Making Peace Visible25 Marras 2025

The antidote to polarization may be hiding in plain sight

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 been very successful, according to an analysis of 77 interventions aimed at decreasing partisan animosity, published in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It showed that while interventions can briefly reduce animosity, their effects are small and short-lived.

But Coleman’s not giving up - he's just changing tactics.

In this episode, we discuss some of the most recent findings from Coleman’s lab at Columbia University Teachers’ College, which he says is part of a “radical new science of peace.” In their latest study, Coleman and colleagues focus on the media: using AI to comb through 700,000 news reports from a diverse group of 18 countries, including the United States. What they found points to a new way to understand what makes a society more peaceful – or more polarized.

LEARN MORE:

Peter T. Coleman’s research lab: The Morton Deutsch International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution

Coleman’s Medium post on classifying peace in global media, “A Radical New Science of Peace.”

AI for Good? AI Finds Lasting Peace in Unexpected Places in Psychology Today, by Peter T. Coleman and Larry S. Liebovitch.

Take the Polarization Detox Challenge

Listen to our December 2022 episode with Peter Coleman.

Follow Peter T. Coleman on Bluesky

ABOUT THE SHOW

The Making Peace Visible podcast is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin. Our associate producer is Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.org

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