A Tribute to a Mediation Pioneer Richard A. Salem

We at ACR pause to honor the vision and early leadership of Richard A. Salem, a past-

recipient of our prestigious Mary Parker Follett award for his many accomplishments in

dispute resolution both in the U.S. and abroad. His son, Peter Salem, caries on his

father's legacy as a leader with the Association for Family and Conciliation Courts, as

an active member of ACR, and a brilliant thinker in our community. We are pleased to

bring you the following tribute from Peter. Our condolences to Peter and his family.

Mediation Pioneer Richard A. Salem 1930-2014 By Peter Salem

Dick Salem passed away on March 22, 2014 due to complications from a stroke. He was a

mediation pioneer whose career took him from the city desk at the Washington Post to mediating

high profile civil rights cases as the Midwest Regional Director of the U.S. Department of Justice

Community Relations Service. He was also my father, and I know that it was a distinct privilege

for him to serve our field for more than 40 years.

As director of the U.S. Small Business Administration’s Washington D.C. office, he was

responsible for implementing the programs of President Johnson’s War on Poverty. That

experience exposed him to work in race relations that led to his conflict resolution career. In

1968 he was appointed Midwest Director of the Community Relations Service in the U.S.

Department of Justice. He mediated many disputes including the 1978 Skokie-Nazi conflict in

Illinois, the Kent State University dispute over construction on the site of the 1973 student

shootings, and numerous police-community, prison, school desegregation, and civil rights

conflicts. In 1973 he received a citation from President Nixon for his mediation during the

takeover of Wounded Knee at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota.

Between 1979 and 1995, Dick Salem made 15 extended trips to South Africa where he trained

and mentored colleagues in negotiation and mediation in community conflicts. He served on the

initial training committee of South Africa's National Peace Accord, and provided training for the

Accord's regional and local peace committees. He subsequently trained and consulted in six

countries in East and West Africa, Northern Ireland, and El Salvador. He was sent to Rwanda by

the U.S. State Department in 1997 as a trainer in community conflict. While there he was deeply

affected by the drawings of child survivors of the 1994 genocide. He saw how dramatically the

children remembered the trauma and felt it was important that the story be told through their

eyes, which he did by editing, writing and publishing Witness to Genocide: The Children of

Rwanda, which included a foreword written by then First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Throughout his career he published numerous journal articles and in 1987 co-authored A

Student’s Guide to Mediation and the Law with Nancy Rogers. In addition to his international

and high profile work, he was a fervent supporter of community mediation, volunteering as a

mediator and Board member of the Neighborhood Justice Center of Chicago (now Center for

Conflict Resolution). He served as on the Boards of the World Mediation Forum and the Society

of Professionals in Dispute Resolution, and he mentored numerous aspiring mediators (including

his son).

Although retired, my father remained interested in developments in the field and his expertise

and experience were sought up until his passing. He was scheduled to present this spring to the

Illinois Chapter of the Association of Attorney Mediators. He also recently spent an hour talking

about his experiences with Grande Lum, the Director of the Community Relations Service. Dick

was scheduled to meet with the staff of the Chicago CRS office only days following his stroke.

Upon learning of his illness, Director Lum notified the entire agency, which resulted in an email

from CRS Regional Director Pascual Marquez, in which he describes my father:

Your dad should remember me as he hired me way back in 1972. He mentored, coached me and

led by his example. It is because of him and John Terronez that I am where I am in CRS today. It

seems like just yesterday that I met your father and the CRS Chicago team. I remember him

telling me “that if I didn’t want to be a regional director, I shouldn’t be in this line of work.”

That seemed like it happened just yesterday and here I am telling you about it 42 years later. I

am the last of the old CRS corps

I spent 63 days at Wounded Knee and I had the opportunity to work with your father on that

assignment. I still shudder at the thought of him driving his vehicle into Wounded Knee from the

rear of “Red Arrow,” a US Marshal bunker who was exchanging gunfire with elements of the

American Indian Movement. Your dad never informed anyone of his intentions (to attempt to

mediate the dispute) including Wayne Colburn, the Director of the US Marshal Service. All he

had to indicate that he was not a combatant was a white handkerchief tied to the car’s antenna.

If he hadn’t tied that handkerchief to the antenna, the Marshal’s surely would have fired at him.

If they had missed, AIM surely wouldn’t have. But, your father felt that the situation was grave

enough to put himself in harm’s way. Luckily, no one fired at him.

The Salem family wishes to thank all of Dick’s friends and colleagues for the vibrant

professional community that you have created and nurtured, one that allowed him to thrive.

Salem, P. (2014, March). Mediation Pioneer Richard a. Salem 1930-2014. Retrieved

from http://www.mediate.com/articles/RichardSalem.cfm