BI System News

As of September 1, we have completed the long-promised upgrade of Beyond Intractability to its new operating system. In addition to upgrading platforms, we have significantly rearranged the site, highlighting what is new and where the current activity is happening.  This means that the newsletter is getting more prominent placement on the home page, but also, more importantly, we are adding a major new section, entitled the Constructive Conflict Guide. This is a free guide to understanding the causes and consequences of intractable conflicts and how they are particularly affecting politics in the United States and other Western democracies. We also include a great deal of material on the ways in which we can all help handle these conflicts more constructively -- from the interpersonal to the societal level.  

The Guide is not yet complete.  It is being built by assembling a list of over 300 topics, covering the nature and causes of intractability, escalation, and polarization, and what needs to be done to address such problems effectively.  Much of the content of BI, including all of our essays, videos, interviews, newsletters, and links to colleague activities, news and opinion pieces is being coded and placed, where appropriate, into each of these 300 topics.  The materials listed under each topic are then being sorted according to type of resource and quality of material, with stars being given to the best few pieces which we suggest be "read first."  As of September 1, we have many of the topics filled with content, with only a few still blank.   Some have been sorted according to quality, while others have not. But if you surf around, you will see that there is already an enormous amount of material available; so much that we thought it was worth deploying this guide before it is fully done!

For those of you looking for materials from the earlier version, everything is still here with the original URLs.  The primary organizational difference is that we used to have something called "the Knowledge Base" (which had essays, case studies, book and article summaries, interviews, teaching materials (including simulations and exercises) practitioner reflections, etc.  Then we had the Frontiers Seminar and the Fundamentals Seminars as separate sections on the old home page.  The Frontiers and Fundamentals seminars have now been included as part of the "Full Knowledge Base" (also linked on the home page), and the "Original Knowledge Base" with the essays, teaching materials, etc. is listed as one part (with a major block) on the landing page of the Full Knowledge Base.  So it is one level further down, but everything is still there.