Gary Wahrhaftig, Odd Fellows stalwart and friend to many, helped Joe introduce our guest Maxim Schrogin from the Berkeley Rotary Club.  Maxim is a genuine polymath, with degrees from Berkeley in comparative lit and architecture.  Among other undertakings, he pursued a career in real estate syndication and founded a synagogue.  These days, Maxim is a community activist and a highly-trained professional and community mediator.  Within his club, he is head of the Peace Committee and has attended Rotary Peace Conventions.  Now that he is familiar with Rotary and Rotarians, he believes that Rotary is uniquely situated through out the world to serve as a catalyst for both civil discourse among people with differing worldviews and championing non-conflictual solutions to social problems.  

 

Maxim is or has been affiliated with groups dedicate to this purpose such as Courageous Conversations, Living Room Conversations and Braver Angels where people come to present views, listen to those with different politics or outlooks and find points of agreement and avenues for progress. He also pointed pout the organization Mediators Beyond Borders, where trained mediators are sent outside the U.S. to work with populations with whom they are unfamiliar and from whom they must learn. This kind of work requires a certain emotional vulnerability and even fearlessness. Maxim and his friends, for instance, had to come to terms with the perceived moral self-righteousness of "progressives" and conservatives with whom he was in conversation were obliged to listen.