Annual Lecture: A Reflection on High Conflict

This year’s Annual Lecture could not have come at a better time. With the increase in violence due to recent events, hearing guest speaker Amanda Ripley speak about high conflict gave greater insight into what is happening in the world today.

Guest speaker Amanda Ripley is the author of “High Conflict: Why We Get Trapped and How We Get Out.” She has studied the concept of conflict throughout the world and what role it plays in our society. She explains why conflict is necessary and how there is “good conflict” and “high conflict.” She then goes on to list the root causes of high conflict. I found it extremely interesting to learn that humiliation plays a large role in conflict. When thinking about it now, it makes sense why a humiliated party starts to feel emotions associated with high conflict. When a person or group of people feel publicly degraded, they begin to view the person/people who humiliated them as the enemy. Toward the end of the lecture, Ripley goes on to explain how we get out of high conflict. We must resist humiliation, break the binary, and reckon with conflict entrepreneurs. Overall, this means we must not engage in those public arguments, get out of the us vs. them mentality, and identify and avoid those who are trying to add to the conflict.

Overall, this event was timely and raised important issues impacting society today. The speaker engaged the audience using effective storytelling methods and related the topics to events we experience in our personal lives. While she discusses conflict on a bigger scale, she taught the audience important methods to implement in conflict that can occur in our everyday lives. For example, how important it is to take a step away from conflict instead of making rash decisions and regretting things you may say. Amanda Ripley’s research is significant as conflict is something that impacts everyone and can have detrimental effects as we’ve seen throughout the world. The event was an overall success with a great turnout both online and in person. We had a great Q&A session and look forward to seeing everyone again next year!

Zoe is a senior at the University of Maryland studying Marketing. She plans on attending law school after graduation. Zoe is excited to use her creativity with the Bahá'í Chair for World Peace while learning about important social, political, and economic issues.

To learn more about Zoe: www.linkedin.com/in/zhlebovic