- Rachel Kleinfeld and Shamil Idriss on Polarization, Philanthropic Plurality, Social Justice, and Democracy -- Those seeking to improve democracy should hold themselves accountable for advancing both peace and justice through collaborative action to meet common goals. -- Jun 26
- Social Justice Advocacy, Bridge-Building and Philanthropy: How Do These Intersect? -- What role should philanthropy play in the effort to fix democracy? Can they help? How? Or should they bow out, acknowledging that they are making the problem worse? -- Jun 22
- Colleague and Context Posts for week of June 18 -- This week's links to news articles and organizations that are, in various ways, working to help us understand and more constructively handle intractable conflict. -- Jun 18
- More Ways to Turn Down the Heat -- The second part of our short, readable summary (with lots of links) to what we collectively know about strategies for controlling destructive escalation. -- Jun 15
- Reversing or Better Yet, Avoiding, Destructive Escalation -- Once we understand the many ways in which escalation can trap us, we can avoid those traps. If we discover that we have already fallen into a trap, we can work to climb out--here are 5 ways to do that. -- Jun 08
- Palma Strand: A Path Out of Polarization: The Strengthening Democracy Challenge and the Civity Storytelling Intervention -- Civity is all about forming relationships across difference. It's the "secret sauce" of successful communities and organizations. And better yet, everyone can do it! -- Jun 07
- Colleague and Context for Week of June 4 -- More interesting reading from our colleagues within and outside the conflict resolution/peacebuilding field. -- Jun 05
- Divided Community Project: Speaking Out to Strengthen the Guardrails of Democracy -- One of the most important ways in which we can all act to strengthen our democracy is to speak out when others are acting in ways that threaten it. -- May 31
- Learning More about How the TRUST Network Does Massively Parallel Peacebuilding -- Democracy--and threats to it--are a complex adaptive system. We need complex, adaptive responses as well The TRUST Network is one. -- May 29
- Learning More about How the TRUST Network Does Massively Parallel Peacebuilding -- Democracy--and threats to it--are a complex adaptive system. We need complex, adaptive responses as well The TRUST Network is one. -- May 29
- Colleague and Context for Week of May 22 -- More news and activities from our peacebuilding colleagues and interesting readings from allied fields, particularly journalism. -- May 24
- Escalation is the Most Dangerous Force on the Planet. But We Continue to Drive It -- Driven by many interacting feedback loops, escalation can get out of control quickly--leading to violence or even worse. -- May 21
- Paul Monteiro, Former Director of the Community Relations Service, Talking About How CRS Works its Magic -- A few of the many important things Community Relations Service Paul Monteiro shared about the way CRS operates, what makes it successful, and most importantly, how it needs help from locals. -- May 17
- Colleague and Context Posts for the Week of May 15, 2023 -- Our weekly selection of interesting organizations and projects in the conflict/peacebuilding field, and articles of interest from outside our field. -- May 14
- An Award for NAFCM + Conflict Mapping and Other Tools for Understanding Complex Problems -- Conflict mapping is a tool to help understand what, besides "the other guys" are driving a conflict or social problem, and hence what might be done to fix it. -- May 11
- John Lande: The Importance of Really Listening – For Ourselves, Others, and Democracy -- Some of our biggest errors are that we generally assume that we correctly understand the world and that being wrong is bad. Rather, we often are wrong--and that is good! -- May 09
- Colleague and Context Posts for the Week of May 8, 2023 -- Colleague activities to strengthen democracy, and outside the field articles on democracy, polarization, and related issues. -- May 07
- D.G. Mawn Talks About Community Mediation and NAFCM -- Conversation with D.G. Mawn about the National Association for Community Mediation and the work of the hundreds of member centers which have been helping resolve community conflicts for decades. -- May 04
- Colleague and Context Posts for the Week of May 1, 2023 -- Colleague activities to strengthen democracy, and outside the field articles on democracy, polarization, and related issues. -- May 02
- Colleague and Context Posts for the Week of April 23, 2023 -- More stories about our colleague's efforts to defuse polarization and strengthen democracy, along with similar stories from outside the conflict/peacebuilding field. -- Apr 23
- ChatGPT — Can It "Listen" Better Than We Can? -- Can ChatGPT "listen to" and understand the other side better than we can? And if so, is that useful for de-polarization? -- Apr 21
- Sharing Ideas From Around the Globe on Ways to Strengthen Democracy - A BI/IGN Discussion -- A summary of ideas generated by the joint BI/IGN discussion on ways to strengthen democracy using negotiation, conflict resolution, and related processes. -- Apr 18
- Polarization's Toll on US Credibility, Progressives' Reverse CBT, and Other Colleague and Context Links -- Our readers share their thoughts: how progressive attitudes are deeply hurting progressives themselves, and how polarization is damaging US credibility abroad. Plus normal colleague and context posts. -- Apr 16
- Our Problem Isn't "Them" -- We need to learn more about the other side--not about how bad they are, but why they believe what they believe, why they respond to us the way they do, and why they advocate for the things we think are so awful. -- Apr 13
- Carrie Menkel-Meadow: Freedom of Speech and Freedom to Protest -- Who has the right to speak how and when? The Stanford Law School controversy has lessons for all of us. -- Apr 11
The Hyper-Polarization Challenge to the Conflict Resolution Field
We invite you to participate in an online exploration of what those with conflict and peacebuilding expertise can do to help defend liberal democracies and encourage them live up to their ideals.
Follow BI and the Hyper-Polarization Discussion on BI's New Substack Newsletter.
