Faculty Updates

Kevin P. Clements

In addition to serving on diverse faculty and university committees and participating in extracurricular projects, Dr. Clements, with doctoral student Susan Allen-Nan, spent ten days in Georgia and Abkhazia in December 1996, organizing ICAR's first Problem Solving Workshop for Georgian and Abkhazian Parliamentarians. In January, with ICAR's "Georgian" team, he helped facilitate the workshop at Airlie Foundation in Virginia and gave a major keynote address to United States Peace Corps senior management staff on "The Relationship between Conflict Resolution and Development." He presented a paper "Conference Resolution Theory and Training" to the Hewlett Foundation's Annual Conflict Centers Meeting in Palo Alto, California.

Dr. Clements served on the Provost's Review Committee on the Future of Centers Within the University during January and February and participated in the ICAR Faculty's Strategic Review and Budget Committees in preparation for the March budget hearings. He was on a panel in February at USIP's Workshop for Decision Makers Working on Humanitarian Relief and Peacekeeping with Hon. Chester Crocker and Dr. Eileen Babbitt. With Richard Rubenstein, Franklin Dukes, and Herb Kelman, he participated in a nationally broadcast discussion of Conflict Resolution Theory and Practice on NPR's Derek McGinty Listener Call-In Show.

In the Netherlands in February, at the Dutch National Council of Development Organizations' Conference on Development, Preventive Diplomacy and Conflict Resolution, he presented a paper "Conflict Resolution, Education and Training in North America," and later facilitated a Conflict Resolution Mapping Exercise for the Kontakt Kontinenten's Seminar on Conflict Resolution Training. Dr. Clements chaired a meeting of the Executive Committee of the International Peace Research Foundation (IPRA) in March and attended the International Studies Association's (ISA) Annual Conference in Toronto where he was a panelist on Evaluating Peace Keeping Training.

In April Dr. Clements attended a meeting of the Minority Rights Group in London on Conflict Resolution Training for Minority Groups. His most recent publications include "North East Asian Regional Security and the Role of International Institutions: An Australasian Perspective" in T. Inoguchi and G. Stillman's North East Asian Regional Security: The Role of International Institutions, published by The United Nations University Press, and "The Future of Peace and Conflict Studies" and "Okinawa in the 21st Century" in Peace and Policy.

Marsha Blakeway

A 1986 master's graduate of ICAR (then CCAR), Marsha Blakeway is teaching part-time as clinical faculty during Frank Blechman's sabbatical. Since graduating, Professor Blakeway has worked extensively in Conflict Resolution Education in Washington, D.C., area schools and served for four years as coordinator of the Regional Branch of Children's Creative Response to Conflict.

In addition to co-teaching ICAR's Laboratory and Simulation in Community Conflict with Professor Warfield, Blakeway is working with ICAR's APT Schools Team on projects primarily concerned with efforts to address youth violence. She is providing logistical coordination for the Fairfax County Public Schools Mediation Conference which will be held on the George Mason campus under ICAR sponsorship on May 16, 1997. Approximately 1,800 students and sponsors are expected to attend.

Professor Blakeway, as a Fellow of the National Peace Foundation, is continuing her work on the foundation's Adopt-A-School Program, a pilot project which is exploring ways to deepen and broaden existing conflict resolution programs according to the identified needs of the school. In a collaborative effort with the Center for Dispute Settlement (CDS), she trained mediators at Lincoln Junior High School in Washington, D.C. United States Attorney General Janet Reno visited the school, as she has other CDS programs, to talk with student mediators, to get ideas from them, and to encourage them in their work.

Additionally, Professor Blakeway is consulting and providing training for a project at Washington, D.C.'s Murch Elementary School. The school has about twenty CCRC trained staff and is focusing on enhancing and linking staff development efforts.

She also completed a ten-week continuing education program for teachers through the Montgomery County Education Association; the Illinois Institute for Dispute Resolution's curriculum "Creating the Peaceable School" and other models were used. She worked extensively with staff at the National Institute for Dispute Resolution (NIDR) to update their publications catalog for the Conflict Resolution in Education Network (formerly NAME). The catalog can be ordered from NIDR's Education Network. Professor Blakeway will coordinate Conflict Resolution in Education Research panels at the NCPCR and at the Education Network Conference later this year.

