Beyond Intractability
Hyper-Polarization Blog
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Beyond Intractability in Context | Colleague Activities
- Colleague, News, and Opinion Links for the Week of April 27, 2025 -- This weeks readings from colleagues and journalists of note.
- Daniel Stid: Competitive Authoritarianism Comes for Civil Society -- An exploration of the critical role that civil society needs to play in the defending US democracy and thoughts about how civil society might overcome the challenges that are making it difficult for it to play that role.
- Harry Boyte and the Burgesses on Thinking Politically -- What does "thinking politically" mean in terms of nonviolent action. It doesn't mean thinking along party lines. Rather, it means thinking strategically about audiences, desired outcomes and best strategies to meet those outcomes.
- Colleague, News, and Opinion Links for the Week of April 20, 2025 -- Useful readings for today.
- Predicting a "Rule-of-Law" Crisis? -- Are we facing a "constitutional" or "rule-of-law" crisis? What can/should the peacebuilding community do in such circumstances? This is what we call "the peacebuilder's dilemma."
- Colleague, News, and Opinion Links for the Week of April 13, 2025 -- Weekly readings and viewings of interest.
- Harry Boyte On Nonviolence Training and Effective Nonviolent Action -- A reflection on the relationship between love and power and what makes nonviolent protests effective.
- David Eisner's P.S. -- Are Trump's Moves -- and the Results -- Controlled Burns or Out-of-Control Wildfires? -- David Eisner asks whether the fires we talked about in our "Fiddling While Rome Burns" series are controlled burns or forest fires. The Burgesses respond "out of control forest fires" -- and explain why.
- Colleague, News, and Opinion Links for the Week of March 30, 2025 -- Our weekly readings for your enjoyment! (Or blood pressure increase).
- Part 2 of the Burgess's Answer to Ashok Panikkar's Questions about Hyperpolarization and Today's World -- We finish answering Ashok Panikkar by talking about other drivers of hyper-polarization: globalization and technology driven job loss, identity politics, cable news and social media, and distrust of institutions. We also address Ashok's notion of theory of continuity and share what we think it will take to "save" liberal democracy in the U.S.
- USIP, CRS, and FMCS and Responding to Ashok Panikkar's Question about Hyper-Polarization -- We reflect on the implications and impact of the closing of FMCS, USIP, and probably CRS, what might be done about that, and then turn to answering Ashok Panikkar's question about whether hyper-polarization is "logical and rational," given the current state of the world.
- Heidi and Guy Burgess Talk with Tom Klaus and Lamar Roth in their "Third Space" - Part 2 -- The second half our Guy and Heidi Burgess's conversation with Lamar Roth and Tom Klaus on their podcast "Getting to Third Space." Here we talk more about what is driving American polarization, why it is a problem, and what can be done to address it.
- Colleague, News, and Opinion Links for the Week of March 23, 2025 -- Lots of readings about the Trump administration and responses to it -- plus other readings and videos of note.
- Responses to Fiddling While Rome Burns - Part 2 -- The Burgesses respond to Bernie Mayer's comments on "Are We Fiddling While Rome Burns," arguing that bridging and advocacy are both needed for change, along with other elements in David Eisner's "renewing democracy ecosystem."
- Responses to: Are We Fiddling While Rome Burns? - Part 1 -- A discussion with David Eisner and Bernie Mayer of how bridging efforts relate to other efforts to strengthen American democracy in what David refers to as the "renew-democracy ecosystem."
- Colleague, News, and Opinion Links for the Week of March 16, 2025 -- Our weekly collection of readings, not surprisingly, heavily focused on Trump's moves and responses to those moves.
- Can we lower toxic polarization while still opposing Trump? -- In the United States, hyper-polarization has escalated to the point where President Trump is trying to destroy pretty much everything Democrats care about. The question is how can the Democrats defend themselves while also working to defuse the hyper-polarization that made Trump's Presidency possible.
- Are We Fiddling While Rome Burns? -- A reflection on why it still makes sense to try to find a middle ground between the far left and the far right, even as the far right seems to be profoundly threatening U.S. democracy.
- Colleague, News, and Opinion Links for the Week of March 2, 2025 -- Another installment of our weekly suggested readings and viewings.
- James Coan and Katie Hyten on Scaling Up Dialogue and Other Forms of Interpersonal Communication to Bridge Political Divides -- Interpersonal communication is not the only way to reduce political divides; other much more "scalable" approaches work in addition to, not instead of, one-on-one communication to reduce hyper-polarization.
- Louis Kriesberg's "For All the People" and Related Thoughts About Paths Forward for the U.S. -- Taking Kriesberg's essay as a starting point, this newsletter explores, from left-leaning and centrist perspectives, a range of hopeful responses that are emerging to the most extreme actions of the still young Trump presidency.
- Lou Kriesberg's "For All the People" and Related Thoughts About Paths Forward for the U.S. -- Lou Kriesberg, the Burgesses, and a variety of commentators agree. America needs to be governed by and for all the people, not just by and for a few rich folk. Pushback is starting to work toward that goal.
- Colleague, News, and Opinion Links for the Week of February 23, 2025 -- Our weekly roundup of interesting reading and viewings, along with one event announcement.
- The Engineering and Medical Approaches to Fixing Broken Systems -- Complex adaptive systems cannot be fixed using typical engineering problem solving. Rather they need to be approached using a "medical model," which is designed to deal with systems we don't entirely understand.
- Rosa Zubizarreta-Ada: Transformative Power and Empathic Connection: Changing Contexts, Generating Inclusive Mindsets -- Rosa Zubizarreta-Ada explores solutions to the "Achilles Heel of democracy," in which free speech allows illiberal speech, which then threatens the very democracy that allows it.
