Do You Have Ideas You Want to Express?

Creating Common Ground seeks exceptional people who are interested in writing regular blog-like columns.  This is not a paid position.  Instead, it is an opportunity for scholars, academics, practitioners or everyday people to express your ideas about how to build common ground in society.

Your credentials are less important than whether you have something interesting to say and know how to say it.

Our Mission

The mission of Creating Common Ground is threefold.  We want to:

1. Help people bridge divides on contentious interpersonal, social and political issues. 
2. Propose specific ways of bridging political divides in order to solve seemingly entrenched social problems.
3. Address what might be called the crisis of meaning in contemporary society.  Over the past half century or more, there has been a decline in our confidence in many traditional institutions — family, religion, social roles, business, government, science, community values. As a result, people often have difficulty in cultivating shared beliefs and values to live by.  However, it is precisely the capacity to act on the basis of some sort of system of values and beliefs that makes life meaningful lives.

We Seek Pieces that that Address:

1. Novel solutions to contentious social and political problems
2. Ways to resolve the culture wars
3. Novel value systems that coordinate or transcend different ways of thinking about the world
4. Ways to restructure society and social relations in order to promote sustainable and meaningful connections among people;
5. Ways to build new economic systems that meet the diverse needs of people
6. Ways to manage conflict between people at the level of interpersonal relations, groups, organizations, communities, and nations
7. Ways to move beyond political correctness, cancel culture, and intolerance in the name of tolerance
8. How to work with people whose political positions you might actually hate.

Your articles should:

1. Identify the different ways that people approach the issue you want to discuss
2. Show how to bridge divides on the issue
3. Affirm the dignity and humanity of all parties to a conflict
4. Be written for the general, intelligent reader
5. Draw on solid evidence whenever possible

Your article should not:

1. Express mere opinions without seeking to bridge divides
2. Show disrespect for the people about whom you are writing — no matter what positions that adopt on an issue
3. Express partisan views

Interested?

If you are interested in being considered as a part of our writing team, send an email to michaelmascolo@creatingcommonground.org.  Include your cv and a writing sample.  Your credentials don’t matter as much as whether you have something interesting to say and are able to say it in ways that will engage readers.