March 17, 2025 • 50 mins
The December 2024 conflict index by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data initiative reported that global conflicts have doubled over the past five years. Now more than ever, we need experts in conflict analysis and peacebuilding. And George Mason University is ready to meet that call.
On this episode of Access to Excellence, President Gregory Washington is joined by Marc Gopin, the James H. Laue Professor of World Religions, Diplomacy and Conflict Resolution in George Mason’s Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution, to discuss the art of diplomacy by building one relationship at a time and creating a shared vision of peace
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Trailblazers in research,innovators in technology,
and those who simply have a good story:
all make up the fabric thatis George Mason University.
We're taking on the grand challengesthat face our students, graduates;
and higher education is ourmission and our passion.
Hosted by Mason PresidentGregory Washington,
this is the Access to Excellence podcast.
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The December,
2024 conflict index by the ArmedConflict Location and Event
Data nitiative reportedthat global conflicts
have doubled over the past five years.
Now more than ever,
we need experts in conflictanalysis and peace building,
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and George Mason is ready for that call.
Mark Gopin is the James H Laue
Professor of World Religions,Diplomacy, and Conflict Resolution,
and a director of the Centerfor World Religions, Diplomacy,
and Conflict Resolution at George Mason's,
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Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Schoolfor Peace and Conflict Resolution.
He's a prolific writerand accomplished speaker,
and has trained thousands ofpeople worldwide in peace building
strategies for complex conflicts. Mark,
welcome to the show.
Thank you. It's a pleasureto see you again and be here.
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In 1983,
you were ordained as a rabbiat the Yeshiva University.
Were you always interestedin pursuing rabbinical study?
I've been studying since I wasfive years old in private school,
and I was particularly motivated todo intensive study with my elders.
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I had master teachers who weremaster teachers of Talmud,
but also PhDs from the Universityof Berlin in philosophy.
So I was always fascinated by thecombination of secular wisdom and secular
science and religious traditionsgoing back thousands of years.
So I just totally immersed in thatfrom the time I was kind of little.
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Well, I always see thosewho learn the word,
so to speak,
you learn it from the perspectiveof being able to teach it, right,
to spread it to others. Butsomething had to move you,
to inspire you to move fromreligious leadership into
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activism and teaching. So canyou talk a little bit about that?
Well, that's an interesting question.I think there are multiple motivations.
I did grow up in a community that wasboth very provincial and very worldly at
the same time. I grew up in Boston.
I grew up in a community where manyof my teachers were survivors of the
Holocaust. I was keenly aware ofwar and its effects on people.
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My father was in the militaryin World War II, my uncles.
So I was very aware of globalevents and yet also was nurtured in
a very quiet space of religious people,
but also doctors and healers.
And so I guess from the influenceof the doctors and the philosophers
and the people experience thehorror of genocide, I became very,
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very interested in what bringssocieties to the point of destruction
and what brings them tothe point of redemption.
Because I grew up at a time when the verysame society that had committed such a
massive war crime and killed 40million people, uh, in World War II,
became a leading democracy.
I'm speaking aboutGermany and Japan as well.
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And so the question of how people changeand why they descend into absolute
barbarism at some times and whythey become within a generation,
the the leaders of democracy, itfascinated me about the human nature.
What does it say about human nature?
Where can we go in order to movehuman nature towards compassion and
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enlightenment andrationality versus barbarity?
And that was always the choice that I was,
from the time I was little looking atthese beautiful survivors of the Holocaust
all the way to the science and philosophythat I studied. I said, you know,
this is global. This isway beyond my community.
And so I have to make a commitmentto globally look at this and actually
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practice experimentationwith people in war zones.
And that's what drove me to war zonesby the time I was in my twenties.
I've been looking forward tothis conversation for some time.
It's because this one is so timelyrelative to what's happening
globally as we speak.
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So you pioneered peace buildingwork across the Middle East,
which is a confluence of three majorworld religions, Christianity, Islam,
and Judaism.
And so what role doesreligion play in developing
conflict as well as resolving conflict?
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And given your rabbinical background,there's a very strong connection there.
Well,
I came to have a very healthy respect forthe fact that religion is a passionate
catalyst of the best ofus and the worst of us.
It becomes a tool of enlightenment inthe hands of those who are rooted in
compassion and a capacity tolisten to many narratives at once.
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And then it also becomes a tool ofrage and apocalyptic rage when people
are so wounded that they look to thereligion and they find what they need to
find in the religion in order tojustify an extremist or violent
a direction. What I started to see wasa pattern around the world from Judaism,
Christianity to Islam, to Buddhism,
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and to Shintoism and Hinduism.Everywhere you looked,
this double-edged sword ofreligion said to me that this is a
potential to help in diplomacy,
not just be a danger for society.
So there has to be conflictresolution and conflict healing.
And I focus on healing verymuch from my background,
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that conflict healing needs to takeplace between secular and religious
segments of society,
between liberal and conservative inorder that religion should not be
utilized and weaponized by thosewho are angry or destructive
and lack a self-examining capacity.
One of the things that I've emphasizedin my writings and in my experiments in
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the field is that self-examinationis the key to enlightenment.
So it's not true just ona philosophical level.
It's true at the level of conflictmanagement, conflict resolution,
negotiations, self-examinationis everything.
And there are religiousfoundations of that,
and there are secular foundationsof that, of those capacities,
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the psychosocial healing.
So I started to see that people are makinga mistake of religion versus society
or religion versus secularism,
and that the two could be alliesif they are understood properly in
all of their manifestations, thepositive manifestations and the negative,
just like secular, uh, there's apositive manifestation of capitalism.
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There's a negative manifestation.
No, I understand. I understand. You know,
that kind of opens upa different question.
We often have this discussion of Israeli,
a person who's Jewish, and aperson who's Zionist, right?
I'm one of the belief that thereare differences between the three.
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Can you talk a little bitabout what those mean from the
perspective of the modern state of Israel?
Well, this is where weget into identity studies,
and my colleagues and I at Carter Schoolfocus on identity and religion and
culture, and they interactquite a bit, and they're fluid.
So we have to accept thefact that for some people,
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Christianity means one kindof identity or another.
And it's the same inJudaism. For some people,
their Judaism is wrappedup in practice, in, uh,
ritual, in ethics.
Their Judaism is ethical monotheism,
their Judaism is the observanceof the Sabbath. For others,
their Judaism is wrapped up indefending the Jewish people or building
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the Jewish people into a flourishingentity that can be safe in a post
holocaust world. For such people,
the state of Israel becomes partof their religious identity.
For other people, it's a mixture.
And there are many very religiouspeople for whom the state of Israel is
important in terms of saving Jewish lives.
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But it's not the expression of Jewishidentity. It's a state. Others,
a lot of young people today arevery critical of the state for its
policies, and some of them arein Israel, some of them are here,
and their identity, their Jewish identity,
is much more complex and nuancedthan saying they're either Zionist or
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anti-Zionist. Everybody's choosing,it's a very fractious people.
But I used to think that there was moreuniformity in Christianity. There isn't,
I used to think that in Islam therewas clear uniformity. There is not.
People are identifying and definingtheir religion all the time,
and they're evolving in that.There's a very big evolution,
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even in my own lifetime, wherenow 50% of Jews live in Israel,
are Israeli citizens, but 50% are not.
50% include lots of people in Russia,in Ukraine, on two sides of war,
mostly in Ukraine. There are 5million American Jews: a very,
very tiny people with very,
very different opinions about wheredoes the state of Israel fit into their
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identity.
It's been a year, over a year now,
since the events of October 7thand the most recent outbreak of
violence between Palestine and Israel.
As of the recording ofthis particular podcast,
the ceasefire has held, continues to hold.
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You're seeing the exchangeof hostages on both sides.
There's so many opinions onhow the conflict between Israel
and Palestine should be resolved.And as an expert in peace building,
from the perspective of peace building,
what is something you wishpeople understood about this long
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standing conflict?
I wish people understood howmany thousands of Israelis and
Palestinians have worked oncoexistence and a two-state
solution and equality forover a half a century.
I wish people understoodthat there were many,
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many viable solutions other than the total
destruction that's envisionedby extremists on either side of
the other side. They dominate the news,
just like violence always dominatesthe news. But unfortunately,
information systems anddigital ecosystems have come to
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radicalize all of us in thinking thereare only violent solutions to things
because fear sells the digitalecosystem. But I can tell you,
because I witnessed itand I participated in,
I created for 40 yearsan incredible number of
idealistic Israelis andPalestinians who work together.
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Many of them live together.There's actually a village,
a very vibrant community south, uh,
near Jerusalem called Oasisof Peace, Neve Shalom.
And there are many otherexperiments in coexistence and many
people who fought for equality inIsrael and also that build bridges.
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I also went between the enemy sides,even in the height of wars and bombings,
and we were always overwhelmedby outsiders who were
funding the extremists.
Christian extremists were funding thesettlers and Jewish extremists, of course,
and then the funders of Islamicextremism were funding the radical
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groups that undermine the secularPalestinian idea of a democratic state.
And that still holds.
I wish people could realize thatbecause then they wouldn't think in
extreme solutions.