Marc Gopin

A djunct Professor Marc Gopin designed and is teaching two ICAR graduate seminars, "The Moral and Philosophical Foundations of Conflict Resolution" and "World Religions and Conflict Resolution Theory." Dr. Gopin conducted a training workshop in 1996 for a group of international students on Religion and Conflict Resolution at Eastern Mennonite University and will offer the workshop again in summer 1997. He taught a group of international students at the Caux Scholars' Program in Switzerland and will offer this training again next summer. He presented at a seminar of COPRED's fall 1997 conference and at the Association of Jewish Studies and spoke at the United States Institute of Peace on March 19th on Conflict Resolution in Religiously Divided Societies. He will conduct a training at NCPCR's May 1997 conference with Cynthia Sampson and will be a panelist there on the issue of International Development and Conflict Resolution. He is slated in June to deliver a keynote address in Belfast at an ecumenical conference, "Boundaries and Bonds: Sectarianism, Identity and Peacemaking."

Professor Gopin's article, "Religion, Violence and Conflict Resolution," published recently in Peace and Change, has been accepted as an ICAR Working Paper. His chapter, "International Development and Conflict Resolution: Problems and Possibilities," is to be published in Conflict Resolution and Social Justice, the commemorative volume dedicated to James Laue. His chapter on evaluating Mennonite conflict resolution is to be published in a forthcoming volume sponsored by USIP, From the Ground Up: Mennonite Contributions to International Peacebuilding. He is also writing a book, Between Eden and Armageddon: The Future of World Religions, Violence and Peacemaking.

Professor Gopin's tenure at the Center for Strategic and International Studies as a Senior Scholar in Religion and Conflict Resolution has recently received generous support from the Foundation for the Carolinas. He participated on a panel in Switzerland in summer 1996, with the Dalai Lama and Cardinal Joseph Koenig, on Peacemaking and World Religions in the Next Century. His work on this issue was subsequently highlighted in an editorial that appeared in the Times of London; he was also interviewed by Swedish Public Radio, the Christian Science Sentinel, and The Christian Science Monitor.

Dr. Gopin appeared recently with Shukri Abed on the cable TV show The Global Village, on the subject of Middle East peace. He is also informally consulting with Kramer Associates, which is funding the creation of an industrial college in Gaza. He maintains regular contact with the Israeli Embassy on the subject of Jewish culture and peacemaking.

Professor Gopin recently returned from delivering a keynote address at a conference in India directed by Rajmohan Gandhi. An interview conducted with him there on the state of religion and society appeared shortly thereafter as an editorial in The Times of India.

He has been consulting and developing a working relationship with the Bureau of Rights, Democracy and Labor and the U.S. Department of State on Bosnian reconciliation strategies and on the relationship between religion, violence, and conflict resolution.

He is a consultant to the Forgiveness Institute, which is planning an international conference, Forgiveness and Reconciliation in the Christian Faith, in Kansas City in fall 1997 and in Jerusalem in the year 2000; he will be a featured speaker at the Kansas City conference. In addition, he is working with the Faith and Politics Institute in Washington, D.C., meeting with members of the U.S. Congress in sessions dedicated to reflection on ethics and public life. His activities as a peacemaker are featured in Michael Henderson's recently published book, The Forgiveness Factor, and will be included in a volume on the same subject by Dr. Robert Enright, a psychologist affiliated with the Forgiveness Institute.

Ho-Won Jeong

In the last several months Dr. Jeong has published several articles in academic journals, edited two issues of International Journal of Peace Studies and Peace and Conflict Studies, and engaged in consulting and advising activities.

Dr. Jeong was consulted recently by a Kurdish human rights group concerned that internal conflicts within the Kurdish population require facilitation workshops with consultation mechanisms built in to reduce suspicion among different factions. He was also consulted by the Korea Information Center on various issues following industrial conflicts in Korea which drew international attention last January. Korean workers are concerned that laws allowing companies to hire replacement workers will significantly reduce the power of trade unions; the process and potential outcome of such industrial conflict reflects power imbalances between different social forces whose positions have been influenced by structural changes in the global political economy.

Dr. Jeong's article, "Politics of Discourse on Liberal Economic Reform," published last autumn in Quest, analyzes how the logic of a free market economy can generate marginalization for the poor. It suggests, as an alternative strategy, sustainable development. In "Evaluation of Development Strategies for Africa: Human Needs Perspectives," published in Journal of Global Awareness (Fall 1996), Jeong draws attention to the significance of cultural dimensions of development and argues that indigenous social institutions and norms are important in strengthening civil society. His article, "Ghana: Lurching Toward Economic Rationality," in World Affairs (Fall 1996), argues that stable social order is not always compatible with economic rationality.

