CRS Announces Publication of New Guide for Navigating Campus Conflicts

As the new academic year approaches, the Justice Department’s Community Relations Service (CRS), in collaboration with the Department’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services and The Ohio State University’s Divided Community Project, is pleased to provide you with a brand-new publication: “Navigating Conflicts: A Guide for Campus Leaders and Public Safety Personnel.”

The Guide offers campus administration and public safety leaders a framework, supported by practical ideas and tools, for dealing with campus conflict as they plan for a safe beginning of the academic year.  The Guide is built on the understanding that conflict plays a valuable and necessary role on campuses, and that divergent views, robust discourse, and disagreement can produce new ideas and stronger relationships.  The authors have designed this resource to help campuses move disagreements that are inherent to academic life towards peaceful outcomes, regardless of viewpoint.

The publication includes:

• Explanations of the critical topics of awareness, communication, support, and coordination—drawing on the learnings from the fields of conflict management and dispute resolution, as well as the experiences of campus leaders. 
• A toolkit for rapid response to campus conflict.  The toolkit condenses the Guide’s key learnings into checklists for quick implementation. 
• An interactive simulation, “Nexera University.”  The simulation is a participatory role play exercise that calls on participants to plan, negotiate, and communicate responses in real time based on a hypothetical scenario. The simulation was not created to evaluate campus readiness or suggest a “perfect response”—but instead to help campus leaders open up new lines of communication, inventory their relationships, reflect, and plan effectively. 

The CRS and the Divided Community Project are available to college and university communities to provide assistance with any of these resources—including helping facilitate the interactive simulation in person, virtually, or in a hybrid format. Colleges and universities interested in receiving assistance may contact askCRS@usdoj.gov. Additional information about the Community Relations Service’s work with educational organizations is available on its website at https://www.justice.gov/crs/our-stakeholders/educational-organizations.