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

Cooperation among chimpanzees

Carl Zimmer had a very interesting article in the March 3, 2006 Science section of the New York Times entitled "Chimps Display a Hallmark of Human Behavior…

Blog

After Neoconservatism

I have admired SAIS professor Francis Fukuyama's quality of thought since I was first exposed to him through his article "The End of History" back…

Blog

How Divided Are We?

James Q. Wilson, the Ronald Reagan professor of public policy at Pepperdine University, has a very interesting piece in this month's Commentary.  Here are s…

Blog

The Religion of Liberalism

In yesterday’s New York Times the distinguished law professor Stanley Fish offered some provocative commentary on the recent furor over the Danish cartoons: “T…

Blog

The Harpies Rage On

I note that Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid broke with the customary Beltway style a week or two ago to apologize for a report released by his office that was…

Blog

Bob Herbert on our Addiction to Violence

Bob Herbert has a great column in the New York Times today called An American Obsession: "Dr. King understood with unusual clarity the price to be paid fo…

Blog

Cosmopolitanism and contamination

Kwame Anthony Appiah had a great article in the New York Times Magazine on New Year's Day that I wanted to include a bit of here. I think he did an excelle…

Blog

Both Parties Ignore the Facts

from slashdot: "Any democrat will tell you the republicans ignore the facts. Any republican will tell you the democrats ignore the facts. Turns out they&#…