Today, the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law
formally announces the Divided Community Project. The Project aims to
strengthen community efforts to transform division into action and focuses on
how communities can respond constructively to civil unrest as well as on how
they can identify and meaningfully address the reasons underlying community
division. Earlier this year the Project
published its first publications:
·
Key Considerations for Community Leaders Facing Civil Unrest:
Effective Problem-Solving Strategies That Have Been Used in Other Communities,
provides background information and expertise for local community leaders to
assist and strengthen their effectiveness in responding through collaborative
approaches to civil unrest. Key Considerations proposes six suggestions for
dealing with the immediate aftermath of a divisive incident and makes two
suggestions for longer-term strategies for addressing the causes of conflict.
·
Planning in Advance of Civil Unrest, offers
leaders a stepped process to plan in ways that will avert or deal
constructively with these divisive community events. Such a plan can help a
community deal effectively with community division. Planning in Advance
suggests eight strategies whereby communities can tackle division.
Both documents
are licensed using the Creative Commons so that (with attribution) they may be
copied, shared, adapted and tailored to fit the needs of a community or
interest group.
The Project
is pleased to announce that Grande Lum, Gould Research Fellow and
Lecturer at Stanford Law and former Director of the Justice Department’s Community Relations Service, has joined
Ohio State’s Divided Community Project as the Director.