They would realize that wehave to do the hard work of
reconciliation and building relationshipsin every country that wants to
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remain a democracy. Heretoo, it's the same analogy.
You can't just legislate,
you can't just have a couple ofpieces of civil rights legislation.
You have to build relationships,one community, one church at a time,
and that peace buildingmoney is not there.
It's not there for people-to-peoplerelationship building because the
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powers that be did not take it seriously.
So I wish people would know that thiscould have gone very, very differently.
Now, we're in a state ofcatastrophe, but in the darkest days,
you always want to know what's possible.
We never thought a half a yearago that Syria would ever recover.
I've worked for 20 years in Syria withmy Syrian friends and inside Syria,
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in a police state, in the worstgenocide imaginable--500,000 dead,
12 million removed from theirhomes, tens of thousands tortured.
And here we are witha mass return to Syria
of extraordinary Syrian citizens in theworst dictatorship in the world after
North Korea.
So to say that it's impossibleto achieve coexistence
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between Palestinians and Israelisis to have a lack of imagination.
And that's what I want people to realize.
Things can always change in the blinkof an eye with the right leadership and
the right new ideas.
That is great food for thought.
There are so many opinions on howthe conflict should be resolved,
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right? And there havebeen previous ceasefires.
So why do you think theseprevious ceasefires failed?
Is it this lack of imaginationpiece you're talking,
is it the external influences?
Yeah, on all sides. On thePalestinian side, on the Israeli side,
on the American side,on the European side,
there was a tendency to disempowerpeople-to-people, relationships.
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They did fund some of that relationships.
There are many good efforts that havebeen funded by the United States,
but it was too controlledfrom the top with very narrow
agendas to what would be allowed andwhat would be acceptable. In my mind...I,
I never saw a single grant for Palestinianand Israeli cab drivers to speak to
each other.
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I never saw a single major grantfor thousands of women to relate
to each other across enemy lines, whichis what turned the tide in Liberia,
for example.
That's exactly right.
And so in many countries in the world,
there are surprising constituencies thatwhen you allow them to speak to each
other and build relationships,
they have the solutions thatthe wealthy elites don't have,
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or the military elites don'thave for lack of imagination.
We need to invest much,
much more in average peopleto build relationships.
And we have done that in otherparts of the world. For example,
after World War ii, the Franco-Germanrelationship had been, uh,
two countries that had been at war witheach other for a thousand years on and
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off. And now a Franco-Germanwar is inconceivable.
So history does change withpeople-to-people businesses,
relationships. Manynationalists I've come across,
many people who really can't standthe other side say to me, you know,
I'll do some business with them. I, I'vehad very fanatical people say to me,
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I'll come on one yeartrips to do some business.
So business sometimes is...wherereconciliation cannot be,
but business can be thelink. Sometimes it's sports,
sometimes it's other kinds ofpsychosocial healing or therapy,
music, et cetera.
But what we did for 40 years is thatwe did it only for very wealthy kids,
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chosen carefully from each side. Andwe didn't really get to the grassroots,
to the refugee camps. I workedin refugee camps in Syria.
I worked in refugee camps.
I brought Mason classes manytimes to refugee camps in Turkey,
refugee camps in Palestine. And our work,
our great work of relationshipbuilding, it didn't reach those places.
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And that's exactly wherethe extremists recruit.
They recruit from the people whoare really dumped on by all sides.
How can Palestine, Israel, andthe Middle East move forward?
There are current discussions,and I'm gonna ask you about those,
but first I want to get yourtake on, you know, look,
we are where we are. What'sthe move forward from here?
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Well, if I could wavea magic wand, I mean,
the way forward from here would bea deep investment in the Palestinian
authority that isreformed. In other words,
Abbas is pressured to create ayounger generation of leadership.
I was just in Ramallah not long ago,
and it suffers from the factthat a group of very aged men,
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a very small group,
are in total control and young leadershipis not allowed to move forward.
That young leadership hasprescriptions for how both secular
and religious Palestinianscould unite into one state,
how they could control the terrorists,and then build relationships,
which they already had yearsago with the Israeli leadership,
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with the Israeli military.
If they were all willing togive this a go to eliminate
Hamas from the area, tobuild trust, build respect,
apologies for harm done on all sides.
October 7th was the worst Jewishatrocity since the Holocaust.
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And it's unimaginable howmuch suffering has spread.
The amount of missiles that kept peoplein shelters in the north of Israel and
the south, the hundreds of thousands ofpeople, it changed people for the worst.
So there's apologies for that.
And then there's apologies for what isdone on a regular basis in the use of
excessive force in Gaza in other places.
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This can be arranged if theparties and the Gulf states
are willing to allow peopleto speak for themselves.
And that's the consensus that we need.
And I believe the Palestinian authorityis waiting there as a potential partner
for Israelis who are readyfor a two-state solution.
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That's not the current leadership,
but I believe that with astrong third party presence,
we could push that.
We could insist on building a partnershipwith Palestinians who are willing
to make a deal in order tokeep the rule of law and build
safety and security for everycitizen on all sides. And in the end,
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it's going to have to be a Jewish state,
a Jewish majority state that hasequal rights for Palestinian citizens.
Don't forget, there are 2 millionPalestinian citizens of Israel.
And then the state of Palestine isgoing to have to be a state with Jewish
citizens who remain a minority,
but who are protected in waysthat are clearly guaranteed as
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equal citizens.
And that is a formula that couldalso re-envision Gaza as well.
Both sides need to get used tocoexistence. There's no way around it,
but we have to build with peoplewho are serious and willing.
And I think they exist on both sides.
Okay, well, well, let's take the current
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conflict that's on the table.
We're in agreement that somethinghas to happen now, right?
At some point you get to an outcome where
you have settled on what'shappened with the hostages,
right?
Right.
Folk have been released onboth sides. And at that point
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you have to start talking aboutwhat is the future of Gaza.
I think, sorry.
And so, and so, what happens then? What,
what do you think willhappen at that stage?
Because that stage is most likely coming.
The antecedents of this is thatIran, which is a rogue state,
took advantage, and Russiawas happy to participate,
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in an arc of power stretching acrossthe Middle East all the way to Lebanon.
That has now been decimatedby the Israeli defense forces,
particularly thedestruction of he Hezbollah.
And that created a chain reactionto release Syria from a, that--
That's how Syria--
Dictatorship.
That's how Syria fell.
Right. So this is an opportunityfor the Gulf states that are
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publicly, and I believe sincerely,anti-Hamas, anti-terrorism.
And that includes the UAE, and itincludes the present Saudi Arabia.
I believe this is an opportunity forthem to work with the Israelis and work
with the Palestinian authority on therebuilding of Gaza together with the
Europeans. And I believeit can be rebuilt for Gaza.
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And I believe it can be the basisfor a two-state process that will
give Palestine a seaport, it'llgive them a lot of wealth.
Eventually that could beinvested in by everyone.
It could be the seeds of renewal ofthe dream of a two-state solution
if Palestinians are treated equally,
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and if the Gulf States and Israel andthe King of Jordan and others guide a
process of rebuildingthis for Palestinians.
It's not such a terrible thingif a few Jews wanna live there.
This is where everybody'sgotta get, you know,
there are 2 million Palestiniansliving in Israel with citizenship.
It's not terrible if a few religiousIsraelis wanna live in Gaza.
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These are not terrible things as longas there's equality and safety and
security for all. And I believethat this wiping of the slate clean,
this total destructioncould be the opportunity.
And maybe President Trump isgonna get tired of dealing with
belligerence on all sides and say, yeah,I'm, this was just my opening gambit.
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And then people start comingforward with alternatives,
which hasn't happened yet.Said, yeah, that's it.
He often will say outrageous thingsin order to stimulate change. Right,
right. And then he claim, thenhe claims credit for it. So,
so what was agreed to in, in Canada, look.
And look, if it works, it works, right?
Yeah. What it, what it workedin Canada is that they,
they agreed to what Biden hadalready agreed to,
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and then that was the solutionto the tariff problem.
So if this is a game of threatening andtherefore achieving some real change,
uh, that would be a wonderful outcome,a surprising outcome. But it's possible.
The slate was cleaned and wiped,
unbelievable destruction in World War ii,
and yet Germany and Franceand many fascist countries
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rose to become leading democracies.
We have to believe that human changeis possible because it's not a fantasy,
it's actually a neuroscience reality.
You can shift your brain anytimeyou want. And, and with leadership,
we can do that.
So what happens to Hamas?
Hamas is a tool of Iran and,
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Iran--eventually that regimemust fall because the vast
majority of Iranians inside andoutside Iran want that regime to fall.
The question is how to do it with theleast amount of human destruction.
There's a lot of consensus on that.
The last thing to do is to give them areason to be the great saviors of the
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Middle East with keeping terrorismalive to fight the Wicked Israel.
And you do that by a bipartisan,
multipartisan collaborationfor rebuilding.
Then it delegitimizes thedestructive solutions,
and that's gonna weaken Iran.
And eventually their people are gonnatake to the streets and never leave.
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That's a separate question,
but I believe the way to do this isto weaken the current Iranian regime
by creating a multipartisanapproach to rebuilding Gaza.
Interesting, interesting. I had neverheard that concept before. And so that's,
that's a good one.
