Job Description of an Arbitrator I have filled

     I fashioned my own position of an arbitrator that I felt I could fill from which I could make intelligent decisions in matters of dispute or conflict between interested parties.  As an arbitrator, I would be objective, implying I would take no salary from any of the disputants, but would fairly and honestly render my suggestions that were designed to be helpful, I believe, in getting the parties to work together for the common good in the world.

     I started taking the role of an arbitrator as early as 1975, when working for a Masters in Higher Education at Chicago University, I researched and wrote a masters thesis on the Governance of Community Colleges in the State of Illinois.  I had taught by then several years at the university level and then at the community college level.  The state board of Higher Education and the Community College Board might use this study of mine for their own evaluations of the community college board during its first 10 years in operation.  As you may know, Illinois was a pioneer in the two-year college system that hands out a two-year college Associate's degree.  In 1975, I was a tenured faculty member of the community college in DuPage County, College of DuPage.  I took no favors for doing the study, despite my hope that I might be contributing to the growth of community colleges across the country.  My aim was to provide guidance and assistance to the leaders in higher education in Illinois in understanding the problems and opportunities the community colleges in the state provided.

     Just about the same time I became part of the evaluations team of the Malcolm X Community College in Chicago.  There, a debate between university-oriented instructors waged with high-school teachers at the College over the requirements in the liberal arts curricula a student needed to qualify for an Associate of Arts degree, even should he be pursuing a vocational objective.  I argued the number of such courses needed to be parsed down, because the curriculum appeared to be constructed independent of the needs and objectives of the students enrolled in its various programs.

     Then, I got to travel around the globe while still maintaining my full-time position in the business world as a systems and programming consultant.  My second marriage had fallen apart, and I chose to travel as a way to spend some of my earnings between projects or consulting positions.  Once again, I donned a hat of an international arbitrator; and it was in that sightseeing capacity of a world traveler that I toured Moscow, Beijing, etc. and talked to whoever desired to hear me regarding my ideas about some aspect of their country, particularly, how my suggestions could lessen conflict between competing groups.  In Russia, I took up the issue of East-West national modes of governance in order to make suggestions beneficial to its people in dealing with the West.  So too, in China, etc.

     When I no longer travelled out of the US, I was able to find the Internet a convenient repository of ideas and suggestions.  For instance, in many of my items over the years, I have tried to encourage the US to makes its military a vital means for promoting world peace internationally, e.g., by expanding its myriad of bases and installations.