Welcome to the IDRInstitute!

In addition to this website, the Intercultural Development Research Institute is a physical place with offices in Washington State, USA and Milan, Italy. More importantly, it is a group of people dedicated to coherent theory and experience. Most centrally, IDRInstitute is a “school of thought.” The main focus of our work is on intercultural/multicultural social relations, but the constructivist and developmental theories we support apply to a wide range of other contexts: critical thinking in education, strategic leadership in global corporations, and sustainable development in international cooperation. In these and other areas, changing conditions are demanding the new forms of conscious adaptation that we are exploring.

IDRInstitute is a nonprofit corporation registered in the State of Washington, USA, and IDRInstitute Europa is a non-profit cultural association registered in Italy. The two entities operate together to propose constructivist research and projects, generate funding, and publish results in print and electronic media.

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IDRAcademy is the academic wing of IDRInstitute. It conducts public and in-house courses in “new paradigm” constructivist theory and practice for professionals in teaching, training, coaching, and administration. In addition to individual course certificates, IDRAcademy offers the Diploma in Constructivist Development for completing the total 100-hour curriculum.

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IDRConsulting is the business wing of IDRInstitute. It coordinates a network of professional interculturalists to consult with corporations on issues of global leadership and multicultural team management, with schools and universities on issues of international study and domestic multicultural relations, and with agencies on community relations and sustainable human development.

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Upcoming courses: April 2024 - Milan, Italy

April 8 – 9, 2024 (2 full days): Intercultural Communication and Meta-Consciousness in the New Paradigm, Milton J. Bennett, Ph.D.

April 10 – 11, 2024 (2 full days): Differentness: a new constructivist approach for Intercultural Education and Training, Shizu Yamamoto, Ph.D., instructor & Milton J. Bennett, Ph.D., facilitator

April 12 – 13, 2024 (2 full days): Embodied Culture: Discovering the Feeling of Self and Other in Cultural Context. Ida Castiglioni, Ph.D.

IDRInstitute Statement of Anti-Racism and Social Justice

The Intercultural Development Research Institute supports bringing unceasing attention to the systemic denial of equal humanity woven into the fabric of American and other societies. Until that fact is acknowledged and rectified, we believe there can be no real progress towards building just multicultural societies.

We do not think that the default condition of humankind is social justice, nor that removing the impediment of prejudice will let justice prevail. On the contrary, humans have mostly exalted their own familiar groups and derogated others in endless real or imagined struggles for survival. Building social justice therefore demands much more than restructuring racist institutions, although recognizing personal and systemic prejudice is a necessary beginning. The larger imperative is to restructure consciousness itself – to extend our perception of self beyond our particular group and into larger constellations of diverse peoples.

We are committed to pursuing these goals in the following ways:

To resist the commercial temptation of offering half-measures to create the appearance of anti-racism, and instead to insist that diversity, inclusion, and intercultural programs always target the development of new consciousness as the major goal.
To focus on building critical masses of people who recognize the deep roots of racism in our consciousness and who are committed to co-evolving new forms of adaption to human diversity.
To support any critical group that is willing with the writing, research, and resources of the Institute, particularly by framing social justice within a more general coherent development of intercultural consciousness.