Bernie Mayer and Jacqueline N. Font-Guzmán wrote a new book, The Neutrality Trap: Disrupting and Connecting for Social Change.  Here’s an excerpt from the flyer:

The message at the heart of The Neutrality Trap is that the wisest and ultimately most effective way to deal with our most profound problems is to avoid the lure of easy solutions or premature peace.  We need to reach out across our differences but we also need to disrupt the forces that sustain the exploitation of people and the environment.  Holding the tension between connecting and disrupting is crucial if we are to confront the social issues we face.  We need to engage and talk with one another, but for real change to happen, we also need the wake-up calls of disruption and disorder.

The Neutrality Trap challenges all of us to embrace the potential we have to further social progress while cautioning us against reflexively calling for dialogue without also recognizing the necessity for disrupting regressive systems and building social movements.  The authors invite us to reconsider our reliance on neutrality, objectivity, and professionalism and instead commit ourselves to justice, equity, and genuine connection.

Bernie is professor emeritus of Conflict Studies at Creighton University, a founding partner of CDR Associates, and author of Beyond Neutrality, Staying with Conflict, The Dynamics of Conflict, and The Conflict Paradox.

Jackie is a Fulbright scholar who is the inaugural Executive Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at Eastern Mennonite University and professor in its Center for Justice and Peacebuilding.  She is the author of Experiencing Puerto Rican Citizenship and Cultural Nationalism.

The book will be released on January 26 and is now available for preorder here and here in the US and here and here in Canada.