Faculty Updates

Frank O. Blechman

In addition to teaching, researching, recruiting, and nurturing ICAR students during the past two semesters, Professor Frank Blechman served on a number of university committees and task forces and provided consultation to a number of outside agencies. He provided consultation on the separation of George Mason's graduate and undergraduate programs in business education and served in fall 1996 on George Mason's "K-16 Committee," examining cooperation and partnerships between George Mason and other educational institutions in Northern Virginia. Dubbed "K-16" because of its focus on integrating Grades K through 12 with undergraduate-level higher education programs, its committee members include representatives of George Mason's Graduate School of Education, College of Arts and Sciences, School of Information Technology and Engineering, Institute for Educational Transformation, and ICAR. Professor Blechman also serves on George Mason's Committee on Responsible Use of Computing, overseeing university policies regarding computer use and helping resolve conflicts.

During 1996 he worked with the Virginia State Crime Commission's Task Force on Youth Gangs on a study of youth gangs in Virginia and helped develop recommendations for the 1997 General Assembly. He served as a member of an advisory group to the Virginia State Crime Commission and the State Commission on Youth and testified before the two commissions at a hearing held in Arlington, Virginia, on October 21, 1996.

As a member of an advisory group on youth violence, working with Kaiser Per-manente's Youth Violence Advisory Board, he participated in designing a July 1996 conference, "Building Hope." Participants included several hundred at-risk youth from Virginia, Washington, D.C., and Maryland.

As an adviser to the Fairfax County Initiative to Reduce Youth Violence, he participated in designing community meetings that will be held across the county between November 6 and December 4, 1996. He also facilitated the Reston Community Center's Annual Retreat.

His outside consulting included health policy collaboration in conferences on inter-professional cooperation in nursing education accreditation; a four-year facilitation of the 301 South Corridor (MD) Transportation Study; consultation with the Fairfax Department of Public Works to develop a training program for senior managers; and with the Fulton County Housing Authority of Georgia to provide training and consulting on mechanisms and skills needed to support tenant-managed businesses in public housing.

With Professor Richard Rubenstein, he solicited and began work on editing the more than 20 manuscripts submitted to date for a volume entitled Conflict Resolution and Social Justice: Essays in Honor of Jim Laue. He contributed a draft chapter for a book, Service Learning in Peace Studies, edited by Robin Crews and Kathleen Weigert. This manuscript draws on ICAR's APT experience to highlight the difficulties faced and our solutions to integrating community service and student learning in conflict resolution.

With ICAR doctoral students Jayne Docherty, Jarle Crocker, and Steve Garon, he wrote a chapter, "Metaphor Dialogue as a Tool for Environmental Policy Dialogue," for a volume edited by Peter Adler.

Sandra I. Cheldelin

Dr. Cheldelin chairs ICAR's Strategic Planning Committee, which is conducting, as its primary kick-off, an all-day ICAR faculty retreat to develop the focus for a one-year and five-year plan for the institute. She is also serving on ICAR's Fund Raising and Curriculum Committees.

This fall Professor Cheldelin facilitated a dialogue among multi-campus leaders about intentional changes in their organizational culture and leadership structure and innovative program development. She also served as a mediator with a board of directors and continues her organizational and clinical psychologist practice.

Cheldelin is currently writing, based on her case-study based research, on the role of leaders in organizations as non-neutral third-party interveners. She will conduct a workshop, "Moving from Conflict to Collaboration," at the Amer-ican Association for Higher Educations Forum on faculty roles and rewards in January 1997; conference participants are college and university presidents, deans, and faculty.

Kevin P. Clements

Over the course of the past year, Professor Kevin P. Clements, along with Professor Christopher Mitchell, has been developing a collaborative research project with the Center for Negotiation and Conflict Resolution of Rutgers State University and individual scholars from Syracuse and Eastern Mennonite University. Their project, "Conflict Transformation: From Civil War to Civil Society," has been submitted to a variety of potential funders, and they hope to begin the research work early in 1997. In March 1996, Clements was one of a four-person review team evaluating the Peace and Conflict Studies Program at Haverford and Bryn Mawr College.

