Every week or so, we will compile posts from the Frontiers Seminar, the Fundamentals Seminar, the Things Everyone Can Do to Help Blog, and the Beyond Intractability in Context Blog into a Newsletter that will be posted here and sent out by email to subscribers. You can sign up to receive your copy on our Newsletter Sign Up Page and find all past newsletters on our Newsletter page.

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Newsletter # 10 --  March 21, 2018

This newsletter is the first substantive newsletter of our spring seminars, so the posts shown here for the Fundamentals and Frontiers Seminars, as well as the Things YOU Can Do To Help Blog are starting over at the beginning.  Most of these were made last year, before we started the Constructive Confrontation Initiative.  Rather than re-doing each of them to show how they relate to this new initiative, we created a new page entitled "Constructive Confrontation Initiative Resources" which explores how this concept relates to our past posts and which posts, in particular, demonstrate explicitly how one can confront conflict in more constructive ways. 

We will be creating new posts soon as well.  All of the upcoming Unit 5 of the Frontiers Seminar, for example, focuses on constructive approaches to conflict which, together, we are terming "massively parallel peacebuilding." The Fundamentals posts will be continuing on with our exploration of conflict overlay factors, all of which need to be identified and remedied in order to be able to constructively address the core of the conflict. So, while sometimes a bit hidden, the notion of "Constructive Confrontation" really infuses all of what we have done already and will be doing as we move forward.  Posts to date for the Constructive Confrontation Initiative are listed below.

Things YOU Can Do To Help Blog

• If You're Not Part of the Solution, You're Part of the Problem -- Conflict is created by everyone--it becomes better or worse depending on what all of us do.
• First, Do No Harm -- Doctors promise to, at a minimum, “do no harm.” People who want to improve conflicts should do the same.

Conflict Frontiers Seminar

Unit 1: Understanding the Intractable Conflict Problem

• Welcome and Introduction to the Frontiers Seminar -- Limiting the destructiveness of today's big and intractable conflicts will require majors advances at the frontiers of the peace and conflict fields.
• Why Can't We Fix Anything Anymore? -- Why can't we fix our serious social, economic, political, and environmental problems? Because we don't know how to deal with the underlying conflicts!
• What Are Intractable Conflicts (A Frontiers Video)? -- Intractable conflicts aren't impossible to resolve--they are just very difficult. Recognizing their true nature is the first step towards transformation.
• What Makes Conflicts Intractable (Frontiers Post)? -- Why are intractable conflicts like the earth and an onion? They all have multiple layers that hide the core.
• Intractable Conflict: A "Climate Change-Class" Problem -- What are the parallels between intractable conflicts and climate change? There are many--and much to be learned from studying them.
• Limits to Growth, Tragedies of the Commons, and the Conflict Problem -- Conflict problems associated with wisely and equitably managing the social, political, economic, and environmental "commons" are society's real "limit to growth."

Conflict Fundamentals Seminar

Unit 1: Understanding the Intractable Conflict Problem

• Why Can't We Fix Anything Anymore? -- Intractable conflicts are making many critical problems all over the world impossible to deal with.
• What Are Intractable Conflicts? (A Fundamentals Essay) -- While some people argue that most conflicts aren't intractable (or that even none are) we are finding more and more that fit into this designation.
• The Core Causes of Intractable Conflicts (Fundamentals Post) -- An essay which goes into more detail about the factors that combine to make conflicts intractable.
• Intractable Conflict: A "Climate Change-Class" Problem -- The peacebuilding field is roughly where the climate change field was in the 1970s. That movement's sucesses and challenges have a lot to teach peacebuilders.
• Limits to Growth, Tragedies of the Commons, and the Conflict Problem -- The "Commons" is a term generally used for environmental issues. It is much broader than that--as this video illustrates.

Beyond Intractability in Context Blog

• 18 political ads you may have seen on Facebook that were actually made by Russian trolls -- Russian Facebook ad examples. How do they compare to homegrown political messages? Are we doing worse to ourselves? -- 03/06/2018
• The Double Threat to Liberal Democracy -- The Double Threat to Liberal Democracy Too much democracy? Too much liberalism? -- 03/05/2018
• Today, Inflation. Tomorrow, Crises -- We are resolving short-term political conflicts by pushing costs off onto future generations. It's unfair & dangero -- 03/05/2018
• As Some Got Free Health Care, Gwen Got Squeezed: An Obamacare Dilemma -- Insight into a real issues associated with the Obamacare conflict--the disparate treatment of the poor and the near -- 03/04/2018
• The short history of global living conditions and why it matters that we know it -- Great charts from Our World in Data, "A short history of global living conditions and why it matters that we know i -- 03/04/2018
• Waking Up to China's Infiltration of American Colleges -- Normally, I'm all for efforts to promote international exchanges. Still, this is a bit creepy. -- 03/03/2018
• Did George Washington Predict Donald Trump? -- Evidence from George Washington's farewell address as president that today's problems aren't so new after all. -- 03/03/2018
• The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM -- Strange paradox: In countries that empower women, women are less likely to choose math and science professions. -- 03/02/2018
• Donald Trump's Language Is Reshaping American Politics -- Words matter–-a provocative exploration of how "Donald Trump's Language Is Reshaping American Politics." -- 03/02/2018
• Russia Isn’t the Only One Meddling in Elections. We Do It, Too. -- Is this a learning moment? A story of US meddling in other countries' elections. -- 03/01/2018