Using Dialogue to Bridge Political Divides Between Massachusetts and Kentucky

Event Date: Wednesday November 14, 2018
Time: 12:00 - 1:30 PM
Location: Hauser Hall Room 104, Harvard Law School, Cambridge, MA

The Herbert C. Kelman Seminar on International Conflict Analysis and Resolution presents:

Using Dialogue to Bridge Political Divides Between Massachusetts and Kentucky

with

Dr. Paula Green

Founder and Senior Advisor, Karuna Center for Peacebuilding

and

Sharon Dunn

Author

Wednesday, November 14, 2018
12:00 – 1:30 p.m.
Hauser Hall Room 104
Harvard Law School, Cambridge, MA

 

About the speakers:

Dr. Paula Green is Professor Emerita at the School for International Training in the US, where she founded and directed CONTACT, the Conflict Transformation Across Cultures Program, a residential intensive for peacemakers from around the world. In 1994, she founded the Karuna Center for Peacebuilding, a US-based NGO focused on international conflict transformation, inter-communal dialogue, and reconciliation.  Her 40 years of experience as a psychologist, educator, facilitator, and mentor in the field of intergroup relations and peacemaking has taken her to many regions of Africa, Asia, the Mid East, and Eastern Europe.

After the 2016 presidential election, Paula turned her focus to addressing US communal relations fractured across lines of historical enmity and current partisanship. Engaging communities antagonistic to each other because of their political allegiances, she and other residents of her hometown of Leverett, MA, co-created Hands Across the Hills. Modeled on her international work, this 2017-2018 project featured extended dialogues and cultural exchanges between groups from MA and KY. A newly emerging 2019 project will focus on racial divides and include participants from SC, MA, and KY.

In October 2018, Paula and Hands Across the Hills received the first ever Alliance for Peacebuilding award dedicated to US peacebuilding. In 2009, Paula received an award from the Dalai Lama as an “Unsung Hero of Compassion.” The Unsung Heroes award is presented to “individuals who, through their loving kindness and service to others, have made their communities and our world a better place.” She also holds the “Psychology of Peace and Justice Prize” from Psychologists for Social Responsibility, 2012, as well as other awards.

Sharon Dunn participated in Hands Across the Hills’ dialogue and cultural exchange between western Massachusetts and eastern Kentucky, and has been the lead on its media team. A writer, she has published two volumes of poetry and a memoir Under a Dark Eye: A Family Story. Over the course of her career, she managed a family business, Duncraft, and edited and published a literary magazine, AGNI. Sharon is currently participating in and on the media team for Bridge4Unity, an interracial dialogue and cultural exchange with Beaufort SC, the new bridging endeavor affiliated with Hands Across the Hills.

About the Herbert C. Kelman Seminar Series: 

The Herbert C. Kelman Seminar on International Conflict Analysis and Resolution series is sponsored by the Program on Negotiation, the Nieman Foundation for Journalism, the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public PolicyThe Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, and Boston area members of the Alliance for Peacebuilding. The theme of the Kelman Seminar is “Negotiation, Conflict and the News Media”.

For more information, contact Donna Hicks at dhicks@wcfia.harvard.edu.


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