Stanford CIS

Colin Rule

Non-Residential Fellow

Colin Rule has worked at the intersection of technology and conflict resolution for the last two decades. He is CEO of Modria.com, an online dispute resolution service provider in Silicon Valley, and Co-Chair of the Advisory Board of the National Center for Technology and Dispute Resolution at UMass-Amherst. From 2003 to 2011 he served as eBay and PayPal's first director of Online Dispute Resolution, designing and implementing systems that now resolve more than 60 million disputes each year.

Mr. Rule is the author of Online Dispute Resolution for Business, published by Jossey-Bass in September 2002. He has presented and trained around the world for organizations including the U.S. Department of State, UNCITRAL, the International Chamber of Commerce, and the CPR Institute for Dispute Resolution, as well as teaching at UMass-Amherst, Stanford, Southern Methodist University, and Hastings College of the Law. He has written and been interviewed extensively about the Internet since 1999, with columns and articles appearing in ACResolution, Consensus, Dispute Resolution Magazine, and Peace Review. He holds a master's degree from Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government in conflict resolution and technology, a B.A. in peace studies from Haverford College, and he served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Eritrea from 1995-1997.

Recent articles

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Bloggers "doing what bloggers do"

There's quite a bit of hullabloo on the internets today about two bloggers hired by the Edwards campaign to reach out to the online world, Amanda Marcotte a…

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Smug and insufferable

Charles Pierce on Alterman's blog:  "Molly [Ivins] made a point often of how much she liked good politicians and believed in the political system {...}…

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RIP Molly Ivins

Molly Ivins was one of the few voices that kept me sane back in my formative days in North Texas.  And man, could she write... as James Thurman put it, when she…

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Rejecting bipartisanship

Krugman in the Times today: "...the nastiness of modern American politics isn’t the result of a random outbreak of bad manners. It’s a symptom of deeper fa…

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Community Patent Review

From a new white paper on the IBM website:  "Until now, only the U.S. patent office has been allowed to review patent applications and determine whether or…

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What $1.2 Trillion Can Buy

David Loenhardt in the Times today: "$1.2 trillion would pay for an unprecedented public health campaign — a doubling of cancer research funding, treatment…

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The Global Good Neighbor Initiative

The International Relations Center has launched a new video as part of its Global Good Neighbor Initiative. From the description on the web site: "Mutual r…

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Beware False Bipartisanship

E.J. Dionne in the Post yesterday: "Few words have been repeated more often by leaders of both parties and President Bush since the new Congress took powe…