How to Design, Organize, and Facilitate Dialogues over Difficult, Divisive, and Dangerous Issues

What are interest-based forms of conversation and discourse?  What higher order skills do we require for democracy to work?  How do we design, organize and facilitate dialogues and meaningful discussions of highly contentious, values-based topics without degenerating into pointless diatribes? What are the limits of collaboration and mediation in conflict?  How do we respond democratically and humanely to authoritarian and inhumane actions? How do we build trust between adversaries in difficult circumstances where time is limited, history is long, and positions have hardened? What can interest-based approaches to conflict teach us about hot political conflicts?  What is politics, and what are the components of political conflict? So many questions, so few answers – yet ones we will seek to answer.