A week or so ago, on the train from Edinburgh to London, we were joined – across the table – by two women who got on at York. As is our wont, and probably theirs, we all offered brief greetings and prepared to return to our books. However, we were almost cajoled into a sotto…
This is not a really post about Brexit; but then again I do circle some of the themes that earlier post-Brexit Kluwer bloggers have addressed, in a series of thoughtful, passionate and concerned comments. “Brexit” has become, beyond the decision and its fallout, a placekeeper for a range of other concerns, about community, tolerance, dialogue,…
I’ve just returned from a week in Vientiane, the capital of the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, and that week away gives me both a [slight] excuse for a late blog entry and a couple of reflections on the outsider/observer role of both mediator and tourist. I should say, too, at this outset, that this is…
I begin with two poetic images. One is from an 8th century Taoist poem – I asked the boy beneath the pines. He said, “The master’s gone alone Herb-picking somewhere on the mount, Cloud-hidden, whereabouts unknown.” [Chia Tao (777-841)] And the other, more recent, from W H Auden’s poem “Law Like Love”: And always the…
In this blog, I’ll follow up on Deborah Masucci’s overview, and in doing so I’ll offer a three observations about technology and one about a very non-technological aspect of mediation. First, on the technology: as those who were there will know only too well, and those who have followed at arm’s length will appreciate, the…
“Stand by your devices”; or “Access through the [virtual] looking glass” I take the first phrase of this blog title from a throw-away line in one of the recent comments by a student in my current Negotiation and Mediation class. The context is this: my university has implemented an Emergency Preparedness Teaching and Learning [EPTL]…
In 1861, the then Secretary to the Education Department, Robert Lowe, addressed the UK House of Commons on the pressing matter of elementary education, in particular on the linked questions of access to education, funding, and quality. His proposal was to introduce a system of “payment for results”, designed both to limit the costs of…
“Yes we speak of things that matter With words that must be said” [Paul Simon, “Dangling Conversation”] I’m posting this a litle earlier than usual, but we all know of the distractions that will only be compounded in the coming week. For about ten years, before we moved to Singapore, our Thursday morning breakfast conversations…
This comment has its origins in two events, separated by distance and utterly different in origin and impact, yet still linked by a common theme. This is also a partial continuation of the conversation started by Martin Svatos in the preceding entry: http://kluwermediationblog.com/2015/11/22/je-suis-paris-do-the-mediators-have-right-to-be-xenophobic/ One event, front and centre in our media and in the lives…
This question emerges from a recent three-way Skype conversation with a couple of mediation colleagues, in anticipation of a US-sponsored conference on ADR, to be held in Brazil later this year. As it transpired, the predominant interest of the conference was and is on arbitration rather than mediation, so that conversation has taken a longer…
