Recent BI and Substack Posts

Once we understand the many ways in which escalation can trap us, we can avoid those traps. If we discover that we have already fallen into a trap, we can work to climb out--here are 5 ways to do that.

Civity is all about forming relationships across difference. It's the "secret sauce" of successful communities and organizations. And better yet, everyone can do it!

More interesting reading from our colleagues within and outside the conflict resolution/peacebuilding field.

One of the most important ways  in which we can all act to strengthen our democracy is to speak out when others are acting in ways that threaten it.

Democracy--and threats to it--are a complex adaptive system. We need complex, adaptive responses as well The TRUST Network is one.

Weekly set of important and interesting readings and videos.

More news and activities from our peacebuilding colleagues and interesting readings from allied fields, particularly journalism.

Driven by many interacting feedback loops, escalation can get out of control quickly--leading to violence or even worse.

A few of the many important things Community Relations Service Paul Monteiro shared about the way CRS operates, what makes it successful, and most importantly, how it needs help from locals.

Our weekly selection of interesting organizations and projects in the conflict/peacebuilding field, and articles of interest from outside our field.

Conflict mapping is a tool to help understand what, besides "the other guys" are driving a conflict or social problem, and hence what might be done to fix it.

Some of our biggest errors are that we generally assume that we correctly understand the world and that being wrong is bad. Rather, we often are wrong--and that is good!

Colleague activities to strengthen democracy, and outside the field articles on democracy, polarization, and related issues.

Interesting readings for this week.

Our weekly set of posts on threats to democracy and how to respond to them effectively.

Conversation with D.G. Mawn about the National Association for Community Mediation and the work of the hundreds of member centers which have been helping resolve community conflicts for decades.

Colleague activities to strengthen democracy, and outside the field articles on democracy, polarization, and related issues.

Video conversation with D.G. Mawn about the history and current activities of the National Association for Community Mediation and the work of the hundreds of member community mediation centers.

More stories about our colleague's efforts to defuse polarization and strengthen democracy, along with similar stories from outside the conflict/peacebuilding field.

Can ChatGPT "listen to" and understand the other side better than we can? And if so, is that useful for de-polarization?

A summary of ideas generated by the joint BI/IGN discussion on ways to strengthen democracy using negotiation, conflict resolution, and related processes.

Our readers share their thoughts: how progressive attitudes are deeply hurting progressives themselves, and how polarization is damaging US credibility abroad. Plus normal colleague and context posts.

We need to learn more about the other side--not about how bad they are, but why they believe what they believe, why they respond to us the way they do, and why they advocate for the things we think are so awful. 

Who has the right to speak how and when? The Stanford Law School controversy has lessons for all of us.

Ideas and announcements from several of our colleagues, as well as observations from people in allied fields about stresses to our democracy, and how to address them effectively.