In April he was Siena College Peace Lecturer and delivered the inaugural lecture for Peace Week, "Prospects for a Stable Peace in Bosnia," at Siena College, Albany, New York. On April 29 he presented a lecture to the Program on Conflict at Harvard University, "The Contribution of Peace Building and Problem Solving to Conflict Transformation" and was a guest lecturer at the University of Maryland on May 10 where he spoke on "The Role of the United Nations in Resolving Violent Conflicts." In June, with Professor Mitchell and Ambassador John McDonald, he conducted a four-day ICAR Workshop, "Conflict Resolution for Diplomats and Non-Governmental Organizations." From June 22-25, he delivered a series of lectures to the UNITAR/DPA Conference for Diplomats and UN Officials at Stadtschlaining, Austria; these focused on "Structural Sources of Conflict" and "The Role of the United Nations in Conflict Resolution."

From July 4-12, he attended the 16th General Conference of the International Peace Research Association (IPRA) in Brisbane, Australia, where he was re-elected president of the association for another two-year term. While there, he chaired a plenary session, the annual general meeting of the association, and three meetings of IPRA's Commission on Global Political Economy. Following the IPRA Conference, he flew to Tokyo, Japan, and to Okinawa to give lectures inaugurating the Toda Institute for Global Peace and Security at the United Nations University. On July 15, he was presented with Soka University's Highest Award in Honor of Services to International Peace. In September he attended a conference, "Reform of the United Nations," organized by the Peace Studies Department of Kyung Hee University in Seoul, Korea, and gave a paper titled "The Role of the United Nations in the Asia-Pacific Region." In late September he went to Boulder, Colorado, to take on the position of president of the IPRA Foundation, replacing its former president, Professor Elise Boulding; the foundation is now based at George Mason University.

At the annual meeting of the International Studies Association at the University of Oregon at Eugene, he was both chair and discussant on a panel analyzing "Social Movements on the Periphery: With Special Reference to Indigenous Peoples." While there, he also gave a seminar and had discussions with the Political Science Department on "Conflict Transformation" and "Evolutionary Learning Theory."

In addition to the above, Clements has taught ICAR courses, "Mediating Public Policy Conflicts" and "Theories of Social Change." With doctoral research assistant, Chiharu Okajima, he has facilitated the development of an Asia-Pacific Conflict Transformation Group at the Institute as well as a Middle Eastern Studies Group with ICAR student Alma Abdel-Hadi Jadallah. While administering the Institute, he continues to represent ICAR on the Board of the Institute for International Studies and the Centre for Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation. At George Mason University, he is serving on the President's Council, the Deans and Director's Council, the University Senate, and on six internal ICAR committees. He is also serving on the board of the William Penn House in Washington, D.C., and on the Editorial Boards of International Peacekeeping, Peace Review, and Pacifica.

His most recent publications are "Why the Cold War Ended: Carrots Were More Important Than Sticks," (Chapter 8, in Why the Cold War Ended, R. Summy and M. Salla, eds., Greenwood Press, Connecticut, 1996), and "Boston Research Center for the Twenty-First Century: Global Citizen Awards," by K. Clements, E. Boulding, A. Carnesale, J. Montgomery, and Kem Lowry (in the American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Vol. 55, No. 3.).

Daniel Druckman

Working with ICAR graduate assistant Victor Robinson, Dan Druckman continues to make progress on the grant from the United Institute of Peace to utilize research findings on negotiation in diplomatic training programs. Robinson and Druckman have recently completed a set of exercises designed to incorporate findings from research journal literature. These findings were presented in the form of narratives on 11 topics arranged into four units:

• the effects of time pressures and alternatives to negotiated agreements
• the role of affect, culture, and relationships on negotiation
• the role of experience and attempts to achieve integrative agreements
• four kinds of tactical approaches, including the use of rewards and two-faces in negotiation

After reviewing and discussing the narratives, participants apply them in the context of three role assignments:

• an analyst of actual international cases
• a strategist who advises a delegation on how to resolve an impasse in those cases
• a designer of negotiating exercises intended to convey the ideas in the narratives

The exercises were used first in a preliminary way with ICAR students in the 1996 spring semester course on negotiation processes, and then with UN diplomats at a three-day June retreat convened by the Institute of World Affairs (IWA). The evaluations suggest that participants learn to apply the concepts to cases and are encouraged to consult the research literature in their day-to-day work, but they do not apply the knowledge in sophisticated ways in their analyses or strategies. More sophisticated use of the knowledge may result from longer training sessions. To this end, Druckman and Robinson plan to teach a two-week 1997 intersession course organized around the exercises "Forty Years of Research on Negotiation: What Works?" They will also apply the exercises in another round of IWA training with UN diplomats in New York in March and in Connecticut in June 1997. Stay tuned to this column for a report of the results of these programs.

