Andrea Schneider at ADR Profs Blog is wondering whether there’s a “Crisis in Dispute Resolution?”

This past weekend, the Graduate Program in Dispute Resolution here at Marquette hosted noted scholar Bernie Mayer. Bernie was mostly speaking about his book, Beyond Neutrality and, on Saturday, was invited in a point-counterpoint format to discuss his arguments with equally well-noted practitioner Howard Bellman. One point of the discussion was about Bernie’s argument, outlined in his book, that the dispute resolution field is marginalized in the most important disputes. In other words, in the biggest crises of the day and over the biggest problems (think war, state of the economy, etc.), the dispute resolution field does not generally have a seat at the table…

Andrea wants to know what the blogosphere makes of all of this:

Are we marginalized? Should dispute resolution professionals be called on more often in public policy and international disputes? Should we just get over ourselves–we are called on when we are needed? Let us know what you think!

Come join me in the discussion and tell Andrea what you think.

Filmmaker Jehane Noujaim had a wish that undoubtedly many others share: she wished for world peace. She said, “I think that the first step toward world peace is for people to meet each other”. She envisioned the use of film to create a kind of exchange program to help people around the world truly see and understand each other better.

Out of Noujaim’s wish came Pangea Day, a world-wide celebration of the things that people across the globe have in common:

Pangea Day taps the power of film to strengthen tolerance and compassion while uniting millions of people to build a better future.

In a world where people are often divided by borders, difference, and conflict, it’s easy to lose sight of what we all have in common. Pangea Day seeks to overcome that - to help people see themselves in others - through the power of film.

To learn more or to find out how you can take part, visit the Pangea Day web site.

Two years ago I introduced readers to the web site ChangeThis, which I described as

a web site born of a radical and hopeful idealism: to virally transmit ideas through a culture medium of community, respect, and dialogue.

Recognizing that “the best discussions in science, medicine, business and politics have always been the civil ones”, ChangeThis publishes what it calls manifestos — proposals for change which serve as “a reasoned, rational call to action, supported by logic and facts”. The goal is to provide a forum for “the rational and thoughtful arguments that help people change their minds to a more productive point of view.” In the egalitarian spirit with which ChangeThis was founded, anyone is welcome to submit ideas for a manifesto.

This online experiment in changing minds has thrived, amassing in the past two years a considerable inventory of innovative thinking, and consequently I continue to stop by in search of ideas to invigorate my work.

On a recent visit to the site I was struck by the premise of a newly published manifesto, “Questionating“, by business consultant Corinne Miller. Miller celebrates the power of the question and its role in creativity and fresh thinking:

Questions have been the enablers of innovation for centuries. As Albert Einstein said, “To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle requires creative imagination and marks real advances in science”…

Questions use verbs and words that activate key areas of the brain that, in turn, increase the volume and variety of questions. The more questions, the more creativity and innovation. We like to say that questions open the innovation pipeline.

Despite the role of the question in stimulating discoveries and advancements, Miller observes that people seem to lose the willingness to ask questions as they grow older:

As we age, we disengage… from asking questions. Questions decrease as aging increases. Think about it. Why does the typical 5-year old ask about 65 questions a day, while the typical 40-something asks only about 6 questions a day? Why is it that the older we get, the fewer questions we ask? We’ve found that the most popular answers to this question have been: asking a question makes one look stupid; asking a question is a sign of weakness; and people think they know the answer so they don’t feel the need to ask.

What a sad state that we have created a business culture where asking questions is seen as a weakness. Shouldn’t it be the opposite, where not asking questions is a weakness?

How can we change this?

Indeed. How can we change this? What can any of us do to challenge the notion that asking questions displays weakness or even disrespect? What can we do to make it safe to ask questions of our institutions, of our leaders, of each other? Questions reflect, reveal, resolve; they shine light into the dark corners. Most importantly, questions give us the ability to see the world afresh. As Bertrand Russell once said, “In many affairs it’s a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.”

In poignant tribute to the U.S. service members who have lost their lives in the Iraq war, the New York Times has created a graphic that literally puts a face to the numbers who have perished.