The majority of people in Gaza,
by the latest polls that were donebefore the destruction were all against
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Hamas. It was 80% against Hamas.
But as there were more violations inthe West Bank from the IDF and from
settlers, then people wereshifting towards Hamas.
But those who have lived underHamas hate Hamas, the majority,
and we have to give them voicetoo, as to what they want.
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George Mason's Center forWorld Religions, Diplomacy, and
Conflict Resolution holds severalglobal education programs for students
to see the impact ofconflicts around the world.
Studies include Bosnia and Turkey,
Northern Ireland, Israeland Palestine, and Jordan.
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What is the value in studentsdirectly engaging with the
people and places of conflict?
Well, we have a good 40 years oftheory development and conflict
analysis, conflict management,conflict anticipation,
my own theories that I'vebuilt on conflict, healing, compassionate reasoning.
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All of these things are wonderful,
but theory is helpless withoutpractice Theory is only
built by practitioners who thenreflected on their own actions.
Every generation of young peopleneeds to build for themselves
their own exposure to what itis to be in a refugee camp,
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what it is to have empathyand pain from two sides,
where does vision come from,and a focus on the future.
My next book is on future healing,
because future and vision is aremarkable part of the brain that builds
rationality. It builds ethical principles.
All of this cannot beappreciated without sitting
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with traumatized kids who are goingthrough a wonderful program in Jordan
on healing from what theywitnessed as refugees.
So the programs in Jordan and Turkey wereall with Syrian refugees, for example.
And before that, I knewthe Syrians before 2011,
worked in Damascus for manyyears on public diplomacy.
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But then we shifted towards refugeework with children and women, et cetera.
So when I take students to these places,
they say that this is the mostimportant moment of their lives.
People have changed careers over thisbecause to immerse yourself in a conflict
zone is to change your perspectiveon the nature of the world.
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I try to steer them toward it not beingtraumatizing and toward it being a
concrete exploration of whatthey can do that's meaningful.
Many of us are searching allthe time for meaningful life.
And that's where the studentsfind that in that practice.
They immediately start writing paperson what we could do back in Chicago,
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in the educational systemand many other places,
'cause conflict is a partof life in every place.
And now we have major American conflict,
and we need exactly the skills thatwe have practiced in violent conflict
zones. We need them right backhere. And the United States,
and I specifically direct the studentson a regular basis, say, okay,
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you see what's happeninghere, let's extrapolate.
You see that incredibly resilientperson helping the kids.
What do you think theirbest characteristics are?
And how could you apply that elsewhere?
It's a constant inquiry andexposure to the real world.
You know, we deal withconflict constantly,
global conflicts between nationsto interpersonal conflicts
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between friends, family,and other acquaintances.
And sometimes it feelslike conflict is such a
natural component of ourlives, that it's inevitable.
What strategies from solvinglarge scale global conflicts,
can be applied to the smaller scale
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conflicts that people are dealingwith in their everyday life?
Well,
what we discovered is that all the thingsthat work in the height of war also
have remarkable effects, positiveeffects inside family life,
inside all relationships.
So when French and Swiss andGerman people were trying to
hide Holocaust survivors frombeing shot or being killed,
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they had to develop an abilityto both have empathy but not be
destroyed by the empathy.
They had to find a visionary wayto figure out one step at a time
what could be done. If you rememberthe movie Schindler's List,
on the possibility of change onthe fact that even a perpetrator
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and a criminal and a crook could turnaround and become, uh, like an angel.
And that belief in repentance,
that belief in change issomething that works in violent
war, but it works infamilies. The belief that,
I don't see it rightnow, but the belief that,
I don't know who it is in the family,
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but we have to always hold outwith a compassionate hand to the
possibility of evolution and change.
It also requires a lot of moral reasoning.
And I write a lot about the skills ofseeing everybody's ethical position.
And that's very important in family life,
is that even when you disagreewith somebody's moral position,
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you look for the principle thatthey're guided by. You say, you know,
that's not fair. Well, what's yourprinciple here? What's your theory?
And it works.
So I have a series of stepsthat involve listening skills,
the use of the word, the useof the deed, imagination,
and the use of imagination in a jointway...basically simple questions.
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One police officer who thenbecame a chief of police in
Massachusetts, said to me, once hesaved somebody's life who had a knife,
he was in a domestic violence situation,he had every right to shoot him.
And then he thought tohimself, he protected himself.
And then he asked the knife wieldingfellow who was out of control,
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he said to them this, he said,
"how are we gonna get outta heretoday so that we both get back to our
families?"
So what that chief of police saidwas that he stimulated the brain
with a question, not with anattack, not "you stupid guy,
what's wrong with you?" You know,
"how could you hold that knife to somebodyyou love?" It's "how can we get out
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of this?
How can we get out of this to back tofamily?" And that brought out the best in
the criminal. He dropped theknife and he was very sorrowful.
Really?
Yeah.
It worked that easily.
It just worked like a magic becausehe shifted his brain away from rage
and counteraction and humiliationand shame and defiance to how
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do we get to tomorrow?
It just had a remarkable effecton reshifting his brain towards a
vision of himself in tomorrow. Thathas a remarkable impact on many,
many simple fights in families, isjust to ask people and say, okay,
I hear you. Let's stop the tit fortat. What do you wanna do? Like, how,
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how are we gonna be a a familyin two years from now? What,
what would you like it to be?What does it look like to you?
I do a lot of neuroscience study now.
And so that stimulates what...?
It stimulates the default networkof the frontal cortex that focuses
on vision and imagination and planningfor things that are not yet there.
And that is related to compassionmore than the amygdala,
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which is related to rage andresentment. So when you shift people,
when you start swearing at people, itstimulates their amygdala. You know,
you say a swear, they say a swear,
and it's like your amygdalasare talking to each other.
It's useless 'cause it justdescends. But if you say,
how are we gonna live together?What do you think we should do?
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And you authenticallyare asking a question,
then suddenly the default networkof the prefrontal cortex gets in,
and your compassionate sense ofhow can we both get to the future?
How can we live together?What is it gonna look like?
How can we both take care of mom together?
That reformulates thebrain towards the future.
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And it's not a simple path, but it'sfar less violent, it's far less angry,
it's far less vengeful, and it'svery much focused on compassion.
I call it compassionate reasoning.
And there is actual neuroscienceproof for this in the
work of Olga Klimecki on theneural pathways of compassion that
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are closer to reasoning.
Well, speaking of that,that's your book, right?
Yeah.
And in your book,"Compassionate Reasoning",
you state that compassion is one ofthe most amazing and important emotions
and ethical principles that bringshealing and hope to human beings.
Compassion stimulates thebest biochemistry that
(34:29):
lowers your heart rate, thatlowers your blood pressure,
that lowers your body temperature.
Whereas rage increases your cortisol.
It makes you need to get outtathere, fight or flight. And empathy,
when you feel the pain ofanother, which is a good value,
it actually isn't very healthy becausethe more you feel the pain of the other,
(34:52):
the more it sends you into despair,
which is why a lot of the progressiveswho focus on pain and despair are
missing the boat on how to stimulatea bipartisan approach to the future.
So compassion though, is much morelike, how can we all be happy?
How can we all be safe?
Those kind of questions stimulatea very different focus that
(35:16):
is all-inclusive, moredemocratic. So basically,
compassion is an ally of medical health,
and it's an ally of democracy.
It focuses on a much moreall-inclusive approach to
pro-social relations,
and that part of the brain that's themost highly developed brain for solving
(35:37):
problems.
Well, I wanna shift gears a little bit.
You have given our audience alot to think about relative to
the Israeli, uh, Gaza conflict.
Let's talk about the USfor a moment. You know,
a common refrain nowadays ishow divided we are as a country.
(35:57):
Is there any hope for us as a country? Uh,
is there any hope to bridge thegaps between our differences and to
heal that divide? Right? If you goback and look at our history, we're,
we're almost as dividednow as we ever have been.
And so I'm interested inhearing your thoughts on that.
Well, this all comes down to leadership.
(36:18):
And I think there's been a failureof the two party system to create
common values and commonpolicies that do unite people.
And in this sense,
we're far too focused onparty identities and identity
identification with a bipolarparty system is a prescription
(36:40):
for civil war. There arecountries in Africa, for example,
that every four years they go to warbecause every four years they have an
election. The electionactually brings out the worst.
It's one country in particular becausethe tribes divide at that point,
who's gonna be the majority tribe, andthen they go back to normal afterwards.
So multiparties and multitribalism,
(37:00):
and Republican and Democrathave become tribes,
is the worst possible way toget policy moderation and new
policies and imagination. BernieSanders focused on policies,
and of course a lot of capitalistsare terrified of Bernie Sanders,
but he was the one that went downand worked with the religious right.
(37:22):
He spoke to the religious right.
He was able to cut acrossthe boundaries of identity.
I've had politicalleaders say to me, I said,
why don't you talk to more rural people?
Why don't you engage the ruralcommunity? Uh, these were progressives.
They said, what would be the point?
That's exactly the opposite ofthe conflict resolution skills.
