Gini Nelson’s Engaging Conflicts

“The other advice is from a book that I read entitled “The Way of Man” by Martin Buber in which he stated that all conflict comes from within and it is up to the person in conflict to straighten him or herself out first and then be capable of dealing with the situation in a creative and generative way.” — Richard Millen

Richard is interviewed in today’s issue of Engaging Conflicts Today. Half lawyer, half entrepreneur, and always, dedicated family man, Millen was admitted to the California bar in June 1949. After a few years as a research and litigation associate, government lawyer and house counsel for a corporation, he started his career as a transactional lawyer and operating officer for a group of Wall Street investment bankers. During this time, while involved in their varied ventures, he also became “of Counsel” to the law firm of Schwartz & Alschuler, now known as Alschuler, Grossman, Stein & Kahan, and remained there for 17 years. Always a dealmaker, Millen finally found a “home in the practice of mediation in 1986. If you would like a copy of his interview, and are not signed up for the newsletter (which you can do in the sidebar on the right!), email me this week at engagingconflicts@gmail.com with Richard Millen in the subject line and I’ll email it to you.

“The best advice that I have received is that ‘time is on our side.’ As long as we (the police) can tolerate the behavior of someone in crisis; that is, that they are not hurting an innocent hostage or victim, then we will allow that individual to work through his or her emotion, which of course, takes time.” — Jack Cambria

Jack is interviewed in today’s issue of Engaging Conflicts Today. Jack is the Commanding Officer of the New York City Police Department’s Hostage Negotiation Team. His duties consist of coordinating the efforts of 100 Negotiators, who respond throughout the city to all hostage and related situations. He is responsible for the training and certification of new negotiators and the retraining of current negotiators, and conducts training for many outside law enforcement agencies. He worked with the Emergency Service Unit for the three months following the attack on the World Trade Center, to assist in the rescue and then recovery efforts at Ground Zero. If you would like a copy of his interview, and are not signed up for the newsletter (which you can do in the sidebar on the right!), email me this week at engagingconflicts@gmail.com with Jack Cambria in the subject line and I’ll email it to you.

“I saw brutality, experienced hunger and was even recruited as a child soldier. Education for kids was only limited to knowing how to operate a hand gun and identify your enemy.” — Emmy Irobi

Emmy is interviewed in today’s issue of Engaging Conflicts Today. After serving as a child soldier in Biafra, Emmy Irobi migrated to Poland and Germany. He obtained a Masters degree in International Relations from the University of Warsaw, and went on to obtain a Ph.D. in Political Science at the University of Leipzig, Germany in May, 2005. He is now a Polish citizen, and plans to live permanently in Poland. His research interests, however, continue to center on resolving ethnic conflicts in Africa. He has also written an article on Ethnic Conflict Management in Africa which can be located at BeyondIntractability.org.

If you would like a copy of his interview and are not signed up for the newsletter (which you can do in the sidebar on the right!), email me this week at engagingconflicts@gmail.com with Emmy Irobi in the subject line and I’ll email it to you.

“We do violence to ourselves and to our mission if we cut process
corners or dissemble or leave sleeping dogs concealed in order to
increase the odds of getting a deal.”
– Wayne Brazil

Wayne is interviewed in today’s issue of Engaging Conflicts Today. Wayne Brazil has been a United States Magistrate Judge in northern California since 1984. Before joining the court, Judge Brazil was a law professor and a civil litigator. As a magistrate judge, he has handled a wide range of assignments in civil and criminal cases. He has hosted some 1500 settlement conferences. He helped design his
court’s ADR program and supervises the professional staff that runs it. He has published a number of articles about court sponsorship of ADR programs and two books about judicially hosted settlementprocesses. If you would like a copy of his interview, and are not signed up for the newsletter (which you can do in the sidebar on the right!), email me this week at gn@gnconflictmanagement.com with Wayne Brazil in the subject line and I’ll email it to you.

“I actually have a bunch of heroes. They’re not the big iconic names in the field… Instead my heroes are the people in the trenches–the individuals I know who are using cyberspace to talk to the world about the conflict resolution field…” — Diane Levin

Diane is interviewed in today’s issue of Engaging Conflicts Today. Diane publishes the award-winning blog, Online Guide to Mediation, which explores conflict resolution, negotiation, and the law, together with the social and cultural influences that shape them. It also regularly features articles on mediation, in particular the training and credentialing of mediators, and examines the intersection of law, justice, and ADR. OGM has been designated a “Featured Blog” at Mediate.com and attracts regular readers from throughout the world. Diane also founded the groundbreaking World Directory of Alternative Dispute Resolution Blogs, the first online directory ever created to globally track and catalogue citizen media relating to ADR. If you would like a copy of her interview, and are not signed up for the newsletter (which you can do in the sidebar on the right!), email me this week at gn@gnconflictmanagement.com with Diane Levin in the subject line and I’ll email it to you.

