Campus & Community

Shapiro, Fisher receive peacemaker award

2 min read

For several years, the Southern California Mediation Association (SCMA) has presented its annual Peacemaker of the Year award to a member of the dispute resolution community for the member’s passion and dedication to peacemaking in his or her profession and daily life. In 2004, it was the vision of the association’s incoming president, Jeff Kichaven, that this award be renamed in honor of two of SCMA’s founding members (and past award recipients) Kenneth Cloke and Richard Millen.

This year, SCMA presented its Cloke-Millen Award to Harvard affiliates Daniel Shapiro and Roger Fisher.

Shapiro is the associate director of the Harvard Negotiation Project at Harvard Law School (HLS) and is on the faculty at McLean Hospital/Harvard Medical School, as well as HLS. He developed a conflict management program, funded by the Soros Foundation, which now reaches nearly 1 million people in 25 countries. According to SCMA, Shapiro’s book, “Beyond Reason: Using Emotions as You Negotiate” (co-authored with Fisher) is “fresh, insightful and relevant to any interaction, but certainly relevant to any mediation or facilitated negotiation.”

Shapiro holds a doctorate in clinical psychology and specializes in the psychology of negotiation. He directs the International Negotiation Initiative, a Harvard-based project that develops psychologically focused strategies to reduce ethnopolitical violence. In addition to being on the faculty of Harvard, he has served on the faculty at the Sloan School of Management, MIT, and teaches negotiation to corporate executives and diplomats. He has extensive international experience, including training Serbian members of Parliament, Mideast negotiators, Macedonian politicians, and senior U.S. officials.

Fisher is the Williston Professor of Law Emeritus at HLS and director of the Harvard Negotiation Project. He is the author of the international best-seller “Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement without Giving In” and has spent the past 40 years studying, writing, and teaching about negotiation. Fisher developed the concept of interest-based negotiation and has consulted on differences ranging from business disputes to international conflicts.

Fisher also has extensive international experience, including training the white Cabinet and the African National Congress Negotiating Committee in South Africa prior to the constitutional talks that led to the end of apartheid and working at the behest of the U.S. and Iranian governments to end the 1980 hostage conflict. Now in his 80s, Fisher continues his active interest and involvement in both the Harvard Negotiation Project and the International Negotiation Initiative.