We have seen work aroundthe world. Around the world,
(37:46):
engagement changesconsciousness and for, uh,
liberals to work with ruralwhites, with young white people,
and to hear them both wealthy and poor,
and for people on the moreconservative side who are terrified of
the violence that's going on, tolisten and engage progressives,
(38:11):
those skills and moderating thosekind of conversations and building
with imagination andcompassion, some third ways,
that's gonna be the key to theUnited States. It's happened before.
I think it can happen again.
So I hear you saying, and,and I'm, I'm gonna ask it,
could compassionatereasoning be a solution here?
(38:34):
When I frame all of these things,I mean compassionate reasoning.
I mean that the more that you humanizea relationship with people who you are
afraid of,
you develop compassion and then youmorally reason together on the things you
can agree on. And it turns outAmericans agree on many things.
They agree on the criticalimportance of freedom. Well,
(38:55):
how would that express itself? Whatcan we agree on in terms of freedom?
What does it mean to us? And you buildslowly policies that are bipartisan,
and then you lobby for bipartisanpolicies. Let's say civil rights.
A lot of people agree inprinciple to equal civil rights.
You wouldn't think that withall the rhetoric flying around,
(39:17):
but all it was was legislation.We legislated civil rights,
we legislated that people should beequal. Well, it doesn't work that way.
It works that way onlythrough relationships,
only through compassionate reasoning.In every church, in every synagogue,
in every community. And then you figureout what equality will look like.
(39:39):
But in the end,
legislation only goes so far inbuilding trust and positions with people
on education. You have to doit one relationship at a time.
I would like to see in the future,
millions of dollars go into relationshipbuilding between people of different
political points of view in this country.
We have never taken civilrights to that level of
(40:03):
deep relationship building. Ithink that's the key to the future.
It is compassionate reasoning.It is conflict healing.
I don't care about the label. I mean, Idon't need my label to be on anything.
It's more about the relationshipsand shared reasoning and
building a point of view thatthere are people on the other side,
(40:24):
and I have those relationships.That's how I survived in Syria.
That's how I did workin Afghanistan and Iran.
That's how I did work in IsraelPalestine for 40 years on both sides,
running across borders all the time.
Because you have to embody itin yourself to be able to listen
to multiple narratives and tosay to all of those narratives,
(40:47):
how can I help? How canI help Jewish identity?
How can I help Palestinian identity?
How can I help you get backto being a proud Republican?
How can I get you to get backto being a proud Virginian?
What does it mean to be a proud Virginian?
Wouldn't that be a wonderful conversation?
What does it mean to be a statesman?
Yeah, that's great. You know.
You, you, you get what I'm saying?
(41:07):
Yeah.
These are the kinds of thingsthat we gotta get back to.
I think you are hittingthe nail right on the head.
So it's a question whichis good for the brain,
and it's a vision whichis good for the brain,
and it's enticing in terms ofreturning to something optimistic.
And Marty Seligman's work on optimism,
Stephen Pinker's work onoptimism suggests that optimism
(41:31):
is far more--Jane Goodall'swork on this--it's far more embedded in human nature
than we realize.
We just have to get control of thedigital information systems because
people have divided us accordingto the digital ecosystems,
which is an AI question.
And I have some ideas on that in termsof the algorithms of what we should...
(41:51):
Well, well, well, let's you know,well, let's talk about that.
Technology and technological advancesare changing the nature of conflict,
right? We know this. Accordingto the United Nations,
artificial intelligence and machinelearning have the potential to enhance
cyber, physical, and biologicalattacks. By making 'em more targeted,
(42:12):
more accessible, andactually harder to trace.
We've seen now mass communications and
engagement through socialmedia frameworks and the like.
We know that bots and other
artificial-like entitieshave exacerbated, uh,
(42:34):
some of those conflicts, right?Have been used to inflame people.
How do we flip that? Right? Becausewhat can be used for negativity,
what can be used for disruption,
can actually be used to buildpeople up? So, how do you do that?
So I'm working with trying to influencepeace tech people on this very subject,
(42:56):
people who work on the algorithmsof conversations globally.
I believe that with the right words, see,
just like words are used to harmand words are used to polarize,
words are also used tobind people together.
So there are ways to steer globalconversations in more constructive
directions and buildingrelationships across enemy lines with
(43:20):
algorithms that you put in, in a subtleway, and that you keep repeating.
People in the businessschool, people in advertising,
people in information technology,they know this very well.
We have to create thistechnology together.
We can even make it profitable. Let'ssay a company wants feedback from their,
their employees.
(43:41):
You can make a tech thatencourages algorithms of
can-do optimism. Theydon't cover up things,
but they simply shift conversationstowards what's possible and what's better.
That's a technology and a skillthat we can insert into our
AI requests. I do it all the time withAI. I ask positive questions. I ask,
(44:05):
what is I ask for good news? You know?
And every day I try to fill my headwith some of the new good news,
like for example,
that the bee population of the worldis rising for the first time in many,
many years,
which is the key to the survival ofall of our fruits and vegetables.
I look for the fact that many ofthe patches of plastic across, uh,
(44:27):
the ocean in five years could becompletely sucked in by new technology
that could take it out of the ocean.There are many exciting discoveries,
and those discoveries are a way,
if we insert that into theAI aspects of our algorithmic
digital ecosystems,
I think those ecosystems aregonna stimulate young people,
(44:49):
especially to new ideas andnew possibilities that are, uh,
the opposite of polarizationand fragmentation.
If we can do that withAmerican kids, American kids,
and we keep politics out of it,
you're gonna see a tremendousamount of excitement,
especially if it creates jobsor if it creates companies that
(45:11):
makes political polarization alittle bit more silly, immature,
and a waste of time.
So if you can redirect people's energytowards things that are not polarizing,
I think you can do that with AI.
I think you can do thatwith global conversations.
And we could think about what wouldbe those conversations. For example,
(45:32):
Mason has so many different campusesand we have different point--political
points of view.
What would be the conversations that wouldyield the most positive feedback that
would yield the most participationwith people of multiple backgrounds?
And then how would we reinforcethat and make it move forward?
That's an interestingquestion for information tech,
(45:53):
and for the business and marketing, andfor conflict analysis and resolution.
As I wrap up here, I have one finalquestion. In your TEDx talk at Berkeley,
you pose the question where and how we
become good despite theworst of circumstances, where
(46:16):
and how we become gooddespite the worst of
circumstances, which in some cases,especially in Palestine and Israel,
that's kind of what we have now, haveyou found an answer to that question?
And if so, what is it?
I forgot how you had asked that question.And I like it. Not surprisingly,
(46:38):
my experience with the wisdom traditions,
all the way from stoicism toBuddhism, to Dalai Lama's wisdom and,
and then the secular philosophies,
and now the neuroscience and especiallyis seen through cognitive therapy,
that it's the smallest memesand the smallest statements
(46:59):
that guide people in a directionthat's less destructive towards more
constructive. So for example,
some people have memorizedlove your neighbor as yourself.
Some people have memorized thateveryone is created in the image of God.
Some people have memorized, I seethis in cabs all over the Middle East,
that Allah made everyone diverse inorder that we can come to know each
(47:22):
other. Almost every cab driverknows that verse from the Quran.
So what matters when you'refaced with misery and horror
is what can you train yourself toflash in front of somebody's mind?
And that has a lot to do withkindergartens and education and public
advertising and whatwe choose to make the,
(47:43):
the essential wisdom piecesof what it is to be human.
I think we have to pay moreattention to that and to think about
repetition and repetitionof truly deep inclusive
truths. What is it to be a democracy?
And you have five or six thingsthat you say, you know, uh,
(48:04):
quotes from Lincoln or, or othersor from the Gettysburg address. You,
we simply have to workharder at those memes,
those things that occur to us naturally.This is what it is to be an American.
This is what it is to be American.This is what it is to be a Christian.
Love your neighbor as yourself. Great,but what is it to be an American?
(48:25):
How do we bind as an American?
We don't have enough American civiceducation that comes down to those core
teachings. Uh, and I think we can,
and I think it'll create a shared ethics.
The postmodernism andenlightenment is great,
but we also lost a lot of common ethics.
We can build those ethics with basictruths that we can all agree to
(48:49):
that are catchy,
that can roll around in the brainand roll around in conversations.
This is what it is tobe American. You know,
I think we have enough bipartisaninstincts on that to recapture that
and then move it forward to build.Okay. What then? What do we do together?
So you keep asking questions,building on those wonderful values.
(49:11):
Outstanding. Outstanding. Well, we'regonna have to leave it there. Marc,
thank you for your tirelesswork to build peace
both around the worldand in our own backyard.
I am George Mason UniversityPresident Gregory Washington.
(49:33):
Thanks for listening.
And tune in next time for moreconversations that show why we are
all together different.
If you like what youheard on this podcast,
go to podcast.gmu.edu formore of Gregory Washington's
conversations with thethought leaders, experts,
and educators who take onthe grand challenges facing our students and graduates
(49:58):
in higher education.That's podcast.gmu.edu.
Trailblazers in research,innovators in technology,
and those who simply have a good story:
all make up the fabric thatis George Mason University.
We're taking on the grand challengesthat face our students, graduates;
and higher education is ourmission and our passion.
Hosted by Mason PresidentGregory Washington,
this is the Access to Excellence podcast.
