Resolving conflict in Africa

About this book

"The Fermeda Workshop, held in August 1969, was the first attempt to employ a modified form of sentitivity training in an international setting. Three Yale professors - Leonard W. Doob (psychology), William J. Foltz (political science), and Robert B. Stevens (law) - brought together at the Fermeda Hotel, in the South Tyrol, six Somalis, six Kenyans, six Ethiopians, and four American trainers to see whether the use of T-groups would enable the Africans to comprehend more fully and propose solutions to the costly border disputes between their countries. In this book, three of the African participants - one from each country - present their reactions to the experience, and the American sponsors and trainers describe their impressions of what took place and what was accomplished. The chapters were all written independently of each other, and the evaluations of the experiment vary enormously from very positive to very negative. The sponsors hope that this unusually interesting case study in the application of social science to an international conflict will have far-reaching implications for all kinds of diplomacy and will constitute a contribution to the techniques of reducing international tension elsewhere in the world." -- Back cover.