February 2010, Volume 4, Issue 1

This January, ICAR held its first ever Spring orientation session to welcome its inaugural Spring Master’s cohort. Twenty-four Master’s and eight Certificate students attended the half-day event, which introduced them to Mason's university services and the nuts and bolts of their respective academic programs. A student panel was on hand to answer questions and share their experience of student life at ICAR. The small cohort size enabled the incoming students to engage the administrative staff, and each other more directly, with expanded opportunity for introductions and networking.

In an effort to maintain cohort size and competitive admissions standards, the Fall admission numbers will be adjusted accordingly. ICAR's Ph.D. admissions...

 When I began to question why I was going to Syria -- and what my path is as a scholar/practitioner -- I picked up Lederach’s The Moral Imagination and was reminded of the web of relationships that we must cast with our fellow human beings if we want to build bridges between real or perceived enemies. Twenty of us were headed to Damascus with our own ideas about the “other” and perhaps our own expectations about how things might unfold. We had read about Syria’s political regime and we knew that former President Bush connected it to his “axis of evil,” but very few of us knew any Syrians or had experienced “being” in Syria. As citizen diplomats we had a unique opportunity to interact with Syrian students, professionals, government officials, religious leaders, and regular citizens and construct a different reality from what we had...

Having heard the news stories, watched videos and pictures, and followed Twitter posts from Dr. Bartoli, in the aftermath of Haiti’s devastating earthquake, it is evident to me that conflict resolution theory needs to be integrated with reconstruction practices to prevent a protracted social conflict, a man-made disaster, emerging as an outcome of natural disaster. Basic Human Needs theory should be carefully examined as the pieces are picked up and Haiti attempts to rebuild. For Burton, human needs are a collection of human development essentials that are sought simultaneously. These human essentials include the need for structure, predictability, stability, and freedom from fear and anxiety, as well as the need...