If you’re listening to this podcast, you’re probably concerned by the level of polarization we’re seeing in societies around the world.

We can point fingers at social media, the news media, political parties, fear mongering leaders, poor education, broken political systems… the list is long. The divides can seem so vast, the problems so huge. It’s easy to retreat into a huddle with people who see the world the same way you do.

But our guest for this episode, Columbia University psychology and education professor and author Peter T. Coleman, says there are things each of us can do to help heal these societal wounds. And he says the press and media can play an important role in decreasing polarization.

That's the subject of his latest book, The Way Out: How to Overcome Toxic Polarization. Coleman outlines evidence-based practices that you can do on your own- or with a group- to help recalibrate assumptions, and re-create bonds with people you disagree with.

Coleman also partnered with the organization Starts With Us to turn the lessons from the book into an online program, called The Polarization Detox Challenge. It's like an exercise routine, for strengthening your compassion muscles. The book is focused on the United States, but the exercises can be done anywhere.

This episode originally published in January 2023.

Follow Peter T. Coleman on X: @PeterTColeman1

Making Peace Visible is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin. We had help on this episode from Faith McClure.

Support our work with a tax-deductible donation.

Music in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions and Bill Vortex

ABOUT THE SHOW

The Making Peace Visible podcast is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin, with help from Faith McClure. Steven Youngblood is Director of Education for Making Peace Visible. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org

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Our guest in this episode is a scholar and peacebuilder who knows the world of peacebuilding intimately, and offers a critique from the inside.

Qamar-ul Huda is the author of Reenvisioning Peacebuilding and Conflict Resolution in Islam, published in April 2024. He’s worked for major players like the US Institute of Peace and the UN Development Program. He served in the Obama Administration as Senior Policy Advisor to Secretary of State John Kerry, and is now a professor of International Affairs at the US Naval Academy.

In this conversation, Huda shares a refreshingly positive perspective on the possibility of peace in Islamic countries, rooted in his deep understanding of Islamic religion and cultures. In his book, he reflects on some of the mistakes made in the early years of the War on Terror, by the US government, and other international actors. He says many of these mistakes were rooted in seeing peacebuilding as a secular project, which failed to acknowledge the conflict resolution tools and ethics that exist in Islamic tradition. And he says this thinking continues to influence foreign policy to this day. He also highlights more constructive examples of conflict resolution in the Muslim world.

ABOUT THE SHOW

The Making Peace Visible podcast is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin, with help from Faith McClure. Steven Youngblood is Director of Education for Making Peace Visible. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org

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"Nature knows no political borders. " - David Lehrer

On a small desert campus, students from Israel, Palestine, and other parts of the Middle East take classes in ecology, earth sciences and renewable energy. They also debate the hot button issues: history, politics, religion, war, occupation, terrorism, while learning to listen actively, and living together amidst contradicting narratives.

Our guest David Lehrer is Director of International Development at the Arava Institute, based at Kibbutz Keturah in Israel. He teaches there, and also heads up Arava's action arm, working with Palestinian partners to bring clean water, sanitation, and eco-friendly temporary housing to displaced people in Gaza -- among other projects.

Learning to care for a shared environment in the region, providing essential infrastructure in wartime, and working together across divides are usually treated as a footnote in the media, David says. But he hopes that as Arava continues to work with Palestinian partners in the face of a war with no end in sight, peacebuilding becomes news.

LEARN MORE:

The Arava Institute

Arava Institute on Instagram

David Lehrer's bio

Times of Israel: Palestinians, Israelis partner to bring off-grid solutions to Gaza camps

Special thanks to Tamar Miller and Rachel Kalikow. Music in this episode by One Man Book, Blue Dot Sessions, Doyeq, and Joel Cummins.

ABOUT THE SHOW

The Making Peace Visible podcast is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin, with help from Faith McClure. Steven Youngblood is Director of Education for Making Peace Visible. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org

Support this podcast

Connect on social:

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Ali Abu Awwad is hard to summarize. He grew up with a mother in the PLO, and served jail time for his role in the resistance during the First Palestinian Intifada. In an Israeli prison, Ali learned the power of nonviolence when he and his mother went on hunger strike to see each other. After his brother was killed by Israeli soldiers, his family met with a group of bereaved Jewish parents. Awwad says witnessing the shared humanity of Palestinian and Israeli mourners "turned his world upside down."