(00:27):
The December,
2024 conflict index by the ArmedConflict Location and Event
Data nitiative reportedthat global conflicts
have doubled over the past five years.
Now more than ever,
we need experts in conflictanalysis and peace building,
(00:49):
and George Mason is ready for that call.
Mark Gopin is the James H Laue
Professor of World Religions,Diplomacy, and Conflict Resolution,
and a director of the Centerfor World Religions, Diplomacy,
and Conflict Resolution at George Mason's,
(01:12):
Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Schoolfor Peace and Conflict Resolution.
He's a prolific writerand accomplished speaker,
and has trained thousands ofpeople worldwide in peace building
strategies for complex conflicts. Mark,
welcome to the show.
Thank you. It's a pleasureto see you again and be here.
(01:34):
In 1983,
you were ordained as a rabbiat the Yeshiva University.
Were you always interestedin pursuing rabbinical study?
I've been studying since I wasfive years old in private school,
and I was particularly motivated todo intensive study with my elders.
(01:55):
I had master teachers who weremaster teachers of Talmud,
but also PhDs from the Universityof Berlin in philosophy.
So I was always fascinated by thecombination of secular wisdom and secular
science and religious traditionsgoing back thousands of years.
So I just totally immersed in thatfrom the time I was kind of little.
(02:16):
Well, I always see thosewho learn the word,
so to speak,
you learn it from the perspectiveof being able to teach it, right,
to spread it to others. Butsomething had to move you,
to inspire you to move fromreligious leadership into
(02:39):
activism and teaching. So canyou talk a little bit about that?
Well, that's an interesting question.I think there are multiple motivations.
I did grow up in a community that wasboth very provincial and very worldly at
the same time. I grew up in Boston.
I grew up in a community where manyof my teachers were survivors of the
Holocaust. I was keenly aware ofwar and its effects on people.
(03:01):
My father was in the militaryin World War II, my uncles.
So I was very aware of globalevents and yet also was nurtured in
a very quiet space of religious people,
but also doctors and healers.
And so I guess from the influenceof the doctors and the philosophers
and the people experience thehorror of genocide, I became very,
(03:25):
very interested in what bringssocieties to the point of destruction
and what brings them tothe point of redemption.
Because I grew up at a time when the verysame society that had committed such a
massive war crime and killed 40million people, uh, in World War II,
became a leading democracy.
I'm speaking aboutGermany and Japan as well.
(03:47):
And so the question of how people changeand why they descend into absolute
barbarism at some times and whythey become within a generation,
the the leaders of democracy, itfascinated me about the human nature.
What does it say about human nature?
Where can we go in order to movehuman nature towards compassion and
(04:09):
enlightenment andrationality versus barbarity?
And that was always the choice that I was,
from the time I was little looking atthese beautiful survivors of the Holocaust
all the way to the science and philosophythat I studied. I said, you know,
this is global. This isway beyond my community.
And so I have to make a commitmentto globally look at this and actually
(04:33):
practice experimentationwith people in war zones.
And that's what drove me to war zonesby the time I was in my twenties.
I've been looking forward tothis conversation for some time.
It's because this one is so timelyrelative to what's happening
globally as we speak.
(04:53):
So you pioneered peace buildingwork across the Middle East,
which is a confluence of three majorworld religions, Christianity, Islam,
and Judaism.
And so what role doesreligion play in developing
conflict as well as resolving conflict?
(05:13):
And given your rabbinical background,there's a very strong connection there.
Well,
I came to have a very healthy respect forthe fact that religion is a passionate
catalyst of the best ofus and the worst of us.
It becomes a tool of enlightenment inthe hands of those who are rooted in
compassion and a capacity tolisten to many narratives at once.
(05:37):
And then it also becomes a tool ofrage and apocalyptic rage when people
are so wounded that they look to thereligion and they find what they need to
find in the religion in order tojustify an extremist or violent
a direction. What I started to see wasa pattern around the world from Judaism,
Christianity to Islam, to Buddhism,
(06:00):
and to Shintoism and Hinduism.Everywhere you looked,
this double-edged sword ofreligion said to me that this is a
potential to help in diplomacy,
not just be a danger for society.
So there has to be conflictresolution and conflict healing.
And I focus on healing verymuch from my background,
(06:21):
that conflict healing needs to takeplace between secular and religious
segments of society,
between liberal and conservative inorder that religion should not be
utilized and weaponized by thosewho are angry or destructive
and lack a self-examining capacity.
One of the things that I've emphasizedin my writings and in my experiments in
(06:44):
the field is that self-examinationis the key to enlightenment.
So it's not true just ona philosophical level.
It's true at the level of conflictmanagement, conflict resolution,
negotiations, self-examinationis everything.
And there are religiousfoundations of that,
and there are secular foundationsof that, of those capacities,
(07:04):
the psychosocial healing.
So I started to see that people are makinga mistake of religion versus society
or religion versus secularism,
and that the two could be alliesif they are understood properly in
all of their manifestations, thepositive manifestations and the negative,
just like secular, uh, there's apositive manifestation of capitalism.
(07:26):
There's a negative manifestation.
No, I understand. I understand. You know,
that kind of opens upa different question.
We often have this discussion of Israeli,
a person who's Jewish, and aperson who's Zionist, right?
I'm one of the belief that thereare differences between the three.
(07:49):
Can you talk a little bitabout what those mean from the
perspective of the modern state of Israel?
Well, this is where weget into identity studies,
and my colleagues and I at Carter Schoolfocus on identity and religion and
culture, and they interactquite a bit, and they're fluid.
So we have to accept thefact that for some people,
(08:11):
Christianity means one kindof identity or another.
And it's the same inJudaism. For some people,
their Judaism is wrappedup in practice, in, uh,
ritual, in ethics.
Their Judaism is ethical monotheism,
their Judaism is the observanceof the Sabbath. For others,
their Judaism is wrapped up indefending the Jewish people or building
(08:34):
the Jewish people into a flourishingentity that can be safe in a post
holocaust world. For such people,
the state of Israel becomes partof their religious identity.
For other people, it's a mixture.
And there are many very religiouspeople for whom the state of Israel is
important in terms of saving Jewish lives.
(08:55):
But it's not the expression of Jewishidentity. It's a state. Others,
a lot of young people today arevery critical of the state for its
policies, and some of them arein Israel, some of them are here,
and their identity, their Jewish identity,
is much more complex and nuancedthan saying they're either Zionist or
(09:16):
anti-Zionist. Everybody's choosing,it's a very fractious people.
But I used to think that there was moreuniformity in Christianity. There isn't,
I used to think that in Islam therewas clear uniformity. There is not.
People are identifying and definingtheir religion all the time,
and they're evolving in that.There's a very big evolution,
(09:36):
even in my own lifetime, wherenow 50% of Jews live in Israel,
are Israeli citizens, but 50% are not.
50% include lots of people in Russia,in Ukraine, on two sides of war,
mostly in Ukraine. There are 5million American Jews: a very,
very tiny people with very,
very different opinions about wheredoes the state of Israel fit into their
(10:00):
identity.
It's been a year, over a year now,
since the events of October 7thand the most recent outbreak of
violence between Palestine and Israel.
As of the recording ofthis particular podcast,
the ceasefire has held, continues to hold.
(10:21):
You're seeing the exchangeof hostages on both sides.
There's so many opinions onhow the conflict between Israel
and Palestine should be resolved.And as an expert in peace building,
from the perspective of peace building,
what is something you wishpeople understood about this long
(10:45):
standing conflict?
I wish people understood howmany thousands of Israelis and
Palestinians have worked oncoexistence and a two-state
solution and equality forover a half a century.
I wish people understoodthat there were many,
(11:05):
many viable solutions other than the total
destruction that's envisionedby extremists on either side of
the other side. They dominate the news,
just like violence always dominatesthe news. But unfortunately,
information systems anddigital ecosystems have come to
(11:28):
radicalize all of us in thinking thereare only violent solutions to things
because fear sells the digitalecosystem. But I can tell you,
because I witnessed itand I participated in,
I created for 40 yearsan incredible number of
idealistic Israelis andPalestinians who work together.
(11:49):
Many of them live together.There's actually a village,
a very vibrant community south, uh,
near Jerusalem called Oasisof Peace, Neve Shalom.
And there are many otherexperiments in coexistence and many
people who fought for equality inIsrael and also that build bridges.
(12:10):
I also went between the enemy sides,even in the height of wars and bombings,
and we were always overwhelmedby outsiders who were
funding the extremists.
Christian extremists were funding thesettlers and Jewish extremists, of course,
and then the funders of Islamicextremism were funding the radical
(12:30):
groups that undermine the secularPalestinian idea of a democratic state.
And that still holds.
I wish people could realize thatbecause then they wouldn't think in
extreme solutions.
They would realize that wehave to do the hard work of
reconciliation and building relationshipsin every country that wants to
(12:53):
remain a democracy. Heretoo, it's the same analogy.
You can't just legislate,
you can't just have a couple ofpieces of civil rights legislation.
You have to build relationships,one community, one church at a time,
and that peace buildingmoney is not there.
It's not there for people-to-peoplerelationship building because the
(13:15):
powers that be did not take it seriously.
So I wish people would know that thiscould have gone very, very differently.
