April 2009, Volume 3, Issue 4

In partnership with the Department of Environmental Sciences and Policy (ESP), ICAR has established a 15-credit Graduate Certificate in Environmental Conflict Resolution and Collaboration beginning in August 2009. This program has been developed in collaboration with Dr. Frank Dukes of the Institute for Environmental Negotiation, University of Virginia, and in consultation with an informal advisory group of environmental leaders in the region.

Why this new certificate program? Crashed fisheries, lost species, contaminated water, toxic communities, looming impacts of global warming – despite decades of laws, regulations, and environmental education, we are failing in many ways and in many locations to ensure a safe,...

The long-term consequences of the five-day war over South Ossetia in August 2008 are difficult to evaluate. The contested status of South Ossetia, recriminatory blame and civilian devastation contribute to an unstable situation in the region with a deepening divide between the South Ossetian and Georgian societies. Given the fact that a number of frozen conflicts remain unresolved in the broader South Caucasus region, the situation in South Ossetia gives urgency to finding peaceful, comprehensible and sustainable ways to resolve conflicts in the South Caucasus. Working with grant funding from Mason's Center for Global Studies, Susan Allen Nan convened the “Zones of Peace in the South Caucasus” symposium in May 2009. The...

With the growing optimism in the revival of multilateralism in the Obama administration, there arises an opportunity for the Conflict Resolution community to reach out to public audiences and make its presence known. The time is ripe for conflict theorists and practitioners to step into the relatively uncharted territory of mediatic conflict resolution, lending their voices in an effort to stimulate change and introduce an alternate orientation that challenges zero sum solutions, humanizes the parties to conflict, and exposes distortions on all sides. Essentially, there is a basic need for practitioners to position themselves, with their nuanced knowledge and field experience, between the dueling "talking heads" that...

It isn’t often that one senses a new phase of development beginning. Usually, these commencements go unremarked. Only later does it become clear that an event which seemed relatively continuous with the past was actually a door opening upon a new stage of one’s personal or professional life. Prediction is a hazardous business, of course. In ancient Rome, “inauguration” meant reading the entrails to foretell the fates of the leader and the state. Nonetheless, Andrea Bartoli’s inauguration as ICAR director seems to me an event both reflective and generative of a new period of transformation. Professor Bartoli came to ICAR two years ago as Christopher Mitchell’s successor in the Drucie French Cumbie...