Conflict Management Initiative

We live in an increasingly complex world, one that sees individuals and groups move from one end of the globe to another, and organizations and companies shift and expand from one region to the next. We mix together and drift apart, sometimes peacefully, other times with great pain and distress. The Conflict Management Initiative, CMI, at UNC aims to provide the Carolina community with the tools necessary to bridge the gap between individuals, organizations, religions, and nations who view the world from a specific angle due to their beliefs, norms, activities, institutions, or communication patterns.

CMI was created in September 2016 by a group of UNC faculty and staff who work and teach in the field. For years there have been numerous professionals on campus involved in teaching and working in negotiation, mediation, facilitation, and arbitration but with little interaction. CMI allows these individuals to better understand each other’s work and to collaborate on future activities, projects, and grant applications, to share teaching methods, and more. In the long term, CMI aspires to become an Institute, which would support public events, visiting scholars, course development grants, manage communications for students, faculty, and the public, as well as to conduct workshops and to assist students with internship and job opportunities.

Housed in the Curriculum in Peace, War and Defense, formally housed under the Center for Global Initiatives, CMI’s goal is to be a hub on campus for academic teaching, academic research, skill-based training and community outreach in the field of conflict management. CMI aims to equip students, faculty, staff and members of the community with tangible skills necessary to not only cope with conflict, but to succeed in an interchanging world, one that necessitates an understanding of the cross-cultural times we live in.