CRDC

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A very special Rotary meeting and talk reflecting the partnership between Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution at George Mason University and Rotary Club with Professor… | Allan J. Alonzo Wind A very special Rotary meeting and talk reflecting the partnership between Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution at George Mason University and Rotary Club with Professor Marc Gopin

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Acquisition Disease: Compassion and Moral Reasoning Respond to the Age of Excess Invisible Escalation in Modern Societies

We’re excited to invite you to a Carter School Malta Alumni Reunion May 28, 2026 at 1:00 PM!

Please join us if you’re interested in learning more about the Malta Dual-Degree program, meeting our program alumni and discovering why our program was ranked one of the Top Master’s in International Security Studies, Worldwide.

Register here → https://ow.ly/iM0h50YVMlP

George Mason University

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George Mason’s Contradictory Role in the History of American Human Rights: A Compassionate Reasoning Exploration

https://crdc.gmu.edu/holding-onto-hope-in-troubled-times/

Holding onto Hope in Troubled Times - Center for World Religions, Diplomacy, & Conflict Resolution Beginning on May 12th, CRDC is holding an online discussion and practice series on HOLDING ONTO HOPE IN TROUBLED TIMES With peace-building facilitator Dr. Majbritt Lyck-Bowen and CRDC Associate Director Christel Gopin. Through a dynamic virtual discussion series, we will unpack the complexities of h...

Do come join us in exploring hope as a practice, starting next Tuesday, May 12 at noon EST (5 pm London time).

The registration link to our Zoom session is below.

Hope isn’t passive—it’s a practice.

CRDC invites you to Holding Onto Hope in Troubled Times, an interactive series designed to help you reflect, connect, and build resilience. Through a dynamic virtual discussion series, we will unpack the complexities of hope.

📅 May 12 (Intro) + May 14 (Practice 1)
📅 Continued sessions: May 19, 21, 26, 28 | June 2, 4
⏸️ Break, then resume June 23, 25, 30
✨ Final wrap-up: July 2
⏰ All sessions at 12 PM ET
💻 Free to attend
🔗 Save your spot: https://ow.ly/rfqG50YV9xu

George Mason University

What if the future of democracy depends not on louder protests, but on deeper human connection? In Bowling with Strangers, I explore a simple but transformative idea: the real power of civic gatherings may lie not in what we say together, but in the relationships we build while we are there. Drawing on Robert Putnam, network science, and modern psychology, this essay argues that democratic resilience grows when strangers become partners—when citizens step beyond familiar circles and practice cooperation across difference. Imagine demonstrations that don’t just express frustration, but actively generate trust, agency, and new networks of shared purpose. This is a fresh framework for renewing democratic life from the ground up—one conversation, one connection, one act of cooperation at a time.

Bowling with Strangers: Fresh Theory for Reviving Struggling Democracies through Demonstrations 2.0 If Robert Putnam famously warned that America was bowling alone, the next stage of democratic renewal may require something even more intentional than bowling with friends: bowling with strangers, or making deep friends through demonstrations.

I Saw Two Bumblebees Dancing
Outside My Window:
The Challenge of Shared Reality

I am sitting on my balcony, eleven floors up, watching two bumblebees dancing in the sunlight outside my window. It looks to me like a dance. They move in small arcs, almost like a dance, the sun is out, and the sky is lightly overcast. I know I am here. I know they are there. I know, in the simplest sense, that they are alive in this moment, interlacing a search for sweetness with the joy of companionship.
If I were to tell anyone this, they would believe me immediately. No ideology, no taking sides, not threat to my existence or the readers. Just a shared trust between the reader and me that what I see and describe corresponds, in some basic way, to reality.
But almost everything else I try to write feels different. If I say that in a distant war there are human beings on all sides—some capable of cruelty, some capable of care—, and that I ask the reader for a modicum of what the neuroscientists call integrative complexity, the truth disappears like mist in the fog of disbelief. It meets resistance, suspicion, and sometimes outright disdain. Not necessarily because what I said is false, but because it emerges into a world where people are no longer drawing from any of the the same set of facts. We do all live in separate information realities, even on a good day.
But when we cannot agree on what is happening, we cannot reason about what should happen. If suffering itself is disputed, compassion becomes selective. If facts are unstable, moral judgment becomes tribal.
Until we find new ways—very new ways—to establish and share what is real, we will remain trapped in cycles of mistrust, distortion, and war. Not only because people disagree, but because they are no longer disagreeing about the same world.

Facts to the Rescue: How Shared Reality Can Restore Ethical Debate and Human Cooperation

https://open.substack.com/pub/drmarcgopin/p/a-dream-i-had-about-defeating-authoritarians?r=2x4gp&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

A DREAM I HAD ABOUT DEFEATING AUTHORITARIANS Awakening Democratic Agency Through Civic Cooperation in My Troubled Country