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

Blog

Talking with Monsters

Nicholas Kristof had a great column in the New York Times this morning entitled "Talking With the Monsters." Here's an excerpt: "If there’…

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John Danforth's "Faith and Politics"

Former senator John C. Danforth, an ordained Episcopal priest and onetime Bush administration ambassador to the United Nations, has a new book talking about the…

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Why not talk?

From an article by Noah Feldman in the 10/1/06 New York Times Magazine: "...even intractable interlocutors may be worth engaging. Perhaps the conversation…

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Avoiding pointless partisan debates

"If we are going to defeat the enemy, we must learn again to discuss our differences about Iraq and terrorism in civil and analytical terms. We must reject…

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ADR Cyberweek is this week!

I strongly encourage everyone to take some time this week and visit the 9th annual ADR Cyberweek, the online conference for the ODR field.  The Center for Infor…

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Not-So-Sensible Sensible Technocrats

In a recent post on his very thoughtful blog, Brad DeLong posted a self description that I absolutely resonate with: "I am... a reality-based center-left…

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Is Technology Neutral? Part II

In a very well thought out September 1 blog post, Sanjana asked “Is technology neutral?” partially in response to my own post on the subject from a few week…

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Jefferson and Harris on Church and State

"...we have to have elected officials in government and we have to have the faithful in government and over time, that lie we have been told, the separatio…

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Morgan Spurlock on Civil Discourse

I didn't see Katie Couric's debut broadcast yesterday, but I heard she had Morgan Spurlock (writer and director of Super Size Me and the interesting sho…