Renowned Mediator and Peacemaker Kenneth Cloke Explores a New Vision for Conflict Resolution in Recently Released Book

Kenneth Cloke, who is a renowned peacemaker, conflict manager and adjunct professor at Pepperdine University and Southern Methodist University, is the author of five previous books on conflict management and mediation, co-author with Joan Goldsmith on five additional books, and author of multiple journal articles. He has dedicated his life to peacemaking and teaching others to navigate conflict, serving as a mediator, arbitrator, attorney, coach, consultant, and trainer. He is the founder and first president of Mediators Beyond Borders.

Cloke specializes in communication, negotiation, and resolving complex multi-party disputes. His coaching, consulting, facilitation, and training practice includes work with leaders of public, private, and nonprofit organizations around the globe on effective communications, dialogue, collaborative negotiation, relationship and team building, conflict resolution, leadership development, strategic planning, designing systems, and organizational change.

"Conflict is an innate part of the human experience," says Cloke. "Understanding how to navigate conflict is not. But we can all learn. When we learn how to navigate conflict, strained relationships can be transformed into deep, meaningful relationships; organizations can attain new goals; people are brought together."

Cloke's most recent work, "The Dance of Opposites: Explorations in Mediation, Dialogue and Conflict Resolution Systems Design" (GoodMedia Press 2013) explores a new vision for conflict resolution, a "conflict revolution" that analyzes the use of language in conflict, the narrative structure of conflict stories, and how the brain responds to conflict. It surveys religion, spirituality, and meditation, and searches for ways of opening heartfelt communications between opponents.

"The Dance of Opposites" also looks at social, political, and environmental conflicts, and offers suggestions on how to organize and conduct dialogues over difficult, dangerous, and controversial issues. It identifies new ways of designing conflict resolution systems for family and couples' disputes, and for chronic organizational conflicts, and encourages us to use conflict to learn and grow, become better human beings, and transform it into opportunities for improvement. "The Dance of Opposites" is available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble and bookstores nationwide.

Kenneth Cloke is available for book signings, keynote speaking, and guest lecturing in person or via webinar.

About Kenneth Cloke
In addition to his coaching, consulting, facilitation, and training practice work, Cloke's university teaching includes mediation, law, history, political science, conflict studies, urban studies, and other social sciences at a number of colleges and universities, including Southwestern University School of Law, Antioch University, Occidental College, USC, and UCLA. He is or has recently been an Adjunct Professor at Pepperdine University School of Law; Southern Methodist University; Global Negotiation Insight Institute at Harvard Law School and Omega Institute; Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Cape Cod Institute; University of Amsterdam ADR Institute; Saybrook University; Massey University (New Zealand).

He has done conflict resolution work in Austria, Bahamas, Brazil, Canada, China, Cuba, Denmark, England, Georgia, Greece, India, Ireland, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Puerto Rico, Scotland, Slovenia, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine, USSR, and Zimbabwe.

He is founder and first president of Mediators Beyond Borders and served as an Administrative Law Judge for the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board and the Public Employment Relations Board, a Factfinder for the Public Employment Relations Board, and a Judge Pro Tem for the Superior Court of Los Angeles. He has been an arbitrator and mediator for over thirty-three years in labor management disputes, and is a member of a number of arbitration panels.

Cloke received his B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley; J.D. from U.C. Berkeley's Boalt Law School; Ph.D. from U.C.L.A.; LLM from U.C.L.A. Law School; and did post-doctoral work at Yale University School of Law. He is a graduate of the National Judicial College and has taken graduate level courses in a variety of subjects.

To post a comment, you must register and login.