Newsletter #234 — May 10, 2024
Reader Suggested Links
Highlighting links suggested by our readers. Please send us links to things that you find useful.
- Freedom of Speech
Not in Our Name — From an Israeli perspective, reflections on the relationship between freedom of speech and efforts to limit campus protests. - Class Inequity
Embrace your Inner Barbarian — A provocative and challenging essay that asks today's highly educated elites to quit defending just their narrow interests and start defending the interests of society as a whole. - Israel / Hamas War
Confessions of a former antisemite — In the context of the ongoing Gaza war, a personal and an in-depth look at the process of persuasion and the way in which fundamental beliefs change. - Israel / Hamas War
Student activists or pro insurgents? — An eye-opening analysis of internal campus protest documents revealing their funding, command structure, interconnections, inner workings, and goals. - Theories of Change
The Campus-Left Occupation That Broke Higher Education — In light of today's campus protests, a look back at the long shadow cast by the vastly bigger and more consequential protests of the 1960s and early 70s. - Israel / Hamas War
Why Israel Should Declare a Unilateral Cease-Fire in Gaza — From Dennis Ross, a provocative, ambitious, and controversial proposal for countering Iran and defusing the crisis in Gaza. - Israel / Hamas War
The Blind Centrist's Guide to Gaza — A comprehensive argument explaining why the solution to the Gaza crisis cannot be found at the midpoint between Israeli and Palestinian perspectives.
Colleague Activities
Highlighting things that our conflict and peacebuilding colleagues are doing that contribute to efforts to address the hyper-polarization problem.
- Saving Democracy
The 22nd Century Initiative — The new website of a movement to "forge a people-powered democracy in this century and the next" with a growing "resource hub." - Violence
Political Violence & US Democracy — The Violence and Democracy Impact Tracker (VDIT) — a resource from Protect Democracy and the SNF Agora Institute — calculates the impact of political violence on eight distinct pillars of democracy in the United States. - Authoritarianism
American Autocracy Threat Tracker — A Comprehensive Catalog Based on Donald Trump and His Associates’ Plans, Promises, and Propositions - Race / Anti-Racism
The Horizon's Project New Race and Democracy Portolio — Julia Roig, and Jarvis Williams,new focus on race and democracy and their goal of supporting partners to break down siloes to place racial equity and racial healing at the center of our pro-democracy organizing. - Constructive Communication
Understanding Pro-Democracy Conservatives — This report by the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University explores the contours of a conservative pro-democracy movement in the current American political landscape - Networking
Learning from Experience — From Network Weaver, a conversation between Rachel Donald and artist Maggie Robers on perspective, vision,AI, bias, resistance, extraction, imagination, and the role of art in a crisis. - Constructive Communication
Aches, Pains, and Alternative Facts. Do the stories you tell yourself help you or hurt you? — The stories we tell ourselves about ourselves determine the quality of the selves we imagine we are. The stories we tell about others determine the quality of our relationships with them.
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.
- Social Complexity
The End of Magical Debt Thinking — For decades now, the US has been resolving "who gets what" distributional conflicts by running ever larger deficits. This article highlights the limits of this strategy. - Class Inequity
Are we overproducing elites and instability? — A perceptive argument that some of our most difficult conflicts stem from the fact that more people feel entitled to elite positions within society than society has to offer. - Saving Democracy
Marjorie Taylor Greene Is Not as Powerful as She Thinks She Is — A hopeful and surprisingly persuasive argument that bipartisan governance is much healthier than it appears. - Constructive Communication
For Conversations You Dread, Try a Chatbot — A crazy idea that might actually make some sense – practicing difficult conversations with AI chatbots. - Family / Gender / LBGTQ+
How to Negotiate Effectively With a Child — Food for thought on one of the most difficult and important kinds of disputes -- disputes between parents and children. - Israel / Hamas War
A suit alleges anti-Israel protest groups provide material support to Hamas — The report on a legal claim that some of the groups behind the campus protests have direct ties to Hamas -- a legally recognized "foreign terrorist organization." - Israel / Hamas War
A Cheat Sheet to the Middle East’s Web of Friends and Enemies — A short primer that attempts to shed light on an unbelievably complex topic -- the web of interrelationships that characterize today's Middle East. - US Election
Joe Biden’s Long Career of Conformity — A profile of President Biden's long-standing and quite successful political strategy of adjusting his views to the changing and, sometimes, logically inconsistent views of his constituents. - Trust / Trust Earning
I’ve Been at NPR for 25 Years. Here’s How We Lost America’s Trust. — This is the critical article about NPR that has provoked considerable outcry. It deserves thoughtful consideration. - Race / Anti-Racism
You Can’t Fire Only the White Guys — An article about a court case that pretty convincingly demonstrates that there are cases in which reverse discrimination is a real problem. - US Election
Why Democrats Can’t Quit Trump — An interesting essay exploring the symbiotic relationship between Donald Trump in the Democratic political establishment. - The Scale and Complexity Problem
Probability and Subjective Certainty — For a world in which so many people are convinced that they know the "truth," an exploration of uncertainty and probability theory. - Culture and Religion
Beware Cultural Drift — Thoughtful reflections on the nature of cultural evolution and the dangers of the cosmopolitan, global monoculture which has led so many people to adopt such highly similar sets of beliefs. - Social Complexity
The New Rules -- Exploring the policies, people, and ideas reshaping the global economy — A report on the dramatic shifts that are taking place in the complex legal, political, and economic environment that determines the way in which peoples and countries interact with one another. - Psychological Complexity
My First Amendment concerns with ‘The Anxious Generation’ — Greg Lukianoff's words of caution regarding Jonathan Haidt's calls for sharp controls on social media for young people. - Climate Change
To Fight Climate Change, We Need New ‘Political Technologies’ — Welcome recognition that successfully fighting climate change will require major improvements in the political process we use to make decisions about climate related issues. - Superpower Conflict
Americans are still not worried enough about the risk of world war — Another plea to take the deteriorating global security environment seriously and not assume that a third World War is an impossibility. - Superpower Conflict
Sizing up the New Axis — As we slide into an increasingly dangerous global Cold War, a sobering assessment of relative strengths of competing blocs. - Empowerment
Toward Accountability for Iran’s UN-Recognized Crimes Against Humanity — Welcome news of progress toward Iranian accountability for at least some of its crimes against humanity. - Family / Gender / LBGTQ+
The Great Hypocrisy of the Pro-Life Movement — An exploration of the relationship between abortion has a fundamental moral cause and abortion as a politically useful tactic for mobilizing voters. - Race / Anti-Racism
With State Bans on D.E.I., Some Universities Find a Workaround: Rebranding — An article describing how DEI programs are responding to increasing public criticism and political efforts to prohibit them.
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