You’ve been involved in dispute systems design in countries around the world. Are there special considerations when you’re dealing with an international issue or situation?
In all of our clinical work, we try to recognize that we’re very steeped in our own perspectives, and when we step back, we can often recognize that what we imagine to be shared expectations may not reflect the values or beliefs of a different context or culture. So we always try to ask ourselves what we’re missing and where there might be very deeply embedded individualistic, Western assumptions built into the way we’re doing our work.
For example, when we interview stakeholders, our usual practice is to reassure them that we won’t attribute their comments to them, so they feel comfortable speaking candidly about their experience. But in certain international settings, or with Indigenous peoples or nations, where there may be a more communal culture, that practice doesn’t always make much sense to stakeholders.
Have you come across interesting approaches in other countries or cultures?
So many things are happening in the world. Through a connection with a recent LL.M. student, the Dispute Systems Design Clinic undertook a project last year with the Brazilian National Council of Justice, which addressed the forced removal of vulnerable communities, often violently, from occupied land. The landowner can go to court and get an eviction order, and the sheriff then has the ability to enforce that order. A recent decision by Brazil’s Supreme Court required states to resolve these disputes through mediation, and in certain regions this new process involves a site visit by the landowner and the judge hearing the case, to talk to the people living on the land. In some cases, they’ve come up with very creative solutions. Can the government buy the land and enable the people to stay? Or, at the very least, can the people living there be relocated before their property is bulldozed? The clinical team, led by my colleague Deanna Pantin Parrish with the support of Ana Carolina Riella, worked with experienced judges, community members, and other participants in this process, to develop a program to train and support judges who are taking on the role of mediator for the first time.
The Dispute Systems Design Clinic project that I’m supervising this fall and spring, building on one we started last spring, is with the SEGA Girls’ School in Tanzania. It’s an incredible school that was designed in a very thoughtful and creative way. They bring in girls from many different regions who are in vulnerable situations but have demonstrated aptitude for and commitment to their studies. In addition to their academic classes, they also learn about business plans, running a shop, raising poultry and creating products for market. Many of the students go on to higher education, but what they learn at the school makes it easier for them to leave a challenging home situation and gain some self-sufficiency.
In the school’s very robust life skills curriculum, they teach the girls about making good decisions and advocating for themselves, and they were interested in incorporating negotiation into the program, to help the students navigate what they were facing at school, at home, or in their jobs. There can be very significant power imbalances in these situations. We considered what negotiation frameworks or practices could help support them on that front. HLS’ clinical students have been developing, piloting, and refining a culturally-responsive course on negotiation skills for girls in different grades.
What do HLS students learn from participating in a project like this?
In all of our work, we focus on trying to learn as much as we can from as many different people as we can. In the first phase of the Tanzania project, we talked to students, staff and alumni from the school, and to experts who have worked on similar programs in other countries, to understand the challenges the girls were facing. There’s so much insight and wisdom that we walk away with, and part of what we offer in return is our ability to pull out themes and dynamics and share some ideas on how to address the issues that our clients have raised.
One of the things we stress in all our work is the idea the world looks very different to each of us, depending on many factors, but certainly including where we live and our expectations of the world around us. On this project, we’ve had students from Belgium, Kenya, Rwanda, and the U.S., and even within our team we’ve learned about our different experiences and approaches. Bringing in these perspectives is one of the benefits of the rich international community that we have at HLS.
Is there always something to learn, even from disputes “in a galaxy far, far away”?
I recently wrote chapters for two books edited by Jen Reynolds and Noam Ebner: Star Wars and Conflict Resolution and Star Wars and Conflict Resolution II: My Negotiations Will Not Fail (DRI Press, 2024). The series is an attempt to take some of the ideas of conflict resolution – negotiation, mediation, facilitation — and make them accessible to people who are, by the nature of our human lives, engaging in an everyday way with all sorts of challenges and conflicts with friends, families, and colleagues.
I’m especially interested in the relationship between the outcomes we hope to achieve and the way we get there. In the first book, I wrote about different conceptions of power in Star Wars. If you look at the choices that are exercised by those using the dark side versus the light side of the Force, there are different constraints and values involved. Broadly speaking, the chapter looks at how the film reflects ideas of power over, power with, and power within. For the second book, I wrote about the clash between two characters, Poe Dameron and Vice Admiral Amilyn Holdo, in The Last Jedi. I used David Kantor’s Structural Dynamics framework to illuminate some of the ways in which our different orientations can have a big impact on how we hear and understand other people. The framework outlines our default approaches in conversation—how we speak, what we value, and how we think about decision making. For example, do people prefer an open system, a closed system like the Empire, where the authority is very clear, or a more random system? It was a chance to look at the different characters, understand their propensities, and see what we can learn from that.
I also taught a 1L reading group in the fall on Star Wars and Conflict Resolution. We were able to dive into iconic clashes, analyzing the negotiation tactics, mediation attempts and influence approaches used, and apply the different skills and frameworks to real-world conflicts. The Force was strong with that group!
How did you get involved in this field?
I did my undergraduate and graduate work in Italian literature. I was living in Italy and studying minute differences in manuscripts, and I thought it would be helpful to do something that would have more of an impact on the world. I had deferred my admission to law school, so I decided to start my degree. When I got here, I was planning to take International Law as my 1L spring elective, but I had a conversation with a 2L who insisted I should take the Negotiation Workshop instead. I was wary at first, but eventually I learned that it was an opportunity to engage with others and not think about which of us wins, but how we can work together to come up with an outcome that advances the goals and values that we each have.