Professor Jeong's articles focus on destabilizing social and political effects of liberal economic reform and show that since the pursuit of macroeconomic balance is not based on the consideration of human factors, it often becomes a structural source of conflict. He argues that an important dimension in various types of social conflict is related to the repression of human needs and the exclusion of key social groups from the policy-making process and that the implementation of the World Bank/IMF version of free market reform in several Third World countries has led to conflict between workers and the government.

Michelle LeBaron

Professor LeBaron continues work on gender and cultural dynamics in conflict. With ICAR Masters candidate Cheshmak Farhoumand, she is completing an update of the Conflict and Culture Annotated Bibliography and Literature Review first published in 1993. She is also collaborating with Professor Nancy Adler of McGill University to produce a course titled Women as Global Leaders. Professor LeBaron has been appointed by President Merten of George Mason University to a faculty committee to study and propose future directions for the University. This committee is employing wide consultation and interdisciplinary inquiry into the evolution of the University and its social, economic, cultural, and educational mission. Professor LeBaron also serves on the University's Committee on Effective Teaching which has recently directed its efforts to the production of materials to support faculty development.

Christopher R. Mitchell

A great deal of Dr. Mitchell's time has been taken up recently with the task of editing papers, many of them authored by ICAR faculty and students, from ICAR's Spring 1996 Conference on local "Zones of Peace." He is preparing these, with ICAR doctoral student Susan Allen-Nan, for publication in a forthcoming issue of the journal Peace Review. This is the first time that Peace Review has been issued under guest editors. This issue will provide a wide range of views on some very different conceptions of peace zones.

Dr. Mitchell has also been involved in preliminary efforts to establish a Center for Conflict Prevention and Resolution in Africa [CPRA] which will use indigenous African methods of dealing with the many conflicts that currently plague that continent. This project involves a number of African scholars (and scholars of Africa) in the Washington, D.C., area, including ICAR's Dr. Hamdesa Tuso and Mr. Jannie Botes. Progress has been slow, but expressions of support have been obtained from Archbishop Desmond Tutu and President Nelson Mandela, and there are indications that such a center would be welcomed in Lusaka, the capital of Zambia.

In October Dr. Mitchell spent one week at the University of Helsinki where he delivered five lectures on Methods of Helping to Resolve Conflict in Divided Societies to doctoral students in the Helsinki Program in Political Science and International Relations. Earlier he had delivered a guest lecture to students on the new Conflict and Peace Studies Program at Rockford College in Illinois. In February he participated in a conference in Atlanta, Georgia, on "Development and Conflict Resolution" sponsored jointly by the World Bank and the Carter Center. He is continuing his work as a member of President Carter's International Negotiation Network. Dr. Mitchell's recent writings include a chapter which describes and analyzes Mennonite peacemaking practices for a book to be titled From the Ground Up: Mennonite Contributions to International Peacebuilding, edited by Cynthia Sampson, and a revised version of "Protracted Conflicts: Keys and Treatments," an address given to the conference organized at the annual Gernika "Jornades" in April 1996 by the Gernika Peace Center. Work continues, slowly, on his manuscript "Gestures of Conciliation."

He will devote time in the spring 1997 term to planning and preparing two Conflict Resolution Training Workshops to be conducted for faculty at Bethlehem University on the West Bank by ICAR students Alma Abdel-Hadi Jadallah and Robert Harris. In summer 1997, Bethlehem faculty will again visit ICAR to plan and prepare for the new program in Conflict Analysis at their university.

Dennis J.D. Sandole

During October 1996 Dr. Dennis J.D. Sandole traveled to Malaysia and to Germany as part of the U.S. Speakers Program of the United States Information Agency.

In Malaysia Dr. Sandole traveled to Kota Kinabalu in North Borneo, where he presented "Conflict Resolution in Human Rights Issues" at the Institute of Developmental Studies and "Conflict Resolution and Trade Issues" at the Center for Borneo Studies. He presented "Conflict Resolution in Human Rights Issues" at the University Kebaangsan in Kuala Lumpur; conducted a day-and-a-half "Workshop on Conflict Resolution" at the National Institute of Public Administration; presented "New Trends in Managing International Conflicts" at the Institute of Diplomacy and Foreign Relations; and presented "U.S., NATO, and the Bosnian Crisis: The America Experience in Conflict Resolution" at the University of Malaya. And in Penang, he discussed ICAR's programs in Conflict Analysis and Resolution at the Research and Education for Peace Unit, Universiti Sains, Malaysia.

