A Pioneering Vision: Lederach on Conflict Transformation
Opening Up: A Conflict Transformation Podcast
Release Date: 03/04/2024
Fiction as a Pathway to explore History and Conflict
Opening Up: A Conflict Transformation Podcast
In this episode, we bring you a talk from Ava Homa, the first Kurdish woman writer to publish a novel in English. In September 2024, Homa spoke at the Middlebury Institute for International Studies at Monterey. Professor Sharad Joshi provides an introduction. Homa is an acclaimed author, speaker, activist, and faculty member at California State University, Monterey Bay. Her debut novel, Daughters of Smoke and Fire (HarperCollins & Abrams, 2020), was featured in Roxane Gay's , the Unplugged Book Box, and International. Learn more here: This event was co-sponsored by...
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Support and Challenge: Higher Ed's role in fostering constructive conflict skills
Opening Up: A Conflict Transformation Podcast
In this episode, Teyonce Allison ’25 talks with Professor Jonathan Miller-Lane. Professor Miller-Lane, known affectionately as “JML,” teaches education studies at Middlebury and is a facilitator in the Engaged Listening Project, a professional development program for faculty and staff. Prof. Miller-Lane discusses his upbringing in various countries as son of a foreign service officer and how that shaped his understanding of culture, hospitality, race, and conflict. The discussion explores the role of higher education in supporting and preparing students. They discuss lessons from...
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Protest, Conflict, and Lessons from Interfaith Dialogue
Opening Up: A Conflict Transformation Podcast
At the end of 2024, we mark the end of Laurie Patton's tenure as president of Middlebury by sharing her reflections on conflict transformation, protest, and higher education. In September, President Patton sat down with Eboo Patel, president of Interfaith America, as part of their programing on Teaching Interfaith Understanding. Their conversation was posted to Interfaith America's podcast and we reshare the episode here with permission. Patel and Patton discuss how Middlebury’s campus culture evolved in the years since 2017, when political scientist Charles Murray’s visit was met...
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Structured Dialogue & Higher Education
Opening Up: A Conflict Transformation Podcast
In this episode, Sarah Stroup talks with Meg Griffiths, director of programs at Essential Partners (formerly the Public Conversations Project). Founded in 1989, Essential Partners (EP) uses a reflective structured dialogue approach to help people communicate across deep differences in identities and values in order “to address communities’ most pressing challenges.” Meg Griffiths and her colleagues at EP have been leading professional development workshops at Middlebury since January 2019 as part of Middlebury’s Engaged Listening Project. She has over 15 years of professional...
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Embodiment and Improvisation: from Dance to Conflict Transformation
Opening Up: A Conflict Transformation Podcast
Today, we bring you a conversation with Susan Sgorbati, Director of the Center for the Advancement of Public Action at Bennington College. In conversation with Lida Winfield, the undergraduate pillar head of the CT Collaborative and dance professor, Susan shares insights from her journey as a dance artist and educator, and how the principles of dance improvisation inform her work in conflict mediation and social justice. They explore how embodied practices, active listening, and improvisational skills can foster collaboration and create transformative change in both artistic and social...
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Beth Berila - Building Compassionate Communities with Mindfulnesss
Opening Up: A Conflict Transformation Podcast
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Everyday Peace at Home and Abroad
Opening Up: A Conflict Transformation Podcast
What does peace look like for ordinary people, and how we can create metrics of peace that reflect those things that people value? In this conversation, we bring you audio from a May 2023 talk by Peter Dixon, a member of the CT Collaborative's External Advisory Board and a Middlebury alum. Peter Dixon is an Associate Professor of Practice in at the School of Professional Studies at Columbia University. He graduated from Middlebury in 2001.5 and has a PhD in sociology from the University of California, Berkeley. In his research, Dr. Dixon uses mixed methodologies to understand how local...
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International Education, Learning, and Conflict
Opening Up: A Conflict Transformation Podcast
What is safety? What is comfort? How does learning happen in an immersive, international setting? How do we foster meaningful relationships with host communities? In this episode, we talk about those questions and more with Dr. David Wick. Wick is Associate Professor and Program Chair in International Education Management at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, and a 2023 research grant recipient from the CT Collaborative. Wick has worked with several of Middlebury's Schools Abroad on the integration of conflict transformation approaches and the importance of...
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"We live with love for each other" - Hindu and Muslim Women in Middle-Class India
Opening Up: A Conflict Transformation Podcast
In this episode, Caroline Harding ’24 interviews Professor Jennifer Ortegren, associate professor of religion at Middlebury and a 2022 CT faculty grant recipient. Ortegren is author of Middle-Class Dharma: Women, Aspiration, and the Making of Contemporary Hinduism (2023, Oxford University Press), which examines the intersections of gender, religion, and class among upwardly mobile Hindu women in Udaipur, Rajasthan. In her CT-supported project, “"'We Live with Love for Each Other': Navigating Neighborhood Relationships between Hindu and Muslim Women in Middle-Class India," Ortegren examined...
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Transforming Campus Conflicts
Opening Up: A Conflict Transformation Podcast
At the beginning of the fall semester, we invite you to join a conversation about conflicts on college and university campuses. This episode was recorded late in Spring 2024 and features some of our Conflict Transformation (CT) interns - Mandy Berghela, Teyonce Allison, Agnes Roches, and Caroline Harding - and Sarah Stroup, the CT director and college faculty. The launching point of this discussion is a 2023 report from the Constructive Dialogue Institute (CDI), "Transforming Conflict on College Campuses." CDI uses the conflict transformation framework of Lederach and others to understand the...
info_outlineThis episode features selections from a September 2022 talk at Middlebury by John Paul Lederach, with an introduction from Middlebury president Laurie Patton.
John Paul Lederach is globally recognized for his pioneering theory and practice in the field of conflict transformation (CT). Lederach is senior fellow at Humanity United and professor emeritus of international peacebuilding at the University of Notre Dame. He is also the co-founder and first director of the Eastern Mennonite University’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding.
Our work at Middlebury has been inspired and enriched by Lederach's work and by his personal example of hope and generosity. In September 2022, he was the keynote speaker at the college's Clifford Symposium. He serves on the Middlebury CT Collaborative External Advisory Board. His 2005 book, The Moral Imagination, identifies risk taking, curiosity, creativity, and a relational focus as key dispositions for constructive engagement in conflict.
Thanks as always to our team of interns and staff who edit and produce these episodes. Special thanks to Caroline Harding for selecting powerful parts of Lederach's talk!
https://www.middlebury.edu/conflict-transformation/who-we-are#external-advisory-board