Case: Fallen Idol? Aung San Suu Kyi & the Rohingya Humanitarian Crisis
Length: 23 pages
Learning Objective: Developed for a course in moral leadership, this case may be used to teach about how top officials may fail when faced with their greatest adaptive challenges. In this case, students may be asked to consider Suu Kyi’s approach in the light of adaptive leadership theory, which rejects the false certainty of easy answers in addressing intercommunal conflict in favor of embracing uncertainty, experimentation, and the risk of failure in the open-ended search for a more humane, enduring path forward.
Case: Caño Martín Peña: Land Ownership and Politics Collide in Puerto Rico
Length: 5-page Multimedia Case
Learning Objective: This case offers rich material for thinking about the most appropriate scale and means for addressing a range of complex socio-economic and environmental urban challenges, such as community empowerment, affordable housing, urban planning, gentrification and water pollution. Pundits and politicians across the globe overwhelmingly view the everyday operation of the private market, coupled with some degree of local and state action, as offering the best way forward in tackling these thorny, complex issues. The Caño Martín Peña community land trust provides students with an opportunity to critically assess an alternative solution -- namely, collectivizing land ownership at the small scale of a neighborhood and rebalancing decision-making power away from city and state authorities as well as private developers to the communities that make the neighborhood their home. Using this case, students can analyze the strengths and weaknesses of the CLT model and consider how effective and sustainable it might be in different contexts.
Case: Female Genital Cutting: Confronting the Power of Tradition in Senegal
Length: 8-page Multimedia Case
Learning Objective: This multimedia case provides a compelling vehicle for the instructor and the students to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of different mechanisms for changing deeply entrenched social norms, from public deliberation and community empowerment to a coordinated abandonment approach that seeks to quickly flip social equilibrium, using game-theoretic principles. Students can also explore ethical dilemmas in international development and aid, as well as the potential for cultural imperialism.
Case: Fighting Bonded Labor in Rural India: Village Activist Gyarsi Bai Tackles an Entrenched System of Coercion
Length: 19 pages plus a multimedia website of eight short videos, ranging in length from 1 to 3:30 min.
Learning Objective: This case was developed for a negotiations class to introduce the topic of coalition-building in multi-party negotiations, but can also be used to examine mechanisms of social change. It demonstrates that, even in extreme situations, disenfranchised groups can make significant headway through effective use of negotiating techniques. Students examine how activist Gyarsi Bai earned the trust of vulnerable laborers, created viable alternatives to bonded labor, and built coalitions with local and national NGOs, the state and central governments, and the media to expand her influence.
Case: Negotiating from the Margins: The Santa Clara Pueblo Seeks Key Ancestral Lands
Length: 23 pages plus video supplement
Learning Objective: This negotiations case describes the approach, over time, of Santa Clara, a small Pueblo Indian tribe in New Mexico, to recover a piece of land tribal leaders viewed as integral to their ancestral homeland. The case can be used to teach several lessons about negotiation – how to trade on differences to create value, overcome a status and power imbalance, build a multi-party coalition, and balance the demands of internal vs. external negotiations. In particular, case analysis shows the advantages of understanding one’s adversary, especially in framing an argument. It also shows how to dig beneath an apparent zero-sum conflict to find a solution that gives both parties what they most want and need.
Case: "No Prison in East L.A.!": Birth of a Grassroots Movement
Length: 28 pages
Learning Objective: This advocacy strategy case describes the special challenges faced and techniques employed by a poor, minority (Mexican-American) neighborhood group seeking to draw public attention to its concern about the proposed siting of a state prison facility on its borders. The Mothers of East LA employ a variety of attention-getting publicity techniques to apparent great effect. This case provides the basis for discussion of advocacy techniques, community organizing strategies, and the position of non-affluent interest groups.
Case: Against All Odds: The Campaign in Congress for Japanese American Redress
Length: 30 pages
Learning Objective: The dramatic story of how the Japanese American community successfully lobbied Congress and the White House for legislation mandating financial compensation for those sent to detention camps in the wake of the attack on Pearl Harbor. The case not only tells the inside story of a decade-long lobbying campaign--including a carefully researched personal approach which changed Ronald Reagan's mind on the subject--but serves as a model of how bills really become laws. Aspects of this process explored in the narrative include internal legislative strategy, the role of the press, the role of grassroots organization, and the structure and nature of coalitions. In addition to calling on students to consider the various approaches available to the Japanese community, such as the choice between legislative initiative and court action, the case allows students to assume the role of a marginalized group dealing with the political and cultural mainstream.