By Lynne Kinnucan
With his newest book,
The Conflict Paradox, Dr. Bernie Mayer joins the likes of Aristotle, Voltaire, Chesterton and Escher in their fascination with paradox: the contradiction that is not.
The Conflict Paradox is a book infinitely rich in its variety, worth reading again and again as the reader’s understanding grows and reshapes itself in interaction with it. However, it is a disaster if you are the sort of person who underlines the important parts of a work. My own copy looks like it went through the printer backwards and forwards.
Dr. Mayer’s goal in writing the book was to “challenge the fundamental way we think about conflict itself.” And he has done it. Focusing on the “polarized, bifurcated view we take of conflict,” he notes that the more aggressive the conflict, the more we are apt to regress to primitive, oppositional thinking, and from there to greater conflict. With a deeper understanding, we can see that the assumed polarizations are not only part of each other but, in fact, need each other to be complete (think DNA strands).
The book is structured around the seven core dilemmas posed in any conflict:
Brett McGurk, a senior State Department official, led a small American team in secret prisoner-swap negotiations with Iran, which culminated in today’s agreement.CREDITPHOTOGRAPH: MANDEL NGAN / AFP / GETTY
(Robin Wright/The New Yorker) Fourteen months ago, President Obama authorized a top-secret, second diplomatic channel with Tehran to negotiate freedom for Americans who had disappeared or been imprisoned in Iran. It was a high-risk diplomatic gamble. The initiative grew out of nuclear negotiations, launched in the fall of 2013, between Iran and the world’s six major powers. On the margins of every session, Wendy Sherman, the top American negotiator, pressed her Iranian counterparts about the American cases. The Iranians countered with demands for the release of their citizens imprisoned in the United States for sanctions-busting crimes. More than a year of informal discussions between Sherman and her counterpart, Majid Takht Ravanchi, the Iranian Foreign Ministry official in charge of American and European affairs, led to an agreement, in late 2014, that the issue should be handled separately—but officially—through a second channel.
Read the full article [HERE].
By Viola Gienger- In the volatile environment of policing in Nigeria, Chief Superintendent Ibrahim Yidi and his officers in the country’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission are taking a new tack. They’re slowly shedding what he calls their “superiority syndrome” and treating citizens and suspects alike with dignity, respect and professionalism. And he’s working to strengthen processes like police recruitment. Yidi undertook the initiatives as a result of a USIP course that takes a unique approach to rule of law reform, a methodology outlined in a guide just published in three languages.
The five-day course, called “Toward a Rule of Law Culture: Exploring Effective Responses to Justice and Security Challenges,” is designed for criminal justice authorities, including senior judges, prosecutors, police officers and prison officials, as well as for defense lawyers, members of oversight bodies and other civil society representatives.
Read more [HERE].
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Academia, business and governments universally declare mediation the most cost-effective and quickest manner to resolve conflicts. But do the majority of civil and commercial players even know the practical aspects of this game changer enough to use it with confidence? Have we done our best to let them know?
IT WILL ONLY TAKE 7 MINUTES OF YOUR TIME!
Read more [HERE].
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