And, if I haven’t said it yet, I share in Victoria Pynchon’s tribute to Diane here (Nobody Does It Better).

“The field is so internally diverse that an ethical issue that strongly affects one type of practitioner is all but nonsensical in another area. But one ethical issue that I think really does apply across the board is the temptation not to be straight with the parties and the public as to the embedded values of a number of different programs and kinds of intervention.” — Christopher Honeyman

Chris is interviewed in today’s issue of Engaging Conflicts Today. Chris is Managing Partner, CONVENOR Conflict Management, based in Madison, WI and Washington, DC. He has led a fifteen-year series of large-scale conflict management research and development projects funded by the Hewlett Foundation. Chris is co-editor of, and author or co-author of 8 chapters in the Fieldbook. If you would like a copy of his interview, and are not signed up for the newsletter (which you can do in the sidebar on the right!), email me this week at engagingconflicts@gmail.com with Chris Honeyman in the subject line and I’ll email it to you.

By the way, I intended to supplement today’s newsletter with a reprint of an earlier Engaging Conflicts post on the Fieldbook, Why Even The Best Get Stuck, which includes one of Chris’ articles, but I have revised the Fieldbook project. I’ll continue to review the Fieldbook (because it’s hot, hot, hot; the ABA calls it the foremost reference book in the field), but I won’t do supplements to the newsletter with the posts at this time. Maybe later. For now, I’ll focus on reading and reporting on the book– come back to the Engaging Conflicts blog for that!– and give subscribers to Engaging Conflicts Today the interviews with the authors. Did I say yet that I’m in the process of interviewing most (perhaps all) of the 80 authors to the Fieldbook? So kind of them to share their perspectives and experiences in this way!

“I hate the way some mediators introduce themselves as ‘reformed lawyers’ — as if law is some kind of disease. I see what I do now as
a natural extension of what I did then.” — Geoff Sharp

Geoff is featured in today’s issue of Engaging Conflicts Today. He is the 2007 chair of the NZ Law Society ADR Committee and often speaks on mediation both in NZ and more recently in the United States at the invitation of the American Bar Association. He is also the author of mediator blah…blah… http://mediatorblahblah.blogspot.com/. If you would like a copy of his interview, and are not signed up for the newsletter (which you can do in the sidebar on the right!), email me this week at engagingconflicts@gmail.com with Geoff Sharp in the subject line and I’ll email it to you.

Kristine Paranica, J.D., is the Director of the University of North Dakota Conflict Resolution Center (CRC), where she also serves as Adjunct Professor of Law in Alternative Dispute Resolution. She is a Fellow and Administrative Director of the Institute for the Study of Conflict Transformation (ISCT), and a trainer and facilitator of transformative mediation, and conflict management. If you would like a copy of her interview, and are not signed up for the newsletter (which you can do in the sidebar on the right!), email me at engagingconflicts@gmail.com with Kristine Paranica in the subject line and I’ll email it to you.

Victoria Pynchon, J.D., LL.M, panelist with the Southern California ADR firm Judicate West, is featured in the current issue of Engaging Conflits Today. She was awarded her LL.M Degree in Dispute Resolution from the Straus Institute in 2006 after 25 years of complex commercial litigation practice. Her Settle It Now Negotiation Blog is a leader in the field, and she also publishes the IP ADR Blog, and the Mediators Without Borders blog. If you would like a copy of her interview, and are not signed up for the newsletter (which you can do in the sidebar on the right!), email me at engagingconflicts@gmail.com with Victoria Pynchon in the subject line and I’ll email it to you.

Victoria will also be presenting workshops using improvisational theatrics at the 2007 Being Human: Exploring Our Blind Spots and Biases conference. You can register now at http://santafeses.eventbrite.com.

I hope to see you there!

John W. Cooley, former United States Attorney, Senior Staff Attorney for the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, and partner in a Chicago law firm, is featured in the current issue of Engaging Conflicts Today. His most recent article at Mediate.com is “The Joke Model Of Creative Thinking.” The article got five stars from Robert Benjamin, who declared about it, “The creativity and quality of thought are obvious.” If you would like a copy of his interview, and are not signed up for the newsletter (which you can do in the sidebar on the right!), email me at gn@gnconflictmanagement.com with Jack Cooley in the subject line and I’ll email it to you.

Jack’s article highlights the active role the joke or mediation recipient plays in cognitively processing the “punchline” of the joke or mediation, the “new information” that can be funny or cause an “ah ha!” moment, or fall flat on its face.