Can ombuds do anything for student protests? Guest: Tom Kosakowski

IE: Hello and welcome back to the sixth episode of We Can Find A Way in 2024. My name is Idil Elveris. This is the sixth season in this podcast about conflict resolution. We can find a way pioneers a culture change in handling conflict because conflict is everywhere. We can find a way is also the only bilingual podcast that addresses conflict on an international scale. In this episode, I spoke with someone that I already interviewed here. His name is Tom Kosakowski who is an ombudsperson at the University of Southern California. This time, we did not discuss what an ombuds does in a higher education institution per se.

In fact, Tom is involved in organizational ombuds career institutionally, by running a blog and having served in the International Ombudsman Association. So I asked him whether there was any role to play for an ombudsperson in campus protests that shaked universities in the US and beyond. What, if any, role they can play now that political clashes and controversies have become more of the day thing in campuses and whether there was a discussion among ombudspersons about these developments as to how to get involved. Let me now turn to the interview that took place on 19 June 2024.

So, Tom, you're an ombuds, and we have seen many student protests in various campuses, universities in the US. Do you think university ombuds can be of any help in these cases? Why and why not?

TK: Thanks for having me back, Idil. And yes, this is a topic that a lot of university ombuds have been talking about. I've had informal meetings with dozens of other university ombuds in the United States who are seeing protests on their campus and kind of wondering collectively: Is there a role for us? How can we help our stakeholders? What can we do that would be helpful? And yet, within the mandate of an organizational ombuds, and to recap for your listeners who may not know, organizational ombuds provide an embedded conflict management service for a defined group of people within an organization.

For many university ombuds that includes faculty, staff, and students: We follow four ethical standards that require us to be confidential, independent, neutral, and informal. In many ways, we are akin to an embedded peer mediation service. You can see that universities would be tempted to call upon their ombuds when there is a campus protest, when there are people in conflict. So, in the past year, we have seen visible demonstrations, you know, public protests that involve a lot of students, sometimes faculty, occasionally staff who are protesting the war in Gaza. And we are also aware of smaller, less visible conflicts that are happening in classroom settings, in offices, online, you know, virtual conflicts in social media spaces. And so, yes, we are definitely concerned about this. We know that it's having an impact on people's sense of well being. It's impacting the mission of the university. Class activities are being disrupted. Research is being disrupted, administrative work is being disrupted. So, yes, it's a significant concern for us. I think we have seen that our current conflict has been preceded by the Black Lives Matter protests that were very prominent in the United States. And also we are holding our breath for conflicts that involve the politics and the national presidential election in the fall. We're seeing sort of this years long state of public and interpersonal conflict on our campuses.

IE: You said as an institution, you spoke with each other. What is the conclusion? Because I haven't seen any intervention by ombuds, and I think it kind of ties into these four qualities. But there can be also other qualities that made you refrain from getting involved.

TK: Yes, I think you're right. In my sort of independent work monitoring the ombuds field, I have been keeping an eye out for any sort of public interventions by ombuds, and I don't think that there have been any, at least to date.

IE: There's a reason for that obviously…

TK: I think there is a reason for that, and I think it's those four qualities of being confidential, neutral, independent, and informal. And I could talk about them in certain ways. I think the overarching goal for ombuds, aside from practicing to these four standards, is to ensure that we remain a viable resource for everyone on our campus for the long term. So while it may be expedient for us to intervene in a small case, if we do that inappropriately and people lose trust in us and we violated any of those four standards, then I think we lose our credibility in the long term. So that is one thing that sort of has tempered our initial urge to see if we can help in this conflict.

IE: Is there something really special about this, or is it the overtly political issues that you didn't want to take a side on? Can you explain it to us in a more depth?

TK: So I think neutrality is probably a good place to start. It's important for us to be perceived as not taking sides or against our organization, the university, or against one of the student groups. And so that is something that is really concerning. I know that at some universities, the administration has asked the ombuds, will you go in and talk to the protesters and ask them to have a mediation. And I think most ombuds are a little bit reluctant and they are concerned right away if we are doing the bidding of the administration. We think, wait a minute, are the protesters -either side- going to perceive us as being a tool of the administration because the administration is one of the parties in this conflict, and to have them dictating us becoming involved starts to affect our at least perceived neutrality, impartiality.

IE: It would have been different, I guess, if both parties asked you for intervention, but this wasn't the case, as I can see from outside.

