Many people regard Herbert Kelman as a Middle East specialist, but as he makes clear in this interview, he is more accurately regarded as a social psychologist who has always had an interest in promoting peace and who has used his professional skills to do so mainly between Arabs, Palestinians, and Israelis.
As one of the participants in the amazingly influential cohort of early conflict and peace researchers gathered at the Center for Advanced Behavioral Studies at Stanford University in the early 1950s, Dr. Kelman was in at the very beginning of the founding of the field and played a major role in the establishment of the Journal of Conflict Resolution. It was the publication of his seminal edited collection of essays, International Behavior in 1965 that established him as a major interdisciplinary scholar in the new field, but it was his membership of the facilitating panel in one of John Burton’s early problem solving workshops that set him in the direction that was to play a major role for the remainder of his professional career.
Taking up from Burton’s original ideas, Kelman has been instrumental in defining and refining both the theory and practice of problem solving processes – workshops and dialogues – over the past forty years. At the conceptual level, Kelman has asked and answered many questions about the process of problems solving, its strengths and weaknesses and the conditions necessary for its successful employment in protracted and intense conflicts.
Working initially with his colleague Stephen Cohen and later with scholar practitioners such as Nadim Rouhana and Tamra Pearson D’Estree, Herbert Kelman has conducted series of workshops that paved the way for the process leading to the Oslo Accords in the early 1990s and to subsequent bridge building exercises in the Middle East. His network of contacts throughout the region – of individuals who have participated in his problem solving exercises – is extraordinary and provides hope that a critical mass of negotiating partners may yet overcome the fears and antagonisms that continue to exist in the region.
Now in his 80s, Herb Kelman continues to work and write on the practice of peacemaking, indefatigable and dedicated as he has been throughout his long and distinguished career.
