ICAR Welcomes Sara Cobb as New Director
On Aug. 15, 2001, ICAR welcomed our new director, Sara Cobb, by sending her to represent our institute at a three day combined retreat of the President’s Council (comprising the president and senior staff members, deans, and directors) and George Mason’s Board of Directors. Within days we learned that her energy and enthusiasm for ICAR’s agenda was contagious and welcome. With academic year 2001–2002 beginning the following week, she has hardly had time to catch her breath.
We are delighted to have Sara as our leader. She received her B.A. in English (honors) from Albertus Magnus College, her M.Ed. in counseling from the University of Puget Sound, and her Ph.D. in communications from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. We stole her from her position as executive director of the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School in Cambridge. In addition to her administrative duties at Harvard, she taught courses in negotiation and conducted research on coexistence processes in past conflict settings. Prior to her two years with the Program on Negotiation, she served as associate dean for three years in the Human and Organization Development Program at the Fielding Institute in Santa Barbara. At the same time, she was president of Dialogue International, which provides training and consultation services on conflict management and organizational change. Some of her clients were Exxon USA; Christenson & Drake Accounting Firm; the Unitarian Church; INTERFAS and CERENEC, both based in Buenos Aires, Argentina; the Bank of La Caxia in Barcelona, Spain; Centro de Mediacion in Sao Paulo, Brazil; and the Family Court System in Buenos Aires.
She has been a visiting professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara in the Law and Society Program and the Department of Communication, and in the communication departments of the University of Connecticut and the State University of New York in Albany. Her versatility as a teacher is remarkable. Among the many courses she has taught are Law and Society, Alternative Dispute Resolution, Law and Violence, Conflict and Communication, Media and Society, Gender and Communication, Conflict and Communication, Discourse and Discrimination, Interpersonal Communication, Media Effects, and Introduction to Communication Processes.
Sara’s publications demonstrate her capacity to fully embrace a variety of issues. She has written about stabilizing violence through victim/victimizer narratives, humanizing human rights through the voice of the perpetrator in truth commissions, the public spectacle of private pain, the domestication of violence in mediation, adding a narrative perspective to clinical work with adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse, deconstructing and reconstructing the role of intention, and the social construction of intentions in mediation. At present, she is working on a book titled Humanizing Human Rights.
For some of us, what belongs in the margins of resumes may be just as interesting as all the proper credentials listed. Such is clearly the case with Sara. She has a vibrant and infectious curiosity that is well reflected in her thinking, speaking, and writing. She seems to have unlimited energy (which will serve her well in this position) and unlimited good will.
We welcome Sara as our director, our colleague, and I’m sure in very short time, our good friend.