Mitchell Hamline School of Law Mitchell Hamline Open Access DRI Press DRI Projects 12-1-2020 Evolution of a Field: Personal Histories in Conflict Resolution Howard Gadlin Nancy A. Welsh Follow this and additional works at: https://open.mitchellhamline.edu/dri_press Part of the Dispute Resolution and Arbitration Commons Recommended Citation Gadlin, Howard and Welsh, Nancy A., "Evolution of a Field: Personal Histories in Conflict Resolution" (2020). DRI Press. 12. https://open.mitchellhamline.edu/dri_press/12 This Book is brought to you for free and open access by the DRI Projects at Mitchell Hamline Open Access. It has been accepted for inclusion in DRI Press by an authorized administrator of Mitchell Hamline Open Access. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Evolution of a Field: Personal Histories in Conflict Resolution Published by DRI Press, an imprint of the Dispute Resolution Institute at Mitchell Hamline School of Law Dispute Resolution Institute Mitchell Hamline School of Law 875 Summit Ave, St Paul, MN 55015 Tel. (651) 695-7676 © 2020 DRI Press. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. Library of Congress Control Number: 2020918154 ISBN: 978-1-7349562-0-7 Mitchell Hamline School of Law in Saint Paul, Minnesota has been educating lawyers for more than 100 years and remains committed to innovation in responding to the changing legal market. Mitchell Hamline offers a rich curriculum in advocacy and problem solving. The law school’s Dispute Resolution Insti- tute, consistently ranked in the top dispute resolution programs by U.S. News & World Report, is committed to advancing the theory and practice of conflict resolution, nationally and inter- nationally, through scholarship and applied practice projects. DRI offers more than 30 dispute resolution courses each year in a variety of domestic and international certificate programs. Established in 2009, DRI Press is the scholarship dissemination arm of the Dispute Resolution Institute which brings significant conflict resolution work to a broad audience. For more informa- tion on other DRI Press publications, visit http://open.mitchell- hamline.edu/dri_press Evolution of a Field: Personal Histories in Conflict Resolution t Edited by Howard Gadlin & Nancy A. Welsh DRI Press Saint Paul, Minnesota Table of Contents Introduction 1. Discovering Our Field in Our Stories ...............1 Howard Gadlin and Nancy A. Welsh Conflict Resolution as (Noble) Craft to End Discord 2. Wabi-Sabi ............................................. 15 Peter S. Adler 3. How I Found My Groove ............................ 35 Howard Bellman Conflict Resolution as Forum for Voice and Connection 4. Mediation and My Life: Moments and Movements ........................................... 55 Lela Porter Love 5. What Am I Doing Here? Field Notes on Finding My Way to Mediation ...................... 75 Ian Macduff 6. Born to Mediate ..................................... 93 Lucy Moore 7. My Passage to ADR ................................. 111 Geetha Ravindra 8. Crosscurrents ....................................... 131 Nancy A. Welsh Conflict Resolution as Creative Exercise 9. Three to Tango: Reflections of a Mediator ..... 151 Johnston Barkat 10. A Sort of Career .................................. 171 Chris Honeyman 11. We Can Work It Out .............................. 193 Colin Rule 12. Bashert: How I Found Dispute Resolution and It Found Me .................................. 211 Andrea Kupfer Schneider v 13. Synchronicity, Paradox, and Personal Evolution ................................ 231 Thomas J. Stipanowich Conflict Resolution as Bridge to a Socially Just, Democratic, and Inclusive Community 14. The View from the Helicopter .................. 253 Lisa Blomgren Amsler 15. A Conflict Counter-Story: How a Puerto Rican Woman Ended Up in a Field Dominated by Anglo Men ........................ 275 Jacqueline N. Font-Guzmán 16. The Accidental Ombudsman .................... 295 Howard Gadlin 17. A Mediator’s Path ................................. 317 David Hoffman 18. Finding Joy Through a Mediation Clinic and Asian American Identity .................... 337 Carol Izumi 19. From the Portal to the Path: Finding the “Me” in Mediator ................................. 359 Marvin E. Johnson 20. The Road to Becoming a Neutral: Working in the Interest of Human Needs ..... 379 Homer C. La Rue 21. My Life in Community ............................401 Bernie Mayer 22. When Should I Be in the Middle? I’ve Looked at Life from Both Sides Now ........... 421 Carrie Menkel-Meadow 23. Becoming a Peacemaker ........................445 Christopher W. Moore 24. Seeking Justice in the Shadow of the Law .... 467 Ellen Waldman vi Alternative Frames for Evolution of a Field ... 