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Janet Rifkin
Dean, College of Social and Behavioral Sciences
Professor Rifkin has been involved in the field of dispute resolution for many years. In 1980, she and several colleagues started the University Mediation Project, the first campus-based program in the United States. This program no became the base for many local, regional, national and international activities that stimulated the growth of this field.
She co-founded of the National Association for Mediation in Education (NAME) which is now integrated into the Association for Conflict Resolution, and served as an advisor to the first American Bar Association Committee on dispute Resolution, helping to train mediators and others in Multi-Door pilot programs. She has served on the boards of directors of a number of national organizations including the National Institute of Dispute Resolution and the National Conference of Peacemaking and Conflict Resolution.
Professor Rifkin was drawn to the idea of Online Dispute Resolution initially through collaboration with Professor Katsh, who had written analyses of how information technologies transform law. They became intrigued by the idea of how emerging information technologies might offer a new resources for practicing third parties and by the more fundamental notion that cyberspace itself is a conflictual space which requires new models of conflict resolution.
Their work at the Center for Information Technology and Dispute Resolution has focused on these new questions and new possibilities. This course is one example of the Center’s approach—one that is exciting to all of us because it gives us the chance to bring some of our ideas to experienced and interested people who can both learn from our experience and who will undoubtedly ask questions that will expand our perspective and understanding about our work.