TK: I haven't seen that happen where both parties of a protest have come to the ombuds independently. I haven't, haven't heard about that. Perhaps it has happened and it's been very quiet. A sort of related issue on this neutrality is then who do you approach and how does the ombuds march out to the protest encampment and say: Can I work with you? You know that. Which side are you going to pick to start the conversation with? Especially since it's going to be in a public setting, perhaps,

IE: Which then violates the confidentiality

TK: …the confidentiality piece. I know that some ombuds have wondered, well, maybe we should just go near the protest and set up a tent and a table and say “we're available to come and talk to”, but then people coming to us would be exposing themselves and it wouldn't be a confidential conversation there. I think another thing that has probably hindered ombud's ability to work in this space is that we're sort of, since we're part of the organization, we're sort of subject to the policies and processes, the ethics, the culture of our organization. And I think a lot of universities have struggled in terms of defining what their position is with respect to these protests. You know, having that be unclear makes it a little more difficult also for ombuds to find their way in terms of helping people in a public way manage these conflicts. Although I have not seen but in this public role with the big public protests, the mass demonstrations, I still think there are some significant things that ombuds can do to help their campuses and to help their stakeholders.

IE: Like what?

TK: I know that ombuds have had this conversation when the university comes and says: “Can you help with this? Can you do x, y or z?” And ombuds say: “well, I can’t do x, y or z, but here are the things that I can do. So first off, we can help our protesters, primarily students manage the effects of these conflicts. The basic conflict is in the Middle East, I think, thousands of miles away. I mean, at least the primary conflict. The actions of the ombuds, the actions of the protesters, you know, the students actions aren't going to resolve that conflict that hasn't been resolved by UN peacekeepers and international diplomats. What we can do is help people manage the conflicts that they have that are more immediate, that are within their sphere of influence. So if a student comes to an ombuds, we can help them understand the context for their conflict, understand how it's affecting their purpose for being on the campus. You know, why are you here? Why are you part of this university? Why are you studying what you're studying? How is this conflict affecting your ability to achieve the goals that brought you to the university? And then there may be ways that we can coach them to manage that conflict more effectively so it doesn't derail their academic progress for example. I think we can also give students context for understanding what will happen if they are swept up in the conflict and are now facing some administrative sanctions with the university.

Most undergraduate students, 18 to 22 year olds, they haven't been to college before. They don't understand how the university works. They don't know what's going to happen when they find themselves in a process. They don't have a lot of skills to advocate for themselves

IE: In a disciplinary process, right?

TK: Disciplinary process, yes. There are a lot of students who are facing potential for sanctions or suspension or dismissal from the university, and they're in a process they've never seen before. So ombuds can give them information about how that works and how they can advocate for themselves. We can coach them on, how to compile and organize their information and arguments. We're not going to do that for them because we have this mandate of being neutral and informal. But we can say, here's how it works. And if you want to advocate for yourself, have your information, put it in chronological order, figure out what your best arguments are, prepare for the hearing or the meeting.

I have seen and I know other ombuds that have seen students who are facing potential criminal prosecution. And we can say, you know, this is something that will affect you for the rest of your life. This is the sort of situation where you need legal advice. Here are ways to find that. I'll make a short pause here to say that I'm not going to comment specifically about cases that I have handled or my particular university. I've worked now at four different universities. So this is sort of an aggregate perspective based on not only my work, but then the conversations I have with these other ombuds. So being able to coach…

IE: Manage the affects of the conflict.

TK: Yeah, that I would classify that as coaching and informing individuals who are in a conflict.

IE: We can find a way is sponsored by Koc attorneys at law, the Istanbul and Antalya based boutique law firm. Founding partners of Koc attorneys at law, are staunch believers of using dialogue and finding common ground to resolve conflicts. They're very happy to be supporting We can find a way in the hope that it will help advance the much needed discussion on de-escalation and reduction of polarization in conflict situations within the legal practice as well as in the public discourse.

TK: I do think there is a role for us to bring students together who have different viewpoints and perhaps have had miscommunications or conflicts that have kind of boiled up by helping them have a difficult conversation. So that work as a facilitator definitely within our scope as university ombuds and another thing I think that we can do is to help the administration understand how these things are impacting the university.

IE: Exactly. The reputation. Right?

TK: Yeah. Organizational ombuds have kind of a primary role of responding when visitors come to us with issues and helping them individually with that particular concern. But then the secondary role that we have is to give upward feedback and help our organization be more aware of systemic issues and trends in conflicts and issues that we're seeing. So we can do that with these protests. We can say this department has not been clear with its students about how to manage difficult conversations. This area, we're seeing a lot of concerns, and it needs some attention. This area has a person in a position of power who is doing these things that are making things worse. You know, that's sort of upward feedback about issues. We can do as ombuds.