Now, we're in a state ofcatastrophe, but in the darkest days,
you always want to know what's possible.
We never thought a half a yearago that Syria would ever recover.
I've worked for 20 years in Syria withmy Syrian friends and inside Syria,
(13:40):
in a police state, in the worstgenocide imaginable--500,000 dead,
12 million removed from theirhomes, tens of thousands tortured.
And here we are witha mass return to Syria
of extraordinary Syrian citizens in theworst dictatorship in the world after
North Korea.
So to say that it's impossibleto achieve coexistence
(14:04):
between Palestinians and Israelisis to have a lack of imagination.
And that's what I want people to realize.
Things can always change in the blinkof an eye with the right leadership and
the right new ideas.
That is great food for thought.
There are so many opinions on howthe conflict should be resolved,
(14:26):
right? And there havebeen previous ceasefires.
So why do you think theseprevious ceasefires failed?
Is it this lack of imaginationpiece you're talking,
is it the external influences?
Yeah, on all sides. On thePalestinian side, on the Israeli side,
on the American side,on the European side,
there was a tendency to disempowerpeople-to-people, relationships.
(14:50):
They did fund some of that relationships.
There are many good efforts that havebeen funded by the United States,
but it was too controlledfrom the top with very narrow
agendas to what would be allowed andwhat would be acceptable. In my mind...I,
I never saw a single grant for Palestinianand Israeli cab drivers to speak to
each other.
(15:11):
I never saw a single major grantfor thousands of women to relate
to each other across enemy lines, whichis what turned the tide in Liberia,
for example.
That's exactly right.
And so in many countries in the world,
there are surprising constituencies thatwhen you allow them to speak to each
other and build relationships,
they have the solutions thatthe wealthy elites don't have,
(15:34):
or the military elites don'thave for lack of imagination.
We need to invest much,
much more in average peopleto build relationships.
And we have done that in otherparts of the world. For example,
after World War ii, the Franco-Germanrelationship had been, uh,
two countries that had been at war witheach other for a thousand years on and
(15:57):
off. And now a Franco-Germanwar is inconceivable.
So history does change withpeople-to-people businesses,
relationships. Manynationalists I've come across,
many people who really can't standthe other side say to me, you know,
I'll do some business with them. I, I'vehad very fanatical people say to me,
(16:19):
I'll come on one yeartrips to do some business.
So business sometimes is...wherereconciliation cannot be,
but business can be thelink. Sometimes it's sports,
sometimes it's other kinds ofpsychosocial healing or therapy,
music, et cetera.
But what we did for 40 years is thatwe did it only for very wealthy kids,
(16:40):
chosen carefully from each side. Andwe didn't really get to the grassroots,
to the refugee camps. I workedin refugee camps in Syria.
I worked in refugee camps.
I brought Mason classes manytimes to refugee camps in Turkey,
refugee camps in Palestine. And our work,
our great work of relationshipbuilding, it didn't reach those places.
(17:01):
And that's exactly wherethe extremists recruit.
They recruit from the people whoare really dumped on by all sides.
How can Palestine, Israel, andthe Middle East move forward?
There are current discussions,and I'm gonna ask you about those,
but first I want to get yourtake on, you know, look,
we are where we are. What'sthe move forward from here?
(17:24):
Well, if I could wavea magic wand, I mean,
the way forward from here would bea deep investment in the Palestinian
authority that isreformed. In other words,
Abbas is pressured to create ayounger generation of leadership.
I was just in Ramallah not long ago,
and it suffers from the factthat a group of very aged men,
(17:46):
a very small group,
are in total control and young leadershipis not allowed to move forward.
That young leadership hasprescriptions for how both secular
and religious Palestinianscould unite into one state,
how they could control the terrorists,and then build relationships,
which they already had yearsago with the Israeli leadership,
(18:10):
with the Israeli military.
If they were all willing togive this a go to eliminate
Hamas from the area, tobuild trust, build respect,
apologies for harm done on all sides.
October 7th was the worst Jewishatrocity since the Holocaust.
(18:31):
And it's unimaginable howmuch suffering has spread.
The amount of missiles that kept peoplein shelters in the north of Israel and
the south, the hundreds of thousands ofpeople, it changed people for the worst.
So there's apologies for that.
And then there's apologies for what isdone on a regular basis in the use of
excessive force in Gaza in other places.
(18:54):
This can be arranged if theparties and the Gulf states
are willing to allow peopleto speak for themselves.
And that's the consensus that we need.
And I believe the Palestinian authorityis waiting there as a potential partner
for Israelis who are readyfor a two-state solution.
(19:16):
That's not the current leadership,
but I believe that with astrong third party presence,
we could push that.
We could insist on building a partnershipwith Palestinians who are willing
to make a deal in order tokeep the rule of law and build
safety and security for everycitizen on all sides. And in the end,
(19:39):
it's going to have to be a Jewish state,
a Jewish majority state that hasequal rights for Palestinian citizens.
Don't forget, there are 2 millionPalestinian citizens of Israel.
And then the state of Palestine isgoing to have to be a state with Jewish
citizens who remain a minority,
but who are protected in waysthat are clearly guaranteed as
(20:03):
equal citizens.
And that is a formula that couldalso re-envision Gaza as well.
Both sides need to get used tocoexistence. There's no way around it,
but we have to build with peoplewho are serious and willing.
And I think they exist on both sides.
Okay, well, well, let's take the current
(20:25):
conflict that's on the table.
We're in agreement that somethinghas to happen now, right?
At some point you get to an outcome where
you have settled on what'shappened with the hostages,
right?
Right.
Folk have been released onboth sides. And at that point
(20:48):
you have to start talking aboutwhat is the future of Gaza.
I think, sorry.
And so, and so, what happens then? What,
what do you think willhappen at that stage?
Because that stage is most likely coming.
The antecedents of this is thatIran, which is a rogue state,
took advantage, and Russiawas happy to participate,
(21:10):
in an arc of power stretching acrossthe Middle East all the way to Lebanon.
That has now been decimatedby the Israeli defense forces,
particularly thedestruction of he Hezbollah.
And that created a chain reactionto release Syria from a, that--
That's how Syria--
Dictatorship.
That's how Syria fell.
Right. So this is an opportunityfor the Gulf states that are
(21:36):
publicly, and I believe sincerely,anti-Hamas, anti-terrorism.
And that includes the UAE, and itincludes the present Saudi Arabia.
I believe this is an opportunity forthem to work with the Israelis and work
with the Palestinian authority on therebuilding of Gaza together with the
Europeans. And I believeit can be rebuilt for Gaza.
(21:59):
And I believe it can be the basisfor a two-state process that will
give Palestine a seaport, it'llgive them a lot of wealth.
Eventually that could beinvested in by everyone.
It could be the seeds of renewal ofthe dream of a two-state solution
if Palestinians are treated equally,
(22:21):
and if the Gulf States and Israel andthe King of Jordan and others guide a
process of rebuildingthis for Palestinians.
It's not such a terrible thingif a few Jews wanna live there.
This is where everybody'sgotta get, you know,
there are 2 million Palestiniansliving in Israel with citizenship.
It's not terrible if a few religiousIsraelis wanna live in Gaza.
(22:42):
These are not terrible things as longas there's equality and safety and
security for all. And I believethat this wiping of the slate clean,
this total destructioncould be the opportunity.
And maybe President Trump isgonna get tired of dealing with
belligerence on all sides and say, yeah,I'm, this was just my opening gambit.
(23:04):
And then people start comingforward with alternatives,
which hasn't happened yet.Said, yeah, that's it.
He often will say outrageous thingsin order to stimulate change. Right,
right. And then he claim, thenhe claims credit for it. So,
so what was agreed to in, in Canada, look.
And look, if it works, it works, right?
Yeah. What it, what it workedin Canada is that they,
they agreed to what Biden hadalready agreed to
(23:26):
and then that was the solutionto the tariff problem.
So if this is a game of threatening andtherefore achieving some real change,
uh, that would be a wonderful outcome,a surprising outcome. But it's possible.
The slate was cleaned and wiped,
unbelievable destruction in World War ii,
and yet Germany and Franceand many fascist countries
(23:48):
rose to become leading democracies.
We have to believe that human changeis possible because it's not a fantasy,
it's actually a neuroscience reality.
You can shift your brain anytimeyou want. And, and with leadership,
we can do that.
So what happens to Hamas?
Hamas is a tool of Iran and,
(24:10):
Iran--eventually that regimemust fall because the vast
majority of Iranians inside andoutside Iran want that regime to fall.
The question is how to do it with theleast amount of human destruction.
There's a lot of consensus on that.
The last thing to do is to give them areason to be the great saviors of the
(24:31):
Middle East with keeping terrorismalive to fight the Wicked Israel.
And you do that by a bipartisan,
multipartisan collaborationfor rebuilding.
Then it delegitimizes thedestructive solutions,
and that's gonna weaken Iran.
And eventually their people are gonnatake to the streets and never leave.
(24:53):
That's a separate question,
but I believe the way to do this isto weaken the current Iranian regime
by creating a multipartisanapproach to rebuilding Gaza.
Interesting, interesting. I had neverheard that concept before. And so that's,
that's a good one.
