The Transformative Approach to Mediation and Dispute Resolution

This informative and engaging program presents the “transformative model” of mediation that has gained considerable attention in recent years. This program will explain how this model of practice is unique in three ways: its interactional (rather than transactional) view of conflict; its profound commitment to party self-determination and agency; and its explicit linking of practice to a set of underlying beliefs about human beings. All three “dimensions” of the transformative model will be discussed in the program. A few of the many aspects of the program explore transforming weakness to empowerment, becoming deliberate rather than reactive, and moving from antipathy to empathy. 

Professor Bush’s scholarship and teaching focuses on mediation and alternative dispute resolution. He is one of the originators of the “Transformative Approach” to mediation, as explained in his best-selling book, The Promise of Mediation (1994, 2d ed. 2005), co-authored with Dr. Joseph Folger and translated into six languages. Bush has practiced, taught and written about mediation for over 40 years, authoring five books and more than thirty articles/chapters on mediation and ADR. His latest article is “Hiding in Plain Sight: Mediation and the Value of Human Agency.”  In 2017, Bush received (together with co-author and colleague Joseph Folger), the Association of Conflict Resolution’s “William Kreidler Award for Distinguished Service to the field of Conflict Resolution.”

Presenter:
Robert A. Baruch Bush, Rains Distinguished Professor of Alternative Dispute Resolution at the Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University and Co-Founder and Board Member of the Institute for the Study of Conflict Transformation