Each face that appears is made up of many small squares, each representing another face. Click on any square to see another face appear, with information about that person displayed to the right. The squares are ordered by date of death, the most recent deaths appearing in the upper left corner of the image. You can also search by last name, home state, or home town.

(With thanks to ICT4Peace. Please read Sanjana Hattotuwa’s observations, including his thoughts on those who are missing from this moving depiction of the human cost of war.)

This may ultimately create more disputes than it resolves, but the DNA testing laboratory INDENTIGENE is selling at-home paternity tests.

For only $29.99 (and $119 for the lab fee), you can find out once and for all who’s your daddy.

(Hat tip to Boing Boing Gadgets.)

In my experience, one of the most persistent sources of interpersonal conflict is the inability to own up to and correct mistakes. Our first impulse may be to conceal an error, or to deny it exists. We may try to shift the fault and blame it on the negligence of others. We may be paralyzed by embarrassment, shame or a sense of personal failure. Or, perhaps, we just don’t know what to do.

Dumb Little Man presents a remarkable story of one lawyer’s workplace error — missing a critical filing deadline, every attorney’s nightmare — and describes the courageous steps she took to make things right in “How to Recover from a (Big) Mistake at Work“. While avoiding mistakes in the first place is important, it’s a mark of character and rare ingenuity to fix one — making her the kind of lawyer I’d want to hire.

A Purdue University employee and student has been accused of racial harassment simply for reading a book. The book that got Keith Sampson into trouble was the critically acclaimed Notre Dame vs. the Klan: How the Fighting Irish Defeated the Ku Klux Klan, which surveys Notre Dame and anti-Catholic bigotry during a troubled time in U.S. history.

According to the Freedom for Individual Rights in Education’s (FIRE) The Torch,

First, a shop steward told Sampson that reading a book about the KKK was like bringing pornography to work (apparently this holds true in his eyes regardless of the context in which a book discusses the KKK, the position it takes, and so on). Likewise, a co-worker who happened to be sitting across the table from Sampson in the break room remarked that she found the KKK offensive. On both occasions, Sampson tried to explain what the book was really about. Both times, the other individual refused to listen.

A few weeks later, Sampson was notified by Marguerite Watkins of the school’s Affirmative Action Office (AAO) that a co-worker had filed a racial harassment complaint against him for reading the book in the break room. Once again, he attempted to explain the book’s content, but Watkins too had no interest in hearing it.

(Emphasis mine.)

Apart from the significant threat posed by “an over-aggressive application of employment discrimination laws poses for First Amendment rights in the public employment context”, in the words of Concurring Opinions blogger Paul Secunda put it, what is deeply disturbing to me as a dispute resolution professional is the utter failure of anyone to listen to Sampson. Had anyone bothered to do so, any concerns about the subject matter of the book would have been instantly allayed.

A little listening would have meant a very different outcome for everyone involved — including Sampson. Consider how many misunderstandings, the vast majority below the radar and unreported, arise out of the failure to communicate — and how many complaints, lawsuits, and conflicts might be avoided if people assumed less and listened more.

(Hat tip to Concurring Opinions.)

People who get along well with others, including family, friends, and neighbors, may be healthier than those who don’t — so suggest the results of a recent study reported in Health Psychology.

Researchers from Portland State University School of Community Health (Oregon) conducted a two-year study of 666 older adults, aged 65 to 90, and found an association between higher levels of negative social exchanges and poorer health.

According to a recent article in HealthDay News,

The findings don’t prove a cause-and-effect relationship between social life and health. Still, “the take-home message is that conflict in your life may have important impacts on your physical health,” said study lead author Jason T. Newsom…

Maybe it’s time to add a little conflict resolution training to your daily workout regimen.

Jim Melamed, co-founder of Mediate.com, arguably the ADR field’s best known and most influential online resource, has published “Obama’s Message: Mediation’s Political Triumph“, an impassioned and compelling panegyric to a presidential candidate and the influence on politics and culture of the mediation movement.

Tammy Lenski — talented blogger, prolific author, inspiring colleague, and respected thought leader — heads in a bold new direction.

After blogging about conflict resolution at Lenski.com for many years, she is leaving her old digital home and launched a new site, Conflict Zen.