The majority of people in Gaza,
by the latest polls that were donebefore the destruction were all against
(25:17):
Hamas. It was 80% against Hamas.
But as there were more violations inthe West Bank from the IDF and from
settlers, then people wereshifting towards Hamas.
But those who have lived underHamas hate Hamas, the majority,
and we have to give them voicetoo, as to what they want.
(25:38):
George Mason's Center forWorld Religions, Diplomacy, and
Conflict Resolution holds severalglobal education programs for students
to see the impact ofconflicts around the world.
Studies include Bosnia and Turkey,
Northern Ireland, Israeland Palestine, and Jordan.
(26:01):
What is the value in studentsdirectly engaging with the
people and places of conflict?
Well, we have a good 40 years oftheory development and conflict
analysis, conflict management,conflict anticipation,
my own theories that I'vebuilt on conflict, healing, compassionate reasoning.
(26:23):
All of these things are wonderful,
but theory is helpless withoutpractice Theory is only
built by practitioners who thenreflected on their own actions.
Every generation of young peopleneeds to build for themselves
their own exposure to what itis to be in a refugee camp,
(26:44):
what it is to have empathyand pain from two sides,
where does vision come from,and a focus on the future.
My next book is on future healing,
because future and vision is aremarkable part of the brain that builds
rationality. It builds ethical principles.
All of this cannot beappreciated without sitting
(27:08):
with traumatized kids who are goingthrough a wonderful program in Jordan
on healing from what theywitnessed as refugees.
So the programs in Jordan and Turkey wereall with Syrian refugees, for example.
And before that, I knewthe Syrians before 2011,
worked in Damascus for manyyears on public diplomacy.
(27:30):
But then we shifted towards refugeework with children and women, et cetera.
So when I take students to these places,
they say that this is the mostimportant moment of their lives.
People have changed careers over thisbecause to immerse yourself in a conflict
zone is to change your perspectiveon the nature of the world.
(27:51):
I try to steer them toward it not beingtraumatizing and toward it being a
concrete exploration of whatthey can do that's meaningful.
Many of us are searching allthe time for meaningful life.
And that's where the studentsfind that in that practice.
They immediately start writing paperson what we could do back in Chicago,
(28:13):
in the educational systemand many other places,
'cause conflict is a partof life in every place.
And now we have major American conflict,
and we need exactly the skills thatwe have practiced in violent conflict
zones. We need them right backhere. And the United States,
and I specifically direct the studentson a regular basis, say, okay,
(28:34):
you see what's happeninghere, let's extrapolate.
You see that incredibly resilientperson helping the kids.
What do you think theirbest characteristics are?
And how could you apply that elsewhere?
It's a constant inquiry andexposure to the real world.
You know, we deal withconflict constantly,
global conflicts between nationsto interpersonal conflicts
(28:59):
between friends, family,and other acquaintances.
And sometimes it feelslike conflict is such a
natural component of ourlives, that it's inevitable.
What strategies from solvinglarge scale global conflicts,
can be applied to the smaller scale
(29:21):
conflicts that people are dealingwith in their everyday life?
Well,
what we discovered is that all the thingsthat work in the height of war also
have remarkable effects, positiveeffects inside family life,
inside all relationships.
So when French and Swiss andGerman people were trying to
hide Holocaust survivors frombeing shot or being killed,
(29:44):
they had to develop an abilityto both have empathy but not be
destroyed by the empathy.
They had to find a visionary wayto figure out one step at a time
what could be done. If you rememberthe movie Schindler's List,
on the possibility of change onthe fact that even a perpetrator
(30:05):
and a criminal and a crook could turnaround and become, uh, like an angel.
And that belief in repentance,
that belief in change issomething that works in violent
war, but it works infamilies. The belief that,
I don't see it rightnow, but the belief that,
I don't know who it is in the family,
(30:26):
but we have to always hold outwith a compassionate hand to the
possibility of evolution and change.
It also requires a lot of moral reasoning.
And I write a lot about the skills ofseeing everybody's ethical position.
And that's very important in family life,
is that even when you disagreewith somebody's moral position,
(30:49):
you look for the principle thatthey're guided by. You say, you know,
that's not fair. Well, what's yourprinciple here? What's your theory?
And it works.
So I have a series of stepsthat involve listening skills,
the use of the word, the useof the deed, imagination,
and the use of imagination in a jointway...basically simple questions.
(31:12):
One police officer who thenbecame a chief of police in
Massachusetts, said to me, once hesaved somebody's life who had a knife,
he was in a domestic violence situation,he had every right to shoot him.
And then he thought tohimself, he protected himself.
And then he asked the knife wieldingfellow who was out of control,
(31:32):
he said to them this, he said,
"how are we gonna get outta heretoday so that we both get back to our
families?"
So what that chief of police saidwas that he stimulated the brain
with a question, not with anattack, not "you stupid guy,
what's wrong with you?" You know,
"how could you hold that knife to somebodyyou love?" It's "how can we get out
(31:54):
of this?
How can we get out of this to back tofamily?" And that brought out the best in
the criminal. He dropped theknife and he was very sorrowful.
Really?
Yeah.
It worked that easily.
It just worked like a magic becausehe shifted his brain away from rage
and counteraction and humiliationand shame and defiance to how
(32:17):
do we get to tomorrow?
It just had a remarkable effecton reshifting his brain towards a
vision of himself in tomorrow. Thathas a remarkable impact on many,
many simple fights in families, isjust to ask people and say, okay,
I hear you. Let's stop the tit fortat. What do you wanna do? Like, how,
(32:38):
how are we gonna be a a familyin two years from now? What,
what would you like it to be?What does it look like to you?
I do a lot of neuroscience study now.
And so that stimulates what...?
It stimulates the default networkof the frontal cortex that focuses
on vision and imagination and planningfor things that are not yet there.
And that is related to compassionmore than the amygdala,
(33:01):
which is related to rage andresentment. So when you shift people,
when you start swearing at people, itstimulates their amygdala. You know,
you say a swear, they say a swear,
and it's like your amygdalasare talking to each other.
It's useless 'cause it justdescends. But if you say,
how are we gonna live together?What do you think we should do?
(33:21):
And you authenticallyare asking a question,
then suddenly the default networkof the prefrontal cortex gets in,
and your compassionate sense ofhow can we both get to the future?
How can we live together?What is it gonna look like?
How can we both take care of mom together?
That reformulates thebrain towards the future.
(33:45):
And it's not a simple path, but it'sfar less violent, it's far less angry,
it's far less vengeful, and it'svery much focused on compassion.
I call it compassionate reasoning.
And there is actual neuroscienceproof for this in the
work of Olga Klimecki on theneural pathways of compassion that
(34:06):
are closer to reasoning.
Well, speaking of that,that's your book, right?
Yeah.
And in your book,"Compassionate Reasoning",
you state that compassion is one ofthe most amazing and important emotions
and ethical principles that bringshealing and hope to human beings.
Compassion stimulates thebest biochemistry that
(34:29):
lowers your heart rate, thatlowers your blood pressure,
that lowers your body temperature.
Whereas rage increases your cortisol.
It makes you need to get outtathere, fight or flight. And empathy,
when you feel the pain ofanother, which is a good value,
it actually isn't very healthy becausethe more you feel the pain of the other,
(34:52):
the more it sends you into despair,
which is why a lot of the progressiveswho focus on pain and despair are
missing the boat on how to stimulatea bipartisan approach to the future.
So compassion though, is much morelike, how can we all be happy?
How can we all be safe?
Those kind of questions stimulatea very different focus that
(35:16):
is all-inclusive, moredemocratic. So basically,
compassion is an ally of medical health,
and it's an ally of democracy.
It focuses on a much moreall-inclusive approach to
pro-social relations,
and that part of the brain that's themost highly developed brain for solving
(35:37):
problems.
Well, I wanna shift gears a little bit.
You have given our audience alot to think about relative to
the Israeli, uh, Gaza conflict.
Let's talk about the USfor a moment. You know,
a common refrain nowadays ishow divided we are as a country.
(35:57):
Is there any hope for us as a country? Uh,
is there any hope to bridge thegaps between our differences and to
heal that divide? Right? If you goback and look at our history, we're,
we're almost as dividednow as we ever have been.
And so I'm interested inhearing your thoughts on that.
Well, this all comes down to leadership.
(36:18):
And I think there's been a failureof the two party system to create
common values and commonpolicies that do unite people.
And in this sense,
we're far too focused onparty identities and identity
identification with a bipolarparty system is a prescription
(36:40):
for civil war. There arecountries in Africa, for example,
that every four years they go to warbecause every four years they have an
election. The electionactually brings out the worst.
It's one country in particular becausethe tribes divide at that point,
who's gonna be the majority tribe, andthen they go back to normal afterwards.
So multiparties and multitribalism,
(37:00):
and Republican and Democrathave become tribes,
is the worst possible way toget policy moderation and new
policies and imagination. BernieSanders focused on policies,
and of course a lot of capitalistsare terrified of Bernie Sanders,
but he was the one that went downand worked with the religious right.
(37:22):
He spoke to the religious right.
He was able to cut acrossthe boundaries of identity.
I've had politicalleaders say to me, I said,
why don't you talk to more rural people?
