News
September 10, 2008
A conference on Preventing Gun Violence will be held at Smith Hall at Portland State University in Portland. The conference will be presented by the Ceasefire Oregon Education Foundation, and cosponsors are the Sidney Lezak Project and PSU's College of Urban and Public Affairs.
Speakers will include Bruce Goldberg, MD, Director of the Oregon Department of Human Services; Karin Immergut, U.S. Attorney for the District of Oregon; PSU Professor Mark Kaplan, DrPH; Nina Vinik, Legal Director, Legal Community Against Violence; Chief Michael Carroll, Second Vice President of the International Association of Chiefs of Police; Kellie Johnson, Deputy District Attorney for Multnomah County; and several other experts. Opening remarks will be made by Portland Police Chief Rosie Sizer and Multnomah County District Attorney Michael Schrunk.
Ceasefire encourages everyone concerned about gun violence to attend this important conference. The registration fee is $25 per person, and students are welcome. To register, please go to www.ceasefireoregon.org/coef/conference.html.
September 12, 2008
The ADR Center and the Master's degree program will be hosting Marshall Rosenberg, internationally known creator of the Non-Violent Communication methodology, for breakfast on Friday, Sept. 12th from 9:00 to 10:30 in room 141 at the law school. This will be a wonderful opportunity to meet Marshall, hear first hand and engage in discussion about his approach and his efforts internationally to improve communication and reduce violence.
Marshall is based in Switzerland and has established centers of training and practice around the world. He is a most entertaining speaker and may even pull out his guitar and sing a song or two, as he is often known to do. His work has been endorsed by many experts including Deepak Chopra, Marianne Williamson, Riane Eisler, Arun Gandhi, William Ury, Thomas Gordon, John Gray, and many others.
Those who plan on attending should rsvp with Ariel Broadous.
Sept. 11-14, 2008
Nonviolence as a Way of Life Conference at the University of Oregon
Keynote speakers are:
Dr. Marshall Rosenberg - creator of Nonviolent Communication
Reverend C.T. Vivian - a key strategist for the Civil Rights movement, serving on Dr. Martin Luther King's executive staff during many nonviolent actions, including the Selma march.
Julia Butterfly Hill – environmental activist, author and poet, well known for her 738 day tree-sit in a 600 year old redwood tree.
Nearly 100 more trainers, professionals and activists will share tools and experiences of nonviolence with hundreds of attendees.
For more information, contact Michael Dreiling at dreiling@uoregon.edu
October 16, 2008
Director Tim Hicks will be making a presentation to the members of the Oregon Joint Use Association at their annual meeting on Oct 16th, 2008. This association includes all the electric utilities, cable TV, and telephone companies throughout Oregon, some of whom own the telephone poles and some who must lease use of the poles. Tim has been asked to speak on how member organizations can better manage the conflicts that arise from the joint use of the utility poles.
October, 2008, date and time to be announced
DeEtte Beghtol will give a presentation to students and the general public on her experience during six years in Africa as a member of the teaching staff for the Peacebuilding and Conflict Transformation program in Zambia which offered 9 month, 3 month and 6 week intensive courses to students from community peacebuilding organizations all over Africa including Rwanda, Burundi, Somalia, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, Kenya and Sierra Leone, and which also designed and presented programs for specific partners, including an ongoing program with the UN to train refugees as trainers for an extensive peacebuilding program in all 8 refugee camps in Zambia.
November, 2008, date and time to be announced
Francis McGovern, professor of law at Duke Law School and a premier international practitioner, scholar, and teacher in the field of alternative dispute resolution, will give a presentation and meet with students at the UO law school and the Master's program. Professor McGovern's name is virtually synonymous with "mass claim" litigation - the often tens of thousands of tort claims arising out of a major disaster or major product liability issue. As a court-appointed special master or neutral expert, he has developed solutions in most of the significant mass claim litigation in the U.S., including the DDT toxic exposure litigation in Alabama, the Dalkon-Shield controversy, and his current work involving the silicone gel breast implant litigation. Countries outside the United States now are recognizing the effectiveness of Professor McGovern's work. Working with United Nations Compensation Commission, which was set up to ensure that Iraq compensates citizens, businesses and government agencies for losses suffered in the Persian Gulf War, Professor McGovern is helping construct a legal framework for handling the 2.6 million claims for reparations from Iraq. He also is developing a transnational ADR center in Europe to handle torts, including silicone gel breast implants and HIV infected blood cases, that cross national boundaries.
June 19-24, 2008Conference Thinking Through Nature: Philosophy for an Endangered World Summit for Environmental Humanities and Design
The University of Oregon in collaboration with the International Association for Environmental Philosophy will host a four-day international summit gathering together the environmental humanities and design communities, including scholars from Anthropology, Art, Architecture, English, Geography, Landscape Architecture, Philosophy, Political Science, Religious Studies, and Sociology.
The deadline for advance registration is 20 May 2008.
Complete information at http://www.uoregon.edu/~toadvine/TTN/
June 14th, 2008, 3:00 p.m.
The Master's program 2008 graduation ceremony will be held at the UO Law School (1515 Agate St.) Courtyard. Twelve students will be graduating and you are invited to attend. The graduation address will be given by Philosophy Professor Cheyney Ryan who has been instrumental in developing the Master's program and who teaches the Philosophy of Conflict Resolution course for the Master's program.
