Newsletter #267 — August 26, 2024
by Heidi Burgess and Guy Burgess
August 25, 2024
We discussed impartiality quite a bit in the fall of 2022 when we started this newsletter. Originally, the newsletter was designed to be a discussion of the points we raised in an article just then published in the Conflict Resolution Quarterly. In that article, we came out in favor of neutrality/impartiality on the part of the conflict resolution and peacebuilding communities who were acting in the "U.S. political conflict space." We argued that our ability to help people resolve their conflicts and/or make peace is severely hampered when we take sides. When we do, we argued, we deny both sides the service of an impartial facilitator, mediator, or arbitrator, and leave them to their own (often destructive) approaches for dealing with important conflicts.
Is Neutrality a Trap?
Bernie Mayer and Jackie Font Guzman, co-authors of the book The Neutrality Trap, strongly disagreed. They argued (as you can tell from their book title) that neutrality is a trap that results in the supposed neutral taking the side of or empowering the higher-power, oftentimes oppressive, party. They wrote in their September 2022 submission to our discussion:
We believe that you are mistaking a symptom — hyper-polarization—for the essential problem. As a result, you propose an approach that in our view will not work and – no doubt unintentionally – is profoundly supportive of a status quo and power structure that we see as the cause of the hyper-polarization you describe.
A second major concern is your suggestion that all sides of the political spectrum are equally to blame for hyper-polarization. We see this as a case of false equivalence and an example of what we have called the neutrality trap. This leads you to suggest that the road through the mess we are in is for conflict professionals to maintain a “neutral” stance in order to facilitate a better understanding between conservatives and progressives, whom you argue share equal responsibility for hyper-polarization and the problems that flow from this. We believe this fails to recognize the damage being done to our social and political culture by continued social inequalities and their protection by existing structures and institutions that impose and maintain hierarchies of power.
Following our three-part written "conversation," with Jackie and Bernie, a number of other people weighed in on the debate, including
- Lou Kriesberg who maintained, as did Bernie and Jackie, that we were wrong to assert that both the U.S. right and the U.S. left are both contributing to polarization. Lou asserted in the summer of 2022 that polarization was being driven primarily by bad behavior on the right, saying that "many more Republicans than Democrats have for several years conducted conflicts destructively." (He can back that statement up with an exhaustively documented history of U.S. political contention since 1945 that he presents in his latest book, Fighting Better. The Negotiation Journal recently published my review of that book, in which, you will see, I very much appreciate Lou's scholarship. However, I still think we are right to focus on polarization for reasons I will discuss further below, and do still believe that it is being driven by both sides (though not necessarily equally by both).
- Larry Susskind who shared his previously published article about "Consensus Building in the Age of Trump" (an age that we thought was over, but which we might be about to experience again.) Here he argued that neutrality is essential to the profession of conflict resolution:
Neutrality is central to the value we add as ADR professionals. Our neutrality allows us to earn the trust of all sides in any dispute. It also means we can operate in the interstices between the parties and, in so doing, carry messages and provide cover for parties to come together without appearing to be weak. My contention is that many ADR professionals are so upset by what is happening in the Age of Trump that they are ready to risk their perceived neutrality. While I understand their motives, I am convinced this would be a disaster for the profession.
- However, Jay Rothman asserted that "Third parties cannot be neutral, and therefore striving to be so is a wasted effort." Rather, he suggested, they should be mindful and reflective of how their bias affects their relationship with the parties.
- Ken Cloke advocated another approach, suggesting that mediators should be "omni-partial" in which, rather than being aloof and indifferent to the parties' goals, they should place themselves "on both sides at the same time and affirm the underlying emotional and “heart” truths they represent. ...Omni-partiality is grounded in core values, such as inclusion, diversity, respect, honest, collaboration, and caring."
Much more recently, we had a discussion with Martin Carcasson, who agreed with us and Larry Susskind about the importance of impartial third parties: Martin explained that humans are
much more wired for outrage and polarization than for collaboration and deliberation. It's hard for us to deal with conflict. So having organizations, having individuals whose job is to help people resolve conflict and deal with conflict better, I think, is inherently going to be important. ... If we just say, "No, there's two sides, and we're sure one side's right and one side's wrong, we should just join the right side," it takes away the power that we have to be the convener, to be the trusted person bringing people together. So that's the case for impartiality. (BI Newsletter 258)
But Martin, like us, has received a lot of push back against this notion.
And as we polarize more and more and more, there's more push back against that [impartiality], arguing, "No, how can you be neutral to this?" "neutrality in the face of oppressor serves the oppressor." "You can't be neutral with this, they say!" ...
Martin said many people quoted Desmond Tutu's famous line: "neutrality in the face of oppression serves the oppressor," and so, they would argue, you can't be neutral when it comes to the beliefs or the behavior of the right. Martin argues that you can, and indeed, should remain impartial, if that's your role — but not to everything.
As he explained in an article for the National Civic Review entitled "the Case for Principled Impartiality in a Hyper-Partisan World, impartiality has to be balanced with an equal commitment to two other values: good information and "small d" democracy. He described a diagram that was in that article (and is reprinted here).
I have a triangle image with impartiality on the top. I'm committed to impartiality for the reasons I just mentioned. People need to trust us. I believe for humans to deal with conflict, they need help. So someone that's focused on doing that well is important. But then I also have a commitment to democracy, at least small d democracy. I'm partisan towards democracy, and that brings in a whole bunch of values. And I think a lot of those values are both on the left and the right. I don't think either side owns democracy. And then I also have a commitment to good information.
