Gini Nelson's Engaging Conflicts

“I think the conflict resolution field must grapple with the question of why “third party neutral” expertise is not more sought after in some of the most volatile, dangerous and pressing conflict in the world today.” — Ellen Waldman

Engaging Conflicts Today interviews Ellen Waldman, who holds a law degree from New York University and an LL.M. in mental health law from the University of Virginia. She directs the mediation program at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and has spearheaded a number of grant projects relating to health care and conflict resolution. She sits on the ethics rosters of both court and community mediation centers. In the negotiation arena, Professor Waldman writes and speaks on a variety of topics, including bioethics mediation, restorative justice, dispute resolution with high conflict personalities, and therapeutic jurisprudence.

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 engagingconflicts@gmail.com with Ellen Waldman in the subject line and I’ll email it to you.

I’m reviewing The Negotiator’s Fieldbook: The Desk Reference for the Experienced Negotiator, Christopher Honeyman & Andrea Kupfer Schneider, Editors (ABA 2006), through 2008 (it has 80 chapters, more than 700 pages of substantive text, and something for everyone, from novice to expert!). I’m reviewing the book because it’s hot, hot, hot. More about the book and its editors here.

Unforgiven: Anger and Forgiveness
Ellen Waldman & Frederic Luskin

Here’s the annotation from the book’s Table of Contents:
How many negotiations are reduced to a numbers game by the unthinking responses of professional negotiators who don’t recognize what is really at stake for their clients? How many negotiators frame what “should” be achieved in the negotiation, conveniently getting around the fact that the agent can’t be paid one-third of an apology? Here, a lawyer and a psychologist together examine the evidence that forgiveness may be the single most desirable negotiation outcome in many situations, when measured by physical and mental health of those involved — but that a lockstep push toward forgiveness in all disputes is neither possible, nor desirable. This chapter should be read in conjunction with Brown & Robbennolt on Apology.

These articles remind us that apology and forgiveness are complex concepts that should be used wisely. I’ll be reviewing Apology in Negotiation later in this series.

If the scientific research is to be believed, aggrieved disputants, even if they want to forgive, do not know how. But, forgiveness can be learned.

This article is not about learning how to forgive. Nor is it about the authors’ conclusion that forgiveness can give tangible health benefits and can have transformative effects on individuals locked in intractable conflict. Instead, it examines the success of two large-scale programs that sought to require forgiveness. Specifically, the authors examine research into the effectiveness of restorative justice programs in Rwanda following the genocide in 1994 and in South Africa after the end of apartheid. In short, they conclude that forgiveness cannot be prescribed as a universal panacea.

In each case, policy makers’ articulated assumptions were that more conciliatory approaches would be better for victims than aggressive prosecution of crimes or other compensations for abuse. [Engaging Conflicts note: it is also possible that policy makers assumed their criminal justice systems could not handle the massive number of claims they faced, and yet something comprehensive needed to be done, and this was a creative option.] The goal, as the authors put it, was “Trading Vengeance, Gaining Peace?”
Their more fully stated conclusion is:

Experiments with restorative justice responses to fractured communities suggest that victim forgiveness should only be encouraged after other tangible steps have been taken toward acknowledging victim suffering and healing the victim’s physical, psychic, and material wounds. Dispute system designs misperceive the pre-conditions to magnanimity when they assume offender truth-telling or apology will automatically trigger victim forgiveness. True forgiveness can only come from a basic foundation of security. Until victims’ basic physical and security needs are met, they cannot and should not be expected to extend grace to their enemies.

Ellen Waldman holds a law degree from New York University and an LL.M. in mental health law from the University of Virginia. She directs the mediation program at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and has spearheaded a number of grant projects relating to health care and conflict resolution. She sits on the ethics rosters of both court and community mediation centers. In the negotiation arena, Professor Waldman writes and speaks on a variety of topics, including bioethics mediation, restorative justice, dispute resolution with high conflict personalities, and therapeutic jurisprudence.

Frederic Luskin, Ph.D. is the Director of the Stanford University Forgiveness Projects and the author of the best selling book Forgive for Good: A Proven Prescription for Health and Happiness. He has conducted 8 successful experiments to validate his forgiveness methodology. He also is the Co-Chair of the Garden of Forgiveness at Ground Zero Project whose goal is adding forgiveness to the menu of responses to the attacks on 9/11. He holds a Ph.D. in Counseling and Health Psychology from Stanford University and is an Associate Professor at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology.

“You see, ADR is inevitably a discretionary practice…So any practitioner will be investing personal values into any ADR action, and we have to be immensely self-aware about the values that we bring to the table (and, of course, deciding to shelve personal values is also an ethical decision).” — Kevin Gibson

Kevin Gibson is Associate Professor of Philosophy and management at Marquette University. He is the director of the Marquette Center for Ethics Studies. He studied with the Harvard Negotiation Project and CDR Associates of Boulder. Dr. Gibson has mediated commercial, environmental, divorce and child custody disputes as well as facilitating a number of settlement conferences. He has worked as a mediator and coach for CDR Associates and the University of Denver Law School. He has published a number of articles on dispute resolution in journals such as the Negotiation Journal, Mediation Quarterly and the Hastings Center Report. At present, he is a teaching associate with the Marquette Center for Dispute Resolution Education.

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!), e-mail me this week at engagingconflicts@gmail.com with Kevin Gibson in the subject line and I’ll e-mail it to you.

I previously posted about Kevin’s articles in the Negotiator’s Fieldbook, Ethics and Morality in Negotiation, here.

“Most people in our line of work won’t be in “the field” of professional conflict resolution or conflict transformation at all. They will have other jobs and be in other professions where they mainstream our practices into their work, and this is a good thing.” — Jayne Docherty

Jayne is professor of conflict studies at the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding at Eastern Mennonite University. She is author of Learning Lessons from Waco: When the Parties Bring Their Gods to the Negotiation Table, and The Little Book of Strategic Negotiation: Negotiating During Turbulent Times. Her particular interests include the challenges communities and organizations face experiencing sudden changes demanding rapid adaptation. 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 engagingconflicts@gmail.com with Jayne Docherty in the subject line and I’ll email it to you.

I previously posted about one of Jayne’s articles in the Negotiator’s Fieldbook, The Unstated Models In Our Minds, here. I’ll post about her three other chapters shortly.

I’m reviewing The Negotiator’s Fieldbook: The Desk Reference for the Experienced Negotiator, Christopher Honeyman & Andrea Kupfer Schneider, Editors (ABA 2006), through the rest of 2007 and into 2008 (it has 80 chapters, more than 700 pages of substantive text, and something for everyone, from novice to expert!). I’m reviewing the book because it’s hot, hot, hot. More about the book and its editors here.

This week I’m reviewing two chapters both written by Dan Shapiro — his bio is at the end of the reviews of the articles.

Identity: More than Meets the “I”
Daniel L. Shapiro. Here’s the annotation from the book’s Table of Contents:

How can you expect to get good results in a negotiation if you give little thought to who you really are, and to who your counterpart is? Shapiro analyzes the research on identity, showing how you can predict the likely reactions of your counterpart to some kinds of proposals — as well as your own propensity to avoid some kinds of proposals that might be to your advantage. This chapter should be read in close conjunction with the chapters on internal conflict, psychology and perceptions.

Dan introduces us to identity-based negotiation, which recognizes an individual’s 3 levels of identity: (1) intergroup identity, focusing on your group affiliations, beliefs, and shared values; (2) intrapersonal identify, the story you tell yourself about yourself; and interpersonal identity, also known as “relational identity,” the way you conceive of yourself in relation to someone else with whom you are interacting. Read more »