487 ADR Processes .........................................487 Career Development ..................................489 Culture .................................................. 490 Gateways to the Field ................................ 490 Generations ............................................ 491 Institutional Contexts for Conflict Resolution ..... 492 About the Editors ...................................... 495 vii 1 Discovering Our Field in Our Stories By Howard Gadlin and Nancy A. Welsh t It’s the people who make a field. This book draws on the thought-provoking, diverse, delightful, sometimes painful, and ultimately beautiful personal histories of some of the thinkers, inventors, influ- encers, reformers, disrupters, and transformers who have created—and continue to create—the field of conflict reso- lution. The authors of the essays in this book play a variety of roles: mediator, facilitator, arbitrator, ombuds, academ- ic, system designer, entrepreneur, leader of public or pri- vate conflict resolution organization, researcher, advocate for conflict resolution, critic of conflict resolution. They represent the various waves of people who have populated our field, the founders, the institutionalizers, and the lead- ers of change. In his chapter, Peter Adler writes, “Stories are ancient and enduring avenues of human exchange and one of the ways we make discoveries. Stories create hypotheses, explain things, and sometimes connect us to each other and older enduring narratives.” And so it is with the histo- ries in this book. The narratives of our contributors allow us to understand the conflict resolution field’s real, on-the- ground reason for being, the beating heart underlying its principles. We are not necessarily talking about the prin- 2 Evolution of a Field: Personal Histories in Conflict Resolution ciples captured in textbooks or ethics codes; we’re think- ing of the values, aspirations, and characteristics that have inspired people to become involved with the field, stay with it, and even wrestle with it. We think this book and its personal histories come at an important time, one when the field of conflict resolu- tion is at an inflection point. Conflict resolution is now a recognized discipline, widely institutionalized in law and graduate schools, often introduced to students as early as elementary school, frequently used to resolve legal and other disputes, and regularly enforced by our courts. The founders of the field, people such as Frank Sander, Mar- garet Shaw, and Roger Fisher, have left this earthly world behind, and other pioneers have retired or are close to retiring. A next generation awaits, with many who are eager to shape the field’s evolution. Our people and communi- ties face new challenges, new causes for conflict, and new reasons to reach resolution of—or at least manage—those conflicts. Technology is an exciting and ubiquitous part of our lives. So this seems an especially opportune time for people who have played key roles in conflict resolution to reflect upon the experiences, goals, mentors, colleagues, and institutions that have informed their careers and guid- ed their contributions. The approach of this book is unusual for at least two reasons. First, as many of us who have talked with col- leagues know, when neutrals describe their work, they generally begin with the stories that parties tell: what fix the parties are in, how they relate to others around them, what brought them to conflict resolution, and what break- throughs or interventions led to the resolution of their disputes. Neutrals rarely scrutinize their own lives and influences to probe for the underlying values and mean- ing they convey. Writing for this book required all the Discovering Our Field in Our Stories 3 contributors—the neutrals, the entrepreneurs, and the academics—to reflect deeply on these matters. This book’s approach is also unusual because although we urged each writer to address some core questions and ideas, we gave them free rein to decide what to say and how to say it. The result is a collection of the principles and aspirations that have actually guided people within our field, not those that have been said to do so. Twenty-three individuals, each in his or her own voice and own way, have all tried to make sense of who they are, what they do, and how and why they do it. We are indebted, first and foremost, to our contribu- tors, those who have made this book so much more than just curated CVs. They are accomplished and self-reflective individuals, people open to locating their thinking, actions, and choices in the context of their historical epoch as well as their cultural, social, and even familial context. We find great variety, insight, and wisdom in these 23 stories,