Inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement, #ScholarStrike, and scholars across the country standing up for racial justice, MD-ICCCR Director Peter Coleman took time this week to highlight what Martin Luther King called "constructive nonviolent tension" in his Fundamentals of Conflict Resoltuoin course. He discusses here the dilemna between the conflcit resolution field, which often works to decrease tension, and movements for social justice endeavoring to increase tension and attention to issues of injustice in society. The concept of "optimal tension", or a state where tension is sufficent to affect change but not so great as to shut down its possibility, is explored as something that the practice of conflict resolutition skills alongside the moral voice of social justice movements can together foster and sustain.