Making Peace Visible

A tweet on a quiet Sunday morning stops Dave Butler cold: a shooting at a Latter-day Saint church in Grand Blanc, Michigan. He doesn't know a single victim — but he’s a member of the same faith, so the attack feels personal. As the news spreads and fear turns to anger online, Dave makes a choice that no one sees coming, one that will pull him into the national spotlight and put him directly in the path of backlash he never expected.

This week we’re featuring an episode of a new podcast hosted by Monica Guzman. Monica...

Making Peace Visible is hosting a free virtual event to reflect on what we’ve learned from the Beyond Polarization series, and how we’re thinking about polarization and solutions going into the 2026 midterms. “Polarization, the midterms & what comes next,” is happening at 7pm Eastern Time on October 27th.  RSVP here. 

We hope you'll join us to process some of what we've gathered about the forces driving polarization here in the United States, and some of the lessons we've taken away about what works to build bridges across the divide -- in journalism, online, in college classrooms in our com...

Our guest this episode is an ordained pastor and journalist who's traveled the country speaking to conservative Christians and facilitating discussions about politics and division. But she's come to believe those efforts are ineffective, and has shifted her focus to combatting Christian Nationalism. 

This is episode 6 in Making Peace Visible's special series, Beyond Polarization. In episodes 1 through 5, we spoke to Americans invested in bridging political divides through journalism, social media, higher education and in civil society. This episode, with a spotlight on religion, examines the limits of trying to find common cause with people you disagree with. 

Civil society organizations are crucial to peacebuilding efforts, in the US and around the world. That includes nonprofits, school boards, churches, membership organizations and charities. A number of international peacebuilding organizations launched local programs in the United States after the 2016 election revealed heightened levels of polarization and dehumanizing rhetoric that mirrored what they'd seen in countries with ongoing violent conflicts. Now we have about 10 years worth of experience, and data from this kind of work to learn from.

Do Americans even care about bridging political divides? When people attend an event where they come to see the...

At college, young people have the opportunity  to get to know peers from different ethnic, social, and political backgrounds. As a result, they meet students who see the world in completely different ways. 

So what should happen when students encounter ideas, histories, or each other in ways that make them deeply uncomfortable? Avoiding those conversations may reduce conflict in the short term. Simply encouraging students to “speak freely” isn’t enough either. Without trust and skill, difficult conversations can reinforce divisions instead of bridging them. 

Professors and other educators can provide guidance drawing from a wide arra...

In our third episode in the Beyond Polarization series, we talk to two inspiring creators who are bridging the political divide on podcasts, YouTube, and even Instagram! 

Think about an issue that you're passionate about. Imagine sitting in a room with someone just as passionate as you, but on the polar opposite side of that issue. Now, imagine your conversation is being recorded and will be streamed online. What do you think would happen in that room?

Our first guest this episode is a content creator who brings Americans with deeply opposing views together and s...

This is the second episode in Beyond Polarization, a special series about what polarization is costing Americans, and what we can actually do about it. You can find Episode 1, where we analyze research on polarization and disagreement, here.

In this episode: how the news media can do less to reinforce polarized narratives, and more to meet the needs of audiences.

Journalism is an essential component of our democratic system. But when it comes to politics, how much reporting do you read that actually helps you decide who to vote for?

During an election...

Political polarization in the U.S. can feel like a lost cause. Trying to have productive conversations with people you disagree with over politics can seem pointless, especially now. News media and social media often reduce “the other side” to its most extreme forms. This creates a negative feedback loop, weakening our ability to function as a democracy.

But research suggests that Americans — on both the Left and the Right —  often misperceive how hostile, uniform, or different their opponents really are. 

In our seven part Beyond Polarization series, we're talking to experts and practitioners from across the...

Often the news covers crises without context. That's especially true when it comes to coverage of the Global South in international media. 

