EPP News & Notes

The International Development Committee of the Association for Conflict Resolution’s International Section has announced the Call for Nominations for the ACR International Outstanding Leadership Award! 

The Call for Nominations is available here.

The International Development Committee welcomes your nomination of an individual or a group who merit celebration and recognition. Please e-mail your nominations to the IDC Selection Committee at idc.nominations@gmail.com by March 15, 2012.

Thank you to everyone who was able to join the EPP Growth and Diversity webinar on Tuesday, January 24th. A special thanks to the presenters and organizers for their time and expertise! For those of you who missed it then, why miss it now? Click the link below to stream a recording of the webinar 

Stream here --> http://resolv.adobeconnect.com/p5yups31x4e/

In advance of the ACR EPP Diversity Webinar on January 24, Diversity panelist Don Edwards offers several observations:

I am going to try to meet my responsibility to my friends and colleagues by being as plain spoken as I can be in this thought piece. I basically believe there are people who like it mixed up and people who don't and no amount of talking about it is going to change that dichotomy. My Aunt Vivianne used to say all the time that she didn't want to be in anything with just colored people because "too much of the same thing is good for nuthin".

When Kevin Bryant asked me what I thought, my eyes did do a gigantic roll. But when he recently told me there were 80 persons already signed up for the webinar, I accepted that it was time for me climb into the saddle, sit up straight and nudge the horse forwards:

In advance of the ACR EPP Diversity Webinar on January 24, Diversity panelist Sarah Palmer offers several observations:

Thoughts about “How do we grow and diversify the field in a way that is meaningful and sustainable?”

In addition to Frank’s points another aspect of diversity is how we practice.  Consider a synonym of diversity, which is variety.  Is there variety and depth in how we practice our work in order to meet the needs of parties?  With intercultural groups where, for some parties, the relationships have a higher value than an actual agreement; where narrative and metaphor are the means to convey information; where what is unsaid can be more significant than what is stated; where near-term timelines are less important than a longer historical view, how do we learn and create skills that are responsive to this richness and in turn make our work meaningful? 

In advance of the ACR EPP Diversity Webinar on January 24, Diversity panelist Frank Dukes offers three ideas:

First: The term 'diversity' is problematic. My experience (in which the term is most often used in situations involving race as opposed to other demographics) has been that the term is largely a way of avoiding discussion about racial injustices and inequities that allows one to appear to be sensitive to such issues without needing to act on them. It reinforces the notion that such disparities are an exception to, rather than a consequence of, the nature of our nation's democratic practice to date. But 'diversity' has one redeeming potential value: for those who wish, it may be the converse, a way of shaping surreptitiously the conversation about race and justice without alienating people who might otherwise immediately dismiss your ideas.

Association for Conflict Resolution

12th Annual Conference

September 12-15, 2012 | New Orleans, Louisiana

The next issue of ACResolution will focus on the theme of the varied professional and educational backgrounds and experience that mediators and other conflict resolvers bring to the field, and how those differences impact people’s practice.  The editor is seeking:

• articles by several practitioners who came to mediation from another profession (e.g. lawyers, psychologists, teachers, etc.) reflecting on how their previous work affects their conflict work.; 
• an article about the increasing number of people in the field whose education and experience is exclusively in conflict resolution; and
• a survey of whatever academic work has been published on these topics.

If you are interested in writing an article for the newsletter, please contact Bill Stempel as soon as possible.  Articles themselves will be due in mid-December.

The USIECR 2012 Call for Conference Presentation Proposals has been extended through November 7! The updated Call for Proposals is here.

For more information check out this blog post

The U.S. Institute for Environmental Conflict Resolution, a program of the Udall Foundation, invites you to share your knowledge at the seventh national conference ECR2012: “Working Across Boundaries.” The conference, organized in conjunction with several federal partners, will be held on May 22-24, 2012, at the JW Marriott Starr Pass in Tucson, Arizona.

The Leadership Council of the Environment and Public Policy Section of ACR is proposing a refinement to its committee structure for two main purposes: (1) to reflect that designated individuals rather than committees will serve as contacts for matters regarding both ethics and diversity and equity issues; and (2) to consolidate and streamline several of its other committees and designate a new committee to focus on new directions for the field.  This new committee is the outgrowth of discussions which have taken place at the last two annual conferences of the Section – in Tucson, Arizona and in Portland, Oregon. 

This new committee structure represents a fresh, forward-looking trajectory for the EPP Section that the LC believes will better serve Section members, help sustain their participation in ACR, and bolster enthusiasm about the future of the field of environmental and public policy dispute  resolution as the next generation of practitioners transitions into leadership roles.