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Ken Cloke

Kenneth Cloke is Director of the Center for Dispute Resolution and a mediator, arbitrator, attorney, coach, consultant, and trainer, specializing in communication, negotiation, and resolving complex multi-party conflicts, including community, grievance and workplace disputes, collective bargaining negotiations, organizational and school conflicts, sexual harassment, international conflicts and public policy disputes, and in designing preventative conflict resolution systems for organizations.

He is a nationally recognized speaker and author of many journal articles and books, including Mediation: Revenge and the Magic of Forgiveness; Mediating Dangerously: The Frontiers of Conflict Resolution; The Crossroads of Conflict: A Journey into the Heart of Dispute Resolution; and Conflict Revolution: Mediating Evil, War, Injustice, and Terrorism. He is co-author with Joan Goldsmith of Thank God It’s Monday! 14 Values We Need to Humanize the Way We Work, Resolving Conflicts at Work: 8 Strategies for Everyone on the Job (2nd Edition); Resolving Personal and Organizational Conflict: Stories of Transformation and Forgiveness; The End of Management and the Rise of Organizational Democracy, and The Art of Waking People Up: Cultivating Awareness and Authenticity at Work.

His coaching, consulting, facilitation, and training practice includes work with leaders of public, private and non-profit organizations on effective communication, collaborative negotiation, relationship building, conflict resolution, leadership development, strategic planning, team building, meditation and organizational change.
He has been an organizer, activist and leader in the student, civil rights, anti-draft, anti-war and environmental movements. He worked in Alabama and Georgia in the 1960’s with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Southern Conference Leadership Council (SCLC), Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) and Law Student’s Civil Rights Research Council (LSCRRC). He was active in SLATE and the Free Speech Movement at U.C. Berkeley. He was Law Student Organizer and Executive Director of the National Lawyers Guild and worked closely with the National Mobilization Against the War, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), Winter Soldier Investigation, Vietnam Veterans Against the War and similar organizations. He is currently President and co-founder of Mediators Beyond Borders, and led an international team of mediators to the Copenhagen climate change conference and to meetings at United Nations headquarters.

He has been a coach and consultant to public and private sector organizations including unions and non-profits in conflict resolution, personnel management, team building, motivation, compensation, personnel evaluation, collaborative negotiation, shared decision making, labor relations, conflict resolution systems design, and other issues.

His university teaching includes law, mediation, history, political science, conflict studies, urban studies, and other social sciences at a number of colleges and universities including Southwestern University School of Law, Antioch University, Occidental College, USC and UCLA. He is or has recently been an Adjunct Professor at Pepperdine University School of Law; Global Negotiation Insight Institute at Harvard Law School, Omega Institute; Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Cape Cod Institute; University of Amsterdam ADR Institute; Saybrook University, Massey University (New Zealand) and Southern Methodist University.
He received his B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley; J.D. from U.C. Berkeley’s Boalt Law School; Ph.D. from U.C.L.A.; LLM from U.C.L.A. Law School; and did post-doctoral work at Yale University School of Law. He is a graduate of the National Judicial College in Reno. Nevada and taken numerous courses in mediation.