Gini Nelson’s Engaging Conflicts

How can learning environments best promote both critical thought and ethical actions, scholarship and character? Tell Me What You Really Think: A Report On the Schools of Integrity Project, is now online, the conclusion of a joint project from the Institute for Global Ethics and the National Association of Independent Schools. The report describes the common themes and practices balancing academic rigor with attention to ethical development found in exemplary independent high schools in the U.S. and Canada, and suggests ways other schools might replicate them in their own programs. Read more »

I’ve just published Vol. 2, #2 of Engaging Conflicts Today, featuring “Building Peace One Book At a Time” publisher Janis Magnuson of Janis Publications. Janis started her publishing company after 20 years of working as an attorney and mediator. If you are not a subscriber yet, and subscribe today through clicking on the subscription link in the right hand column, I’ll send you today’s issue. Janis most recently published Ken Cloke’s The Crossroads of Conflict, discussed in numerous previous Engaging Conflicts posts between September 4-November 6, 2007, discussing his latest book.

Cognitive Daily over at ScienceBlogs has several fine posts relating to science literacy. They are associated with both the desire and/or need for the general public to understand science better, and a debate over whether or how scientists should be “framing” their research in communicating with the public in order for the general audience to understand its relevance. I believe the points are directly relevant for Engaging Conflicts readers for at least two reasons. First, science and claims of scientific validity are used increasingly in training seminars and in our practical explanations of how and why we and our clients act as we do. We need science literacy to better evaluate these claims. Second, if we want the general audience to better understand the goals, values and methods of engaging conflicts (I go back to one of Bernie Mayer’s points that very few mediators have clients beating down their doors for their services, and that most successful mediators get the bulk of their casework through court-ordered programs), we need to communicate in the way the general public understands.

Read more »

Kansas State University cultural anthropology professor Michael Wesch created a popular online video explaining critical concepts of “Web 2.0 in just under 5 minutes.” He placed it on YouTube in February 2007, where it was viewed 1.8 million times in six weeks. This is his final version, slightly revised and cleaned up:

Kansas State University cultural anthropology professor Michael Wesch created a popular video explaining concepts of “Web 2.0 in just under 5 minutes.” He placed it on YouTube in February 2007, where it was viewed 1.8 million times in six weeks. This is his final version, slightly revised and cleaned up:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLlGopyXT_g]

this link will take you back to the old Engaging Conflicts blog for the YouTube presentation –sorry, technical difficulties!

Victoria Pynchon over at Settle It Now Negotiation blog has written and is asking readers to take a short survey on justice issues in negotiation and mediation here. She asks that you take it not as a mediator, but as a lawyer (if you are one), or as the client herself. She will not share your names with anyone — it is confidential. She’ll leave the survey open until the end of May.
She’s trying to learn more about what people (who are not the mediators themselves) are seeking from mediation and negotiation and how they define justice when seeking a resolution to a conflict. Do clients want procedural justice or distributive justice, more? She discusses these concepts more in this post drawing from an excellent article by Professor Lisa Blomgren Bingham When We Hold No Truths to Be Self-Evident: Truth, Belief, Trust and the Decline in Trials, from a 2006 Symposium Issue for the Journal of Dispute Resolution.
She discusses the results of the survey so far here.

Just a reminder — postal rates go up Monday (2 cents for a standard first class letter) and new rules for size and dimensions — shape- based pricing. Don’t stuff those first class letters without knowing that bulk now matters, not just weight! Some commentators recommend switching to 6″ x 9″ envelopes and folding once, to keep bulk down. Here’s a detailed description of the changes and office management implications.

A lovely title to a moving essay on literacy, on how profoundly books can change lives, yes, as can the lack of them. Roxanne Coady is an independent bookseller, owner of R.J. Julia Booksellers in Madison, Connecticut.

The annotation for the essay (called a manifesto, at the ChangeThis website) describes it thus:

49% of the adult population of the United States reads below a sixth-grade level and has dificulty navigating such common demands as reading job applications, ATM screens, and outpatient care instructions. In this evocative manifesto, Roxanne Coady calls for change and suggests how you can improve the lives of others through promoting literacy in your community.

That’s the “bare” description — it’s more than that, truly moving, at least to those of us who also grew up loving reading and finding so much of value in the worlds opened by reading and libraries.

Click on this for the .pdf download. It was released this week at ChangeThis.com.

Prof. John Lande has his new article (of the above-title) in the Ohio State Journal on Dispute Resolution (”JDR“), the official law journal of the American Bar Association’s Section on Dispute Resolution and the most cited journal in the field of Alternative Dispute Resolution, available as a .pdf online at his website. It’s a comprehensive and detailed article (almost 90 pages including it footnotes) recommending policymaking principles; outlining a general approach to policymaking; and then applying the principles to proposals for new ethical rules for negotiation, specifically Collaborative Law ethical rule proposals. He recommendations and conclusions include: (1) dispute system design should be the initial and primary approach in analyzing policy options; (2) process pluralism is critical to engender a wide range of available “goals, norms, procedures, results, professional roles, skills, and styles in handling disputes involving legal issues,” to promote an ADR system as a whole rather than to promote one particular ADR process; and (3) legal regulation should be a limited and last resort in developing new ADR policies.

Prof. John Lande continues his insightful work on Collaborative and Cooperative law with his recent article Lessons For Collaborative Lawyers and Other Dispute Resolution Professionals From Colorado Bar Association Ethics Opinion 115, published online at Mediate.com in April, and also posted here at his website together with other articles on this and related topics. Background to this issue is found in this earlier post about the Colorado Ethics Committee’s Opinion finding Collaborative Law per se unethical, and this one overviewing the promises and perils of Collaborative Law.

Here’s an excerpt:

[Ethics Opinion 115] found per se violations of ethical rules when Collaborative Law involves four-way agreements beween lawyers and clients. It also found that similar Cooperative Law agreements do not violate the ethical rules. Readers may wonder what is the difference between Collaborative and Cooperative Law? What can you learn from this opinion and why should you care? This article addresses these questions.

Stephanie Westallen of the Idealawg blog recently tagged me to share the top five to ten goals in my life (here’s her tagging post in which she talks about the role of aspirations and her unique goals). Stephanie writes a rich blog, contributing much to the blogosphere, and I’m happy to respond.

Of course I have caveats — I can’t know all I will want to try to achieve to say I’ve lived life to the fullest. Unimaginable that five years from now I’ll won’t have developed new aspirations based on how I experience life in the meantime. I also think that I will not be naming so many — the originator of the tag calls for five to ten — I’ve “lived” many of my top goals throughout my life, and work hard to achieve the most important. So, my immediate list is short — but still very rich and not easily obtained. I also agree with Stephanie on keeping private the more intimate goals.

1. Live beside the ocean (or the Puget Sound) so that I can take a daily walk there just outside my door
2. The party to which everybody comes and has a great time
3. Household name

Good luck in reaching your goals, Stephanie!