Director’s Column
Dear ICAR Community Members,
Looking back, looking forward, ICAR is in a period of transition and as Director, I am hoping that we can continue to surf on the crest of the wave that the founding faculty and students generated some 20 years ago. This past year, we have changed the location of ICAR, we have added new faculty and new Advisory Board members, and we have launched an important new programmatic initiative, an undergraduate major. Any one of these changes would have posed some challenges to our identity as an Institute, but taken collectively, these changes offer the opportunity for us, as a group and as a community, to reflect on our assumptions, values, and commitments, and navigate these new spaces as reflective practitioners, mindful of who we have been, and imagining who we are becoming.
The decision to move from Fairfax to Arlington was made by ICAR faculty and students in fall 2003; people thought that despite the upheaval and inconvenience, ICAR would benefit from the proximity to downtown Washington where we would be closer to the agencies, institutions, think tanks, academic programs, and NGOs that are involved in conflict analysis and resolution nationally and internationally. The move put ICAR on the Metro and we all anticipated that this would make life easier for students, opening up connections for teaching and research.
The move itself was scheduled for July 2004; however, the “move-in” date was dependent on construction being completed in our new space, in the Truland Building, on the Arlington George Mason campus. But like most construction projects, there were unanticipated delays, so July turned into August and then into September. Classes started in Fairfax, and the move finally took place mid-September. Needless to say, life was very difficult for faculty who had to prepare lectures from materials in (multiple) boxes piled up in the corridors. However, unlike other faculty, who can be cantankerous, ICAR faculty bore the trauma of a move in the midst of classes with good cheer, patience, and fortitude. My assistant Nicole Rowsell, along with the rest of the ICAR staff, saved the day with their diligence and hard work, so the semester that began in a storm finished with all but the Burton Library in place. With the logistics of the move behind us, we are already beginning to concentrate on programs and projects for the coming year.
If you have not already come to see the new offices, please do so — you will find some welcome new additions to the ICAR space:
• A conference room that seats 50, for training and research meetings, teaching, and receptions;
• Two classrooms with adequate seating and lots of whiteboard space;
• Two seminar rooms for working groups, committee meetings, and small groups;
• An office for GSCS, our student governance organization;
• A lounge area (still to be furnished);
• Research space for 22 graduate students to have cubicles for sustained research and study; these cubicles are adjacent to faculty offices, to support exchange and learning;
• A separate reception area, with consolidated staff, to maximize collaboration; and
• One-third more space for the Burton Library
Together, these additional resources provide the space for the kinds of events and gatherings that help build relationships, which in turn, provide the basis for generating new ideas and new knowledge.
Programmatically, ICAR continues to grow in complexity. This year we have added a new undergraduate program to our existing graduate program. We now offer a BA and a BS in Conflict Analysis and Resolution (CAR), in collaboration with the College of Arts and Sciences at George Mason. This program allows students to craft their own degree program to focus on interpersonal conflicts, community/organizational conflicts, or international conflicts, depending on the nature of the work they seek to do. Obviously, in a globalized world, these three domains or levels of
analysis are overlapping, but students can choose to work in sites that focus predominantly on one of these areas. Students will take a core set of courses, offered by ICAR faculty and graduate students, and add electives that expand their areas of interest using courses from multiple disciplines within the College of Arts and Sciences (history, psychology, sociology, anthropology, etc.). We, at ICAR, are convinced that this degree will not only be extremely useful to students in their professional careers, providing them a base set of skills in conflict analysis and resolution, but will also be of interest to them; we believe it will be a popular program. Obviously, this new undergraduate program expands the reach of ICAR to undergraduate students, but it also provides a place where our graduate students can learn to teach and mentor, as part of their own program. Teaching is an important practice and experts in conflict resolution need to know how to train, how to design curricular materials and how to build relationships to support learning. So this new program will benefit the graduate students as well.
We are so fortunate to have new faculty, Professor Susan Hirsch, as Director of the undergraduate program (CAR). She coordinates the development of the new courses, building relationships with the faculty across the College of Arts and Sciences; she teaches the introductory course for the program, and she will mentor the graduate students who will be teaching, eventually, in the CAR program. She is committed to the successful launch of this program, and with her leadership, I am confident the CAR program will grow and be a tremendous contribution to George Mason University as well as to the field of conflict resolution as a whole.
Professor Hirsch, is one of three new faculty at ICAR. Susan who earned her doctorate in Anthropology from Duke University, now joins us from Wesleyan. She brings an array of expertise in legal anthropology, sociological studies, discourse analysis, gender theory, East Africa, and Islam. She teaches in the undergraduate program (CAR) but is already working with a number of graduate students on special topics related to her work in human rights. She brings tremendous expertise in undergraduate education, as well as her enthusiasm for learning and research. We are thrilled to have her with us!
