Recent Posts
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Monday, September 14, 2020
Strategies in Multi-Party Negotiations (A Video Presentation)
HNMCP is fortunate to draw on the expertise of a wide variety of practitioners in seeking to understand and teach students about the nuances of alternative dispute resolution. One of those practitioners is Susan Carney Lynch, JD, DrPH, NREMT-P, a lawyer, public servant, and Fellow with Harvard’s Advanced Leadership Initiative (ALI). Dr. Lynch has built a career… More
Thursday, July 30, 2020
Only a Game: How Elements of “Gamification” Can Enrich Online Dialogue
In light of the pandemic, dialogue practitioners are finding inventive ways to not only transfer dialogue online but also reimagine how traditionally in-person activities can be conducted online more effectively. A new way of making remote dialogue more engaging is to incorporate game-like elements to make the online experience more life-like. Carla Luna talks about how in her new blog.… More
Thursday, July 23, 2020
How will the post-Covid office space change the way we manage conflict?
When the physical setups of our offices constantly remind us to be wary of one another, what will happen to our choices about how to handle conflicts at work? … More
Tuesday, July 14, 2020
Bridging the Virtual Gulf: Engagement Strategies for Online Facilitation
Imagine this. You are facilitating a local community meeting over Zoom. Although all participants have their audio and video enabled, about half are staring down at their cellphones while another participant (whom you recognize from two previous meetings) is single-handedly carrying the conversation. As a new participant starts to chime in, your virtual veteran cuts her off mid-speech. She mutes. This is facilitated dialogue post-COVID. … More
Monday, May 4, 2020
Can Dispute Systems Design be “Rapid-Response”?
Dispute systems design, when done well, emphasizes thoughtful, intentional engagement with stakeholders in order to develop robust conflict management systems. Is this approach useful during an acute crisis? A few days ago, a friend who works in a state court system sent the following email to me and a number of colleagues in the field of… More
Wednesday, April 8, 2020
Finding the contours of our virtual lives
In-person interaction is now largely unavailable to us. Can digital connections ever be as rich? In visual art, the term “negative space” refers to the space around the subject of an image. M.C. Escher’s Sky and Water I provides a vivid example: the birds at the top of this graphic print start out as positive… More
Tuesday, March 24, 2020
#WhatIsThisMomentFor?
There is no avoiding or downplaying the enormity of the changes we have all experienced in the past three weeks. From the large-scale patterns of our movement from place to place, down to the number of seconds we spend at the sink scrubbing our hands, it seems like the very texture of our ordinary days has… More
Thursday, March 19, 2020
When the pandemic ends, will we remain “distanced”?
When I first read the phrase, “social distancing”—in an email sent by one of our law school deans—my first reaction was a visceral sort of aversion. It seemed a particularly callous phrase, tinged with both sadness and a cold, clinical sensibleness. I have since learned that social distancing was not, in fact, a term made up by a dean at Harvard Law School, but is actually a well-known protocol for slowing contagion, with which I and my colleagues and millions upon millions of people around the world are now personally familiar. … More
Thursday, February 6, 2020
Engaging Deep Differences Online
Originally published on the Indisputably blog as part of the Theory-of-Change Symposium . You can find all the submissions for the symposium here. As we approach the next election, we continue to confront important challenges about engaging across deeply felt differences. Our country remains polarized, and many feel disconnected from those whose views differ… More
Wednesday, October 23, 2019
On the Road
Former HNMCP clients Heather Kulp (New Hampshire Judicial Branch) and Rebecca Price (U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York) presented at the ABA Section of Dispute Resolution Conference in Minneapolis, MN, on April 9, alongside Clinical Instructor Sara del Nido Budish ’13. The presentation, “Trust the Process? Understanding and Learning from Party… More
Wednesday, October 2, 2019
Client Spotlight
The systems design approach HNMCP takes is a substantial asset during the semester of the project. But for me, the skills I’ve learned from HNMCP—both as a clinical instructor but perhaps more as a client—render HNMCP a greater asset long after the students have submitted their final projects. They teach me, and others, how to see our work and environment differently for years to come.… More
Thursday, May 23, 2019
Brexit and Peace in Northern Ireland: The Perils of Ignoring the Interests of Key Stakeholders to an Agreement
By Dr Ronán Feehily, University of Canterbury The imminent withdrawal of the United Kingdom (UK) from the European Union (EU) has brought into sharp focus the likely impact that a “no-deal” Brexit will have on peace in Northern Ireland. A question that has emerged as part of the Brexit negotiations is: can negotiators maintain the… More
Wednesday, March 27, 2019
Sharing What Divides Us
The first time that Ahmad was discriminated against at his local job center in Berlin, the official working there called him a “donkey.” The second time, the same official told him he should have his “brain checked out.” The third time, Ahmad was denied information before being thrown out of the office. After the sixth time, Ahmad stopped going to the job center. Instead, he withdrew into his room, stayed inside and disengaged with anyone from the outside world.… More
Wednesday, November 21, 2018
What Relevance for ADR in situations of Domestic Violence? Part 2: The design and challenges of Bhutan’s Consensus Building Initiative for certain types of domestic violence
This is the sixth installment of a blog series called From the Field. In this series we spotlight stories and insights from former students, friends, and colleagues who are working in the field of dispute resolution. This post is Part II of a two-part post by Stephan Sonnenberg ’06. You can read Part I here. … More
Monday, November 5, 2018
What Relevance for ADR in situations of Domestic Violence?
This is the sixth installment of a blog series called From the Field. In this series we spotlight stories and insights from former students, friends, and colleagues who are working in the field of dispute resolution. This post is Part I of a two-part post by Stephan Sonnenberg ’06. Domestic violence, as we are all… More
Wednesday, October 17, 2018
Lessons Learned: Facilitating a Conversation about Remembrance
by Niharika Singh ’18 When Zikaron BaSalon first asked me to facilitate a discussion about Holocaust Remembrance on Holocaust Memorial Day, the task seemed easy even though the subject matter was weighty. After all, many people who were similarly inexperienced in leading group discussions had successfully hosted similar events with Zikaron BaSalon in the past. Moreover,… More
Friday, August 31, 2018
When Truth Isn’t Truth
I should start by acknowledging that it wasn’t as bad as it sounded. Rudy Giuliani’s infamous claim that “truth isn’t truth” was preceded by an attempt to distinguish “somebody’s version of the truth” from “the truth.” When interviewer Chuck Todd responded that “truth is truth,” Giuliani then stuck his foot in his mouth. No doubt… More
Monday, April 30, 2018
Principled Negotiations and Complex Peace Processes: Reflections on connecting theory to practice—Part II
In the first installment of our reflection on the pedagogy of principled negotiation, we began our consideration of the practicalities of applying theories of interest-based negotiation to peacebuilding.
We turn now to the concept of negotiation process. … More
Wednesday, April 18, 2018
Principled Negotiations and Complex Peace Processes: Reflections on Connecting Theory to Practice: Part I
This is the fourth installment of a blog series called From the Field. In this series we spotlight stories and insights from former students, friends, and colleagues who are working in the field of dispute resolution. by Lisa Dicker ’17 and C. Danae Paterson ’16 “These methods may be fine in the classroom and… More