Jay Rothman says music can help people learn to listen to each other. (Michael Snyder photo) | ZOOM |

        The peacemaker used to be a fighter. Jay Rothman walked the tree-lined streets to his childhood home in Yellow Springs, 60 miles northeast of Cincinnati, suspended from junior high school.

        He had a temper. He admits it. But the other kid had been picking on someone smaller and deserved a fight. Phil and Esther Rothman weren't upset with their son. They were proud he helped the underdog, something he often did.

        But Jay learned a lesson: It is important to fight wrongdoing and in justice, but anger needs to be channeled. Fists and violence aren't the way.

        Over the years, he has taught Arabs and Jews how to talk about their differences, and navigated hostile waters of racism in South Carolina's battle over the Confeder ate flag.

        And now Mr. Rothman comes to Cincinnati amid its worst racial tension in three decades. His job: mediate the settlement of a lawsuit accusing police of 30 years of racial profiling or stopping African-Americans simply because of race. The case could have gone to court, but the parties involved — the city, police union, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Black United Front — agreed to try mediation first.

ROTHMAN FILE

• Age: 43   Hometown: Yellow Springs, Ohio   Family: Married to Randi Land for 13 years; three children, ages 6, 9 and 11.   Education: Bachelor's degree from Antioch College; master's and doctorate degrees in international relations from University of Maryland.   Accomplishments: Authored three books, including Resolving Identity-Based Conflicts in Nations, Organizations and Communities; Led conflict resolution workshops in South Africa, Jerusalem and Northern Ireland. Founded ARIA Group Inc. Teaches conflict resolution and management classes at Antioch University McGregor, an adult education and graduate program in Yellow Springs.

        He comes to Cincinnati as clergy boycotted the Taste of Cincinnati festival and federal investigators are examining the city police department following the April 7 shooting of an unarmed man by a police officer.

        It may be the biggest challenge of Mr. Rothman's career.

        Mr. Rothman's Yellow Springs-based company, ARIA Group Inc., aims to get thousands of residents and community leaders talking this summer about racial profiling and police-community relations.

        Ultimately, proposals from the discussions could cost millions of dollars to implement. They could change the face of race relations in Cincinnati. They may become models for other cities struggling with similar issues. Or they could fail.

        “It's a huge job,” admits U.S. District Judge Susan Dlott, who appointed Mr. Rothman the court's “special master.”

        “I told him if he pulls this off, he probably deserves a Nobel Prize. But I think he's capable, with his background, experience and training, of handling it.”

Father was professor

        Training began on Wright Street in Yellow Springs. When Mr. Rothman's parents moved their four children there in 1962, the street was 50 percent black, 50 percent white.

        Phil Rothman, an education professor at Antioch College, wanted his children to live with people of different races.

        “I thought our country's future depended on integration,” he says. “I still do.”

        Jay Rothman, the youngest child, was the most contemplative, the most focused, his parents say. He often pulled a table under a small grape arbor in the backyard to do his homework or use the canopy of vines as a cool place to think.

        Yellow Springs was a small village — even today, it is home to only 3,700. Herb shops and art galleries, comic book stores and college taverns line Xenia Avenue, the main street. Awnings shade storefronts. People sit on benches and talk.

        The home of liberal Antioch College has long been a haven for philosophers and artists, a place where different kinds of people live in harmony.

        Against this backdrop, Mr. Rothman developed a love for music and learned another lesson about peacemaking.

        Mr. Rothman played French horn and cello and sang in a sweet tenor. He reveled in the creativity of music and appreciated how composers spun divergent voices into beautiful songs.

        When he founded his own conflict resolution company in 1998, Mr. Rothman named it ARIA, which is a song or a tranquil and richly harmonized section. His goal for ARIA: help organizations turn the dissonance of conflict into the resonance of cooperation.

        People can learn what it means to listen to each other by talking about how to listen to music, Mr. Rothman says.

        At first, people hear only the melody of a song, but when they truly listen, they may pick up on a guitar riff in the background or an alternate rhythym from another instrument.

        The same is true when people talk, Mr. Rothman says. Attentive listening requires hearing what's said from all participants — not just the dominant voice.

        Four years ago, Mr. Rothman; his wife, Randi Land; and their three children moved back to Yellow Springs, to a large but simple white house a mile from where he grew up. In one room is the ARIA office, where Mr. Rothman works on a slim, silver laptop computer. In the bathroom hangs a shower curtain with stick-figure animals in primary colors.

        Their three children, ages 6, 9 and 11, get music lessons from the same teacher as their father. They play instruments and sing in the car or around the dinner table for religious services.

