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 with upheaval. Patton elaborates on Middlebury’s conflict transformation efforts, including the successes of the Engaged Listening Project, the challenges of countering a national narrative, and the outcomes of building a resilient culture, evidenced by her community’s constructive engagement of tensions surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the spring of 2024.

To hear other episodes in Interfaith America's podcast, click here: https://www.interfaithamerica.org/podcast/ 

Many thanks to Teyonce Allison, Brett Simison, and the Conflict Transformation Collaborative staff for editing and production. Thank you also to Middlebury music professor Damascus Kafumbe for our music. 

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 experience in higher education and community organizations, and holds certifications and degrees from Boston College’s School of Theology and Ministry and from Georgetown’s Organizational Development Consulting and Change Leadership program.

In this conversation, Meg and Sarah talk about the ways in which dialogic practices can enhance student learning and strengthen campus communities. With scaffolding and careful question design, it is possible to disrupt established stories and patterns that can keep people from understanding and addressing the problems they face. The conversation also takes up common critiques of dialogue in the larger framework of conflict transformation.

To learn more about Essential Partners, click here: https://whatisessential.org/about-us

To learn more about Meg Griffiths, click here: https://whatisessential.org/people/meg-griffiths

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 contexts.

Sgorbati is the former Dean of Faculty and holds the Barbara and Lewis Jones Chair for Social Activism. In 2018, Sgorbati co-founded the Transboundary Water In-Cooperation Network (TWIN) with Dr. Asim Zia.  TWIN works with communities on six continents in the major river basins of the world. She is also a partner with the African Centre for Climate Action and Rural Development in moving a new Convention forward on Saving the River Deltas for the United Nations (UNCCRD).  In collaboration and conversation with scientists, Sgorbati named a form of improvisation, 'emergent improvisation' and wrote a book called, "Emergent Improvisation: On Spontaneous Composition Where Dance Meets Science".  She also co-founded "Quantum Leap" a program that connected public school students to their education who were at risk of dropping out of school. Over 2000 students participated in this program. Sgorbati completed two projects for the US State Dept. Art in Embassies with Sarah Tanguay and Jon Isherwood, who collaborated with a student collective in creating two public art installations for the new US Embassy in Oslo, Norway and for the new US Consulate in Chiang Mai, Thailand.

This is a re-posting of an episode from Lida Winfield’s podcast, Making Embodiment Visible. Learn more here: https://www.lidawinfield.com/podcast.html

Learn more about Susan Sgorbati here: https://www.bennington.edu/academics/faculty/susan-sgorbati

Many thanks to Teyonce Allison, Brett Simison, and the CT Collaborative staff for editorial support.

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 Negotiation and Conflict Resolution 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 knowledge can influence transformative solutions toward peace and justice in conflict-affected communities. Currently, he is researching community-based transitional justice in Colombia and bottom-up approaches to public safety and restorative justice in urban America. He has received support for this work from foundations including the National Science Foundation, United States Institute of Peace, Inter-American Foundation, and Humanity United.

To learn more about Dixon, see here: 

https://sps.columbia.edu/person/peter-dixon-phd

To learn more about Everyday Peace Indicators, click here:

https://www.everydaypeaceindicators.org/ 

To learn more about our External Advisory Board, see here:

https://www.middlebury.edu/conflict-transformation/who-we-are#external-advisory-board 

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 considering the impact on host communities. 

Learn more about David Wick here: 

https://www.middlebury.edu/institute/people/david-wick

To access a "CT Toolkit" for Study abroad experiences, check out the "Our CT Approach" page at our website:

https://www.middlebury.edu/conflict-transformation/media-and-resources#our-ct-approach 

Wick and other Middlebury colleagues are leading the opening plenary panel, "Embracing and Transforming Conflict to Enhance Education Abroad Learning for All," at The Forum on Education Abroad's Europe, Middle East, and Africa conference this October. Learn more here: https://www.forumea.org/emea-plenary.html 

Learn more about our research grant recipients here:

https://www.middlebury.edu/conflict-transformation/supporting-faculty-research/spring-2023-grant-recipients

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 how Muslim women experience upward mobility in ways that are both similar to and distinct from Hindu neighbors, and how these shifts shape, and reshape, relationships between Hindu and Muslim neighbors. In particular, it asks if and how young women are meeting and supporting one another in the same ways their mothers did or if they are connecting in other ways that are rooted in their shared middle-class lifestyles.

Learn more about Prof. Ortegren here: https://www.middlebury.edu/college/people/jennifer-ortegren

Learn more about other research projects supported by the CT Collaborative here: https://www.middlebury.edu/conflict-transformation/supporting-faculty-research

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 many different types of conflict that can arise on campuses, and to suggest actions that can foster more constructive dynamics. As they describe their research, "[w]e embarked on this research project to better understand free speech issues on campuses, but what we heard from many participants was that the framing of free speech situates the problem in an abstract national debate that hinders, rather than facilitates, problem-solving. What participants emphasized instead was the increase in conflict that stemmed from competing community values and stakeholders who lack the skills and vocabulary or will to discuss and integrate these competing values."

You can listen in without reading the report first, but we strongly encourage you to check it out! The download is free at their website: https://constructivedialogue.org/articles/transforming-conflict-on-college-campuses 

At a time when campus conflict and protest is in the national spotlight, we revisit an important moment for Middlebury College - the March 2017 visit of Charles Murray - through the voices of ten Middlebury students.

This episode was created in 2019 and hosted by Sarah Stroup. She interviewed a group of students with different experiences and perspectives. Each student agreed to be recorded and to have their first names used. Each student was asked four questions: (1) Where were you on March 2, 2017? (2) Which person or view frustrated you the most? (3) Under what conditions would you be willing to talk to that person or engage with that view today? (4) What is the biggest take away for you today?

To Lily, Pete, Charles, Porter, Zorica, Adam, Mike, Trey, Charlotte, and Alex - thank you.

For more student perspectives on Murray and campus protests and conflict, see our student newspaper, the Middlebury Campus: https://www.middleburycampus.com/ 

For a 2018 report from the Committee on Speech and Inclusion, see: https://www.middlebury.edu/announcements/news/2018/01/committee-speech-and-inclusion-issues-report-recommendations 

In this episode, we talk with longtime Middlebury partner, the Shepherd Higher Education Consortium on Poverty (SHECP). SHECP assistant director Jen Handy invited CT leaders Kailee Brickner-McDonald and Sarah Stroup to join the "SHECP Talks" podcast to discuss how the CT lens can enhance experiential learning opportunities for students concerned about privilege and poverty. We are cross-posting the episode in our feed here.

SHECP encourages the study of poverty as a complex social problem, by expanding and improving educational opportunities for college students in a wide range of disciplines and career trajectories. Through its programs, SHECP and its member institutions prepare students for a lifetime of professional and civic efforts to diminish poverty and enhance human capability, while also supporting connections among students, faculty, staff, and alumni engaged in the study of poverty. Learn more about SHECP at their website: https://www.shepherdconsortium.org/about