Alma Abdel-Hadi Jadallah. While administering the Institute, he continues to represent ICAR on the Board of the Institute for International Studies and the Centre for Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation. At George Mason University, he is serving on the President's Council, the Deans and Director's Council, the University Senate, and on six internal ICAR committees. He is also serving on the board of the William Penn House in Washington, D.C., and on the Editorial Boards of International Peacekeeping, Peace Review, and Pacifica.
His most recent publications are "Why the Cold War Ended: Carrots Were More Important Than Sticks," (Chapter 8, in Why the Cold War Ended, R. Summy and M. Salla, eds., Greenwood Press, Connecticut, 1996), and "Boston Research Center for the Twenty-First Century: Global Citizen Awards," by K. Clements, E. Boulding, A. Carnesale, J. Montgomery, and Kem Lowry (in the American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Vol. 55, No. 3.).
Daniel Druckman
Working with ICAR graduate assistant Victor Robinson, Dan Druckman continues to make progress on the grant from the United Institute of Peace to utilize research findings on negotiation in diplomatic training programs. Robinson and Druckman have recently completed a set of exercises designed to incorporate findings from research journal literature. These findings were presented in the form of narratives on 11 topics arranged into four units:
After reviewing and discussing the narratives, participants apply them in the context of three role assignments:
The exercises were used first in a preliminary way with ICAR students in the 1996 spring semester course on negotiation processes, and then with UN diplomats at a three-day June retreat convened by the Institute of World Affairs (IWA). The evaluations suggest that participants learn to apply the concepts to cases and are encouraged to consult the research literature in their day-to-day work, but they do not apply the knowledge in sophisticated ways in their analyses or strategies. More sophisticated use of the knowledge may result from longer training sessions. To this end, Druckman and Robinson plan to teach a two-week 1997 intersession course organized around the exercises "Forty Years of Research on Negotiation: What Works?" They will also apply the exercises in another round of IWA training with UN diplomats in New York in March and in Connecticut in June 1997. Stay tuned to this column for a report of the results of these programs.
Ho-Won Jeong
Ho-Won Jeong is serving as ICAR's Library Liaison, meeting with George Mason University librarians on a weekly basis to survey and upgrade the library's holdings in the field of conflict studies. As coordinator of ICAR's Undergraduate Program Committee, he is working with Professors Clements, Rubenstein, and LeBaron to design George Mason's first undergraduate course offerings in Conflict Studies. In spring 1997, at the conclusion of Professor Mitchell's five-year stint in the post, Jeong will take over the role of faculty representative to the University Dispute Resolution Center.
Michelle LeBaron
Michelle LeBaron developed and co-taught the course "Violence and Gender" at New Century College, George Mason's undergraduate interdisciplinary program, with Paula Gilbert, Modern and Classical Languages Department, and Lorna Irvine, English Department. With a readership grant from George Mason University's Women's Studies Program, she and colleague Sara Looney of the Department of Communication developed and taught a new course on women and spirituality.
Professor LeBaron presented work at several summer programs including Moral Re-Armament in Caux, Switzerland, The University of Victoria Public Dispute Resolution Institute, and the Summer Institute in Intercultural Communication. She gave a plenary address at the Canadian conference entitled "Making Peace and Sharing Power: A National Gathering on Aboriginal Peoples and Dispute Resolution," and made two presentations at the conference of the Network entitled "Interaction for Conflict Resolution" in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Together with colleague Louise Diamond of the Institute for Multi-Track Diplomacy, Professor LeBaron delivered a workshop at George Mason University entitled "Non-Linear Approaches to Conflict Resolution: The Role and Power of Myth, Story, and Metaphor."
Professor LeBaron received summer research funding from ICAR for her work on gender, conflict, and leadership. This work involves an analysis of conflict dynamics in a class on women as global leaders, attended by women, in which gender role expectations and gender expectations in leadership are being explored. This work is being completed with the assistance of ICAR graduate students Nike Carstarphen and Cheshmak Farhoumand.
Michelle LeBaron and Nike Carstarphen completed an evaluation of the Network for Life and Choice (NLC) dialogue process on abortion for the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and participated in the first annual conference of the NLC as conference evaluators and facilitators. LeBaron and Carstarphen are now writing an article about the dialogue process for Negotiation Journal.
Professor LeBaron is also writing a chapter on gender conflict for a new book on gender studies and a chapter on diversity-related conflict for the Jim Laue festschrift. In addition, she also is working on a chapter on intercultural conflict resolution for a new textbook.
Richard E. Rubenstein
Professor Richard E. Rubenstein's recent publications include ICAR Working Paper #10, Power Politics and Conflict Resolution, and Global Conflict After the Cold War: Two Lectures, based on public lectures that he delivered at the University of Malta. He also authored a Report on Terrorism, 1996, for the World Book Encyclopedia Yearbook. Rubenstein is readying three more articles for publication this year: "Conflict Resolution and the Prison System: An Abolitionist Perspec-tive"; "Legaholism: America's Overdepen-dence on Law"; and "Conflict Analysis By The News Media."
