I’m very pleased to announce that Mediate.com, as an additional Membership benefit, is now hosting monthly online conversations with top mediators and conflict resolvers from around the world. Inspired by the wonderful book, Evolution of a Field: Personal Histories in Conflict Resolution, (edited by Howard Gadlin and Nancy Welsh, DRI Press, 2020) the new Mediate.com conversation will draw upon personal histories and evolving visions for the future.
Here are the first 9 scheduled conversations.
Read: “The accidental ombudsman” by Howard Gadlin
Howard Gadlin retired in 2015 after 17 years as ombudsman and director of the Center for Cooperative Resolution at the National Institutes of Health, where he developed new approaches to addressing and preventing conflicts among scientists. In establishing the Gadlin Lecture Series in his honor, NIH officials noted Gadlin’s “big-picture approach” to ombuds work and said the lectures will “embody his ongoing commitment to scholarship, intellectual curiosity, creative problem-solving, and values of fairness and respect.” From 1992 through 1998, Howard was university ombudsperson and adjunct professor of education at the University of California at Los Angeles, where he was also director of the UCLA Conflict Mediation Program and co-director of the Center for the Study and Resolution of Interethnic/Interracial Conflict. While in Los Angeles, Howard also served as consulting ombudsman to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Before moving to Los Angeles, Gadlin was ombuds and professor of psychology at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Gadlin is past president of the University and College Ombuds Association and of The Ombudsman Association and past chair of the Coalition of Federal Ombudsman. An experienced mediator, trainer, and consultant, he has many years’ experience working with conflicts related to race, ethnicity, and gender, including sexual harassment, and is often called in as a consultant or mediator in “intractable” disputes. With colleagues he has written Collaboration and Team Science: A Field Guide (2nd ed., 2018), “The Welcome Letter: A Useful Tool for Laboratories and Teams,” and “Mediating Among Scientists: A Mental Model of Expert Practice.” He is the author of “Conflict Resolution, Cultural Differences, and the Culture of Racism,” “Mediating Sexual Harassment,” and “The Activist Ombudsman.”
Read: “How I found my groove” by Howard Bellman
Howard Bellman has mediated in nearly every category of disputes, with concentrations on labor, the environment, and public policy. His practice has been nationwide and international. He has held leadership positions in professional organizations, taught courses and lectured at universities around the world, and published in scholarly and professional journals. He served as secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Industry, Labor and Human Relations and commissioner of the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission. He received a law degree from the University of Cincinnati and an LLM in labor law from New York University.
Read: “My life in community” by Bernie Mayer
Bernie Mayer has provided conflict intervention for families, communities, NGOs, unions, corporations, and governmental agencies throughout North America and internationally for more than 35 years. He recently retired as professor of conflict studies in the Program on Negotiation and Conflict Resolution at Creighton University and is a founding partner of CDR Associates, a conflict intervention firm headquartered in Boulder, Colorado. His most recent book is The Conflict Paradox: Seven Dilemmas at the Core of Disputes (2015). Earlier books include The Dynamics of Conflict (2012), Staying with Conflict (2009), and Beyond Neutrality (2004)
Read: “Born to mediate” by Lucy Moore
Lucy Moore has been a mediator, facilitator, consultant, and trainer since the late 1980s. Formerly a partner at the nonprofit Western Network, she is now the principal of Lucy Moore Associates, often working with multiple parties and multiple issues. Her focus has been natural resources and public-policy disputes, and her clients have included federal, state, and local agencies, tribal governments and communities, public-interest organizations, and industry. The subjects of the disputes have been wide-ranging, from water rights and air quality to mine reclamation and endangered species protection. With her strong background in Indian country, many of Moore’s cases involve tribal interests and parties. Moore has mediated highlevel federal disputes, facilitated large public meetings, trained EPA staff in “Dealing with Difficult People,” and offered cross-cultural alliance building workshops with Hispanic and Native colleagues. In 2015, she received the Sharon Pickett Award from the Association for Conflict Resolution, granted to honor advancement of the cause of environmental protection through writing and the effective use of alternative dispute resolution. Moore’s memoir, Into the Canyon: Seven Years in Navajo Country (2004), won Best Memoir from Women Writing the West. She is also the author of Common Ground on Hostile Turf: Stories from an Environmental Mediator (2013), in which she tells the stories of 10 of her most challenging cases.
Read: “What am I doing here? Field notes on finding my way to mediation” by Ian Macduff
Ian Macduff is Director of the New Zealand Centre for ICT Law at Auckland Law School. He taught at Victoria University of Wellington for a number of years and, until June 2016, was associate professor of law and director of the Dispute Resolution Initiative at Singapore Management University. He worked for the World Health Organization in Sri Lanka on their “Health as a Bridge to Peace” program between 1999 and 2006 and has been a practicing mediator for more than 30 years, working in commercial, environmental, policy, intercultural, family, online mediation, and other fields. He is a member of the Independent Standards Commission of the International Mediation Institute and a member of the IMI’s Task Force on Intercultural Mediation accreditation, a member of the Global Organizing Committee of the Global Pound Conference series, and a fellow of the National Center for Technology and Dispute Resolution. He is also editor of Essays on Mediation: Dealing with Disputes in the 21st Century (2016), co-editor of Ethnic Conflict and Secessionism in South and South East Asia (2003); and contributing author of Dispute Resolution in New Zealand (1999), Guidelines for Family Mediation (1995), and An Asian Perspective on Mediation (2009).
