Advisory Board

Jane Gordon is the Associate Dean for Students and Program Affairs and Director of the Appropriate Dispute Resolution Program at the University of Oregon. After graduation from law school in 1980, Jane Gordon practiced law and trained as a mediator in 1982. She was a founder of Eugene's Community Mediation Board in 1981. She teaches the Mediation Clinic and courses in the law school and in the master's degree program. She also provides mediation and mediation training in the community. Gordon has trained lawyers from Ukraine in mediation and has taught international negotiation in Florence, Paris, and Barcelona. She is past chair of the Oregon State Bar's ADR Section, and is currently co-chair of the Education Committee of the ADR Section of the American Bar Association.

 Rob Gould co-founded the Oregon Peace Institute with Congresswoman Elizabeth Furse, and continues to serve as President of OPI’s Board of Directors. In earlier years, he managed the Portland Draft and Military Counseling Center and the Portland Office of the American Friends Service Committee. Dr. Gould co-founded Portland State University’s Graduate Program in Conflict Resolution in 1993 and currently serves as its Chair. He also completed a three-year term as Chair of PSU’s Philosophy Department before Conflict Resolution became its own department. More recently, he co-founded the Northwest Institute for Conflict Resolution, the Newhall Nonviolence Institute, and the Peace and Conflict Studies Consortium. He has presented a wide variety of papers, workshops, and seminars in topics related to philosophy, peace, and conflict resolution.

 Elaine Hallmark is the President of the Board of Beyond War and Senior Associate at the Oregon Consensus Program at the Hatfield School of Government at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon (2003-2011). She has been the principal and senior mediator of Confluence Northwest and Hallmark Pacific Group since 1988. Past Chair of the Oregon Dispute Resolution Commission, Elaine has received numerous awards including the Oregon State Bar Association Sidney Lezak Award of Merit for Outstanding Achievement in Appropriate Dispute Resolution, Lewis and Clark Law School Outstanding Environmental Alumni Award and the Spirit of Portland Award for her volunteer efforts with the Portland Neighborhood Mediation Center.

 Tom H. Hastings is founder and Director of PeaceVoice, a program of the Oregon Peace Institute. He teaches in the Portland State University Conflict Resolution masters program (specializing in Nonviolence and Media Studies) and one Peace and Conflict course at Portland Community College, Sylvania campus. He is a founder of Whitefeather Peace Community and has practiced, studies, trained others in, and written books about nonviolent action campaigns for almost 40 years. He is an aspiring pacifist.

 Hardy Merriman is Vice President and Director of Content Development at the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict. He also acts as an independent consultant in the field of civil resistance. For the last decade his work has focused on how grassroots nonviolent movements around the world can successfully fight for rights, freedom, and justice. He lectures widely to scholars, practitioners, and members of civil society.

Mr. Merriman has contributed to the books Waging Nonviolent Struggle: 20th Century Practice and 21st Century Potential (2005) by Gene Sharp and Civilian Jihad: Nonviolent Struggle, Democratization, and Governance in the Middle East (2010) by Maria Stephan (ed.).  He has also written about the role of nonviolent action in countering terrorism and co-authored A Guide to Effective Nonviolent Struggle, a training curriculum for activists.  Prior to his seven years working with the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict, he worked for three years with Dr. Gene Sharp at the Albert Einstein Institution.

  Tim Hicks is the Director of the Conflict and Dispute Resolution Masters Program at the University of Oregon. Tim was a mediator in private practice for 14 years before coming to the University of Oregon to direct the Masters degree program. Prior to his mediation career, he and his wife started and managed two successful businesses, one that grew to 150+ employees. As a mediator, Tim worked in three primary sectors - family and divorce, workplace/organizational, and multi-party, environmental/public policy. He also consulted with and provided training for businesses and organizations in conflict management. He is the co-author the book "The Process of Business/Environmental Collaborations: Partnering for Sustainability" and author of the article "Another Look At Identity-Based Conflict: The Roots of Conflict in the Psychology of Consciousness" (Negotiation Journal, Vol. 17, #1, January 2001). MA Antioch University.

 Winslow Myers has taught art and art history at various schools and colleges for forty years, and shows his paintings at www.winslowmyers.com and with Yvette Torres Fine Arts (http://yvettetorresfineart.com), Rockland, Maine. He published peace and justice related op-eds on a regular basis at www.winslowmyersopeds.blogspot.com. He lives in Bristol, Maine. He is the author of "Living Beyond War: A Citizen's Guide, with a Foreword by Brian Swimme, published by Orbis Press.

 Kent Shifferd holds a Ph.D. in history from Northern Illinois University and taught for thirty years at Northland College where he directed the Peace Studies program. He has held visiting appointments at Ripon College, the University of Wisconsin, and United Theological Seminary. He was one of the founders of the Wisconsin Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies, a twenty-one campus consortium, and served several terms as its Executive Director. He was part of the team of scholars who created the award-winning Annenberg-CPB, distance learning course, Dilemmas Of War And Peace, broadcast on Wisconsin Public Radio.

Kent Shifferd lives with his wife, Dr. Patricia Shifferd, and their Sheltie, "Sweetheart," on Middle Twin Lake in northern Wisconsin. He likes old airplanes, bluegill fishing, and traveling in Europe. He is currently working on a new book on the unprecedented global crisis of hypercivilization and the ways humanity and the planet might yet survive it. Kent is the author of the 2011 book "From War to Peace. A Guide to the Next Hundred Years".