Professor Rubenstein is also continuing work on two forthcoming books: Conflict Resolution and Social Justice: Essays in Honor of James H. Laue (editor, with Frank O. Blechman); and The Arian Controversy: Conflict and Conflict Resolution in the Early Christian Church. He presented a paper on "Prisons and Conflict Resolution" at the annual conference of the Consortium on Peace Research, Education and Development (COPRED) in Washington, D.C., in August and appeared on News Channel 8 in Springfield, Virginia, to comment on the possibility of terrorist involvement in the downing of TWA Flight 800. In September Rubenstein was a featured panelist at the U.S. Information Agency's Open Forum on "Citizen Diplomacy and Negotiation: Linking Second Track to First Track Dip-lomacy.f" He also participated in September in an all-day conference, "Conflict Resol-ution and the News Media," sponsored by the Voice of America.
As an active member of George Mason's Faculty Speakers Bureau, Rubenstein spoke on "Terrorism: Causes and Cures" before the Fairfax, Virginia, Rotary Club and the Fairfax Kiwanis Club. He presented an ICAR Brown Bag Seminar on "The Nature and Causes of Religious Conflict," lectured on "The Middle East Peace Process" at two Washington-area synagogues, and participated as a primary trainer in "Living Together Peacefully," a one-day intensive training offered at ICAR for Northern Virginia youth leaders.
Professor Rubenstein facilitated discussions between leaders of two national nonprofit associations relating to a possible merger of their organizations and served as a member of a program evaluation team for the Peace Studies Program at Juniata College. He was also a member of the Virginia State Commission on Higher Education's Accreditation Team sent to evaluate the Conflict Analysis and Transformation Program at Eastern Mennonite University.
At ICAR, Rubenstein is offering a new course, "Perspectives from Literature on Conflict Analysis and Resolution." He chairs the Institute's Curriculum Committee, its Admissions Committee, and its Promotions and Tenure Committee, and co-chairs the Committee on Fundraising and Publications.
Dennis J.D. Sandole
Dennis J.D. Sandole completed a study leave at the Austrian Study Center for Peace and Conflict Resolution in Stadtschlaining, Austria, from January 23 to August 6, 1996. His main objective was to work toward the completion of his manuscript, The Genesis of War: Mapping and Modelling of Complex Conflict Processes, which he will submit shortly to Lynne Rienner Publishers.
While at Stadtschlaining, Sandole taught the course, "Peace, Conflict, and Violence: Theory and Praxeologies for Conflict Transformation," for the spring semester of the European University Center for Peace Studies (EPU). He also lectured on "Nature and Functions of Principal Conflicts in the 1990s," "Prin-cipal Strategies and Practices of Inter-national Conflict Resolution," "Empowerment for Political Participation," for the International Civilian Peace-keeping and Peace-building Training Program (IPT), and "Developing Conflict Resolution in Transcaucasia: A University-Based Approach," for the Caucasus Seminar on Joint Training of NGO Representatives and UN Personnel in Conflict Resolution and Human Rights Monitoring.
During his stay at Stadtschlaining, Sandole traveled to Vilnius, Lithuania, where he presented, "Peace and Security in the Post-Cold War Era: Preventing New Yugoslavias" and "A Practitioner's Guide to the Nature, Causes, and Resolution of Conflict" to the Conference on Conflict Resolution in Contemporary Society.
In September 1996 Sandole participated in the 12th Annual Worldwide Conference of People to People Inter-national (Youth Component) held in Newport Beach, California, where he presented the plenary speech, "Introduction to Conflict Resolution," and participated in a panel on international careers.
Sandole was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to continue his research on the role of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in the creation of a peace and security system for Europe in the post-Cold War era. He will take up this scholarship upon the termination of spring semester 1997.
Hamdesa Tuso
Dr. Hamdesa Tuso's major professional activities during this past year included participation in the evaluation of a Conflict Resolution Workshop for the Greater Horn of Africa Initiative (GHAI) organized by the U.S.Institute of Peace.
Tuso presented a paper entitled "People Who Wage No War" at the Second International Congress for Peace in Europe, in Vitoria, Spain and another entitled "Immigration and Politics During the 1996 Presidential Election: Facts and Fictions" to the Minority Leadership Forum in Washington, D.C.
His paper, "The Indigenous Processes of Conflict Resolution of the Oromos of the Horn of Africa: Change and Continuity," has been submitted for inclusion as a chapter in a forthcoming book on conflict resolution in the African tradition, edited by Professor William Zartman, School for Advanced International Studies (SAIS), Johns Hopkins University.
Professor Tuso has been invited to join the board of directors of the Center for Conflict Prevention and Resolution in Africa (CPRA), based in Washington, D.C.
Wallace Warfield
Continuing practicum activities begun more than two years ago with the Arlington County Department of Parks, Recreation, and Community Resources, Professor Wallace Warfield and ICAR