Why don't you engage the ruralcommunity? Uh, these were progressives.
They said, what would be the point?
That's exactly the opposite ofthe conflict resolution skills.
We have seen work aroundthe world. Around the world,
(37:46):
engagement changesconsciousness and for, uh,
liberals to work with ruralwhites, with young white people,
and to hear them both wealthy and poor,
and for people on the moreconservative side who are terrified of
the violence that's going on, tolisten and engage progressives,
(38:11):
those skills and moderating thosekind of conversations and building
with imagination andcompassion, some third ways,
that's gonna be the key to theUnited States. It's happened before.
I think it can happen again.
So I hear you saying, and,and I'm, I'm gonna ask it,
could compassionatereasoning be a solution here?
(38:34):
When I frame all of these things,I mean compassionate reasoning.
I mean that the more that you humanizea relationship with people who you are
afraid of,
you develop compassion and then youmorally reason together on the things you
can agree on. And it turns outAmericans agree on many things.
They agree on the criticalimportance of freedom. Well,
(38:55):
how would that express itself? Whatcan we agree on in terms of freedom?
What does it mean to us? And you buildslowly policies that are bipartisan,
and then you lobby for bipartisanpolicies. Let's say civil rights.
A lot of people agree inprinciple to equal civil rights.
You wouldn't think that withall the rhetoric flying around,
(39:17):
but all it was was legislation.We legislated civil rights,
we legislated that people should beequal. Well, it doesn't work that way.
It works that way onlythrough relationships,
only through compassionate reasoning.In every church, in every synagogue,
in every community. And then you figureout what equality will look like.
(39:39):
But in the end,
legislation only goes so far inbuilding trust and positions with people
on education. You have to doit one relationship at a time.
I would like to see in the future,
millions of dollars go into relationshipbuilding between people of different
political points of view in this country.
We have never taken civilrights to that level of
(40:03):
deep relationship building. Ithink that's the key to the future.
It is compassionate reasoning.It is conflict healing.
I don't care about the label. I mean, Idon't need my label to be on anything.
It's more about the relationshipsand shared reasoning and
building a point of view thatthere are people on the other side,
(40:24):
and I have those relationships.That's how I survived in Syria.
That's how I did workin Afghanistan and Iran.
That's how I did work in IsraelPalestine for 40 years on both sides,
running across borders all the time.
Because you have to embody itin yourself to be able to listen
to multiple narratives and tosay to all of those narratives,
(40:47):
how can I help? How canI help Jewish identity?
How can I help Palestinian identity?
How can I help you get backto being a proud Republican?
How can I get you to get backto being a proud Virginian?
What does it mean to be a proud Virginian?
Wouldn't that be a wonderful conversation?
What does it mean to be a statesman?
Yeah, that's great. You know.
You, you, you get what I'm saying?
(41:07):
Yeah.
These are the kinds of thingsthat we gotta get back to.
I think you are hittingthe nail right on the head.
So it's a question whichis good for the brain,
and it's a vision whichis good for the brain,
and it's enticing in terms ofreturning to something optimistic.
And Marty Seligman's work on optimism,
Stephen Pinker's work onoptimism suggests that optimism
(41:31):
is far more--Jane Goodall'swork on this--it's far more embedded in human nature
than we realize.
We just have to get control of thedigital information systems because
people have divided us accordingto the digital ecosystems,
which is an AI question.
And I have some ideas on that in termsof the algorithms of what we should...
(41:51):
Well, well, well, let's you know,well, let's talk about that.
Technology and technological advancesare changing the nature of conflict,
right? We know this. Accordingto the United Nations,
artificial intelligence and machinelearning have the potential to enhance
cyber, physical, and biologicalattacks. By making 'em more targeted,
(42:12):
more accessible, andactually harder to trace.
We've seen now mass communications and
engagement through socialmedia frameworks and the like.
We know that bots and other
artificial-like entitieshave exacerbated, uh,
(42:34):
some of those conflicts, right?Have been used to inflame people.
How do we flip that? Right? Becausewhat can be used for negativity,
what can be used for disruption,
can actually be used to buildpeople up? So, how do you do that?
So I'm working with trying to influencepeace tech people on this very subject,
(42:56):
people who work on the algorithmsof conversations globally.
I believe that with the right words, see,
just like words are used to harmand words are used to polarize,
words are also used tobind people together.
So there are ways to steer globalconversations in more constructive
directions and buildingrelationships across enemy lines with
(43:20):
algorithms that you put in, in a subtleway, and that you keep repeating.
People in the businessschool, people in advertising,
people in information technology,they know this very well.
We have to create thistechnology together.
We can even make it profitable. Let'ssay a company wants feedback from their,
their employees.
(43:41):
You can make a tech thatencourages algorithms of
can-do optimism. Theydon't cover up things,
but they simply shift conversationstowards what's possible and what's better.
That's a technology and a skillthat we can insert into our
AI requests. I do it all the time withAI. I ask positive questions. I ask,
(44:05):
what is I ask for good news? You know?
And every day I try to fill my headwith some of the new good news,
like for example,
that the bee population of the worldis rising for the first time in many,
many years,
which is the key to the survival ofall of our fruits and vegetables.
I look for the fact that many ofthe patches of plastic across, uh,
(44:27):
the ocean in five years could becompletely sucked in by new technology
that could take it out of the ocean.There are many exciting discoveries,
and those discoveries are a way,
if we insert that into theAI aspects of our algorithmic
digital ecosystems,
I think those ecosystems aregonna stimulate young people,
(44:49):
especially to new ideas andnew possibilities that are, uh,
the opposite of polarizationand fragmentation.
If we can do that withAmerican kids, American kids,
and we keep politics out of it,
you're gonna see a tremendousamount of excitement,
especially if it creates jobsor if it creates companies that
(45:11):
makes political polarization alittle bit more silly, immature,
and a waste of time.
So if you can redirect people's energytowards things that are not polarizing,
I think you can do that with AI.
I think you can do thatwith global conversations.
And we could think about what wouldbe those conversations. For example,
(45:32):
Mason has so many different campusesand we have different point--political
points of view.
What would be the conversations that wouldyield the most positive feedback that
would yield the most participationwith people of multiple backgrounds?
And then how would we reinforcethat and make it move forward?
That's an interestingquestion for information tech,
(45:53):
and for the business and marketing, andfor conflict analysis and resolution.
As I wrap up here, I have one finalquestion. In your TEDx talk at Berkeley,
you pose the question where and how we
become good despite theworst of circumstances, where
(46:16):
and how we become gooddespite the worst of
circumstances, which in some cases,especially in Palestine and Israel,
that's kind of what we have now, haveyou found an answer to that question?
And if so, what is it?
I forgot how you had asked that question.And I like it. Not surprisingly,
(46:38):
my experience with the wisdom traditions,
all the way from stoicism toBuddhism, to Dalai Lama's wisdom and,
and then the secular philosophies,
and now the neuroscience and especiallyis seen through cognitive therapy,
that it's the smallest memesand the smallest statements
(46:59):
that guide people in a directionthat's less destructive towards more
constructive. So for example,
some people have memorizedlove your neighbor as yourself.
Some people have memorized thateveryone is created in the image of God.
Some people have memorized, I seethis in cabs all over the Middle East,
that Allah made everyone diverse inorder that we can come to know each
(47:22):
other. Almost every cab driverknows that verse from the Quran.
So what matters when you'refaced with misery and horror
is what can you train yourself toflash in front of somebody's mind?
And that has a lot to do withkindergartens and education and public
advertising and whatwe choose to make the,
(47:43):
the essential wisdom piecesof what it is to be human.
I think we have to pay moreattention to that and to think about
repetition and repetitionof truly deep inclusive
truths. What is it to be a democracy?
And you have five or six thingsthat you say, you know, uh,
(48:04):
quotes from Lincoln or, or othersor from the Gettysburg address. You,
we simply have to workharder at those memes,
those things that occur to us naturally.This is what it is to be an American.
This is what it is to be American.This is what it is to be a Christian.
Love your neighbor as yourself. Great,but what is it to be an American?
(48:25):
How do we bind as an American?
We don't have enough American civiceducation that comes down to those core
teachings. Uh, and I think we can,
and I think it'll create a shared ethics.
The postmodernism andenlightenment is great,
but we also lost a lot of common ethics.
We can build those ethics with basictruths that we can all agree to
(48:49):
that are catchy,
that can roll around in the brainand roll around in conversations.
This is what it is tobe American. You know,
I think we have enough bipartisaninstincts on that to recapture that
and then move it forward to build.Okay. What then? What do we do together?
So you keep asking questions,building on those wonderful values.
(49:11):
Outstanding. Outstanding. Well, we'regonna have to leave it there. Marc,
thank you for your tirelesswork to build peace
both around the worldand in our own backyard.
I am George Mason UniversityPresident Gregory Washington.
(49:33):
Thanks for listening.
And tune in next time for moreconversations that show why we are
all together different.
If you like what youheard on this podcast,
go to podcast.gmu.edu formore of Gregory Washington's
conversations with thethought leaders, experts,
and educators who take onthe grand challenges facing our students and graduates
(49:58):
in higher education.That's podcast.gmu.edu.
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