Jacqueline N. Font-Guzmán is professor of law and conflict studies and director of the Negotiation and Conflict Resolution Program in the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies at Creighton University. A Fulbright Scholar and recipient of the 2017 Nova Southeastern University Distinguished Alumni Achievement Award, she is a mediator and arbitrator certified by the Puerto Rico Supreme Court. Her book Experiencing Puerto Rican Citizenship and Cultural Nationalism was selected as the Puerto Rico Bar Association 2015 Juridical Book of the Year in the category of Essay Promoting Critical Thinking and Analysis of Juridical and Social Issues. Font-Guzmán’s research focuses on health care disparities, law, citizenship, and conflict engagement—specifically, how people construct meaning at critical points in their lives to explore how meaning-making leads them to productively engage with conflict. She also explores how marginalized individuals create alternate stories and counter-narratives to address institutional/structural injustices. Font-Guzmán has a BA from Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, a MS in health care administration from Saint Louis University, a JD degree from the Interamericana University of Puerto Rico, and a PhD in conflict analysis and resolution from Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
Read: “Bashert: How I found dispute resolution and it found me” by Andrea Kupfer Schneider
Andrea Kupfer Schneider is a professor of law, the inaugural director of the Institute for Women’s Leadership at Marquette University, and director of the Dispute Resolution Program at Marquette University Law School. Her most recent books include Negotiating Crime: Plea Bargaining, Problem Solving and Dispute Resolution in the Criminal Context (2019, coauthored with Cynthia Alkon), Negotiation Essentials for Lawyers (2019) and The Negotiator’s Desk Reference (2017, both books co-edited with Chris Honeyman), and Smart & Savvy: Negotiation Strategies in Academia (2017, co-authored with David Kupfer). Her textbooks include Dispute Resolution: Examples and Explanations (2008, with Michael Moffitt) and Negotiation: Processes for Problem-Solving (2014), Mediation: Practice, Policy & Ethics (2013), and Dispute Resolution: Beyond the Adversarial Model (2005) with Carrie Menkel-Meadow, Lela Love, and Michael Moffitt. She is a co-author of two books with Roger Fisher, Beyond Machiavelli: Tools for Coping with Conflict (1994) and Coping with International Conflict (1997). She has published numerous articles on negotiation, ethics, pedagogy, gender and international conflict, is a founding editor of Indisputably, the blog for ADR law faculty, and started the Dispute Resolution Works-in-Progress Annual Conference in 2007. In 2017, the ABA Section of Dispute Resolution gave her its award for Outstanding Scholarly Work.
Read: “Wabi-sabi” by Peter S. Adler
Peter S. Adler recently returned to Hawai’i, his home, after serving as president of the Keystone Center for nearly a decade. Adler’s specialty is multi-party negotiation and problem-solving. He has worked extensively on water management and resource planning problems and mediates, writes, trains, and teaches in diverse areas of conflict management. He has worked on cases ranging from the siting of a 25-megawatt geothermal energy production facility to the resolution of construction and product-liability claims involving a multimillion-dollar stadium. He has extensive experience in land planning issues, water problems, marine and coastal affairs, and strategic resource management. Prior to his appointment at Keystone, Adler held executive positions with the Hawai’i Justice Foundation, the Hawai’I Supreme Court’s Center for Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR), and the Neighborhood Justice Center. He served as a Peace Corps volunteer in India, an instructor and associate director of the Hawai’i Outward Bound School, and president of the Society of Professionals in Dispute Resolution. He has been awarded the Roberston-Cuninghame Scholar in Residence Fellowship at the University of New England, New South Wales, Australia, a Senior Fellowship at the Western Justice Center, and was a consultant to the US Institute for Environmental Conflict Resolution. Adler has written extensively in the field of mediation and conflict resolution. He is the co-author of Managing Scientific & Technical Information Environmental Cases (1999); Building Trust: 20 Things You Can Do to Help Environmental Stakeholder Groups Talk More Effectively About Science, Culture, Professional Knowledge, and Community Wisdom (2002); the author of Beyond Paradise and Oxtail Soup (1993 and 2000) and numerous other articles and monographs. He more recently wrote Eye of The Storm Leadership (2008) and India40: A Memoir of Death, Sickness, Love, Friendship, Corruption, Political Fanatics, Drugs, Thugs, Psychosis, and Illumination in the US Peace Corps (2018).
Read: “Mediation and my life: moments and movements” by Lela Porter Love
Lela Porter Love is a professor of law and director of the Kukin Program for Conflict Resolution at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York City, where her program has been ranked by US News and World Report among the top 10 law school programs in the United States in dispute resolution since 2000. In 1985, she founded Cardozo’s Mediation Clinic, one of the first clinical programs to train law students to serve as mediators. She serves as mediator, arbitrator, and dispute resolution consultant in community, employment, family, human rights, school-based and commercial cases. An active educator and participant in dispute resolution activities, she regularly conducts mediation training programs and courses both domestically and internationally. During her year as chair of the American Bar Association’s Section of Dispute Resolution, she initiated the first International Mediation Leadership Summit in the Hague. She has written widely on the topic of dispute resolution, including co-authoring three law school textbooks. Among her books are The Middle Voice: Mediating Conflict Successfully, co-authored with Joseph Stulberg, and two collections of stories about mediations: Stories Mediators Tell and Stories Mediators Tell—World Edition. The International Academy of Mediators gave her a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2012. The American College of Civil Trial Mediators gave her a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2010, and in 2009 she received the “Front Line Champion” Award at the Association of the Bar of NYC on Mediation Settlement Day.
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By Terry WheelerChip Rose says he jumped into the practice of mediation in about two weeks. When he heard about mediation it made so much sense that he made the switch very...
By Chip Rose
