Current Activities
My current activities include my engagement in promoting two new books, including zoom presentations. In doing so, I have enjoyed renewing contact with friends and colleagues. I am also engaging in usual professional matters and in addition, greater political engagement.
The sixth edition of Constructive Conflicts: From Emergence to Transformation was released in August 2022. It is coauthored by Bruce Dayton and Louis Kriesberg and the publisher remains Rowman and Littlefield.
Fighting Better: Constructive Conflicts in America by Louis Kriesberg was published by Oxford University Press and was released in December 2022.
It examines how constructive and destructive conflicts have changed the degree of class, status, and power inequality in America since 1945. It assesses how the conflicts contributed to the increasingly hyper class inequality, which has many unfortunate consequences. Contrariwise, it examines conflicts that contributed to some increases in status equality, notably of African Americans and women. Finally, it analyzes the conflicts that yielded varied and uneven changes in power inequality for different kinds of people.
This book indicates how the destructively conducted conflicts contributed to the many contemporary antagonistic divisions threatening U.S. democracy. Numerous specific conflicts at the national and local level are analyzed, including constructive conflict transformations. These social science analyses enable judgments to be made of better ways of contending that might have avoided the adverse consequences of many destructive conflicts in the past. The core ideas of the constructive conflict approach are tested as they were or were not applied to struggles relating to class, status and power inequalities in America. Moreover, and importantly, the book suggests how applying the core ideas of the constructive conflict approach can help overcome the current political and societal distress in the U.S. and avoid and overcome its many destructive conflicts.
Other Recent Book Publications
Conflict and Collaboration: Better or Worse Relations
This book, edited by Catherine Gerard and me, will include chapters by associates of PARCC examining the relations between conflict resolution and collaboration. It follows a multi-year series of seminars by PARCC associates about the topic. The book was published by Routledge in 2018.
Overcoming Intractable Conflicts: New Approaches to Constructive Transformations
The book derives from an international conference on transforming intractable conflicts, held at Syracuse University, on September 22-24, 2016. The Tami Steinmetz Center for Peace Research, Tel Aviv University and the Program for the Advancement of Research on Conflict and Collaboration (PARCC) organized and supported the conference. The book was edited by Catherine Gerard, Galia Golan, Miriam Elman, and me. It was published by Rowman & Littlefield International in 2019.
Other Activities
I continue to be engaged in the community organization, Syracuse Area Middle East Dialogue group, initiated in 1981. I and four other members were recognized with Interfaith Works Leadership Awards by Interfaith Works of Central New York in May 2012. Here is a link to the video related to this award.
I continue to write journal articles and chapters in other books. They are linked here. Also, I write blogs on current topics, from a constructive conflict perspective. They are posted on Huffington Post, Foreign Policy in Focus, and elsewhere. Many are accessible here.
Videos of Presentations in conjunction with PARCC functions, at professional meetings, at other universities and research centers can be accessed through the PARCC website, the Maxwell School YouTube Channel, or by the Links button on this website. These include talks at George Mason’s School of Conflict Analysis and Resolution (March 7, 2010) , an interview as one of Parents of the Field, conducted on April19, 2006, the University of Manitoba’s Mauro Center for Peace and Justice (March 17, 2014), at the Manlius Senior Centre (April 9, 2014), and later presentations..
I continue to be engaged in the community organization, Syracuse Area Middle East Dialogue group (SAMED), initiated in 1981. I and four other members were recognized with Interfaith Works Leadership Awards by Interfaith Works of Central New York in May 2012. Here is a link to the video related to this award.