IE: Most of the complaints are coming from x, but not from z, as you would expect, or something?

TK: Right.

IE: So it's working in many ways among students, to the administration, but also to the relationship between police and students and, students and administration, kind of. It's not a two way street, obviously. It's much more complicated.

TK: Right. You know, earlier, I alluded to the fact that there was a protest a couple of years ago for black lives in the US, and now there's this current conflict about the Middle East, and we anticipate conflicts coming up about politics. I think it's important that we are that safe place to talk to students and staff and faculty about the fact that conflict is normal.

IE: Right.

TK: This.. just sort of a feature of adulthood. And helping people feel a little bit more comfortable with the fact that there are these conflicts, hopefully will kind of help them de-escalate a little bit and also feel like they can use some tools to address it. You know, I know that medical students, for example, are not homogenous. They don't all have the same political and personal perspectives on the world. They have different religions, they have different political parties. They have different views on gun control, different views on reproductive health care rights. You know, almost any topic you can think of will split these classes of students. And so helping them understand that it's okay to have differences of opinion, that it doesn't devalue them because they disagree that they can still do the important work of learning and training and starting to become professionals ready for adulthood is a really important part of, I think, what we do with our organizations and with student groups.

IE: I think in order for ombuds persons to be helpful, you need a new paradigm, maybe you need a new definition for your role in contentious issues. Organizational ombuds were more perceived for, like individual actions rather than public displays of opinion and that kind of things. But the political atmosphere has brought you to a very controversial situation where you try to find a space for yourself by entering the sphere. But some structural and policy issues are hindering you. Maybe you need a new paradigm, you need a new policy for ombudspersons to be helpful in contentious issues because… So maybe campus conflict will be part of life in a university from now on…

TK: It's interesting because in the United States, a lot of ombuds had their origins in campus conflicts in the late 1960s…

IE: Right, yeah.

TK: …about the Vietnam War. And I think the profession has evolved considerably since then. And you may be right that we're being… being brought back into these public conversations, these public conflicts. I'll offer that another reason that some ombuds are reluctant to get into these large scale conflicts is that it feels like a different skill set. Personally, I feel like I would need to be trained to manage, say, a town hall with a lot of angry people.

IE: Or angry people. Really angry. No cooling off period. It's just happening right now, kind of.

TK: Right. I'm pretty good with one angry person in my quiet office.

IE: But not thousands of people.

TK: Yeah. You know, the tactic is to, you know, to work with that one person, help them feel heard. But if there are 20 next to them, you can't do that sort of work at scale.

IE: It's like crowd control that the police does kind of..Right?

TK: I don't want to say that there aren't ombuds that have that skill set.

IE: Right.

TK: Many of us come from very different backgrounds, and I'm sure that that I have colleagues who are comfortable managing these public conflicts, but they probably have something they could teach the rest of us.

IE: So maybe you need a meeting where you can discuss all these developments and what your role can be. I'm sure there will be an annual meeting of ombuds, where this issue can be discussed or something.

TK: Yes. At our last conference of the International Ombuds Association, we did have sessions that talked about this. I know that there are regional and focused ombuds groups that are talking about this. There are ad hoc meetings that have happened where we talk about what we've tried, what's worked, sharing ideas, brainstorming. I think it's definitely catching our attention, and we are working on it. I think a lot of ombuds are holding their breath for the fall, and

IE: It's an ongoing process, I guess?

TK: Right. You know, what makes this work interesting and invigorating for me is that there's a lot of variety, and context is very important. And so while I talk to my colleagues at other universities, we all have our own unique fact pattern when we get involved in these conflicts on our campus. And so we have to sort of do the work individually at the end of the day.

IE: All right, Tom, thank you very much for coming and talking to me again. I really appreciate it.

TK: Idil, it's very good to see you. Thank you for having me again, and I look forward to our next conversation.

IE: So I hope you liked this episode, which was recorded via Zoom. I will continue to follow up developments in various places of the world and make programs about them in this podcast. Please feel free to alert me about subjects that doesn't catch my attention, especially if it's a global matter. If you like this episode, please share it. The website of We can find a way has a transcription of the episode for those who are hearing impaired or those who don't speak English that well to understand everything being discussed. I also share excerpts of the episode thanks to Headliner in the Instagram account of We can find a way. And in my YouTube channel. I'd like to close by thanking my sponsor Koc Attorneys at Law, my marketing manager Julia Nelson, and musician Imre Hadi, and artist Zeren Goktan who allowed me to use their music and photograph in the podcast. Thank you and hope to meet you in the next episode.