Newsletter #182 — December 10, 2023
Colleague Activities
Highlighting things that our conflict and peacebuilding colleagues are doing that contribute to efforts to address the hyper-polarization problem.
- Constructive Communication
Braver Angel's "E-Courses" — These professional level 40-minute courses have been crafted by experts in communications and depolarization. They provide an effective and “safe” way to interact with people in difficult situations. - De-Escalation Strategies
Political Forgiveness and the Healing of Nations — This was Eileen Borris's keynoe address to the Ethiopia Symposium on Higher Eduation for Post Conflict Transformation - Developing a Unifying Vision
How business can help address the American schism without touching political “third rails” — Historically, the U.S. has navigated political divisions by letting facts and data lead the conversation and working together constructively to engage multiple perspectives and work toward consensus and compromise.. Businesses do that all the time. - Pursuing a Unifying Common Vision
Join or Die — Chip Hauss revisits the critical concept of bridging social capital, and reflects both on its widespread loss and its importance to both peace and democracy worldwide. - Leadership
Series Introduction: The Practice of Leadership in the Midst of Controversy and Conflict: — An explanation of how leaders are currently dealing with deep-rooted, highly polarized intractable conflicts--not well, of course. Can anything change that? - Countering Misinformation
Countermeasures for Mitigating Digital Misinformation: A Systematic Review — This Synthesis Report reviews the findings from 588 peer-reviewed publications, from around the world and many disciplines, to highlight the most effective countermeasures for disinformation. - Peacebuilding
What is Peacebuilding — The Alliance for Peacebuilding's new "story map" that explains what peacebuilding is and how it is done in words everyone can understand.
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.
- Developing a Unifying Vision
Why I Am a Liberal — A defense of liberalism and an explanation of why it offers a more unifying vision for the future than the views now dominant on the left and right. - Psychological Complexity
Why Fundamentalists Love Trump — With respect to Trump's strong support among evangelicals, a look at the three elements of fundamentalism: certainty, ferocity and solidarity (elements that also apply to Hamas and the secular left). - The Hyper-Polarization Threat
The Perils of Affective Polarization — The valuable primer on what everyone ought to know about affective polarization or what we call hyper-polarization. - Civic Education
Preparing the next generation of citizens requires bringing back civics — An update on a critically important component of the broader effort to defend and strengthen democracy -- civic education. - Left / Right Conflict
Two parties, two wildly different spending solutions, both implausible — An explanation of how massive deficit spending allows both Republicans and Democrats to convert tough, sero-sum budgetary conflicts into positive-sum disputes that allow all of their supporters to win. - Intersectional Left
The Democratic Coalition Is Falling Apart — Building victorious political coalitions requires an ability to successfully manage a wide range of within-coalition disputes. This article explains how Democrats are failing to do this. - Family / Gender / LBGTQ+
America Isn’t Ready for the Two-Household Child — A real-life example of cultural lag and the struggle to adapt family support structures to changing social norms. - Israel / Hamas War
Propaganda in Local Newspapers: Distorting Reality and History — A lengthy and carefully documented explanation of the many ways in which mainstream media sources are misunderstanding and misreporting the Israeli/Hamas war. - Race / Anti-Racism
What Bayard Rustin Could Teach Democrats Today — A report on a new biopic that explores the life of Bayard Rustin -- a man with a great deal to teach the current generation of civil rights activists. - Crime / Policing / Guns
With ‘conversion switch’ devices, machine guns return to U.S. streets — An explanation of how a simple, easy to reproduce, and difficult to control device may be about to dramatically exacerbate the United States' gun violence problem. - Class Inequity
Another Wrong Way to Measure Poverty — A surprising story about the muddled and misleading way in which we gather statistics about the incidence of poverty (and some proposed fixes). - Climate Change
How Much Does it Cost to Build a Nuclear Power Plant? — For a time when efforts to speed the transition to carbon-free energy sources are encountering difficulties, welcome news that nuclear power may be cheaper than we thought. - Civic Education
In search of ‘civicians’ — the team parents of a healthy democracy — The story about a small-scale effort to to promote civic functioning -- an effort that could be applied much more broadly. - Class Inequity
Why America Abandoned the Greatest Economy in History — Reflections on what it was that made the United States' economy so phenomenally productive and thoughts about why those sources of strength are being abandoned. - Race / Anti-Racism
Liberals Once Embraced Interracial Marriages Like Mine. What Changed? — Thought-provoking reflections on the pros and cons of rapidly changing social norms regarding interracial marriage along with deep questions about the kind of society that we are trying to build. - Analytical Failures
You Can’t Fact Check Propaganda — A really excellent description of the nature of propaganda in the context of the Israeli/Hamas war along with an explanation of the many limits of "fact-checking." - Countering Misinformation
The Orwell Test — Thought-provoking reflections on what one of history's leading experts on authoritarianism might think of contemporary politics and the many people who are trying to co-opt his ideas. - Intersectional Left
Osama bin Laden, Big Man on Campus — A worrisome story about how students, in their zeal to address the many shortcomings of liberal, capitalistic, democracies, are embracing the teachings of Osama bin Laden.
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