Professor Nadim Rouhana joined ICAR this past fall as the Henry Hart Rice Chair in Conflict Analysis and Resolution. He comes to us from Tel Aviv University in Israel most recently, but was also deeply engaged at the Center for International Affairs at Harvard University, where he worked, with Dr. Kelman, on the development of problemsolving workshops as a technology for conflict resolution. As the Rice Chair was endowed to support the development of Point of View, Dr. Rouhana will be working to help create the research agenda and the programmatic content for this soon-to-be-constructed research and conference center, Point of View, which will provide a place for groups in conflict to come together for dialogue and exchange. Professor Rouhana will work with ICAR faculty and students, as well as experts in the field of conflict resolution, to build case studies and research databases that continually enhance our knowledge about conflict analysis and resolution. We are indeed honored to have him join ICAR!
Karina Korostelina is currently a Research Professor at ICAR; she comes to us from the Ukraine, where she worked for many years with ICAR faculty on joint research and training projects. Professor Korostelina got her doctorate from the Institute of Psychology of Ukrainian Academy of Science. She is an expert in social psychological analysis of conflict with a particular interest in identity processes. She has studied the relationship between multi-cultural identity and violence, using survey research methods. At ICAR she is teaching courses at the graduate and undergraduate level in research methods and identity and conflict; she also supervises the International APT program, helping students design and implement an international project in conflict resolution. We are so pleased to have her with us as Research Professor, and delighted that she accepted a position at ICAR as “Associate Professor” in September 2004.
These three new faculty add diversity to our staff in terms of who they are as human beings as well as the disciplinary backgrounds and knowledge base that they offer. All three are excellent mentors and share a concern for social justice. We are thrilled to have them here at ICAR, and look forward to their continued contributions over many, many years!
We have added several new Advisory Board members in the last year: Robert Scott, Stanley Taylor, and Dr. Alan Gropman. Rob Scott is the Executive Director of the Northern Virginia Mediation Service (NVMS), and a graduate of ICAR. His membership on the Advisory Board will help maintain the ties between ICAR and NVMS. Stanley Taylor is Vice President at George Mason for the Arlington Campus. He was extremely helpful with ICAR’s move to Arlington, and given his ties to the Arlington community, I am sure he will enable ICAR to “nest” in the community over time. Dr. Alan Gropman, professor at the Industrial College of the Armed Forces, National Defense University, brings invaluable expertise to the Advisory Board, not only because he is an expert in the analysis of conflict from a strategic perspective, but also because he teaches courses on think tanks and is working to help ICAR connect to a host of academic and policy institutions in Washington. These three new members to the Advisory Board help us protect and deepen existing relationships, and they also help us reach out to new groups and individuals, enhancing ICAR’s already excellent network. We surely appreciate the work they have done to date and thank them in advance for the hard work they will do in the future on behalf of ICAR.
As you can see, the amount of change at ICAR is dizzying. But as the old adage says, “the more things change, the more they stay the same.” We are using these changes to anchor ourselves, as a program, and as a community, in our core values, walking a path with markers that we recognize, anchored in values that we share. Faculty and students continue to be engaged in research and practice, and this newsletter itself details the exciting projects that are currently in play. As Director, I have many questions about the future that ICAR is hurling itself into, questions that are at times echoed by faculty and students:
• How do we retain and signal our ICAR (counter) culture, in our new (more corporate-like) setting? (i.e., tapestries
on the walls, colorful carpets, spaces to, as Chris Mitchell would say, “lay about”)? Ideas or thoughts?
• How do we manage to maintain space for our (treasured) graduate program, with the introduction of a new undergraduate program? How do we integrate these programs? Should faculty teach in both programs, and mentor
graduate students to teach in the undergraduate program? Ideas or thoughts?
• How do we include new faculty within a group that has been very stable, over the years so that creative juices are
unleashed, dominant assumptions are questioned, and core values cherished? Serve lots of good food at faculty board meetings? Start a new faculty mentoring program?
• How do we take advantage of our new location in Arlington? Offer a lecture series, targeting special topics, such as media and conflict, terrorism, or human rights?
I imagine that we will continue to hurtle into our future without explicit answers to these kinds of questions, but we will at least be mindful of the nature of the questions we ask. There is a Spanish proverb, “Caminante, no hay camino; se hace camino al andar…” which translates roughly to “Traveler, there is no path; you make the path by walking…” Clearly, ICAR is making the path for its future as it walks toward it. While this may accompany uncertainty, it can also accompany reflection — we can watch the path we are making, and, in this way, walk mindfully into the future. We are looking forward to an active spring:
A Brown Bag series (check our website for dates
and topics.)
• The roll-out of a “Design Competition” for Point of View. This competition offers prizes for the best design (site lay
out and building design) for Point of View; all entries must provide designs that integrate “green” building
with conflict resolution research and practice. Judging will take place in May 2005, and the winning designs
will provide an excellent base for architectural and site development on the Point of View property (see www.pointofview.gmu.edu).
• New courses at the graduate level that cover some exciting new topics including media and conflict, gaming conflict and terrorism, and narratology and conflict.
These kinds of events, along with the continued active research of our faculty and students, forecast yet another very productive and exciting time at ICAR. Please take the time to visit us and/or attend one of our public events. We would welcome your presence and your participation!