Our guest this episode, journalist and documentary filmmaker Etant Dupain, gives us a behind-the-headlines look at events in Haiti, his home country. Dupain says that the gangs who control much of the country now are supported by powerful elites. Their aim, his says, is to suppress a grassroots protest movement that is calling for accountability for the embezzlement of billions of dollars in development funds. 

Dupain's documentary film, The Fight for Haiti, tells th...

Polarization in the U.S. is not just a Washington problem. It also shows up in our newsrooms, our social media feeds, our schools, our dinner tables, and most importantly, in the stories we tell about each other. 

That's why Making Peace Visible is launching a new limited podcast series called Beyond Polarization. We're speaking with people from across the political spectrum to break down what these deepening divisions are actually costing Americans — all of us.

Across six sectors — journalism, new media, higher education, technology, government, and civil society — we’ll examine where familiar solutions have fallen sho...

The MPV team is currently hard at work on Beyond Polarization, a limited series where we talk to people who are finding solutions to the increasing polarization we face in the United States. In the meantime, we bring you this episode from our friends at Disrupting Peace, a podcast from the World Peace Foundation about "why peace hasn't worked, and how it still could." 

What beliefs make people willing to commit violence, and what could change their minds? This episode explores what makes individuals vulnerable to white supremacist beliefs, what it means when extremism becomes mainstream, the s...

Suzette Brooks Masters is a thought leader, political strategist and Senior Fellow at the Democracy Funders Network. She says that for American democracy to thrive, it's not enough to defend the existing system against attack, because the system doesn’t work well for most people. 

She’s been researching ways to invigorate democratic practice, including citizen’s assemblies and participatory budgeting – frameworks that give ordinary people a bigger say in government. And she advocates for storytelling that envisions positive, possible futures. 

LEARN MORE

Suzette Brooks Masters’ articles for The Fulcrum

Imagining Better Futur...

The world is missing the perspective of peacebuilders at a critical moment, as we live through this time of one war after another. We need skilled negotiators and mediators who know how to listen to both sides of a dispute and find common ground.  

We invited Joshua Weiss to the podcast to help us understand what happened in the negotiations that preceded the Iran war, and how negotiators might bring it to an end.  

Josh Weiss is an internationally recognized conflict resolution expert, educator, and author. He is co-founder of Harvard University's Global Negotiation Initiative an...

For her whole life, Iranian-American actor and activist Nazanin Nour has been calling attention to the distinction between the Islamic Republic – the face of Iran in the news – and the Iranian people. And she’s not stopping any time soon. 

In normal times, Nour hosts Iranian diaspora musicians, comedians, journalists and others on her online show Mehmooni with Nazanin. But since mass protests began in December, she's been using social media to amplify the message of the protesters and call attention to the massacre and disappearances of thousands. 

She's also calling out others – including news organizati...

"I’m a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will."

This aphorism from political philosopher and journalist Antonio Gramsci is one of our guest Neha Sanghrajka’s favorite quotes. When you learn her story, you’ll understand why. 

A Kenyan born lawyer, Sanghrajka spent almost a decade in Mozambique mediating a peace process between the country’s president and a guerrilla leader stationed on a remote mountaintop. Sanghrajka and her colleague, Swiss Ambassador Mirko Manzoni, travelled back and forth between the capital of Maputo and the militant headquarters in the remote Garongosa Mountains...

Public funding for peace efforts took a massive hit with the gutting of USAID last year, and other donor countries have ramped down aid as well, in a world that feels increasingly less safe for many. That’s why our ears perked up when we heard about Brian Abrams, an American venture capitalist who is investing in technology to find solutions to violent conflict. 

In the new field of ‘peace tech,’ companies are using AI to predict the likelihood of major events – like military invasions or popular uprisings, and modeling how to prevent violence before it starts. With thei...

It’s hard to keep up with the number of unprecedented actions the second Trump administration has taken, but what happened on January 3 – when the US military extracted Venezuela’s president and first lady amidst an aerial assault on Caracas – is impossible to ignore. Also seemingly overnight the U.S. government’s narrative on why they were taking action against Venezuela changed – from interdicting the drug trade to restoring the country’s oil sector. 

