As the U.S. government approaches a potentially catastrophic default on its debt in October, President Obama remains determined to avoid negotiations with Republican leaders on the issue, the New York Times reports, a situation that leaves House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner with an uncertain BATNA, or best alternative to a negotiated agreement. … Read More

The Program on Negotiation, an inter-university consortium of Harvard, MIT, and Tufts, and Harvard’s Future of Diplomacy Project have named Ambassador Tommy Koh of Singapore the recipient of the 2014 Great Negotiator Award. In public events at Harvard planned for the afternoon of Thursday, April 10, 2014 (details to be announced), participants will honor Koh’s … Read More

When negotiating a new business partnership, what should you do if you begin to believe that your partner is less attractive than he (or it) first appeared? Duke Energy faced this question during the course of its nearly two years of merger negotiations with Progress Energy.

In July 2012, the two North Carolina– based companies closed … Read A deal blows up

A five-year old American manufacturer of medical equipment has just secured a patent on its primary product, a new kind of heart monitor. The potential market is even stronger than the company imagined, yet its second round of venture capital funding is coming to an end. A few other manufacturers are about to go public … Read When You Shouldn’t Go It Alone

Program on Negotiation faculty member and Director of the Harvard Negotiation and Mediation Clinical Program at Harvard Law School, Robert Bordone, and HNMCP clinical instructor Alonzo Emery recently published an article for NPR’s Cognoscenti titled “What Obama Should Say About Syria,” in which he discusses the opportunity the crisis in Syria presents for US President … Read More

On August 7, President Barack Obama canceled a summit with Russian President Valdimir Putin scheduled for September in Moscow, citing a lack of progress on a variety of issues. The announcement came on the heels of Russian’s decision to grant temporary asylum to former National Security Agency contractor and Edward Snowden, who made confidential data … Read Hitting “Pause” On International Negotiations

Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School faculty member Erica Ariel Fox recently published an article for Forbes.com discussing the inner negotiations that she advises leaders to focus on when formulating theirnegotiation strategy and how this relates to US President Barack Obama’s deliberations with regard to the crisis in Syria. … Read More

Negotiators engaged in conflict management are commonly advised to focus on the big picture, but sometimes it’s the smaller signs that can derail an agreement.

That was literally the case in July when the U.S. government’s plans to engage in peace talks with the Taliban were scuttled over a simple sign and other symbols, as Dion … Read More

Program on Negotiation and Harvard Law School faculty member Gabriella Blum’s essay “Invisible Threats,” co-authored with Benjamin Wittes of the Brookings Institution, was featured on the Harvard Law School website.

In a panel discussion about her research, Professor Blum explained her perspective on the growing threat of technology to peace and how the accessibility of this … Read More

Many viewed the deal to be a terrible one from the start. In December 2008, Richard M. Daley, then Chicago’s mayor, announced that his administration had agreed to lease the city’s parking meters for 75 years to a private company for nearly $1.2 billion in an attempt to tackle a budget shortfall of about $500 … Read Got a raw deal? Renegotiate a better one

Abundant negotiation research suggests that negotiators are better off setting specific, challenging goals rather than vague “I’ll do my best” goals. In a new study, Kevin Tasa of York University in Toronto and his colleagues take a first look at whether it’s better to focus your specific goals on the negotiation process or on its … Read More