        They don't agree on music. The two older children try to point out the merits of rap; Mr. Rothman raves about blues, jazz, classical music and folk songs.

        But the family follows a house rule: Only one piece of music plays at a time. Each song deserves respect.

Search for meaning

        After high school graduation, Mr. Rothman took $2,500 he saved from summer jobs and set out to explore the world. He landed in Israel as a scrawny 17-year-old with a change of clothes stuffed in a backpack and a heart searching for peace and meaning.

        He wound his way to the Western Wall in the old city of Jerusalem. Leaning his head against the cracked stones, Mr. Rothman experienced something akin to an electric jolt. A nonobservant Jew who had always seen religion as divisive, he felt for the first time a connection to a people, a history, a culture and faith.

        He embraced his identity, celebrating the sense of place it gave him in the world. But at the same time he saw on the streets of Jerusalem that how people identified themselves often led to conflict.

        “I was discovering how wonderful, how powerful identity could be,” he recalls. “But then, turn over the picture and there was this hatred.”

        Each person has layers of identities, Mr. Rothman says. They may identify themselves as a parent, worker, softball player, beer drinker, church-goer or music lover. But at the core, he believes, ethnicity, race and often religion play a major role.

        And people clash because they don't understand these influences.

        Mr. Rothman's style of mediation seeks to show people they can honor their uniqueness and work with others who are different.

        He tries to get at the root of the problem, to get people talking from their gut and heart, instead of glossing over important issues with platitudes, says Carrie Marcinkevage, a product manager at Strategic Management Group in Philadelphia. In 1998 her company launched its “Making Conflict Work” program using ARIA's conflict resolution model.

        The hard part, Ms. Marcinkevage says, is “getting people to the point where they're willing to resolve the conflict.”

        “Some people would rather live with the conflict because it's more familiar. But if people are willing to work on the conflict, then I think (the method) has every chance in the world.”

        Part of the method hinges on empathy.

        In the debate about whether South Carolina should fly the Confederate flag over its capitol building, Mr. Rothman led a mediation program. For Ike Williams, a former field director for South Carolina's NAACP, the flag summons images of lynchings and the Ku Klux Klan.

        But during the daylong session, Mr. Williams was asked to articulate the views of a white man who saw the flag as a symbol of honor and glory. It was awkward, admits Mr. Williams, now a district aide to U.S. Rep. James E. Clyburn.

        The role-playing didn't change his mind. But he was reminded, he says, of the importance of respecting and listening to everyone's views.

        Court decisions and laws “cannot promote the healing a community needs to have,” Mr. Williams says. “That's where Mr. Rothman comes in. He can get both sides talking.”

Largest project so far
               Mr. Rothman has always been willing to take on big jobs, his dad says.

        “I would say, "I don't think you can do it. Why don't you try something smaller?” And he would say, "Yes, I can,'”

        And he would.

        The Cincinnati mediation is the largest project Mr. Rothman has ever supervised. For the past decade, he has spearheaded conflict resolution programs at companies and for communities, mostly in small-group settings involving up to 120 people at a time.

        In Cincinnati, Mr. Rothman plans to survey or interview 5,000 to 8,000 people. His staff will swell from seven to 28, and he expects to spend much of the next 12 months working solely on this project.

        The ARIA Group is being paid less than half its normal asking price, he says.

        So why do it?

        “It's the fulfillment of who I am and what I'm supposed to do in the world,” Mr. Rothman says.

        Those who have worked with Mr. Rothman say he's up to the challenge.

        Rose Washington, a former commissioner of juvenile justice who now heads one of New York City's largest foster-care agencies, recalls how effective Mr. Rothman was earlier this year. He guided meetings with her staff, a New York City foundation, and foster kids to help them develop independent-living programs.

        Getting the children to participate was a coup, she says.

        “They were used to being left out when it came to decisions about their lives,” she says.

        In 30 years of working with consultants, Mr. Rothman “is the first one who walks the talk,” Ms. Washington says. “He helps people give voice to their visions, dreams and goals.”

        People feel they can trust him, says Racelle Weiman, a former student of his in Jerusalem and now director of the Center for Holocaust and Humanity Education at Hebrew Union College in Clifton. He was able to defuse some of the deep-seated hostilities between Arabs and Jews in the class, she says. She expects he'll do the same in Cincinnati, teaching the community empathy and respect for each other.

        Her fear is the work could die when he leaves. People must continue to talk about the problems after ARIA finishes the mediation process and establish quantitative ways to measure success, she says.

        Ms. Weiman says: “To feel there's been real change, we can't say, "We all feel good. We had a great session.' And then everybody goes home to their non-integrated lifestyle.”

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