In the initial draft of the paper, I played off Desmond Tutu and said, sort of the same thing he did, that if one side has really good information, and the other side just has talking points that we know are wrong, if I'm neutral, neutrality in the face of bullshit serves the bullshitter. But [the editors] decided not to let me use those terms. So I had to change it to a little bit. But it's that same idea.
So I'm committed to impartiality. I'm committed to democracy. And I'm committed to good information, while recognizing the line between good information and bad information is not an easy one. It's really hard to make that distinction. But it's something that we do have tools to try to negotiate. So the work that I do is a constant negotiation between those three elements.
One argument I make, particularly now with the concerns about the authoritarian right and people saying that we can't be neutral, is that we have to call that out. I think attacking them [the right] fits within the polarization [playbook] and doesn't do much. But if we really help people have much better conversations, I think we'll realize, more and more, where the better arguments are. If the world is really beset by oppressors, oppressing people, powerful people and bad faith actors [it would become evident]. — I think they love the fact that we're all screaming at each other and facts don't matter. That makes it easier for them. So pragmatically, I think the better the conversation, the better the argument, the better off we are.
Shortly after our conversation with Martin, we talked with David Eisner. That conversation was not recorded (though we have since done a recorded one that will be posted soon). David asked (as have many others in the past) how we balanced our strong defense of impartiality with respect to the US political conflict and our strong and, to many, one-sided, stance on Israel. We have been thinking a lot about this too, ever since October 7, though Guy never had the self doubts that Heidi had. But Martin's triangle, along with an explanation that Guy recently gave Heidi, brought our views into focus, and indeed, into coherence. So many people have called us out on "inconsistency" in the past that we wanted to share our current thinking on this difficult and critically important issue. However, it turns out that it is going to take the rest of this, and the next newsletter to explain this — there is a lot to say! We hope you'll stay with us for both posts!
Impartiality Doesn't Mean Everyone is Equally Right
What Guy pointed out to me is obvious, but I hadn't thought about it this way before. Judges (and juries) are supposed to be "impartial." But that doesn't mean that they think that both sides are right. Rather, they listen to the evidence presented, and then they weigh that evidence, and on that basis, together with their understanding of the law, they render a decision. Most often, that decision is that one side is right and the other side is wrong. Juries, too, must decide whether or not the defendant is guilty of each specific charge. They don't decide that they are half guilty and half not guilty in order to be "impartial." And, following guilty verdicts, judges (and, sometimes, juries) must then decide what remedies and punishments to impose.
Outside of the legal context, impartiality implies a similar willingness to fairly consider the evidence and, on the basis of that evidence, make appropriate judgments about what we think is "good" or "right," and hence what we are willing to support and what we feel compelled to oppose.
That is what we have been trying to do in the case of Israel and Hamas/Hezbollah/Iran, and in the case of Democrats and Republicans in the United States. But in addition to considering the law (about which we are not experts), we are also, like Martin, taking into account our fundamental values which closely align with his and, we believe, with the underlying goals of peacebuilding movement and the liberal, democratic ideals upon which those goals are based.
So we agree with Ken Cloke's assertion above that we should guide ourselves with the core values of "inclusion, diversity, respect, honest collaboration, and caring. We value the conflict resolution/peacebuilders' role of impartial third party for the reasons stated above.
However, we also value (probably even more) what Martin calls "small d democracy," and we would call "liberal democracy" or, as we have called it before, "power-with democracy." Now, just to be clear, by "liberal democracy," we do not mean democracy as favored by liberals or progressives in the United States' Democratic Party. We use the term "liberal democracy" in its political science sense to mean a system that is characterized by free, fair, and open elections in which all points of view have an opportunity to compete and win, and a system of checks and balances designed to make it hard for small factions to seize control of the government. Other characteristics of liberal democracies include the rule of law and a monopoly on the legitimate use of force by the police to enforce that law. Liberal democracies are also characterized by a free market-based economy and a free society with protections for a broad range of civil rights. (Ken Cloke's values of inclusion, diversity, respect, honest collaboration and caring are also consistent with these liberal democratic goals. So these are values that we believe in, and we use them to make judgments about what is right and wrong, good and bad.
Like Martin, we also value facts, which means we value transparency, and trustworthy information. This also means that we are willing to ask hard questions that challenge the conventional wisdom. To earn our support, policies need to offer more than lofty sounding goals — they need to demonstrate that they have a realistic path toward achieving those goals. Making wise and equitable judgments about policies is, unfortunately, increasingly hard to do. Today's information environment is dominated by a cacophony of competing and, often, unreliable voices. To avoid all of this chaos, many people have retreated into increasingly homogeneous echo chambers that supply an endless series of stories that explain how they are always right and the other side is always wrong. We have been trying, as well as we can, to sort through the morass of information coursing around the Internet to come up with as accurate an assessment of what is really going on in places we write about, and to use that information to inform our opinions, and hence our writing.
Given the difficulties involved, it is not surprising that conscientious people who are honestly trying to be impartial with respect to today's big issues often reach differing conclusions. This is why it is so important that we try to explain our thinking to each other — thinking that can help us all improve the judgments we are making regarding these important issues. It is in this spirit that we want to explain our latest thinking regarding the many facets of the Gaza crisis and, to a lesser extent, our thinking regarding the US election. But that will have to wait until the next newsletter, as this one has already come close to our length limit.
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