David J. Smith is a Washington, DC career coach and educator. He teaches at the Carter School at George Mason University and the School of International Service at American University. At the Carter School he runs its career seminar. He serves on the board of advisors for the master’s in humanitarian action program at the Kroc School at the University of San Diego. He is the president of the Forage Center for Peacebuilding and Humanitarian Education. David is the author of Peace Jobs: A Student’s Guide to Starting a Career Working for Peace (IAP 2016). He was a Fulbright U.S. Scholar teaching peace studies and alternative dispute resolution at the University of Tartu in Estonia. He can be reached at davidjsmith@davidjsmithconsulting.com and www.davidjsmithconsulting.com.
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Beyond Intractability
Beyond Intractability
The Intractable Conflict Challenge
Our inability to constructively handle intractable conflict is the most serious, and the most neglected, problem facing humanity. Solving today's tough problems depends upon finding better ways of dealing with these conflicts. More...
Selected Recent BI Posts
Including Hyper-Polarization Posts
- Massively Parallel Peace and Democracy Building Links for the Week of September 8, 2024 -- Readings on Israel, the U.S. political scene, and other intractable conflicts of note.
- Reprise: Constructive Confrontation: Applying Conflict Insights from a 1st Party (Not 3rd Party) Perspective -- A reprise of an old newsletter on constructive ways of engaging in conflict that is less likely to create backlash and more likely to achieve one's goals than typical adversarial approaches are likely to do.
- Guy and Heidi Burgess Talk with David Eisner about Threats to Democracy and How to Address Them -- The Burgesses talked with David Eisner about what he thinks the threats to democracy are, and how (and when) we might respond to them. We agreed, citizen involvement in governance is key.
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