The conflict over whether Southern Methodist University should become the home of the President George W. Bush Library is being treated as a zero-sum game. In the graduate-level certificate program in dispute resolution that I completed at SMU, I was taught three applicable truths: Conflict is not inherently bad nor to be avoided at all costs. We are best able to resolve conflict in a healing way if we avoid inflammatory rhetoric. Creative problem solving seeks to enlarge the pie so all parties to the conflict come out ahead.
As a mediator, I am not a big fan of compromise – where everyone gives up something of value to them. I much prefer the integration of desire as articulated by Mary Parker Follett and published in “Dynamic Administration: The Collected Papers of Mary Parker Follett,” 1942. Mary Follett described a situation that, on the surface, provided no possibility of a win-win solution. When she entered a Harvard library reading room on a cold winter evening, she closed the window. Soon afterward, another student entered and opened the window. Obviously, the window had to be either open or closed. But the two students respected each other and were skillfully able to find a creative solution. After becoming fully aware of their own important needs and effectively communicating those to the other party, they observed that there was a connecting empty room with its own window. The gentleman student opened the window in that room slightly and the connecting door was left open. He got the fresh air he needed and Mary Follett was protected from a cold damp draft directly on her.
Does that story apply to the conflict over the inclusion of the Bush Institute as a package deal with the library and museum? Is there a possibility for an integration of desire where all concerned can get their most essential needs met? I believe I have the embryo of a solution that could become a gift to SMU, the nation and the world.
Imagine, if you will, a building that houses both the Bush Institute and the SMU Institute for the Study and Promotion of Human Rights and Peaceful Diplomacy. A major goal of this twin kinship would be the fostering of respectful dialogue and an end to demonizing the opposition. All facilities in the building except for private offices would be shared – including the restrooms, elevators, cafeteria, gym, you name it.
The SMU Department of Dispute Resolution would be invited to become a third-party participant by hosting periodic public mediations of the most pressing issues of the day. In those exchanges, a major goal would be to find areas of common ground. Experts in the field of international negotiations such as Roger Fisher would be invited to moderate those dialogues – as well as SMU’s own distinguished faculty.
The huge sums of money that will become available to the Bush Institute is seen as threatening by some opponents. That problem can be easily solved if both parties would be willing to divide all donations to either institute with its twin. Both slices of pie increase in size as either slice grows.
Surely the issues facing humankind are too serious for the academic world to continue to become more and more divided. Let us have the benefit of the respectful recognition of differences of opinion and a search for common ground.
It is not possible for me to see how such an arrangement could violate the Social Creed of the United Methodist Church nor bring anything but credit and God’s blessing upon SMU.
Charles R. Hogge, Jr.
