Constructive Conflict Massive Open Online Seminar (MOOS)
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The MOOS is an online exploration of the tough challenges raised by the
Constructive Conflict Initiative
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Additional Posts
Lists of these recent posts plus additional posts are available separately for each BI Section:
Things You Can Do To Help | Conflict Frontiers | Conflict Fundamentals
Beyond Intractability in Context | Colleague Activities
- Media Development and Countering Violent Extremism: An Uneasy Relationship, a Need for Dialogue -- Describes how media development practitioners relate to peacebuilders working to combat violent extremism and how that relationship can be improved. #mbi_colleague -- Sep 08
- What Will You Do if Trump Doesn’t Leave? -- A critical question as we approach an election that could easily lead to a disputed result and large-scale civil unrest, how will we respond? #mbi_context -- Sep 07
- The Blood-Boiling Trap -- Our tendency to focus on things that make us furious distorts the way we look at the world in ways that threaten rather than advance our interests. #mbi_cci -- Sep 07
- Racism 4.0, Civity, and Re-Constitution -- Palma Strand -- Current-day racism must be dismantled by developing positive relationships across racial groups. #mbi_colleague -- Sep 07
- Hyper-Polarization, the Pandemic, and the Need for a "Lifeboat Ethic" -- We are all, in a sense, on one giant lifeboat. Surviving the storm will require us to figure out how to work together more effectively. #mbi_cci -- Sep 07
- Fact-checking Trump’s lies is essential. It’s also increasingly fruitless. -- For a world in which self-serving fantasy often replaces reality, a look at why we need fact-checking, why it isn't working, and a call for new ideas. #mbi_context -- Sep 07
- The Franco-German Relationship: From Animosity to Affinity -- If it is happened it must be possible: a story of how two enemies transformed their relationship through both symbolic and pragmatic steps. #mbi_colleague -- Sep 07
- Disdain for the Less Educated Is the Last Acceptable Prejudice -- Those of us who are lucky enough to have had a quality education tend to feel that we are somehow superior. This is a tendency that we need to fight. #mbi_context -- Sep 04
- Promote Escalation Awareness -- Conflict escalation is, arguably, "the most destructive force on the planet." It is what leads us into war and catastrophic acts of inhumanity. #mbi_cci -- Sep 04
- Social Media Impacts on Social and Political Goods: A Peacebuilding Perspective -- Lisa Schirch -- We need to be better at getting the benefits while controlling the costs and the dangers of social media. #mbi_colleague -- Sep 04
- Where Does The Nightmare of Continuing Hyper-Polarization End? -- Social processes like hyperpolarization can't continue indefinitely without leading to catastrophe. We desperately need an exit strategy. #mbi_cci -- Sep 04
- I’m an Activist in Russia. I Can’t Believe What My Life Has Become. -- An intimate look at what Russian-style autocracy looks like up close and personal. We ought to take the threat that this poses very seriously. #mbi_context -- Sep 04
- Comparison of Dialogue Practices -- Photovoice has survivors take pictures and then describe them, a novel way to encourage dialogue among those who otherwise might be reluctant. #mbi_colleague -- Sep 04
- Could 2020 Spawn '70s-Style Radicals and Violence? -- A comparison of contemporary tensions with the conflicts of the 60s and 70s. Could we be embarking on a similarly violent period? #mbi_context -- Sep 03
- Confronting NIMBYs by Polling Community Interests -- By broadening their understanding of their "backyard" to include their whole community, citizens can be much more powerful in their advocacy efforts. -- Sep 03
- Modernizing Congress: Bringing Democracy into the 21st Century -- Ideas for modernizing Congress so that it can effectively grapple with today's tough issues. We just need the political will to implement the changes. #mbi_colleague -- Sep 03
- Exponential Growth in Pandemics, the Economy, and Escalation -- Economic panic and/or escalating political violence threatens to upend society even more rapidly than the COVID-19 pandemic. #mbi_cci -- Sep 03
- U.S. political divide becomes increasingly violent, rattling activists and police -- A review of recent events that suggests that we may be crossing the threshold into overt and potentially large-scale political violence. #mbi_context -- Sep 03
- The World Café -- A digital place and a process based on a philosophy of conversational leadership, the World Café facilitates "conversations that matter." #mbi_colleague -- Sep 03
- The Democratic Republic of the Congo: A Case Study of War and Failed Peace -- The complexity of the DRC makes peacemaking very difficult, but if past successes are built upon, DRC could still achieve its long-sought peace. #mbi_colleague -- Sep 03
- U.S. Hyper-Polarization—Over the Edge? -- Hyperpolarization at the level of hateful, but entertaining, rhetoric could easily escalate into large-scale 1960s-style civil unrest and violence. -- Sep 03
- What Happens When We Have an Election That Both Sides Absolutely Positively Can't Afford to Lose? -- Seeing the possibility of electoral defeat as totally unacceptable justifies the use of the most extreme and dangerous forms of political combat. #mbi_cci -- Sep 01
- How Trump Appointees Short-Circuited Grid Modernization -- This story about a failed effort to modernize the electric grid to reduce reliance on coal explains how climate change is also a conflict problem. #mbi_context -- Sep 01
- Americans tune in to ‘cancel culture’ — and don't like what they see -- The force-based strategy of social change embedded in the "cancel culture" risks a powerful backlash. we also need to persuade people to change. #mbi_context -- Sep 01
- Constructive Demonstration Strategies -- Primal screams don't change policy or public opinion. Demonstrators should know their goals--and the best way to accomplish them. #mbi_cci -- Sep 01
