We received the sad news yesterday that former New York Governor Hugh Carey, generous benefactor of the Hugh L. Carey Center for Dispute Resolution at St. John’s School of Law, passed away.  Governor Carey had had a long-standing ambition to create a center for dispute resolution at St. John’s when I founded the Carey Center with the help of Elayne Greenberg in 2008.  Carey was best known for helping to resolve New York City’s financial crisis in the mid-Seventies, effectively serving as the neutral who drew out the concessions required from the City, its unions, and the Federal Government to stabilize the City’s finances.  He was also a passionate promoter of peaceful conflict resolution around the world, though.  As one of the ‘Big Four’ with Tip O’Neill, Edward Kennedy, and Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Carey helped lay early groundwork for the peaceful resolution of the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

I regret that the Governor passed while I was in Ghana representing his Center in providing dispute resolution training to the many clergy members, government officers, tribal chiefs, and professionals from around the country who made it to the Catholic University last week.  I was not able to report back to him on the success of the project, or on the obvious importance Ghanaians are placing on ADR as they try to extend the rule of law while addressing the growing pressure on their court system.  I’ll try to write up something more in-depth about that project in the coming days, but for now I will just recognize a man I got to know only late in his life, but who was a wonderful ambassador for his alma mater St. John’s and a champion of conflict resolution.