Yesterday I pointed readers to an electrifying series by commercial mediator and arbitrator, Victoria Pynchon, which rips the lid off the ADR profession’s secret and unacknowledged shame: the absence of women and minorities from the prestigious ADR panels:
Not content to merely name the problem, my colleague today proposes solutions in “Combatting Implicit Gender Bias in ADR“.
Turning to Americans for American Values for ideas, Pynchon identifies the cure, a detailed action plan, which you can read in her post. It’s going to take strong medicine to cure what ails us.
It takes guts to do what she Pynchon has done. She warns readers “that the topic of implicit gender bias is ‘toxic’”,with the potential of poisoning her market against her and costing her opportunities. Her post stands as a challenge to other women – and men, too – in ADR to break the silence and speak out. In solidarity, I stand shoulder to shoulder with my colleague on the West Coast. I issue a call to arms of my own:
It’s time for ADR membership organizations to make the vanquishing of implicit bias a local and national priority – and actually do something about it. The ABA Section on Dispute Resolution has a diversity committee, but it has apparently posted nothing new on its site in two years. This is also a committee limited in size with membership by appointment only. How about opening it up to those of us out here hungry for change and ready to act? The Association for Conflict Resolution has a diversity committee as well – what is it doing right now to actively battle implicit bias and improve access to business opportunities for all ADR professionals? What about the numerous regional and state associations for ADR professionals? NE-ACR? SCMA? TAM? This problem affects your membership – what will you do to make a difference? State bar associations with ADR committees, where are you on this? Exert your influence. And let the rest of know what needs to be done so we can roll up our sleeves and get to work.
There’s been time enough to talk. It’s time at last to do.
I’ve been active on social networking site Twitter for about a year now. It’s proven to be a good resource for useful links. Last week one of the folks I follow, workshop facilitator Joe Gerstandt, pointed his readers to an article that appeared last November in the Globe and Mail, “Why smart people do dumb things“.
It’s an article on dysrationalia – how hard it is for us to think rationally, despite the intelligence we possess. Dysrationalia leads us to take shortcuts in solving problems, going for what seems the easy or obvious answer instead of working harder to identify the correct one.
This article poses some puzzles for readers to solve, including this one:
Bob is in a bar, looking at Susan. But she is looking at Pablo. Bob is married. Pablo is not.
Is a married person looking at an unmarried person? The answer could be (a) yes, (b) no or (c) cannot be determined.
The correct answer might surprise you. Click here to test yourself on this and the other brain teasers the article challenges readers to match their wits against.
Photo credit: Artem Chernyshevych.
As I was getting ready for the start of the mediation training I was teaching, one of the participants, just arrived, approached me to tell me to get him a cup of coffee. Despite my power suit and the flip chart markers in my hand, he had mistaken the lead trainer for a member of the support staff.
If you think that this is an isolated incident in the life of an ADR professional who happens to be a woman, think again. Challenge yourself by reading commercial mediator Victoria Pynchon’s gutsy series on gender, race, and diversity in the ADR profession:
“Negotiating Prejudice at U.C. San Diego”
“Negotiating Gender: Why So Few Women Neutrals?”
“Update on Gender Diversity in the Judiciary and in ADR”
Then do as Vickie suggests and take the awareness-raising tests at Project Implicit, an ongoing research project inquiring into the implicit biases that affect our judgment. What associations do you draw about identity, capability, and role?
In my ongoing one-woman effort to contribute to the improvement of public discourse, each month I discuss an example of a Fallacious Argument. In December I chose a particular favorite of mine, the ad hominem.
This month I revisit it. Why? Because accusing someone of committing a fallacy of the argumentum ad hominem can itself be a fallacy. Let us consider it.
As the saying goes, there’s an app for everything. Some enterprising soul, capitalizing on the American fondness for the gratuitous insult, has created the political insult generator app, one for conservatives and one for progressives.
Thanks to these digital innovations, iphone and ipod Touch owners need no longer be at a loss for words in any political debate. Confident that a witty retort is always handy, they can hurl at their opponents ready-made epithets such as “crunchy business-bashing libtards” or “puritanical Bible-banging bullies”. It’s all in har-har good fun.
It’s harder to laugh though when a visit to any online forum or the letters page of your daily paper shows how ready to hand the insult is, like a rock to be hurled. But who’s surprised? Marshaling evidence to demonstrate the flaws in an opponent’s reasoning takes hard mental work. It’s much more fun and requires less effort to simply heap verbal abuse upon your adversary to attack their patriotism, ancestry, food preferences, or taste in ties.
There are of course ways to respond to such tactics. Often, however, in response to the jeering, people mistakenly accuse their opponents of engaging in ad hominem attacks. This is the fallacy of the fallacy of the argumentum ad hominem.
In a true argumentum ad hominem, an individual uses an attack on the speaker to undermine the speaker’s argument. Declaring your opponent a “Nazi”, “socialist”, or other insult du jour doesn’t cut it. It may be childish, uncalled for, and do nothing to further discussion, but it is not an ad hominem. Sorry.
If you’re confused about the difference, one writer, Stephen Bond, offers guidance, parsing numerous examples of correct and incorrect uses of ad hominems (warning: some language not safe for kids). Here’s one :
A: “All politicians are liars, and you’re just another politician. Therefore, you’re a liar and your arguments are not to be trusted.”
B: “Yet another ad hominem argument.”
If you accept the premises, A’s argument is sound; but I think most of us would sympathise with B and class it as fallacious, and ad hominem. This is because we do not accept the premise that all politicians are liars. There is a false premise that lies behind all ad hominem arguments: the notion that all people of type X make bad arguments. A has just made this premise explicit.
When debaters throw mud, everyone gets splattered. Too bad that a good clean fight has never been in fashion.
In the third episode of ADR podcast series Cafe Mediate, I serve as host while professional mediator and author Tammy Lenski, international business mediator Amanda Bucklow, New York City detective and conflict resolution professional Jeff Thompson, and commercial mediator Victoria Pynchon debate the question, “What kind of preparation is involved in becoming a mediator?”
You can pour yourself a cup or glass of your favorite beverage, pull up a chair, and enjoy the conversation in any of three ways:
Each month Cafe Mediate (motto: “where conversation, not caffeine, is the stimulant”) features conversation among ADR practitioners about topics relevant to the business, practice, and future of our field.
Coming up next time: a two-part discussion on mediator certification that is sure to produce sparks. Caution: avoid wearing flammable material while listening to that one.
Thanks so much to my wise, talented colleagues for another outstanding discussion about the issues that matter.
