The International Institute for Conflict Prevention and Resolution just notified us that ODR Theory and Practice has been nominated for entry into the competition for a 2012 CPR Award in the Book category. If CPR operates on the same schedule that it has used in the past, the awards will be announced in January, 2013. For a link to CPR Awards information, click here.
In July of 2013, SMU will offer a revised version of the Israel/Palestine study abroad course. This time, instead of looking at trauma and long term conflict, the class will focus on community disputes and “social” disputes at the Track II and local levels on both sides of the border. The class will meet from July 7-15, 2013, in Jerusalem, Acre, Tel Aviv, and Bethlehem. I will lead the class, starting with a weekend session at SMU to set the stage for the community mediation centers, mediators, and other dispute resolvers with whom the class will interact in Israel and Palestine. The attached draft agenda has the tentative schedule and cost, and contact information for the SMU Dispute Resolution program office. Click here for the tentative schedule: Israel-Palestine Class.
I recently joined a task force formed by the International Committee of the ABA Section of Dispute Resolution. The Task Force on Interdisciplinary Approaches to Complex Dispute Resolution was formed at the recent ABA Section meeting in Washington, DC, and is co-chaired by Larry Bridgesmith of Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tennessee, and Ross Sydney, owner of Mediate Today, in Canberra, Australia. The mission statement for the task force is posted here: ABA – TARGETTED MISSION STATEMENT FOR THE TASK FORCE ON INTERDISCIPLINARY APPROACHES TO COMPLEX DISPUTE RESOLUTION.
The ABA Dispute Resolution events at the Creighton Law School are taking shape. The Werner Institute for Negotiation and Dispute Resolution is hosting my talk on “Mediation in the Mainstream” on Wednesday, October 17. The talk will begin at 4:30 pm, run as long as I have anything to say, and will be followed by a reception until 6:30 pm. Registration (no cost) is available at Eventbrite. To reserve a seat, click here: Mediation in the Mainstream.
This is exciting news for me: PeaceTones just moved to the voting round in a contest for innovating justice. All we need now is enough votes to be selected as the winner! The winner gets a suite of really great resources from the Innovating Justice organization that helps them scale their work up. The voting starts on September 20, so when the date rolls around, please go to http://www.
Next week is the annual Association for Conflict Resolution conference – Julia and I will be involved in a number of events associated with the conference.
I will moderate a panel entitled, “ODR Tools for Bringing Parties Together,” for which several of my NMB colleagues will demonstrate ODR technology that we routinely use to work with parties.
At the Silent Auction, I will be on the block, offering an hour of ODR consulting to the lucky bidder 😉
I’ll be at the Authors’ Corner to flog copies of ODR Theory and Practice.
I’ll be at the Conflict Resolution Quarterly annual editorial board meeting.
And I’ll stand by and be impressed by Julia’s presentation on “Conflict, Space, and Movement.”
Next week the second group of new graduate students will begin the online dispute resolution Masters Degree offered by Dominican University in River Forest, Illinois. The program begins with an intensive five-day mediation skills course taught by two of my NMB colleagues and me as part of a cooperative agreement with Dominican. For more information about the program, go to the Dominican University web site.
The ABA’s Section of Dispute Resolution Mediation Week for 2012 will be from October 14-20, 2012. The theme for the week this year is “Mediation in the Mainstream: From the Courthouse to the Conference Room.”
As part of the Mediation Week activities at Creighton University, the Werner Institute (housed in the Creighton School of Law) will host an evening session on Wednesday, October 17, at which I will be the featured speaker. I haven’t decided how to approach the idea of mainstreamed mediation, but I’ll come up with something, and I’ll post the gist of my comments on this blog on the 17th.
In the meantime, for more information about Mediation Week, go to the ABA Mediation Week web page, and the Werner Institute web page.
The Washington Post recently carried an article about yoga teachers from the Washington, DC, area working with groups in the Occupied Territory of Palestine to reduce the pervasive stress of living in a long-term conflict environment. (The article, “DC Teachers Offer Yoga to Combat the Stresses of Conflict-Ridden Ramallah,” can be found at Yoga.)
My partner in Holistic Solutions, Inc. (and in all other things), Julia Morelli, has for quite some time used yoga and the “Internal Arts” as part of her dispute resolution practice (that’s Julia in the photo), and there are a growing number of practitioners who use Aikido and other martial arts as aids in stressful environments. The Center for Mind-Body Medicine has long been involved in exploring the connection between our physical selves, our emotional selves, and our relationship to conflict, including a good bit of work in Israel and Palestine.
As part of my work with SMU’s graduate program in dispute resolution, I have teamed with an Israeli psychologist to teach a course in trauma and long term conflict. That course featured interaction with the outstanding trauma counseling professional in Israel, and I currently am pursuing a proposal to produce a trauma intervention package that can be used by schools in Palestine to blunt the impact of daily trauma there. There’s a lot to the mind-body/mindfulness approach to stress reduction and conflict resolution.
