Prerequisites: None

Exam Type: No Exam

This reading group examines conflict as fundamentally relational and core to legal practice and democratic life. It explores how clashes over values, identities, and positions are shaped by social psychology and entrenched narratives. Drawing on principles of negotiation, mediation, dialogue, restorative justice, political theory, philosophy, and narrative non-fiction, the group will explore why conflicts escalate, why they so often get stuck, and how curiosity and connection can open pathways to repair.

At each session, the group will pair conceptual frameworks with illustrative disputes from public life, universities, workplaces, and communities. Through group discussion and brief, practice-oriented exercises, participants will work with concrete tools such as listening for “under-stories” and moral worldviews, reflecting, and reframing, while also cultivating the self-awareness and introspection needed to use those tools constructively. The aim is both practical and aspirational: to support the development of lawyers and civic leaders who can disagree respectfully across difference, interrupt destructive dynamics, and help create more just and durable resolutions in a fractured democracy.

Note: This reading group will meet on the following dates: TBD.