June 12th, 2008, 7:00 p.m.
Tim Hicks, Director of the Master's in Conflict and Dispute Resolution, will speak at the EWEB Training Center, 500 East 4th Avenue in Eugene, on Thursday, June 12, from 7:00-9:00 p.m. Tim will make a presentation and facilitate a discussion on the topic, "The Climate Change/Peak Oil Crisis and the Human Story: What Role Compassion?" The event is free and open to the public.
With the imminent arrival of "peak oil" and its uncertain consequences, and our response to the reality of climate change, people are struggling with the gravity of what is happening to our world. At the event, Hicks will offer some perspectives on climate change, explore with the audience how we come to terms with its realities, and evaluate how the stories we tell ourselves about the reasons for climate change will make a difference in resolving the crisis.
May 17-20, 2008 - THE PROMISE OF REASON: THE NEW RHETORIC AFTER FIFTY YEARS
This is an international conference commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Chaim Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca's Le Nouvelle Rhétorique: Traité de l'argumentation (1958), one of the most influential twentieth-century rhetorical works. Subjects addressed will include:
- legal argument and justice
- rhetoric and human rights
- ethical rhetoric and communications
- argumentation as a substitute for violence
- international diplomacy and conflict resolution
- rationality and reasonableness in international relations
- negotiated assent in public debate
- opposition and cooperation is conflict situations
- argumentation across cultures
- persuasion and leadership
- A public "Contrarian Forum" including a debate by advocates for public policy with responses on the rhetoric of the debate by conference participants
- Master Classes conducted for graduate and undergraduate students by conference speakers
- Competitive scholarships for undergraduates to attend the conference and master classes
- Organized outings to experience Oregon's pleasures: rafting, wine-tasting, mountain hiking, coastal sight-seeing
- Proximity to the Rhetoric Society of America's annual conference in Seattle Washington, May 23-26, 2008
February 22 to March 7, 2008 - Realms of Forgiveness: An Opportunity for Dialogue. Speakers, workshops, panel discussions, facilitated dialogues, a film series, an essay contest, and other community events on the subject of forgiveness. For complete information go here.
http://www.law.uoregon.edu/org/nwtwc/
News
Director Tim Hicks will be making a presentation to the members of the Oregon Joint Use Association at their annual meeting on Oct 16th, 2008. This association includes all the electric utilities, cable TV, and telephone companies throughout Oregon, some of whom own the telephone poles and some who must lease use of the poles. Tim has been asked to speak on how member organizations can better manage the conflicts that arise from the joint use of the utility poles.
Three of our students recently returned in August 2008 from 8-week internships in Northern Ireland where, working with community conflict resolution organizations, they were able to learn about the dynamics of a protracted conflict in a context of minimal violence, and the use of mediation at the community level to address the ongoing sectarian conflict in a post-accord setting.
One of our students will travel in October, 2008 as one of four "youth delegates" from the Pacific Northwest selected to attend the Terra Madre 2008 conference in Turin, Italy that will bring together some 6,000 farmers, processors, distributors, activists, and academics, from 150 countries gathered to discuss the diverse and complex issues of the international food system. This will be part of her research into conflicts along the international supply chain from grower to consumer, especially in the context of the growing world food crisis.
One of our students spent the summer, 2008 interning at the Commonwealth Science and Industry Research Organization (CSIRO) at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. conducting research on multi-scalar collaboration in natural resource policy issues. Derek says, "The experience and knowledge I gained will prepare me to better understand how we as natural resource planners might better construct institutional frameworks that meet the needs of on-the-ground environmental/social issues."
What began as an internship for one of our students turned into employment, after graduation, with the Oregon Consensus Program where he will continue as a member of the facilitation team helping the West Eugene Collaborative seek consensus among multiple stakeholders on solutions to the knotty issues of transportation, environmental protection, and commercial vitality. Says Mike, "The flexibility of the Master's Program allowed me to pursue my goal of a career in environmental conflict resolution and collaborative planning and has prepared me thoroughly for these tasks."
Two of our students taught an undergraduate course, Mediating Sports Conflict, developed by the ADR Center. The course was structured to use competition in sports as a framework to explore conflict and dispute resolution. One of the two reported, "It was amazing to watch the growth the students experienced. For me personally, the class provided an opportunity to grow as a facilitator and mediation coach. Having experience teaching dispute resolution processes will be extremely valuable to me professionally."
Our concurrent degree (JD and Masters) student, Kimberly Purdy, won first place in the Chief Justice John B. Doolin Writing Competition, open to all law students in the United States and Canada, for a paper she wrote making the argument that Native American Indian students should be exempted from the recent Supreme Court curtailment of affirmative-action type programs, based on the trust agreements in place with the Tribes and the relationship between Tribes and the federal government. The paper also introduced some new ideas about how universities can extend outreach and support to Indian students via direct, mutually beneficial contractual relationships between the quasi-sovereign Tribes and the universities themselves. Congratulations, Kimberly!
One of our students is conducting research with the Western Environmental Law Center to assess the perceptions of and assumptions about collaborative approaches to environmental conflict resolution among environmental litigators and their clients.
- Extreme global poverty
- Fragile and failing states
- The demographic "youth bulge"
- Extremist militant movements
- Climate change
- The rise of China and India
Articles of Interest
Coming soon.
