Newsletter 178 — November 29, 2023
Colleague Activities
Highlighting things that our conflict and peacebuilding colleagues are doing that contribute to efforts to address the hyper-polarization problem.
- Peacebuilding
Parents of the Field: Betty Reardon — Betty Reardon was one of the founding parents of the conflict resolution field. We were saddened to learn of her passing last week, and wanted to share this video that is making the rounds of our email feeds. Hats off to Betty! - Peacebuilding
Women Peace and Security Index — This index put together by Georgetown University scores and ranks 177 countries in terms of women’s inclusion, justice, and security. - Crime / Policing / Guns
Polarized Misperceptions of The Magnitude of Police Violence - BCB #72 — It’s not just differences in values that can drive conflict, but differences in knowledge. Liberals' estimates of the magnitude of the problem are way off. - Saving Democracy
Faith in Democracy: Mobilizing Religious Communities for Democratic Change — A robust democracy is essential to safeguarding the rights and fostering the civic participation of religious citizens. And likewise, religious communities can help strengthen democracy. - Peacebuilding
Religion and Peace building: Lessons from Africa — The Catholic Church has played a prominent role in promoting human rights, sustainable development, good governance, and peace in Africa. Cardinal John Onaiyekan reflects on this work. - Saving Democracy
The Global State of Democracy Initiative — This initiative provides evidence-based, balanced analysis and data on the state and quality of democracy for 173 countries, producing a variety of indices and an annual report. - Peacebuilding
Deep Healing and Emotional Expression: Political Forgiveness as a Unique Peacebuilding Process — A political forgiveness process is uniquely different than other peacebuilding measures — it provides a healing mechanism to deal with the emotional undertow that keeps a conflict alive.
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.
- Critical Theory
‘Social’ Justice Is Injustice — A provocative challenge to the kind of justice being pursued by the social justice movement. - Left / Right Conflict
My grand theory of the left — For those who may have thought that intersectionality (or perhaps something else) explains the left's behavior, an essay that reminds us that things are more complex than that. - Communication Complexity
Algorithms Hijacked My Generation. I Fear For Gen Alpha. — Reflections on the critically important role being played by the algorithms which determine what, exactly, we see through our Internet-based window to the world. - Communication Complexity
Google’s Relationship With Facts Is Getting Wobblier — For a world in which Google has, in a wide range of settings, become the final arbiter with respect to wide range of factual disputes, alarming questions about its declining reliability. - Class Inequity
How Democrats Lost Voters With a ‘Compensate Losers’ Strategy — Reflections on the impact of the political strategy that focuses on providing financial assistance to the disadvantaged (rather than removing those disadvantages). - Social Complexity
Forget About Overpopulation, Soon There Will Be Too Few Humans — Food for thought for those thinking about complex relationship between social and environmental sustainability and demographic change. - Communication Complexity
Social Media Broke Up With News. So Did Readers. — An update on the continually changing way in which information flows through our society. - Class Inequity
America’s two homelessness problems — A thoughtful look at the two very different elements of homelessness (and options for better dealing with both problems). - Left / Right Conflict
Where Have All The Democrats Gone? — A window into the ever-changing nature of the left and right-leaning political coalitions that divide our hyper-polarized society. - Freedom of Speech
Free speech is in trouble — From Nate Silver, a detailed look at a major new poll exploring what young people really think about free speech. - Superpower Conflict
Isolationism Makes a Perilous Moment More So — Given the world's many complexities and dangers, it is understandably tempting to withdraw from it all. This article explains why that would be a big mistake. - Hate Mongering
Is Campus Rage Fueled by Middle Eastern Money? — The disturbing article about a different manifestation of the bad-faith actor problem -- one focused on the use of large donations by foreign powers to influence the way in which major universities teach about specific foreign policy issues. - Critical Theory
The MAGAfication of the Left: A progressive movement that makes allowances for Jew-hatred cannot endure. — A highly critical look at the social justice left that focuses on the moral hypocrisy of fighting against oppression while embracing anti-Semitism.
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