Summary

The Beyond Intractability project is recruiting advanced university students, faculty, and conflict practitioners to write new materials for the free Beyond Intractability Knowledge Base.

Background

The Beyond Intractability Knowledge Base Project believes that there is a critical need for free and easy access to the best available ideas on strategies for more constructively addressing difficult and dangerous conflict situations — ranging from interpersonal to international. To meet this need, the Beyond Intractability website has been organized as a cooperative project, composed of the cumulative contributions of people working on difficult conflict problems worldwide. The website currently contains over 350 articles by over 100 authors, 100+ hours of interviews (audio and text) with leading scholars and practitioners, and several thousand references to additional sources of information.

Inspired by the open-source software movement, Beyond Intractability employs a simple licensing system, which allows people to freely draw upon Knowledge Base resources, while encouraging them to make their own contributions to the system. (For more details, see the Using Beyond Intractability Resources section below.)

Needed Materials

We are now looking for contributors to help us add:

• New essays on conflict dynamics or conflict transformation topics (that differ from the ones we already have). (Click here for a list of essay topics currently needed, though others are welcome too.)
• New user guides that will help particular types of users feel "at home" and be able to find what they need in the system quickly and easily. (Click here for a list of User Guides currently needed, though others are welcome too.)
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• Personal "reflections" from people involved in intractable conflicts.
• Application examples, case studies, and evaluations of particular interventions.
• Profiles of prominent peacebuilders.
• Interviews of prominent scholars and/or peacebuilders.
• Summaries and reviews of key books in the field. Check here to see a list of the books for which we currently have summaries; if you are interested in writing a summary and/or a review of another (preferably fairly new) book, let us know which one and we'll tell you if we can use it.

Please check with us before beginning work on any contribution to the Knowledge Base. We are trying hard to avoid duplication of effort by keeping track of who is working on what. We are also encouraging collaboration between people working on related topics.

Solicited Essays

Although Beyond Intractability now has about 350 essays, there are still many topics that we would like to add. Essays range from short (about 500 words) to medium (1500 words), to long (3000 words). They need to be written in generally understandable language, without lingo whenever possible. They also need to be fully referenced and have additional Web-based and print-based resources suggested for people who want to learn more about the essay topic.

Please also see Essays Needed for a list of essays that we know we want at this time. If you have an idea for an essay topic that is not on this list, make sure we don't have it already, by going to the Essay List. If we don't have it, check with us, and we'll tell you if it seems as if it might fit in the system.

User Guides

The Beyond Intractability system contains a massive amount of information on strategies for dealing with difficult and intractable conflicts of all kinds — much more information than any one person is likely to need or use. To help combat information overload, we are asking people to help us prepare annotated "user guides" or course syllabi, identifying and introducing subsets of Knowledge Base resources applicable to specific audiences or conflict situations.

Although a variety of formats are possible, our initial image of a user's guide was an essay focusing on the kinds of conflicts that particular user groups often encounter, showing how the Knowledge Base could be helpful to them as they deal with these situations. For example, one of our students, Eric Brahm, has assembled a user guide for people who are concerned about transitional justice issues, assembling Beyond Intractability resources on transitional justice, along with key outside resources on the same topic. (See the Transitional Justice User Guide to Beyond Intractability) Another approach which we have used successfully is a "things to think about" checklist for people in a variety of common situations, with annotated links to relevant articles from the Knowledge Base.(See our Peacebuilding and Post-Conflict Reconstruction Checklist for Intermediaries checklist. Yet a third format is one developed by Johnathan Smith, a graduate student at Notre Dame University who assembled A User's Guide to the Beyond Intractability Website, Built Specially for Religious Leaders and Workers.

We are open to other ideas as well. The goal is to make the knowledge base useful and interesting to a wide variety of potential users by "customizing" it for them. While we only want you to use a word processor to create these guides, we welcome your ideas for alternative "look-and-feel" configurations that we could implement with our Web-design tools.

Other user guides can be viewed at the Special Editions section of the Beyond Intractability Website as well as the Checklist section of the website.

Please also see Needed User Guides for a list of user guides that we are currently seeking.

Personal Reflections

These are personal reflections of people who have been personally deeply involved in a serious conflict, as parties, intermediaries, bystanders, or observers. We are interested in publishing personal reflections about your experiences. These reflections are most useful if they:

• Summarize your view of the conflict itself and its impacts on you
• Describe your role in the conflict
• If you have worked to end or moderate the conflict, give a description of what you have done, what obstacles you faced, how you dealt with them, and how it has worked out
• We would also be very interested in hearing your assessment of the usefulness of the ideas embodied in the Beyond Intractability system that most closely relate to your conflict and your role in it. Are the relevant ideas useful? Not? What would make them more useful to people in situations similar to yours? What other topics would be useful to cover that are not now covered? How could the presentation of information in the knowledge base be improved? (This would not be published as part of your conflict reflection, but would be used by us to improve the knowledge base.)

So, if you have been involved in:

• A long-running ethnic, racial, or communal conflict within or outside of the United States
• A "values" conflict within or outside the U.S., such as the conflicts over abortion or gay rights
• A personal conflict that has gone on for a long time without resolution

Note: Sample reflections can be found at Personal Reflections.