Ho-Won Jeong

Ho-Won Jeong is serving as ICAR's Library Liaison, meeting with George Mason University librarians on a weekly basis to survey and upgrade the library's holdings in the field of conflict studies. As coordinator of ICAR's Undergraduate Program Committee, he is working with Professors Clements, Rubenstein, and LeBaron to design George Mason's first undergraduate course offerings in Conflict Studies. In spring 1997, at the conclusion of Professor Mitchell's five-year stint in the post, Jeong will take over the role of faculty representative to the University Dispute Resolution Center.

Michelle LeBaron

Michelle LeBaron developed and co-taught the course "Violence and Gender" at New Century College, George Mason's undergraduate interdisciplinary program, with Paula Gilbert, Modern and Classical Languages Department, and Lorna Irvine, English Department. With a readership grant from George Mason University's Women's Studies Program, she and colleague Sara Looney of the Department of Communication developed and taught a new course on women and spirituality.

Professor LeBaron presented work at several summer programs including Moral Re-Armament in Caux, Switzerland, The University of Victoria Public Dispute Resolution Institute, and the Summer Institute in Intercultural Communication. She gave a plenary address at the Canadian conference entitled "Making Peace and Sharing Power: A National Gathering on Aboriginal Peoples and Dispute Resolution," and made two presentations at the conference of the Network entitled "Interaction for Conflict Resolution" in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Together with colleague Louise Diamond of the Institute for Multi-Track Diplomacy, Professor LeBaron delivered a workshop at George Mason University entitled "Non-Linear Approaches to Conflict Resolution: The Role and Power of Myth, Story, and Metaphor."

Professor LeBaron received summer research funding from ICAR for her work on gender, conflict, and leadership. This work involves an analysis of conflict dynamics in a class on women as global leaders, attended by women, in which gender role expectations and gender expectations in leadership are being explored. This work is being completed with the assistance of ICAR graduate students Nike Carstarphen and Cheshmak Farhoumand.

Michelle LeBaron and Nike Carstarphen completed an evaluation of the Network for Life and Choice (NLC) dialogue process on abortion for the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and participated in the first annual conference of the NLC as conference evaluators and facilitators. LeBaron and Carstarphen are now writing an article about the dialogue process for Negotiation Journal.

Professor LeBaron is also writing a chapter on gender conflict for a new book on gender studies and a chapter on diversity-related conflict for the Jim Laue festschrift. In addition, she also is working on a chapter on intercultural conflict resolution for a new textbook.

Richard E. Rubenstein

Professor Richard E. Rubenstein's recent publications include ICAR Working Paper #10, Power Politics and Conflict Resolution, and Global Conflict After the Cold War: Two Lectures, based on public lectures that he delivered at the University of Malta. He also authored a Report on Terrorism, 1996, for the World Book Encyclopedia Yearbook. Rubenstein is readying three more articles for publication this year: "Conflict Resolution and the Prison System: An Abolitionist Perspec-tive"; "Legaholism: America's Overdepen-dence on Law"; and "Conflict Analysis By The News Media."

Professor Rubenstein is also continuing work on two forthcoming books: Conflict Resolution and Social Justice: Essays in Honor of James H. Laue (editor, with Frank O. Blechman); and The Arian Controversy: Conflict and Conflict Resolution in the Early Christian Church. He presented a paper on "Prisons and Conflict Resolution" at the annual conference of the Consortium on Peace Research, Education and Development (COPRED) in Washington, D.C., in August and appeared on News Channel 8 in Springfield, Virginia, to comment on the possibility of terrorist involvement in the downing of TWA Flight 800. In September Rubenstein was a featured panelist at the U.S. Information Agency's Open Forum on "Citizen Diplomacy and Negotiation: Linking Second Track to First Track Dip-lomacy.f" He also participated in September in an all-day conference, "Conflict Resol-ution and the News Media," sponsored by the Voice of America.

As an active member of George Mason's Faculty Speakers Bureau, Rubenstein spoke on "Terrorism: Causes and Cures" before the Fairfax, Virginia, Rotary Club and the Fairfax Kiwanis Club. He presented an ICAR Brown Bag Seminar on "The Nature and Causes of Religious Conflict," lectured on "The Middle East Peace Process" at two Washington-area synagogues, and participated as a primary trainer in "Living Together Peacefully," a one-day intensive training offered at ICAR for Northern Virginia youth leaders.

