The ‘What Can I Do?’ Series
What Is This Series?
How Is This Series Organized?
The Framework: Name, Reflect, Act
Why Multiple Perspectives?
The Foundations of This Series
How To Use This Series
Every day we encounter conflict, injustice, polarization, and uncertainty. We ask ourselves difficult questions: What can I do? Does my voice matter? Can one person make a difference?
The What Can I Do? series begins with those questions.
Each perspective offers a different way of thinking about the choices we face as individuals, communities, and societies. Drawing on the scholarship and practice of conflict transformation, peacebuilding, restorative justice, and decolonization, the series invites readers to move beyond simple answers and engage the complexity of our world with curiosity, courage, and responsibility.
At the Center, we believe conflict transformation is the work of diplomats, mediators, activists, parents, teachers, students, neighbors, colleagues, and citizens. The ways we listen, disagree, build relationships, and respond to difference shape the communities we live in and the future we create together.
The What Can I Do? series begins with the individual. Institutions, cultures, and systems matter deeply, and many conflicts require collective action and structural change. But every system is inhabited by people making choices. This series explores the choices available to each of us, wherever we find ourselves in a conflict. It does not ask what governments, organizations, or communities should do. It asks what you can do. And maybe what we do ends up creating new systems.
This series is organized into themes. Each theme explores one conflict situation from multiple perspectives. The first theme, When a Word or Phrase Hurts, has three perspectives:
Perspective 1: When I was hurt by a word or phrase someone used
Perspective 2: When I caused hurt by a word or phrase I used
Perspective 3: When I witnessed someone hurt by a word or phrase
You do not have to read all three. Start with the perspective that speaks to where you are right now. But reading all three will give you a fuller picture of the conflict and the people in it.
Every perspective in this series follows the same three-movement framework, grounded in the Compassionate Courage approach:
Name. Identify what is really happening. Not the overt conflict, not the comfortable version, but the real issue. Name your feelings, the people involved, the history, and what you actually know.
Reflect. Stay with what you found. Do not rush to act. Examine your own biases, goals, assumptions, and values. Sit with the discomfort long enough to understand it. Resist the urge to react immediately, and remain open to complexity before deciding what comes next.
Act. Move from a place of clarity, not reaction. With compassion toward yourself and courage toward others. On your terms, when you are ready, grounded in what you named and reflected on.
Conflict is never one-sided. There are as many perspectives, if not more, involved as there are parties in the conflict. Each carries something. Each party in the conflict has responsibilities. Each can cause harm in the process of trying to address harm.
Exploring multiple perspectives does not mean all actions carry equal weight, nor does it imply moral equivalence. It means conflict is relational, and understanding different positions can help us respond with greater clarity, accountability, and wisdom.
This series is not written to defend one side over another. It seeks to account for the full complexity of what happens when harm is caused by one or more parties and considers how others respond to that harm.
Read the perspective that speaks to you now. Return to the others when you are ready. Conflict rarely looks the same from every perspective, and neither will you.
Every perspective in this series is grounded in the scholarship and practice that inform the work of the Center for Conflict Studies and its founder, Pushpa Iyer, including conflict transformation, restorative justice, decolonization, and the Compassionate Courage framework. Together, these approaches encourage us to move beyond binary thinking, engage complexity with compassion and courage, and recognize that meaningful conflict transformation requires accountability, curiosity, and the courage to question our own assumptions.
Start with the perspective that best reflects your experience. Be brutally honest with your reflections, particularly about your own biases, prejudices, and values. You do not need to share them with anyone. Use the Name · Reflect · Act framework as a sequence rather than a checklist. You may need to return to Name or Reflect before you are ready to Act. Share perspectives you are comfortable sharing with others, primarily your allies. It might provide you with a more holistic understanding of the situation. Conflict evolves. Where you are today is not where you will be in a week. Return to these perspectives as the situation develops.