The Cambridge Negotiation Institute convened national leaders in dialogue and bridging work for a panel discussion on October 27, 2020 to discuss the the challenges and opportunities and need for dialogue across difference at a time of increasing political polarization and tension in the United States. Moderated by CNI Principal and Harvard Law School Senior Fellow Bob Bordone, the panel included:

Keith Allred is the Executive Director of the National Institute for Civil Discourse and founder of CommonSense American, a new organization that brings Republicans, Democrats, and Independents together from across the country to find and champion solutions with broad support. NICD serves the platform for CommonSense American, which, in coordination with other NICD programs, strives to revive civility and enhance problem solving across the partisan divide. Keith also was the first professor of negotiation and conflict resolution hired by Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

Lucas Johnson is the Executive Director of Civil Conversations and Social Healing for the On Being Project. He has been shaped by his time learning from veterans of the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S., most closely Vincent Harding and Dorothy Cotton, and by his work with human rights activists around the world, especially in Africa, Europe, and Latin America. Lucas was a leader in the U.S. community of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation (IFOR), the world’s oldest interfaith peace organization, for 6 years, based in Atlanta and focused on the Southeast and mid-Atlantic. From 2014 until he joined the On Being Project in December, 2018, he served as General Secretary of IFOR’s global operation.

Grande Lum is Provost and Professor of Menlo College. Provost Lum enjoys writing, teaching and working on issues that helps people and communities work together in more constructive ways. Prior to joining Menlo, he was Director of the Divided Community Project (DCP) at the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law. Previously, Grande Lum was nominated by President Barack Obama and confirmed by the Senate in 2012 as the Director of the Community Relations Service (CRS), an agency within the Department of Justice that serves as “America’s Peacemaker” for communities in conflict by mediating disputes and enhancing community capacity to independently prevent and resolve future conflicts. He is the author of The Negotiation Fieldbook (McGraw-Hill 2nd Edition, 2010); Tear Down the Wall: Be Your Own Mediator in Conflict (Optimality, 2013); and the forthcoming Resolving Civil Rights Conflicts in the Community: The US Justice Department’s Community Relations Service (University of Missouri, 2020. Co-authored with Bertram Levine).

Nancy Rogers is a Professor Emeritus at the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law.  She also serves on the executive committee of the College’s Divided Community Project.  Since she first joined the Moritz faculty, she has served as Ohio Attorney General, Dean of the Moritz College of Law, Vice Provost for Academic Administration of The Ohio State University, Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs for Moritz. Prior to joining the faculty, she was a law clerk for U.S. District Judge Thomas D. Lambros in Cleveland and practiced in the Glenville-area office of the Cleveland Legal Aid Society.  She is a graduate of the University of Kansas and Yale Law School.