Newsletter #100 — April 2, 2023
Colleague Activities
Highlighting things that our conflict and peacebuilding colleagues are doing that contribute to efforts to address the hyper-polarization problem.
- Constructive Communication
BridgeUSA — BridgeUSA is a youth-led nonprofit organization that creates spaces on high school and college campuses for open discussion between students about political issues. - Developing a Unifying Vision
Citizenship and American Identity Program--The Aspen Institute — This program explores the question of what it means to be American, and how to promote a shared sense of national identity in an age of demographic flux and severe inequality. - De-Escalation Strategies
- Creating Space for Democracy: A Primer on Dialogue and Deliberation in Higher Education — A set of case studies illustrating ways different campuses have successfully navigated the political conflicts that are riling so many colleges and universities.
- Monitoring and Evaluation
Mapping Civic Measurement: How Are We Assessing Readiness and Opportunities for an Engaged Citizenry? — A report on a review of existing resources and tools we can sue to evaluate the success of efforts to improve our constitutional democracy. - Making Collaborative Democracy Work
The State of Public Discourse on Campus — Episode 9 of Areas of Agreement, a podcast featuring students and faculty discussing the need for viewpoint diversity and constructgive disagreement on campuses. - Psychological Complexity
"Entangled" Social Change: From Inter-action to "Intra-action" — An insightful look at how we are all part of the conflict system, and how simply observing it is also an intervention. So HOW we observe and interpret is key.
Beyond Intractability in Context
From around the web, more insight into the nature of our conflict problems, limits of business-as-usual thinking, and things people are doing to try to make things better.
- Race / Anti-Racism
Today’s Woke Excesses Were Born in the ’60s — A well-documented inquiry into a big question: how did the civil rights movement of today emerge from the civil rights movement of Martin Luther King (and what is been gained and lost in the process)? - Effective Problem Assessment
The State of ‘Nature’ — Provocative thoughts on the relationship between political advocacy and science and the danger that too much advocacy can undermine scientific trustworthiness and public trust. - Constructive Communication
The New York Times Is Finally Moving on From 2020 — Welcome news that the New York Times is again embracing its traditional role of providing a forum for competing views on the big issues facing society. - Social Complexity
Do You Live in a ‘Tight’ State or a ‘Loose’ One? Turns Out It Matters Quite a Bit. — Yet another way of thinking about the social and economic factors underlying our divisions. - Effective Problem Assessment
The world is awful. The world is much better. The world can be much better. — An important reminder: as we struggle to address today's big problems, we should not lose track of (and fail to sustain) the very real progress that has been made. - Civic Education
It’s Time to Krauthammer the Curriculum — A persuasive argument for combating right-wing extremism by raising the visibility of thoughtful, right-leaning critiques of the left. - Class Inequity
The powerful lesson from 18 million workers getting a pay raise over $15 — Reflections on a welcome and surprising development -- rapid increases in the compensation paid to low-wage workers (something that seemed impossible just a few years ago). - Social Complexity
The Global Transformation of Christianity Is Here — An eye-opening look at the global spread of Christianity and a reminder that our simplistic stereotypes about culture and cultural change are often wrong. - Big Picture Thinking Projects
Crisis Management — A review and critique of an important new book, "The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism" by Martin Wolf. - Class Inequity
Helping People by Helping Distressed Places — A different and potentially quite promising way of thinking about how to help those that are being left behind -- focus on more than individuals, focus on the places in which people live. - Superpower Conflict
The Cold War With China Is Changing Everything — As we slide deeper into a cold war with China, thoughtful reflections on what this means. - Political Dysfunction
'Live free and die?' The sad state of U.S. life expectancy — Yet another very persuasive reason for trying to really understand our society's many problems and pursue realistic solutions. - Improving Problem Assessment
Escape From Model Land — An in-depth look at the complexities associated with predicting the future (and selecting the most desirable policy options). - Race / Anti-Racism
The true Left is not woke — A thoughtful critique of left-leaning, progressive political views and an argument that they often fail to live up to their own ideals. - Psychological Complexity
You’re Better Off Not Knowing — As we obsess about all of the things that are going wrong in the world, surprising advice that we ought to step back and focus more on what makes life so wonderful.
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Once a week or so, we, the BI Directors, share some thoughts, along with new posts from the Hyper-polarization Blog and and useful links from other sources. We used to put this all together in one newsletter which went out once or twice a week. We are now experimenting with breaking the Newsletter up into several shorter newsletters. Each Newsletter will be posted on BI, and sent out by email through Substack to subscribers. You can sign up to receive your copy here and find the latest newsletter here or on our BI Newsletter page, which also provides access to all the past newsletters, going back to 2017.
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