Diversity in ADR Task Force Meeting: The Divided Community Project

Presented by CPR Institute's Diversity in ADR Task Force

The Diversity in ADR Task Force was joined by four members of the Divided Community Project (DCP), a multi-pronged racial equity program housed at The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law. Our guest speakers included Thomas Battles, Lead Mediator of the DCP's Bridge Initiative @ Mortiz; William E. Froehlich, Deputy Director of DCP, and Langdon Fellow in Dispute Resolution at The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law; Grande Lum, Chair of DCP's Steering Committee, and former Director of DCP; and Nancy Rogers, Professor Emeritus at the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law, and former Ohio Attorney General.

Our guests discussed how collaborative race equity initiatives are emerging in communities across the country and their various forms including truth and reconciliation, coalitions to dismantle racism, reparations, diversity commitments, and implicit bias and cultural competency training. In this context we discussed DCP’s April 2020 report A Practical Guide to Planning Initiative for working Together to Advance Racial Equity, which urges communities to take multi-pronged, sequenced, collaborative problem-solving approaches to addressing racial equity. The Divided Community Project is currently soliciting feedback for the 2nd edition of their report on how corporate and business stakeholders might constructively become involved with multi-layered approaches to addressing racial equity.

Learn more about the Divided Community Project from their paper, Sharing Dispute Resolution Practices with Leaders of a Divided Community or Campus: Strategies for Two Crucial Conversations, the winner of CPR’s 2021 Professional Article Award.