Editor\u27s Note

Such is the unpredictability of Trump’s streaming executive orders that much of what I write may be irrelevant by the time this issue of the New England Journal of Public Policy goes to press. But the articles in this issue will not lose their pertinence, no matter what the administration does. Indeed, given its predilection for “alternative facts,” they assume a greater relevance and consequential significance. This issue of the journal has three parts. The first part had its origins in a conference on extremism held at the Center for Study of Intractable Conflicts (CRIC), Harris Manchester College Oxford in October 2015; the second comprises four articles on conflicts referred to as “intractable”—Colombia, Syria, and Israel/Palestine—and a reflection on the Holocaust; the third is a stand-alone, one article that addresses the leadership attributes necessary to crack the iron walls of intractability