Overcoming Cultural Barriers in International Negotiations

Part I
Part II
RealPlayer Recommended (download here)

The Harvard Negotiation Law Review, in conjunction with the Program on Negotiation and the Consortium on Global Leadership, will be presenting this Conference on Friday, February 28th, from 1:00 – 5:00 pm at Harvard Law School in Austin Hall, North Room. The Conference will specifically address and provide insight into our increasingly interdependent global community, particularly with regard to dealing with differences in gender, ethnicity, and customs.

Diplomacy Panel
1:00 – 3:00 pm
  Transactional Panel
3:00 – 5:00 pm
Moderator
Kevin Avruch
Professor, George Mason University

Panelists
Keith Allred
Professor, Kennedy School of Government

Marc Gopin
Professor, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy

Ambassador Swanee Hunt
Professor, Kennedy School of Government

  Moderator
Linda Netsch
Founder, Align Consulting

Panelists
William Benjamin
Senior Partner, Hale and Dorr LLP

Ashish Nanda
Professor, Harvard Business School

Jeswald Salacuse
Professor, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy

A reception will immediately follow the event. Questions may be sent to jhsia@law.harvard.edu.

No Man’s Land

Film and Discussion with
Danis Tanovic
Bosnian Director

and Harvard Law School Professor
Robert Mnookin

Set in the midst of the recent Balkan wars, No Man’s Land is a powerful account of the relationship that develops between two enemy soldiers—a Serb and a Bosnian—who are trapped together in the same trench. When the United Nations begrudgingly decides to come to their rescue, the soldiers’ predicament is blown up into an international news spectacle, and the dark humor of the film becomes evident. The award-winning drama explores humanity in the midst of the horrors of the Bosnia-Herzegovina war.

One of the most widely acclaimed films of 2001, No Man’s Land was awarded Best Screenplay and the Special Jury Prize at Cannes, as well as the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

The screening will be at the Harvard Film Archive at 7 PM on Wednesday, February 26. Professor Robert Mnookin will join Tanovic in a discussion about the film and international conflict resolution following the film.

ABOUT DANIS TANOVIC:
Bosnian writer and director Danis Tanovic became a celebrity in the international film community practically overnight with the release of No Man’s Land. Born in 1969 in the former Yugoslavia, Tanovic developed an interest in filmmaking after spending several years studying music and engineering, and was attending the Sarajevo Film Academy in 1992 when the war broke out. Over the next two years, Tanovic shot literally hundreds of hours of documentary footage of the war and its effect on the nation before leaving Sarajevo to study filmmaking in Belgium. While studying in Belgium, Tanovic produced a documentary about the Bosnian conflict, A Year After, and several short films; he also wrote a play, A Madman and a Nun. In time, Tanovic set aside documentaries and shorter projects to concentrate on his screenplay for No Man’s Land, which Tanovic brought before the cameras with financing from Belgian, Italian, British, and Slovenian film companies (the film was shot in Slovenia). In addition to the awards at Cannes and the Academy Awards, No Man’s Land landed Tanovic the Best New Director trophy at the 2001 Cesar Awards, and critical acclaim at the Los Angeles International Film Festival, the Rotterdam Film Festival, the San Sebastian International Film Festival, and the Sao Paulo International Film Festival.

“I wanted this film to be full of all different kinds of contrasts and disharmonies, but I wanted the outcome to be that disharmony and hate are unnatural, that they bring no solution. I read somewhere that love brings harmony to a conflict without destroying either side. Hate does the contrary. If hate were the ruling principle, there would be no opposition left in the world. But because fire and water exist, love must be the principle that rules the world…
“I am not trying to deny responsibility for the atrocities committed in the Bosnian war. I would never do something like that, because there were victims on one side and people who committed crimes on the other. But the point of my film is not to accuse. The story is not about pointing at those who did wrong. The point is to raise a voice against any kind of war. It is my vote against violence of any kind.”
— Director Danis Tanovic

The Program on Negotiation Film Series seeks to explore negotiation and conflict resolution through the medium of film. Other films in the 2002-2003 Film Series include:

For information on the PON Film Series, contact Jeremy Bird at jcbird@law.harvard.edu or at 617-495-1684 x538.

Free and open to the public.

Watkins Wins Best Book Award for Breakthrough Business Negotiation

Michael Watkins has won a Best Book Prize from the CPR Institute for Dispute Resolution for Breakthrough Business Negotiation: A Toolbox for Managers (Jossey-Bass, 2002).

