Dignity: The Essential Role It Plays in Resolving Conflict, with Dr. Donna Hicks
Dr. Donna Hicks is an Associate at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University. Dr. Hicks was Deputy Director of the Program on International Conflict Analysis and Resolution (PICAR) at the Weatherhead Center for nine years.
The Harvard Club of Washington, DC, is proud to co-host this event with the Shared Interest Group, Women in Defense, Diplomacy, and Development (W3D).
$20 Members of the Harvard Club and their Guests, Members of W3D and their Guests
The desire for dignity is universal and powerful. It is a motivating force behind all human interaction—in families, in communities, in the business world, and in relationships at the international level. When dignity is violated, the response is likely to involve aggression, even violence, hatred, and vengeance. On the other hand, when people treat one another with dignity, they become more connected and are able to create more meaningful relationships. Surprisingly, most people have little understanding of dignity, observes Donna Hicks in this important book. She examines the reasons for this gap and offers a new set of strategies for becoming aware of dignity’s vital role in our lives and learning to put dignity into practice in everyday life
Drawing on her extensive experience in international conflict resolution and on insights from evolutionary biology, psychology, and neuroscience, Hicks explains what the elements of dignity are, how to recognize dignity violations, how to respond when we are not treated with dignity, how dignity can restore a broken relationship, why leaders must understand the concept of dignity, and more. Hicks shows that by choosing dignity as a way of life, we open the way to greater peace within ourselves and to a safer and more humane world for all.
Donna Hicks is an Associate at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University. She has been involved in numerous unofficial diplomatic conflict resolution efforts including projects in the Middle East, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Colombia, Cuba, and Northern Ireland. She was a consultant to the BBC where she co-facilitated a television series, Facing the Truth, with Archbishop Desmond Tutu, which aired in the United Kingdom and on BBC World in 2007. She has taught conflict resolution at Harvard, Clark and Columbia Universities, and conducts training seminars in the Dignity Model, a human-centered approach to rebuilding conflict relationships, in the US and abroad. She is the author of the book, Dignity: The Essential Role it Plays in Resolving Conflict, published in 2011 by Yale University Press, and founder of declaredignity.com.