Newsletter #269 — September 1, 2024
Reader Suggested Links
Highlighting links suggested by our readers. Please send us links to things that you find useful.
- Israel / Hamas War
What I Want a University President to Say About Campus Protests — Thoughtful advice for university presidents looking for ways to better handle Gaza-type protests, while also remaining true to the core (and often neglected) mission of the university. - Israel / Hamas War
Warning: Advocates of a ‘ceasefire-for-hostages’ deal are lying to you. — A critique of ongoing efforts to negotiate a cease-fire/hostage-release deal that raises real questions about whether or not this is really a path to peace. - Israel / Hamas War
New Training and Tougher Rules: How Colleges Are Trying to Tame Gaza Protests — A summary of the steps that institutions of higher education are taking to prevent the kind of politically explosive protests that occurred on so many campuses last spring. - Israel / Hamas War
UCLA Crafts FAQs On How Not To Enable Discrimination Against Jewish Students — A look at what UCLA is and is not doing to protect Jewish students and reflections about how that compares to the treatment of other minority groups. - Undermining Unifying Vision
Democrat platform says America was built on stolen land — An undoubtedly controversial, outside critique of the Democratic Party's obligatory "land acknowledgments" -- a critique that asks hard questions about our messy and fraught history. - US Election
Trump Turned the Democratic Party Into a Pitiless Machine — Ezra Klein's illuminating reflections on the differences between Democrats and Republicans. - US Election
Harris can seal the deal this week by being new, improved — and loyal — An example of delicate balancing strategies that are needed to win US elections.
Colleague Activities
Highlighting things that our conflict and peacebuilding colleagues are doing that contribute to efforts to address the hyper-polarization problem.
- Runaway Escalation
Outrage Overload: A Fresh Perspective — A conservative take on outrage and polarization with Michel Anderson - Runaway Escalation
Making mistakes about our opponents' hostile intent — Zach Elwood reflects on a book on the causes of war, and wonders how many of those mistakes apply to the U.S. hyper-polarized society as well. - Networking
The Aspen Institute's Weave: the Social Fabric Project — Weave tackles the problem of broken social trust that has left Americans divided, lonely, and in social gridlock. Weave connects, supports, and invests in local leaders stepping up to weave a new, inclusive social fabric where they live. - Culture and Religion
Religious Perspectives on the Narratives of America: The Search for Just, Honest, Inclusive and Forward-looking Tellings — This set of essays was compiled by the US Bahá’í Office of Public Affairs, and the Aspen Institute which collaborated on this collection of essays from people of many faiths in the U.S. - US Election
J.D. Vance Endorses Book with Dehumanizing “Unhumans” Language — From Starts with Us, thoughts for Trump supporters and Harris supporters on the danger of dehumanizing language and what to do when it is uttered. - Theories of Change
Horizons' Pillars of Support Projects' "Caselets" — Exploring tactics and strategies employed by key pillars throughout history and around the world in support of a pro-democracy agenda; notably faith-based organizations, businesses, unions and professional associations, and veterans groups. - Bridge Building
For Students to Change the World, Colleges Must First Teach Them to Bridge Differences — A commentary from our colleague Shamil Idriss observing that the spring's turmoil on campuses highlights what’s not on the curriculum: Young people need conflict resolution skills to lead us to a better future.
News and Opinion
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. (Formerly, Beyond Intractability in Context.)
- Authoritarianism
The West’s Next Challenge Is the Rising Axis of Autocracies — The dynamics of hyper-polarization are also playing out on a global scale with autocracies increasingly forming alliances to help them more effectively challenge Western democracies. - Disinformation
Trump's Lies Are More Injurious than Mere Propaganda — Reflections on the extremely worrying downsides of a major party presidential candidate that systematically undermines the idea that there can be anything approaching objective truth. - US Election
Kamala Harris Rushes to the Center — From a critical, right-leaning perspective, a look at the steps that Kamala Harris and the Democrats are taking to better appeal to moderate, centrist, swing voters. - Violence
The Bitter Fight Over the Meaning of ‘Genocide’ — Genocide is one of those words that is now used in so many different (and often misleading) ways that it has become hard to distinguish genuine genocidal violence from self-serving propaganda. - Bridge Building
The Seven Essential Truths of Digital Media Literacy — Solid proposals for responding to the way in which digital media has worked its way into pretty much every corner of our lives. - Climate / Environment
Why Are Carbon Emissions Up? — A more understandable summary of the major new research report highlighting the fact that most of the things that we have been doing to fight climate change aren't working. - Climate / Environment
Climate policies that achieved major emission reductions: Global evidence from two decades — A major new study from the American Association for the Advancement of Science's, Science Magazine that argues that most of what we are doing to fight climate change isn't working. Time for a major rethink. - Israel / Hamas War
In a Grim Palestinian Refugee Community, People See Hope in Hamas — The report on what Palestinians are now thinking about Hamas, Israel, and the tragedy that has engulfed them. - Psychological Complexity
Our language, our world — An article exploring the complex psychological dynamics that determine how the language that we use influences how we think, and how we think influences the culture in which we live. - Freedom of Speech
First Amendment Doesn't Protect Speech That Solicits a Specific Crime — An examination of one of the most difficult issues facing free speech advocates -- where to draw the line between protected speech and criminal speech. - US Election
Democrats Are Still Not Thinking Seriously About Preventing Another Jan. 6 — An argument that Democrats have, thus far, failed to respond to the threats posed by the extremes of Trump's candidacy with specific proposals for correcting the situation. - US Election
The Democratic Party’s Project 2025 — An attempt to understand and articulate what it is that Democrats genuinely stand for -- a government that systematically identifies problems and then works to solve those problems. - Intersectional Left
How Settler-Colonialism Colonized the Universities - The Atlantic — A retrospective look at the origins of the theory of "settler colonialism" -- a theory that has done much to frame the Gaza crisis in the eyes of the world. - Communication Complexity
Deep Reading Will Save Your Soul — A critique of higher education and a strategy for learning the things that you should have learned in college.
Please Contribute Your Ideas To This Discussion!
In order to prevent bots, spammers, and other malicious content, we are asking contributors to send their contributions to us directly. If your idea is short, with simple formatting, you can put it directly in the contact box. However, the contact form does not allow attachments. So if you are contributing a longer article, with formatting beyond simple paragraphs, just send us a note using the contact box, and we'll respond via an email to which you can reply with your attachment. This is a bit of a hassle, we know, but it has kept our site (and our inbox) clean. And if you are wondering, we do publish essays that disagree with or are critical of us. We want a robust exchange of views.
About the MBI Newsletters
Two or three times a week, Guy and Heidi Burgess, the BI Directors, share some of our thoughts on political hyper-polarization and related topics. We also share essays from our colleagues and other contributors, and every week or so, we devote one newsletter to annotated links to outside readings that we found particularly useful relating to U.S. hyper-polarization, threats to peace (and actual violence) in other countries, and related topics of interest. Each Newsletter is 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.
NOTE! If you signed up for this Newsletter and don't see it in your inbox, it might be going to one of your other emails folder (such as promotions, social, or spam). Check there or search for beyondintractability@substack.com and if you still can't find it, first go to our Substack help page, and if that doesn't help, please contact us.
If you like what you read here, please ....
