Framing Campus Free Expression Conflict Through a Dispute Resolution Optic: Insights For Campus Leaders

This Essay, with campus leaders as its intended audience (i.e., presidents, chancellors, provosts, deans, department chairs, and faculty, staff, and student governance leaders), maintains that acquaintance with constructs familiar to dispute resolution scholars and practitioners can deepen understanding of free expression conflict on college campuses, increase self-awareness and enhance leaders’ ability to act consciously and purposively in response to conflict, and help equip campus leaders with useful tools for managing conflict when it arises. This Essay will stress framing, but many constructs in the dispute resolution field illuminate the techniques and skills campus leaders need if they are to manage conflict effectively, whatever may be its source.