Tammy explains why:

My writing has always served two masters: You and me. You, in that you have interest in effective conflict resolution in your life, your family, your workplace or business, and/or your community, and it’s what’s drawn you to subscribe to my articles. Me, in that my writing helps me explore ways to frame what works for my current clients so that I can share it even more effectively with future clients.

But I have always puzzled over the paradox of an imperfect human (me) offering up conflict resolution advice to others. It’s important to me that you understand I don’t come to you from the high place of interpersonal perfection, but instead as an equal human in front of you. I happen to know a thing or two about conflict resolution because I’ve spent two decades studying and successfully practicing it in a professional capacity. But I have yearned for a place where I would frame my work as a teacher who is also your co-learner. Conflict Zen will be that place.

Tammy, best of luck. I’m glad to know that we will all continue to benefit from your wisdom.

The peace symbol — an enduring emblem of protest recognized around the world — celebrates its 50th birthday this year.

Visit the Happy Birthday Peace web site to learn what you can do to make love, not war.

PART27.com, a web site dedicated to providing resources that help organizations, companies, and agencies create safer workplaces, also publishes Workplace Violence, a blog that delivers news and links to resources for employers and others seeking ways to address and prevent violence at work.

Among the stories covered recently are:

• “Bullying bad for business“
• “Bullied at work: practice costs productivity, health” and
• New European report highlights emerging psychosocial risks in the workplace

Tonight ABC news anchor Charles Gibson eulogized a colleague and friend, retired journalist John McWethy, who died yesterday in a ski accident.

Gibson spoke movingly of McWethy’s commitment to objective reporting and to uncovering the facts: “Jack believed that the most important word, the most powerful word, in the English language is why.”

Those words queued up a film clip of McWethy speaking at a DePauw University graduation ceremony:

All institutions, all endeavors, all relationships, are improved by a good scrubbing, using the word “why”. In democracy it is the question we must all constantly be asking our government and our leaders. It is not unpatriotic to question the government. It is unpatriotic not to.

Economics professor David K. Levine defines game theory this way:

What economists call game theory psychologists call the theory of social situations, which is an accurate description of what game theory is about. Although game theory is relevant to parlor games such as poker or bridge, most research in game theory focuses on how groups of people interact.

Of particular interest to conflict resolution professionals and scholars is the use of game theory to shed light on the way people behave when they negotiate or resolve disputes. (One of my favorite examples of this is the recent game theory analysis of the toilet seat problem.)

If you’re a game theory enthusiast, you’ll enjoy reading Game Theory Tuesdays, a weekly column by economics consultant and self-proclaimed math nerd Presh Talwalkar at Mind Your Decisions, a blog about personal finance, decision-making, negotiation, and, yes, game theory.

This week’s column has ideas on how to get someone to cooperate. Presh is an engaging writer with a great capacity for honest self-reflection and a talent for bringing game theory to life with real-world anecdotes. You definitely don’t have to be a math nerd to enjoy Game Theory Tuesdays.

Just a few stories spotted in my travels around the web that piqued my interest and hopefully yours as well, dear reader:

In a new twist on the old maxim, “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer,” The Illinois Trial Practice Blog has advice for new lawyers: learn from people more experienced than you — like your opponent.

Robert Ambrogi at Legal Blog Watch reports on the results of a first-of-its-kind video contest sponsored by the State of Texas Bar, Lone Star Stories: Texans on Justice. The contest rules were simple:

Create a three-minute-or-less video that captures your vision of the importance and value of the justice system in our daily lives.

You can view the winning videos at Youtube. Ambrogi’s favorite? “Like Justice for Chocolate“. Mine, too. Go see for yourself.

China Law Blog has advice on cultural awareness in business contexts that can be boiled down to four blunt words: “Don’t Be An Asshole“.

That’s also the workplace advice from Bob Sutton as he reports on the results of a study that indicate that when people are treated rudely, their performance suffers.

It’s advice, if followed, that could put mediators and lawyers out of business.

Science Daily explains how “The Mind And Body Together Lean Toward ‘Truthiness’” — in other words, “the more ambiguous an answer to a question, the more likely an individual will believe it is truthful”.

Finally, Cognitive Daily reports on “What you know, and how it’s different from what you remember” — it’s not just a linguistic difference.