With 40 years of experience, Paul Biderman has all the right stuff when it comes to his position as director of the Institute of Public Law at UNM. Biderman served as New Mexico’s Secretary of Energy and Minerals under former Gov. Toney Anaya and is a research faculty member. Biderman is now researching economic security and collaborative governance, pertinent to these current economic times.
Daily Lobo: Can you explain a little bit about the research project you are working on now, and why this project was of interest to you?
Paul Biderman: I became interested in enhancing the quality of public deliberation of public policy issues, so that people aren’t just yelling at each other and actually listening, trying to accommodate other people’s interests and
perspectives. I found that the Kettering Institute (for TMJ) out of Dayton, Ohio, has been promoting that issue very heavily for many years … UNM IPL has been asked to coordinate a 10-state western region effort to conduct public dialogue on economic security. These forums will be structured so that you get people talking to each other, understanding other perspectives and, if possible, finding other solutions that accommodate all the interests that people have. We are then the ones responsible for compiling the information into either a mock trial or a hearing of some kind that would dramatize what the issues are and try to encapsulate the different perspectives into presentations.
DL: Is the Kettering Institute providing any funding for this research?
PB: They are actually giving us a small amount of money for training, and we are actually going to offer training to anyone that is interested in training on moderating and recording of national issue forums. There will be a pre-registration process to take part in this training. The training is on March 8, located in the SUB, beginning at 8:30 a.m. until 5:30 p.m.
DL: What are you hoping to accomplish in research that can’t really provide any black and white answers?
PB: The acceptance and funding of these forums by institutes like Kettering acknowledge the value in dialogue addressing public policy. The dialogue has been important … We hope in the future to present the results of these forums to local legislators and get them more involved in the dialogue process.