In this special episode, we look at the many narratives surrounding the U.S. action in Venezuela, and separate fact from fiction. We also discuss wh...

William Ury is one of the world’s most influential peacebuilders and experts on negotiation. He advised Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos in the lead up to that country's historic 2016 peace agreement with the FARC, and played a key role in de-escalating nuclear tensions between the U.S. and North Korea in 2017. Getting to Yes, which Ury co-wrote with Roger Fisher back in 1981, is the world’s best selling book on negotiation. Ury co-founded the Program on Negotiation at Harvard, as well as the Abraham Path Initiative, an NGO that builds walking trails connecting communities in the Middle East. 

...

This week we’re featuring an episode from American UnExceptionalism, a limited podcast series that examines the intersection of authoritarianism and religious fundamentalism around the world – looking for lessons that Americans can learn from to resist Christian nationalism and the threat it poses to our democracy. 

The series turns the idea of American exceptionalism on its head, asking: What can we learn from others about protecting democracy when the stakes are high? Co-hosts Susan Hayward and Matthew D. Taylor bring their expertise to bear as scholars of religion, religious extremism, and peace. 

In this episode, Taylor...

In the last decade, the field of peace-building has turned its eye toward the United States, as polarization has gotten worse, and political violence has increased. Our guest Peter T. Coleman is a part of that movement to bring peace-building or bridge-building to Americans. Coleman is a professor of psychology and education at Columbia University, and a renowned expert on conflict resolution and sustainable peace. He first appeared on Making Peace Visible in January 2023 to discuss his book The Way Out: How to Overcome Toxic Polarization.

The bad news is polarization efforts in the United States haven’t...

“ Military children serve alongside their parents, except they're invisible.” –  Harold Kudler, M.D. 

Millions of American children have had parents serve in Iraq, Afghanistan, or other wars following September 11, 2001. This episode focuses on the wellbeing of those children, who tend to grow up fast. 

Susan Hackley is the director of the short documentary film Veteran Children. The film offers a window into the often hidden lives of military spouses and kids. Through interviews and roundtables, viewers meet children who have suffered as a result of their parents’ service, and also those who stepped up to help a wounde...

In our time when rumors and lies spread across the internet with lightning speed, journalists play a vital role in debunking misinformation and disinformation.

Media outlets run by and for non-white audiences, while working under great financial pressure, occupy a special role in the information ecosystem. With immigrants and people of color so often targeted, ethnic and indigenous media outlets are often paying closer attention to these rumors and lies about their own communities. So, they’re well positioned to address disinformation before it reaches the general population. And they offer lessons for mainstream journalists and news co...

Our guest Megan K. Stack began a recent op-ed in the New York Times describing a contentious debate about anti-immigration riots in the Northern Ireland Assembly, “each speaker straining to upstage the last in outrage and fervor.” But unlike many opinion writers, she doesn’t go on to expound on the importance of civility in public discourse. Instead, she marvels that this debate is happening at all – amidst the children of Protestant paramilitaries and I.R.A. bombers, people who grew up in communities that battled each other bitterly for about 30 years – but now share power under a peace agreement...

Since his election in 2010, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has transitioned Hungary from a democracy into a quasi-authoritarian country, and provided a blueprint for Project 2025 in the United States.  Elections, economic policies, and the media have been transformed to benefit Orbán and his far-right Fidesz Party.

Orbán’s government, with its consolidation of executive power, Christian nationalist and anti-LGBTQ policies served as inspiration for Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s plan for Donald Trump’s second term. Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts has called modern Hungary “not just a model for conservative statecraft but the model.”