Professor Rubenstein facilitated discussions between leaders of two national nonprofit associations relating to a possible merger of their organizations and served as a member of a program evaluation team for the Peace Studies Program at Juniata College. He was also a member of the Virginia State Commission on Higher Education's Accreditation Team sent to evaluate the Conflict Analysis and Transformation Program at Eastern Mennonite University.

At ICAR, Rubenstein is offering a new course, "Perspectives from Literature on Conflict Analysis and Resolution." He chairs the Institute's Curriculum Committee, its Admissions Committee, and its Promotions and Tenure Committee, and co-chairs the Committee on Fundraising and Publications.

Dennis J.D. Sandole

Dennis J.D. Sandole completed a study leave at the Austrian Study Center for Peace and Conflict Resolution in Stadtschlaining, Austria, from January 23 to August 6, 1996. His main objective was to work toward the completion of his manuscript, The Genesis of War: Mapping and Modelling of Complex Conflict Processes, which he will submit shortly to Lynne Rienner Publishers.

While at Stadtschlaining, Sandole taught the course, "Peace, Conflict, and Violence: Theory and Praxeologies for Conflict Transformation," for the spring semester of the European University Center for Peace Studies (EPU). He also lectured on "Nature and Functions of Principal Conflicts in the 1990s," "Prin-cipal Strategies and Practices of Inter-national Conflict Resolution," "Empowerment for Political Participation," for the International Civilian Peace-keeping and Peace-building Training Program (IPT), and "Developing Conflict Resolution in Transcaucasia: A University-Based Approach," for the Caucasus Seminar on Joint Training of NGO Representatives and UN Personnel in Conflict Resolution and Human Rights Monitoring.

During his stay at Stadtschlaining, Sandole traveled to Vilnius, Lithuania, where he presented, "Peace and Security in the Post-Cold War Era: Preventing New Yugoslavias" and "A Practitioner's Guide to the Nature, Causes, and Resolution of Conflict" to the Conference on Conflict Resolution in Contemporary Society.

In September 1996 Sandole participated in the 12th Annual Worldwide Conference of People to People Inter-national (Youth Component) held in Newport Beach, California, where he presented the plenary speech, "Introduction to Conflict Resolution," and participated in a panel on international careers.

Sandole was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to continue his research on the role of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in the creation of a peace and security system for Europe in the post-Cold War era. He will take up this scholarship upon the termination of spring semester 1997.

Hamdesa Tuso

Dr. Hamdesa Tuso's major professional activities during this past year included participation in the evaluation of a Conflict Resolution Workshop for the Greater Horn of Africa Initiative (GHAI) organized by the U.S.Institute of Peace.

Tuso presented a paper entitled "People Who Wage No War" at the Second International Congress for Peace in Europe, in Vitoria, Spain and another entitled "Immigration and Politics During the 1996 Presidential Election: Facts and Fictions" to the Minority Leadership Forum in Washington, D.C.

His paper, "The Indigenous Processes of Conflict Resolution of the Oromos of the Horn of Africa: Change and Continuity," has been submitted for inclusion as a chapter in a forthcoming book on conflict resolution in the African tradition, edited by Professor William Zartman, School for Advanced International Studies (SAIS), Johns Hopkins University.

Professor Tuso has been invited to join the board of directors of the Center for Conflict Prevention and Resolution in Africa (CPRA), based in Washington, D.C.

Wallace Warfield

Continuing practicum activities begun more than two years ago with the Arlington County Department of Parks, Recreation, and Community Resources, Professor Wallace Warfield and ICAR graduate students on the Governance APT Team trained two groups of Parks Programmers and Park Rangers in conflict resolution skills. The emphasis in this training was on utilizing the understanding of conflict indicators to develop more timely and preventative responses to conflict occurring at various parks and recreation sites. These activities relate to objectives identified in the Surdna grant designed to support the research and practice of ICAR's Applied Theory and Practice (APT) Practicum Program.

This August signaled closure on the first series of neighborhood leadership institutes conducted under a grant awarded by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The final event in this series was a Youth Leadership Weekend Retreat at George Mason University's Hemlock Overlook, which was designed by the participants. Retreat activities focused on trust-building, leadership skills, and conflict resolution.

Affiliates

Barbara Wien, director of the Consortium on Peace Research, Education and Development (COPRED), Linda Baron, director of the National Conference on Peacemaking and Conflict Resolution (NCPCR), and Robert Scott, director of the Northern Virginia Mediation Services (NVMS), invite the ICAR community to visit their new offices at the institute's new location in the George Mason Townhouses, 4260 Chainbridge Road, Fairfax.