2020 has been a difficult year for many of us.  From the pandemic to shutdowns to political chaos, it has been challenging to find any sure footing.   Every time we think we've got the last crisis under control it seems a new one popped up in its place.  I'm guessing that our great-grandkids will one day ask us what it was like to live through the covid-19 crisis, and we’ll just shake our heads and say, “Well, it was a pretty rough time.”

Many South African Schools are facing demands to change and even to radically transform themselves. Some of these demands relate to the ‘isms’ such as racism, and other identity related issues. Schools are responding to the demands in different ways, some more successful than others. The following is one way to respond.

John Barkai has published a cartoon book with over 50 cartoons and 500 original captions on the topics of negotiation, mediation, and arbitration. The materials come from a cartoon captioning contest he ran for over 14 years for the ABA’s Dispute Resolution Magazine.

I am one of the founding coordinators of the Bangalore Mediation Centre, the Court annexed program of the High Court of Karnataka. A few months after we started the mediation program, a young advocate walked into my office and could not contain her excitement.

Nearly all mediations involve parties that view the same facts in a very different light.  But in a great many mediations, the parties go further:  they are convinced the other side is not taking its position in good faith, but rather is knowingly lying or engaging in some nefarious scheme. 

President John F Kennedy was visiting NASA headquarters for the first time in 1961. As he walked along, he introduced himself to a janitor mopping the floor and asked him what he was doing. The janitor replied I am helping put a man on the moon’.