What's Happening [03.26.13]

Lee Jay Berman- I often wonder who invented the concept of impasse. Who first said, "We are stuck. We cannot go any further."? And who decided that we should give it a name, acknowledge its existence, and make it the scapegoat for all that goes wrong with a mediation?

My guess is that it was the first mediator who had run out of tools. With imagination exhausted, someone threw their hands into the air and declared the negotiation over and decided it was time to send everyone home, declaring an impasse and deeming the mediation process, not just the session, to have failed.

For negotiators to declare impasse can make sense, if you think about it.

ACR Blog Radio - Helping Mediators Around the World Practice and Im...

ACR Podcast- Tune in to ACR Blog Radio Thursday, March 28 at 2pm EST for our next show, Helping Mediators Around the World Practice and Improve Their Skills via Skype with Giuseppe Leone.

The show will discuss promoting mediation (and online mediation) around the world, by showing what mediation means and how it works – in different languages. If you click here, you will see some examples in English, French and Italianhttp://goo.gl/Jh44h And by the time we run the show, there may well be something in Spanish.

FORGIVING WHEN ASKED

by Cinnie Noble

A Conflict Resolution Scholar Explains How to Resolve Conflicts in ...

Yesterday Ta-Nehisi Coates discussed some trouble he was having on Amtrak's Quiet Car:*

As I write this someone's digital device is going off. The woman apparently can't figure out how to shut it off. She does not want to repair to another car to figure this out. She wants to do it here in the quiet car. She is not alone.

Coates isn't alone either. Writing in the Wall Street Journal a couple weeks back, William Power and Brian Hershberg chronicled the rise of quiet cars on local commuter lines across the country, and the rise of passenger conflicts that have come as a result. While conductors occasionally police the cars, more often that job is left to quiet car "vigilantes."

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