NCJ Number
97636
Journal
Negotiation Journal Volume: 1 Issue: 1 Dated: (January 1985) Pages: 29-43
Date Published
1985
Length
15 pages
Annotation
This paper examines a dispute and negotiation that occurred in 1972 between two universities in Los Angeles and some local Afro-American and Mexican-American political activists.
Abstract
The onset of the dispute is traced to a grant application for research funds from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The associate director of research at a university research center completed the application and included the names of university faculty members, advisory board members, and other oncampus personnel without their permission. Some of the individuals involved felt that the use of their names constituted a misrepresentation; soon an investigation was underway by NSF to determine whether the research effort would include blacks and Chicanos. These two groups would include blacks and Chicanos. These two groups sought compensatory discrimination for their ethnic categories in a variety of forms. The dispute over the disposition of the grant was used as the occasion to make wider demands, to vent broad grievances, and to make allegations about the responsibility of 'the Establishment' for social inequities. From the start, the universities sought to preserve as much as possible the particulars of the research project and to confine the dispute to narrower issues. Finally, the dispute was resolved amiably after NSF revealed its intent to reconsider the entire grant if there were any change in the original designation of the second university to perform part of the research. As in many instances of negotiation, this case illustrates that the analysis of its discourse must proceed in multiple levels of meaning.