Recent Beyond Intractability Posts
Including Hyper-Polarization Posts
Posts by BI Section
Lists of recent posts are also available separately for each BI Section:
Hyper-Polarization Discussion Posts | Earlier Constructive Conflict Initiative Blog
Things You Can Do To Help | Conflict Frontiers | Conflict Fundamentals
Beyond Intractability in Context | Colleague Activities
- Our Common Purpose: Reinventing American Democracy for the 21st Century -- A report by the Commission on the Practice of Democratic Citizenship on how we can work together, instead of against each other to achieve a true democracy. -- Mar 28
- Massively Parallel Peace and Democracy Building Links for the Week of March 24, 2024 -- A rename of our regular "colleague and context links" to highlight how these readings and the activities they describe all fit within our "massively parallel" peace and democracy building framework--or show why it is needed. -- Mar 28
- Massively Parallel Peace and Democracy Building Roles - Part 1 -- People engaged in massively parallel peace and democracy building play at least 50 different roles. In Part 1 of this three part series, we explore the roles played by the "strategizers," or "big thinkers" who help us understand the both nature of the problem and possible responses. -- Mar 27
- Anne Leslie: Slurps, Sulks, and Family History: Do You Care Enough to Argue? -- Sometimes it is better to have an argument, rather than stew in silence, and have it with the mindset of wanting to learn more about the other person's truth instead of wanting to 'win'? -- Mar 24
- What Would You Have Israel Do to Defend Itself? -- An exceptionally complete and thorough analysis of the pros and cons of the many strategies that Israel's critics have suggested that they pursue. -- Mar 24
- What is the Building Civic Bridges Act and Why Support it? -- A set of essays from conflict resolvers, advocates, a retired four-star general, an educator, a business leader, and others about why the Building Civic Briedges Act is so important. -- Mar 23
- America’s Most Overlooked Political Divide Is Also Its Most Revealing -- A persuasive argument that we ought to be paying a lot more attention to the conflict between political activists and everyday citizens. -- Mar 23
- How to beat the backlash that threatens the liberal revolution -- From Fareed Zakaria, an overview of his major new analysis of threats to liberal democracy. -- Mar 23
- Heidi Burgess Talks With James Coan about Taking De-Polarization Work "to Scale." -- Dialogue is great for the few participants, but it simply cannot be scaled up enough to change societal attitudes and behaviors. James Coan and Heidi Burgess discuss alternative ways to scale depolarization work. -- Mar 18
- Toda Peace Institute's Global Outlook: March 2024 -- This issue has articles on the Korean Peninsula, New Zealand's landmark decision on climate, COP 28, and the most worrying international conflicts. -- Mar 17
- You're Thinking About Polarization All Wrong -- Another look at the problem of hyper-polarization -- one that argues that partisan blocs are less rigid than it might appear. -- Mar 17
- 3 Ways to Make Conflict Less Destructive -- From Bill Ury, one of the biggest names in the conflict resolution field, his thoughts on things we can do to escape spirals of destructive conflict. -- Mar 16
- Will you join the supermajority for constitutional democracy? -- A thoughtful essay exploring threats to democracy and steps that might be taken to address those threats. -- Mar 16
- Colleague and Context Links for the Week of March 17, 2024 -- Submissions from readers, activities and publications from colleagues, and interesting articles from allied fields about conflict, peace, and democracy. -- Mar 16
- Peacebuilding Starts at Home -- A new Alliance for Peacebuilding initiative intended to educate and raise awareness about the drivers of instability and conflict in the U.S. and responses to that. -- Mar 14
- Gaza, Ukraine, Increasing Global Tensions, and the Nature of War -- An exploration of Quincy Wright's image of total war, reasons why it is so much more dangerous than lesser armed conflicts, and mechanisms through which it could quickly spread around the world. -- Mar 13
- Colleague and Context Links for the Week of March 10, 2024 -- Our usual Sunday link suggestions from readers, together with our compilation of interesting colleague activities, plus news and opinion articles of interest to the conflict field. -- Mar 09
- Closing Civic Space in the United States: Connecting the Dots, Changing the Trajectory -- From Rachel Kleinfeld, thoughts on opposing the use of regulations, laws, and narratives to restrict the ability of civil society organizations to act and speak. -- Mar 09
- Google's Culture of Fear -- inside the DEI hivemind that led to gemini's disaster -- A must-read article describing how DEI has transformed the Google culture and is threatening to transform our image of reality (as we see it through the lens of Google's monopoly). -- Mar 09
- Bari Weiss: What it Means to Choose Freedom, Supplemented by Franklin Foer and the Burgesses -- Bari Weiss (The Free Press) and Franklin Foer (The Atlantic) reflect on the meaning of the war in Gaza and world response to it, to prospects for the survival of liberal democracy worldwide. The two, they agree, are linked. -- Mar 08
- Overcoming digital threats to democracy -- A report outlining the ways in which the tools of deliberative democracy could be used to better govern information technologies and help protect the larger society. -- Mar 07
- An Antidote to the Polarization Poison -- A fresh look at the threat posed by polarization along with proposals for better protecting ourselves. -- Mar 05
- Our divided nation will fall unless we return to American pragmatism -- Our country is disturbingly polarized, and the future of our republic is at stake if we don’t change course ... and soon. This long-time civil servant observes that we are our own worst enemy. -- Mar 05
- Bill Froehlich Talks about the Ohio State Divided Community Project -- A summary of a conversation Bill Froehlich about the work of the Divided Community Project which works to help deeply divided communities come together to prevent, and respond to civic strife. -- Mar 04
- Colleague and Context Links for the Week of March 3, 2024 -- More readings and videos suggested by readers, along with our weekly pick of colleague activities and important writing from outside our field. -- Mar 03