Interviews

Application Examples, Case Studies, and Evaluations

We are also interested in case studies and evaluations of particular interventions or intervention processes. "Intervention" here means an attempt to moderate or resolve a conflict (or one aspect of it), either by an external party or someone involved in the conflict as a disputant. Thus, we are looking for write-ups of case examples of the approaches to conflict problems already suggested in the Knowledge Base, AND case examples of other approaches that we have not yet written about in the Knowledge Base (for example, constructive indigenous approaches to dealing with destructive and long-running conflicts). Such case studies can examine failures as well as successes — for example, an analysis of what went wrong with the Oslo Accords, in Iraq, or with the Dayton agreement would be valuable, as would analyses of what was done right in Mozambique, South Africa, and Northern Ireland (though one could argue with this assessment of "right and wrong," and that's okay). (Suggested length: 1500-4000 words)

Note: Sample case studies can be found at Case Studies

Moral Imagination Examples

There are many conflict problems for which the Knowledge Base does not currently offer solutions. We are, therefore, especially interested in accounts of creative, imaginative, and unconventional approaches to communal violence from perspectives other than those of the professional conflict resolution community, akin to the kinds of stories that John Paul Lederach has included in his new book, The Moral Imagination.

If you don't know about this book, read it! But meanwhile, listen to John Paul talk about it at: John Paul Lederach on The Moral Imagination

Peacebuilder Profiles

More constructive approaches to conflict ultimately depend upon the personal initiative of individuals who strive to "make a difference." To provide Knowledge Base users and, especially, students with role models for careers in conflict-related fields, we would like very much to include biographical profiles of accomplished peace builders. We are looking for realistic accounts of what it's like to work in the field, along with advice on how to build a career. These profiles would need to be built from written sources as well as interviews with the person being profiled, if that is possible. (Suggested length: 1000-2000 words)

Note: Sample Profiles are available at Peacebuilding Profiles.

Book Reviews / Summaries

Many of the people using Beyond Intractability have little or no access to libraries, nor do they have the money to buy many books. Yet they often have access to the Web. For that reason, we have been providing short summaries of the key ideas from important conflict resolution books for a number of years. But recently, we have fallen way behind. You can find the list of summaries we currently have at Book Summary List. These summaries vary considerably in length, depending on the length of the book. Summaries of edited books tend to be longer, as we want the reviewer to give a brief summary of the key ideas of each article as well as the overall "message" of the book as a whole. Overall, however, most summaries range from 750-1500 words.

Style

While we accept documents written in a broad range of styles, our preference is for short, succinct articles, written for a general audience. The use of technical jargon should be minimized. (User guides are an exception here, however — they should be written in language that is familiar to the targeted user group.) In cases where specialized terms are required, they should be briefly defined in the text. While we can accept documents in a wide array of computer formats, we prefer Microsoft Word, WordPerfect, or HTML. All direct quotes should be fully cited in footnotes or endnotes, as should books, articles, and other websites referenced in the document. (Any format is acceptable as long as all of the information is there.) Additional readings (books, articles, or websites) can also be included as "additional readings" at the end of the document. Please include short descriptions of all cited resources when at all possible. (See the additional resources at the bottom of the essay on Intractability for an example of what these short descriptions should look like and what they are used for.) We also encourage the inclusion of as many links as possible to existing Beyond Intractability resources.

Review Process

All contributions to Beyond Intractability must be reviewed and approved prior to posting. We offer three review programs for different types of contributions.

• Faculty Research Journal - Our professional peer review process evaluates contributions based upon the standards of major academic journals. Here, the focus is on new theoretical work and research reports that significantly advance the field.
• Knowledge Base Essays - These essays are also peer reviewed, but they are not expected to break new ground. Rather, they review what is currently known about a particular topic. We are very interested in publishing quality graduate student papers on the topics described above. Instructors interested in involving students in this effort are welcome to contact us and/or distribute this flier to their students. However, if you are reading an offline (paper) version of this document, we ask that you check this Web page: Call for Contributors to see an updated list of topics currently being solicited. Once a topic is taken, we will remove that topic from the list. If you have an idea for other topics, please write us or call us at 303-492-1635 to check to see if the topic would be appropriate for inclusion in the Knowledge Base.
• Editorials - We are publishing a limited number of editorials or opinion pieces by leaders in the field, suggesting ways in which this knowledge could and should be applied to current policy dilemmas — such as Iraq. These do not need to be rigorously documented as do the other two types of submissions, but they do need to be credible, valuable, and on a topic that is relevant and important for the Knowledge Base.

Submission Process

Contributions should be e-mailed to the Beyond Intractability Project co-directors, Guy Burgess and Heidi Burgess (burgess@colorado.edu). People are also encouraged to submit preliminary outlines and draft papers for comments prior to the formal submission of contributions to Beyond Intractability. The author's résumé should also accompany each submission, and students are additionally asked to submit a letter of endorsement from their instructor.

Using Beyond Intractability Resources

By contributing material for inclusion in the Beyond Intractability knowledge base and/or website, you agree to grant unlimited usage and distribution rights to the University of Colorado Conflict Research Consortium. You further grant to the Consortium the right to edit your submitted material at the Consortium's discretion. Any editorial changes deemed by the Consortium to be of significance will be presented to you for your approval prior to publication.

Once contributed materials are added to the Knowledge Base, they become available for general use in accordance with the following principles. Our goal is to create an open-source version of the field's principal ideas.

• People can freely link to any knowledge base resource.
• Short-term (less than 4 months or one semester) reprint rights are free, provided that the work is fully cited and the text is not altered. (Because the Knowledge Base articles are continually being refined, we want to make sure that people are using the latest versions.)
• The materials may not be sold for profit. (Users can be charged for duplication costs.)
• Liberal rights to extensively quote Knowledge Base resources are also granted. Quoted sections must be presented in their original form and be clearly cited. Unless a specific exemption is granted, the resulting, "composite" materials must be made freely available through the Beyond Intractability site. (We can handle the posting of such materials.)
• Short quotations that fall within the standard, fair use guidelines are, of course, acceptable.