In Germany he traveled to Bonn, where he participated in an informal roundtable discussion at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation on "The Interplay of NATO and OSCE in Preventing Conflict in Eastern Europe." While there he had a working luncheon on the OSCE with a parliamentary staffer in the Bundestag and participated in an informal roundtable discussion at the Friedrich Ebert Foundation on "Conflict Prevention in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS)." In Frankfurt he had a working luncheon with journalists and associates of the Peace Research Institute at Frankfurt, dealing with the war in Bosnia. In Leipzig, he met with journalists and military officers to discuss "Bosnia and the Future of Peacekeeping" and participated in a working meeting on "Peacekeeping in Eastern Europe" at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation.

On March 13, 1997, Dr. Sandole attended and participated in a discussion "NATO Enlargement and Public Diplomacy," organized by the U.S. Information Agency, at the White House Conference Center in Washington, D. C.

Dr. Sandole has recently published "Ethnic Conflict as Low Intensity Conflict in Post-Cold War Europe: Causes, Conditions, Prevention" in The First International Workshop on Low Intensity Conflict (ILIC '95), edited by Alexander E.R. Woodcock, S. Anders Christensson, Henrik Friman, and Magnus Gustafsson, Stockholm: Royal Swedish Society of Naval Sciences, March 29-31, 1995; and "Conflict Resolution: A Unique U.S. Role for the 21st Century" in U.S. Foreign Policy Agenda (special issue on "American Perspectives on Conflict Resolution"), An Electronic Journal of the U.S. Information Agency, vol. 1, no. 19, December 1996.

Wallace Warfield

Professor Warfield has three articles that are due to be published this spring: "Building Consensus for Racial Harmony in American Cities" in the Missouri Journal of Dispute Resolution; "The Development of Pedagogy and Practicum," co-authored with Juliana Birkhoff, in Mediation Quarterly; and "From Civil War to Civil Society: The Potential of Local Zones of Peace" in Peace Review.

Professor Warfield served on the facilitation panel for ICAR's Georgia-Abkhazian Parliamentarians' Joint Problem Solving Workshop held at the Airlie Conference Center in Leesburg, Virginia, in January 1997 and is participating in the planning group that is designing the next workshop and other follow-up activities.

In addition to his academic teaching schedule, Professor Warfield has conducted Conflict Resolution Trainings for the Neighborhood Leadership Institute (NLI) established through George Mason's Urban Alternative Grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). A Vietnamese youth who participated in the first training cohort has been accepted at the University of Virginia. She credits her involvement in the NLI Workshops and Professor Warfield's letter of support as part of the reason for her acceptance. A Somali teenage participant, a recent immigrant, was inspired to run for class president in her high school; she came in second, but vows to try again. In the second cohort, which this year's Arlington Governance APT Team is facilitating, the mixture of Somali, Sudanese, and Latino participants has been highly interactive. Two members (originally from the Horn of Africa) traveled from Richmond to Arlington during Ramadan to participate. Dr. Hugh Sockett, who heads the Urban Alternative Learning Team, has asked Professor Warfield to make a presentation on the NLI at a team meeting. Todd Endo, Project Director, would like ICAR and its APT practicum project to be a part of a second year follow-through grant which he plans to secure.

Visiting Scholar Wendy Lambourne

Wendy Lambourne, a PhD candidate in the University of Sydney's Department of Government, was a Visiting Scholar at ICAR in May 1997. She is the winner of an inaugural Evans Grawemeyer Scholarship which will provide support over the next three years for the completion of her dissertation research on "Healing the Gap Between Self and Other: Genocide, the United Nations and Post-Conflict Peacebuilding." The Grawemeyer student scholarship was created by former Australian Foreign Minister Hon. Gareth Evans, through an endowment from his 1995 University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order. Ms. Lambourne worked previously at the Peace Research Centre at the Australian National University in Canberra and is currently on the Council of the University of Sydney's Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies. During her stay in North America, she visited with eminent scholars and representatives of non-governmental organizations in Virginia and Washington, D.C., and presented a paper, "Retribution, Restitution, Reconciliation: Responding to Rape in War and 'Peace,'" at the 38th Annual International Studies Association Conference in Toronto, Canada. Wendy hopes to return to ICAR in fall 1997 to continue her research and fieldwork.