When we first read Suchitra Vijayan’s reporting on the media in India we were shocked to learn that much of the press in the world’s largest democracy, had fallen in line with Narendra Modi’s authoritarian agenda. Now it feels like a portent of what could happen in the United States. In India today, 75% or more of news organizations are now owned by 4 or 5 large corporations, all led by allies of Modi. In contrast, journalists who have dared criticize the government have been harassed, detained, imprisoned, and even murdered. 

Suchitra Vijayan is a journalist and attorne...

This episode comes to us from independent journalist Scott Gurian. 

In the Nørrebro neighborhood of Copenhagen, there's a small building with a garden and wooden seats. At first glance, it looks like some sort of neighborhood cafe, but it's actually the Menneskebiblioteket or Human Library, where the "readers" and "books" are people having deeply personal and intimate conversations about topics that might normally be considered off-limits or taboo in polite society. The library is staffed by volunteers whose life stories and experiences mean they face some sort of stigma, whether it be due to their ethnicity, re...

Peace negotiations and reconciliation processes can change the world – but they’re not much to look at. The shortage of compelling images is one of many challenges to making peace more tangible in our very visual world.  

But if  we expand the concept of peace to include what peace actually means to people who have lived through conflict, then what peace looks like can be expansive. Like a portrait of a family reunited after a war. Or something unexpected, like a photo of a man walking on stilts through a refugee camp, entertaining a host of children.  

Ou...

Think about the infrastructure that makes your community tick. Roads, schools, buses and trains, parks and playgrounds, the sewage treatment plant are probably the kind of things that first come to mind. But what about local news?

Our guest this episode, journalism scholar Jennifer  Henrichsen, says local newspapers, news webistes, and TV and radio stations are a necessary part of public infrastructure too.

Local news journalists play crucial roles in times of crises, like wildfires and floods. They also play a less visible watchdog role in keeping local governments accountable. And even less visible -- th...

This podcast is a project of Making Peace Visible, is a small 501(c)3 nonprofit organization based in Somerville, Massachusetts. What we do is unique -- consistently analyzing how the media covers conflict, and amplifying stories of resolution and reconciliation that are often ignored by the mainstream media.  

In the month of July, we're working to raise $40,000 to continue and grow this work. With your help, we can fund journalists producing rigorous, underreported stories of conflict transformation through the Making Peace Visible story awards, and convene strategic gatherings of peacebuilders and journalists to shift how stories get told. Yo...

This podcast is a project of Making Peace Visible, is a small 501(c)3 nonprofit organization based in Somerville, Massachusetts. What we do is unique -- consistently analyzing how the media covers conflict, and amplifying stories of resolution and reconciliation that are often ignored by the mainstream media.  

In the month of July, we're working to raise $40,000 to continue and grow this work. With your help, we can fund journalists producing rigorous, underreported stories of conflict transformation through the Making Peace Visible story awards, and convene strategic gatherings of peacebuilders and journalists to shift how stories get told. Yo...

In hopes of learning from the past and In light of US missile strikes on Iranian nuclear sites and subsequent retaliation in an escalating regional conflict, we're revisiting one of our best episodes on how Western media covers war.

Guest Bette Dam is a Dutch journalist who covered the war in Afghanistan for 15 years. She began her coverage in 2006, embedded with the Dutch military. She’s the author of two books: Looking for the Enemy, Mullah Omar and the Unknown Taliban, and A Man in a Motorcycle, How Hamid Karzai Came to Power. 

In the cou...

In the United States, about one sixth of the federal budget goes to defense.  Why are many Americans so passive in the face of the massive expenditures for defense that crowd out spending on human needs like education, healthcare and infrastructure? Why does much of the media accept the status quo? And is all of this spending making Americans and the world any safer?

Our guest helping tackle these questions is anthropologist Stephanie Savell. Savell is the Co-Director of Costs of War at Brown University, an interdisciplinary research project focused on the impact of the post 9/11 wars i...

“Humans are not rational beings with emotions. In fact, we're just the opposite. We're emotionally based beings who can only think rationally when we feel that our identities, as we see them, are understood and valued by others.”