Awwad has been working as a peacebuilder since 2002, and has given talks around Israel, Palestine, and the world. His current work is leading Taghyeer, a Palestinian movement —"to take nonviolent responsibility for self-development and forging a path to end occupation." Awwad says he founded Taghyeer, a "DNA Palestinian movement" to focus on the "homework" needed to lay the foundation for true Palestinian self-governance and an end to Israeli military occupation. In this conversation, Awwad gives us an intimate view of his own inner transformation, and an inside look at Palestinian identity and self-determination.

LEARN MORE

Watch: An Israeli and a Palestinian talk peace, dignity and safety a conversation with Ali Abu Awwad and Ami Dar, Israeli peace activist and founder of Idealist.org, from TED.

Read: “I Don’t Want to Resist the Occupation—I Want to End the Occupation” an interview with Ali Abu Awwad in the Nation Magazine

Read: Nonviolence Is the Missing Path to Israeli-Palestinian Peace editorial by Ali Abu Awwad in "The Daily Beast"

Listen: Ali Abu Awwad and Robi Damelin on Nonviolence as The Path to Freedom for Palestinians and Israelis on "Unlocking Us" with Brené Brown

Music in this episode by Xylo-Ziko and Blue Dot Sessions.

Special thanks to Cloe Shasha Brooks.

ABOUT THE SHOW

The Making Peace Visible podcast is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin, with help from Faith McClure. Steven Youngblood is Director of Education for Making Peace Visible. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org

Support this podcast

Connect on social:

Instagram @makingpeacevisible

LinkedIn @makingpeacevisible

X (formerly Twitter) @makingpeaceviz

We want to learn more about our listeners. Take this 3-minute survey to help us improve the show!

Most people feel that peacebuilding – resolving conflicts and decreasing violence – is a positive thing. But as we've said many times on this podcast, peacebuilding is virtually invisible in the world.

Today’s guest, veteran mediator and peacebuilder Mark Gerzon, says to strengthen peace and reconciliation efforts, we need to make peacebuilding mainstream. And to do that, the reasons behind the practice need to be practical and more accessible to both the public and to donors. He says the messaging we've been using for years, grounded in a moral imperative for peace, isn't working. And today, he’s working in the United States to train leaders to work across the partisan divide.

Gerzon has served as advisor to the UN Development Program and multinational corporations. He is president of the Mediators Foundation, an incubator for social action projects that bridge divides around the world, and has authored several books on the topic of polarization and reconciliation.

LEARN MORE

Leading Through Conflict and other books by Mark Gerzon

Harvard Business Review: To Resolve a Conflict, First Decide: Is It Hot or Cold?

Documentary by Mark Gerzon: The Reunited States

Music in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions and SFmusic.

ABOUT THE SHOW

The Making Peace Visible podcast is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin, with help from Faith McClure. Steven Youngblood is Director of Education for Making Peace Visible. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org

Support this podcast

Connect on social:

Instagram @makingpeacevisible

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We want to learn more about our listeners. Take this 3-minute survey to help us improve the show!

Social entrepreneurs are a unique breed of people, capable of conjuring up a vision, a new way of doing something, a solution to a problem; but they also have the skill and the determination to overcome all the obstacles to implement their vision. John Marks is a remarkable social entrepreneur who, with his wife Susan Collins Marks, built the largest peace building organization in the world, Search for Common Ground. When they stepped down from leadership in 2014, Search had 600 full time employees and offices in 35 countries. Search was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2018.

His new book, From Vision to Action: Remaking the World Through Social Entrepreneurship, explains how he built Search for Common Ground, and what made it so successful. His new book delivers practical guidance on building bridges and creating meaningful change. Of particular interest to us at MPV, John is a remarkable innovator, not only in the production of effective media to promote peaceful solutions to conflicts, but also in the breakthrough ways he found to disseminate the media, and ideas and approaches they celebrated.

RESOURCES:

Virtual book talk with John Marks with Harvard Law School's Program on Negotiation, September 23, 2024

Clips from Common Ground Productions:

· Radio in Burundi: 1:42 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qghsd3-Wpv8

· Children’s TV in Macedonia with Sesame Workshop: 2:04 - https://youtu.be/ifyCYSbHp2A

· Reality Series: CNN piece on “The President: 2:45 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQFlmUzi6ys

· Adult Drama: Team trailer: 2:14 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqYVapttDEQ&feature=youtu.be

· PSA: Ziggy Marley: 0:23 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llinHdw_gdU

· Music Video: Ring the Bells: 3:38 - https://youtu.be/5Rs94ztNROI

Music in this episode by Joel Cummins, Podington Bear, Xylo-Ziko, and Faszo.

