Recent BI and Substack Posts

Our selected readings from colleagues journalists writing on peace, conflict, and democracy topics.

Taking Kriesberg's essay as a starting point, this newsletter explores, from left-leaning and centrist perspectives, a range of hopeful responses that are emerging to the most extreme actions of the still young Trump presidency.

Interpersonal communication is not the only way to reduce political divides; other much more "scalable" approaches work in addition to, not instead of, one-on-one communication to reduce hyper-polarization.

Our weekly collection of interesting and important readings.

Complex adaptive systems cannot be fixed using typical engineering problem solving. Rather they need to be approached using a "medical model," which is designed to deal with systems we don't entirely understand.

Rosa Zubizarreta-Ada explores solutions to the "Achilles Heel of democracy," in which free speech allows illiberal speech, which then threatens the very democracy that allows it.

Tom Klaus and Lamar Roth talked with Guy and Heidi Burgess about Beyond Intractability, hyper-polarization, constructive conflict, and ways we are going to get out of the "mess" we are in.

More important readings from our colleagues and journalists of note.

Daniel Stid's three key "take-aways" from a conference on Pluralism in Action: we have a choice between pluralism and war; political resistance and civic renewal are different tasks, and pluralism is not a field. See why!

We are good at understanding and responding to sharp feedback, but continue to have serious trouble seeing and responding to fuzzy feedback. These difficulties do much to explain why society is in such serious trouble.

Our weekly set of readings renamed to clarify the contents, trying to help our readers understand the challenges we face.

A repeat of a two-year old post, explaining "thinking and acting systemically" by using the metaphor of Google Maps and "Adopt a Highway" programs -- both systemic ways of managing vast amounts of traffic on the U.S. highway system.

The civic renewal we need is not primarily political or governmental, but rather, cultural. While Federal governance is still in a shambles, cultural change at the local and state levels promises a healthier democracy.

Two weeks' worth of readings from colleagues and journalists about hyper-polarization, intractable conflict and more.

Comments on our U.S. democracy post, Ashok Panikkar's question about contemporary education, and uplifting essay from Anne Leslie, and a new case study on Burundi from Emmy Irobi.

Harry Boyte explained how the ideas of the U.S. Civil Rights Movement from the 1950s and 1960s can be adapted by anyone wanting to make fundamental change in their communities and their societies.

This is the second of a two compilations of links collected over the holiday break.

The second of two collections of link assembled over the holidays.

The first of two links sets to get caught up from the holiday break.

Guy and Heidi Burgess talked with Rep. Derek Kilmer on how to break down polarization in Congress and in society in order to actually solve problems collaboratively. There is much to learn and utilize here!

Ashok Panikkar, Heidi and Guy Burgess (with facilitation from Merrick Hoben) talked about why peacebuilding is failing in much of the world, and how the use of critical thinking explains why and what might be done to be more successful.

A last set of readings for 2024.

Lou Kriesberg explores "what next" for progressives in the United States following Trump's election, arguing that two responses are necessary: resistance, and strengthening democracy.

U.S. polarization and political dysfunction is only going to worsen until the two parties realize that the problem isn't "the other," but rather the way we (don't) tolerate, compromise and or work collaboratively with with "the other."

Road rage is much like ideological rage. We don't accept the former; why do we accept the latter?