Mission & Introduction

Mission

CU-CRN's mission is to establish Columbia University as the internationally recognized arena for cutting-edge, multidisciplinary work in conflict resolution, that emphasizes the theory-practice link.  The Network seeks to provide important opportunities for scholars and practitioners from various disciplines to collaborate on research, theory development, practical models, and conflict intervention. 

Introduction

CU-CRN is an interdisciplinary network of conflict resolution theorists and practitioners at Columbia University.  The Network was founded in 1997 by a voluntary group of faculty members from various schools and departments at Columbia University who were interested in conflict resolution.  The group met informally for more than two years to exchange ideas and insights in a broad-based multidisciplinary forum.  In August of 2000, Columbia University's central administration recognized and founded the Network through the Office of the Provost's Strategic Initiatives Program.  The Network was additionally endorsed in a letter written by the heads of four schools at Columbia including the School of International and Public Affairs, the School of Business, the School of Law and the Teachers College who actively support the Network.

The Network finds its direction and purpose in fulfilling two emerging and apparent needs in the Conflict Resolution field:

(1) The Need for Multidisciplinary Frameworks:  For over seventy years, members of the academic community have been conducting research aimed at enhancing understanding of conflict and developing more constructive methods of resolving it.  Currently, however, both scholarly and practical work in the field of conflict resolution faces two important challenges.  The first concerns the complexity of many social conflicts.  Because many of the significant conflicts that societies face are rooted in political, economic and social histories, and are fueled by social-psychological dynamics, the analysis and resolution of these conflicts cannot be reasonably conducted from any one disciplinary perspective. Rather, the resolution of these conflicts must be embedded in a multidisciplinary framework.  The traditional specialized training orientation within psychology, international relations, law, anthropology, and so on, lessens the chances for such an approach.  Combining traditional disciplinary paradigms and methodologies with multidisciplinary ones is a daunting task, but an essential one if the field of conflict resolution is going to offer effective solutions to the world’s most perplexing problems.

(2)The Theory & Practice Gap:  Second, there is a growing concern in the field of conflict resolution over the substantial “gap” which exists between theory and practice.  Many practitioners of conflict resolution dismiss the contributions of theorists and researchers, particularly when the research challenges their own opinions or methods.  At the same time, scholars often fail to utilize the expertise of highly skilled practitioners in their development of theory, and research designs often fail to take into account what practitioners and policy makers want or need to know.  In fact, a recent evaluation of the 18, mostly university-based, Hewlett Theory Centers found that the work of most practitioners surveyed had been largely unaffected by the important contributions generated by the various Centers (theory, publications, etc.).  At the same time, much of the research conducted at these Centers was found to be “removed from practice realities and constraints”.  This lack of effective collaboration between scholars and practitioners is problematic for the development of the field and a significant waste in such an applied area.