ABOUT THE SHOW

The Making Peace Visible podcast is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin, with help from Faith McClure. Steven Youngblood is Director of Education for Making Peace Visible. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org

Support this podcast

Connect on social:

Instagram @makingpeacevisible

LinkedIn @makingpeacevisible

X (formerly Twitter) @makingpeaceviz

We want to learn more about our listeners. Take this 3-minute survey to help us improve the show!

Imagine living next door to a person who murdered your father, raped your sister, or even killed your child. This was the case for many people in Sierra Leone who endured a brutal civil war from 1991 to 2002: the majority of the 50,000 who died were those killed by their own neighbors.

While working with a program that facilitates ritual reconciliation processes in Sierra Leone, a process known as fambul tok (or “family talk”), peacebuilder and philanthropist Libby Hoffman learned that justice for Sierra Leonians isn't about punishing or ousting a perpetrator. Rather, justice comes through making the community whole again. “When you hurt somebody, you don't just hurt them; you hurt the community as well,” says Hoffman.

In this episode, host Jamil Simon speaks with Libby Hoffman about fambul tok, a process she calls “building peace from the inside out.” Fambul tok is an ancient tradition where disputes are solved through community-wide conversation around a bonfire. In this post-war context, Hoffman and her team facilitated the revival of the practice for Sierra Leonians.

Hoffman also documented this remarkable peacebuilding process in her award-winning documentary film Fambul Tok, which has itself catalyzed further reconciliation within Sierra Leone’s war-torn communities. Hoffman's book about her experiences in Sierre Leone is called The Answers Are There: Building Peace from the Inside Out.

Libby Hoffman is the founder and President of Catalyst for Peace, a US-based private foundation building peace from the inside-out – creating space for those most impacted by violence to lead in building the peace, supported by healthy, inclusive systems. A former Political Science professor, Hoffman has a Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy from Tufts’ Fletcher School of Law and a BA in Political Science from Williams College.

The film Fambul Tok is available for private viewing through MPV's Peace Docs initiative. Watch the film here: vimeo.com/26644766.

This episode was produced by Andrea Muraskin, with help from Faith McClure. It was originally published in October 2022.

Music by Xylo-Ziko via freemusicarchive.org.

ABOUT THE SHOW

The Making Peace Visible podcast is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin, with help from Faith McClure. Steven Youngblood is Director of Education for Making Peace Visible. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org

Support this podcast

Connect on social:

Instagram @makingpeacevisible

LinkedIn @makingpeacevisible

X (formerly Twitter) @makingpeaceviz

We want to learn more about our listeners. Take this 3-minute survey to help us improve the show!

On July 28, 2024, a teenage boy carried out a fatal stabbing attack on a dance class in Southport, England. Three little girls were killed, and eight other children and two adults were injured. Police arrested and detained the assailant. They didn't release his name, because he was under 18.

A user on X posted that the suspect was a Muslim asylum seeker named Ali Al-Shakati. A prominent YouTuber claimed the attacker was an "illegal migrant." As rumors quickly spread on social media, attracting tens of millions of views, Brits on the far right used platforms like X and TikTok to organize violent protests around the country. In one town, a mob started a fire outside a hotel housing asylum seekers and and smashed a glass door, chanting "get them out." In another, demonstrators attacked a mosque. By the end of the next weekend, violent protests had taken place in at least 18 towns and cities, and 147 people had been arrested, as Tortoise reported.

When a judge eventually released the attacker's name, Axel Rudakubana, it turned out he neither Muslim not a migrant, but a Christian and the British-born son of Rwandan parents.

This is just one of many stories of online misinformation leading to real world harm. Our guest this episode, Lena Slachmuijlder, is working to stop the flow of misinformation in a world where so many get their news from social media. She heads Search for Common Ground's Digital Peacebuilding initiative, which identifies and trains "digital stewards" around the world, people who are trusted by their communities and help stop the spread of fake news online. Also, in her work as co-chair of the Council on Tech and Social Cohesion, Lena is envisioning ways to design new tech that fosters real conversations online, including the use of AI.

Learn more:

Digital Community Stewards free online course

Digital Peacebuilders' Guide

Searching for Safer, Healthier digital spaces - review of digital peacebuilding initiatives

ABOUT THE SHOW

The Making Peace Visible podcast is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin, with help from Faith McClure. Steven Youngblood is Director of Education for Making Peace Visible. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org

Support this podcast

Connect on social:

Instagram @makingpeacevisible

LinkedIn @makingpeacevisible

X (formerly Twitter) @makingpeaceviz

We want to learn more about our listeners. Take this 3-minute survey to help us improve the show!