Conflict Fundamentals Seminar

About This Seminar

As conflicts were heating up and becoming both more destructive and intractable after President Trump's first term in office, many of our friends who were not in the conflict resolution field started to ask us "what can I do?" or "What can be done to defuse the deepening level of distrust, hostility, and even hate that we see growing in the United States and elsewhere around the world?"  We created the Conflict Fundamental Seminar starting in 2017 -- along with the "What Everyone Can Do" Blog -- to try to help answer that question.  

This seminar covers what we have elsewhere called "Conflict 101" — or "Introduction to Conflict Resolution." It contains fundamental information about the causes of conflict, and tried and true ways for dealing with most conflicts, including both "tractable disputes" and "intractable" conflicts.  

This seminar series, we expect, will be of interest to people unfamiliar with the conflict resolution field, or those just starting to study it. Like all our other materials though, this seminar is open to everyone. We discuss new, and less "settled" ideas for dealing with intractable conflicts (such as our notion of "massively parallel peacebuilding") in the other seminar we started at the same time, called the Conflict Frontiers Seminar.

Syllabus Overview

The Conflict Fundamentals Seminar has twenty one units, covering introductory concepts, and then a deeper examination of typical conflict problems and solutions, or at least ways of addressing such problems constructively if "solution" is too high a goal. Many (but not all) of the readings come from the BI Knowledge Base essays. Some have been updated with "current implications sections," but others have not. This is, in a sense, the forerunner to our new "Constructive Conflict Resource Guide," except the Guide covers both fundamental ideas, as well as new ideas, such as "massively parallel approaches" to peace, problem solving, and democracy building.  The Guide also includes materials developed in the last several years.  The Fundamentals Seminar, having been built in the late 2010s, does not. Below are links to each of the units, which open in new pages.

• Unit 1: Understanding the Problem of Destructive Conflict
• Unit 2: Core Concepts
• Unit 3: Conflict Assessment and Mapping
• Unit 4:  Core Conflict Elements
• Unit 5: Conflict Overlay Factors
• Unit 6: Parties
• Unit 7: Framing
• Unit 8: Communication Pitfalls and Corrections
• Unit 8 1/2 (we missed one!)_: Psychological Dynamics and Issues
• Unit 9:  The Abuse and Use of Real and "Fake" Facts
• Unit 10: Escalation and De-Escalation Processes
• Unit 11: Procedural Problems/Solutions
• Unit 12: Power- It's Uses and Abuses
• Unit 13: Exchange Power and Negotiation
• Unit 14: Collaboration and the Power of Working Together
• Unit15: Alternative Dispute Resolution Processes
• Unit 16: Culture and Conflict
• Unit 17: Unrightable Wrongs and Reconciling the Past
• Unit 18: Developing an Attractive Common Future
• Unit 19:  Promoting Good Governance
• Unit 20: Peace Processes

Caveat:

Although we call this "a seminar," it is not being actively "taught." We do not have the capacity to have students "enroll," study this material together, discuss it, and be tested on it or otherwise be graded and get a certificate upon completion, as is generally the case for most "seminars."  However, the material is freely usable to whomever wants to use it to learn the basics of conflict resolution in a self-taught, unstructured, manner.