Those words from neuroscientist Bob Deutch triggered a lightbulb moment in the mind of Tim Phillips, a veteran peacebuilder and educator.  Over the past twelve years, Phillips has worked with neuroscientists and psychologists to integrate brain science into research and practice at Beyond Conflict, the peacebuilding organization that he founded in 1991 and where he serves as CEO. 

In thi...

Support for Donald Trump is slipping lately, at least in part because of the President’s violations of democratic rules and norms. In a New York Times/ Sienna College poll, a majority of respondents disapproved of Trump’s recent actions, including moves to eliminate government programs enacted by Congress, deport legal immigrants who have protested Israel, and ignore Supreme Court rulings. 

This episode we’re joined by Suzette Brooks Masters, a thought leader, political strategist and Senior Fellow at the Democracy Funders Network. She says that for American democracy to thrive, it's not enough to defend the existin...

Brazil’s Arariboia Indigenous Territory is a green island that spans more than 413,000 hectares (1.02 million acres) in a sea of deforestation. Though the territory is protected by law, it’s become the site of incursions by loggers and cattle ranchers.

In a five-year investigative series for the environmental news outlet Mongabay, reporter Karla Mendes exposed environmental crimes in Arariboia and other protected areas of the Amazon, including palm oil production, logging, and cattle ranching. She also investigated the murder of Paulo Paulino Guajajara, an indigenous Forest Guardian who was ambushed by loggers. He was one of more than...

What's it like to lead without a military? This episode, from our friends at Disrupting Peace, focuses on Costa Rica, and explores what happens when a country abolishes its military, Costa Rica’s approach to domestic security, and the ways that having a military can increase violence and instability in a country.

Carlos Alvarado Quesada served as President of Costa Rica from 2018 to 2022. While president, he focused on combating climate change, defending human rights, democracy, and multilateralism, which is when countries cooperate to solve problems. Carlos currently teaches graduate courses on leadership at the Fletcher School at Tu...

Venezuela is a tough place to be a journalist. Our guest this episode, Tony Frangie Mawad wrote last year about the possibility of an opposition victory that would upend the regime of President Nicolás Maduro in the country's July elections. But even though the opposition candidate won the vote, Maduro held on to power, and this year has cracked down further on his opponents and an already-weakened media.

Frangie Mawad is an independent journalist and political analyst, based in Caracas, Venezuela.  He writes the Substack Venezuela Weekly, where he keeps a close eye on developments both at...

After the end of the Cold War, many academics and policymakers believed that a global state of peace was achievable.  People talked about a “peace dividend”:  A long-term benefit. as budgets for military spending would be redirected to social programs or returned to citizens in the form of lower taxes.  

Our guest this episode, Bridget Conley, started her career in peacebuilding in the 1990s. At that time, Western academics and politicians spelled out a formula for creating peaceful nations. You would hold elections, convert the economy to a free market, pursue human rights, and prosecute bad actors. But the...

When the Trump administration slashed the budget and suspended most of the staff of the United States Agency for International Development last month, their representatives said the agency was using taxpayer dollars to fund a radical, “woke” agenda around the world. Criticism coming from the Left since the founding of USAID in 1961 has characterized USAID as an arm of American imperialism. 

The reality, of course, is much more complicated. It’s heartbreaking to hear stories of children suddenly unable to attend school and receive essential vaccinations. But beyond the shockwaves of a sudden halt in the flow of assi...

Often the news covers crises without context. That's especially true when it comes to coverage of the Global South in international media. 

Our guest this episode, journalist and documentary filmmaker Etant Dupain, gives us a behind-the-headlines look at events in Haiti, his home country. Dupain says that the gangs who control much of the country now are supported by powerful elites. Their aim, his says, is to suppress a grassroots protest movement that is calling for accountability for the embezzlement of billions of dollars in development funds. 

Dupain's new documentary film, The Fight for Haiti, te...