Breakthrough Business Negotiation presents principles that apply to any negotiation situation and tools to achieve breakthrough results. Step by step, Watkins demonstrates how to diagnose a situation, build coalitions, manage internal decision making, persuade others, organize a deal cycle, and create strategic alliances. He also explains how to prevent disputes from poisoning deals.

Michael Watkins is associate professor of business administration at Harvard Business School, where he teaches negotiation and corporate diplomacy. He also has taught at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and is an associate of the Program on Negotiation. He is the coauthor of Breakthrough International Negotiation (Jossey-Bass, 2001), which won a 2001 CPR Best Book Prize, Right from the Start (1999), and Winning the Influence Game (John Wiley & Sons, 2001).

The CPR Institute for Dispute Resolution (www.cpradr.org) is an alliance of 500 global corporations and law firms at the forefront of resolving business and public disputes through mediation and other forms of dispute resolution.

Breakthrough Business Negotiation is available through the PON Clearinghouse at www.pon.org.

KANEHSATAKE: 270 Years of Resistance

Film and Discussion with
Kim Campbell
Former Prime Minister of Canada

Kanehsatake is the award-winning documentary film by Native American filmmaker Alanis Obomsawin depicting the two-and-a-half month armed confrontation between Native American Mohawks and Canadian government forces.

Following the film, former Prime Minister of Canada Kim Campbell will lead a discussion with the audience. Campbell became Canada’s first female prime minister in 1993 after serving as Canada’s Minister of State for Indian Affairs and Northern Development, Minister of Justice and Attorney General, and Minister of National Defense and Veterans’ Affairs.

This event is cosponsored by the Kennedy School of Government’s Center for Public Leadership, Harvard University’s Consortium on Global Leadership, and the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School.

The film is part of the Program on Negotiation’s 2002-2003 Film Series. Other films in the series include:

Pizza and drinks will be served during the reception.

When Spider Webs Unite: Five Case Studies of the Third Side in Action

by Joshua N. Weiss, Brian Blancke, Bianca Wulff,
Rebecca J. Wolfe, Mark Young, and Chang In Shin
Cambridge, MA: PON Books, 2002.

When Spider Webs Unite is the next work in the evolution of William Ury’s “Third Side” concept, originally set forth in The Third Side: Why We Fight and How We Can Stop (New York: Penguin, 2000). Through a series of case studies, When Spider Webs Unite illustrates how the “Third Side” — the community context within which a conflict occurs — becomes operationalized in actual conflict situations.

The five case studies, written by Program on Negotiation Graduate Fellows, represent a wide range of conflicts: Native American land claim disputes in upstate New York in the late 1990s, a management buyout conflict during German reunification and the privatization of former East German companies, collective resistance in Tuzla during the 1991-95 Balkan war, a health care access crisis in Peru during the mid-1990s, and the 1994 US-North Korea nuclear standoff. The case studies shed light on the obstacles and barriers to the emergence of the “Third Side” as well as the strengths and weaknesses of the concept. The book concludes with a summary of “Third Side” lessons and thoughts for future research.

When Spider Webs Unite is available through the PON Clearinghouse at http://www.pon.org/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=313.

Ury Addresses Conference on The Third Side in Venezuela

Fortalecer El Tercer Lado Para Alcanzar La Paz [Strengthening the Third Side in Order to Achieve Peace]
RealPlayer Recommended (download here)

In February 2003, the Carter Center, USAID’s Development Alternatives, Inc., the Organization for American States (OAS), and the Central University of Venezuela sponsored a conference on the topic of “Strengthening the Third Side in Order to Achieve Peace” (“Fortalecer El Tercer Lado Para Alcanzar La Paz”) at which William Ury was the featured speaker.

This video is subtitled in Spanish.

Click here to watch the video of this conference.

Click here to learn more about “The Third Side.”

The Israeli-Palestinian Final Status Talks: A Partial Success

Professor Menachem Klein of Bar Ilan University, Israel

The Program on Negotiation will welcome Professor Klein of Bar Ilan University on Monday, Feb. 3. Professor Klein will present a talk, “The Israeli-Palestinian Final Status Talks: A Partial Success”.

Professor Klein will analyze the peace talks held from 1999-2001 and will discuss the relationship of the Intifada to the failure of the Camp David 2 Summit. He also will discuss the interactions among the three sides involved, the two parties and the American mediator, and how he believes their interactions led to the failure to reach an agreement.

Professor Klein will base his talk on his forthcoming book, The Jerusalem Problem — The Struggle for Permanent Status.

Participants are asked to bring a lunch with them. Soft drinks and dessert will be provided by PON.
Open to the public.