Coping With Conflict

With a few phone calls and letters and an overseas jaunt now and then, a Harvard professor lets world leaders know how to solve their problems--and sometimes they take the advice.

Roger D. Fisher '43 is one of those rare professors who aggressively practices what he preaches.

Fisher, Williston Professor of Law at the Law School, is the founder of Social Sciences 174, "Coping with International Conflict," and for over 30 years he has been doing just that. He has been involved in trying to help settle disputes between Iran and Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, the United States and Denmark--and his most recent efforts have been directed toward solving the Middle East conflict. He has been advising both the Egyptians and the Israelis about how to move negotiations forward.

On the one hand, Fisher has been offering suggestions to his former student at the Law School, Osama el-Baz, who was the number-two negotiator for the Egyptians in the recent Cairo peace talks and a participant in the Jerusalem talks.

On the other hand, Fisher has had the ear of the director - general of the Israeli foreign ministry, Ephraim Evron, who is rumored to be a leading candidate to be the next Israeli ambassador to the U.S.

And third, Fisher has been in touch with the State Department and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), suggesting possible ways to break the deadlock in the Mideast settlement.

One major problem in the current round of peace talks is the difference in negotiating styles of Egypt's Anwar el-Sadat and Israel's Menachem Begin, Fisher says. "Sadat says 'Let's agree now and negotiate later. Let's get married.' But Begin is a Philadelphia lawyer, he wants to see the details before he agrees to peace. Begin says 'I wouldn't marry you if you were the last guy on earth. You are ugly. Of course, this is my opening position and I'm willing to negotiate.'"

Although the PLO is excluded from the current round of peace talks, Fisher says, "In the long run there is no alternative to the PLO. Is is the only group that can claim to speak for all the Palestinians." Based on private discussions he has had with PLO members, Fisher says he believes the PLO "is prepared to seek peace with Israel in return for direct U.S. talks with them." So he has been urging the State Department to try to establish face-to-face discussions between Israel and the PLO. "The sooner we start domesticating the PLO, the better," he says.

Sea, Salt and Ireland

Besides working on the Mideast problem, Fisher has been advising the present U.S. representatives to the International Conference on the Law of the Sea, and the present U.S. negotiators in the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT). Through letters and telephone calls he has been helping a group of Catholic and Protestant educators in Northern Ireland develop a history text presenting each side's interpretation of events in that nation.

He also plans to testify soon before a Senate Intelligence subcommittee on legislative means to prevent further CIA abuses of power. A draft bill on this subject has already been written, but Fisher says the bill will undergo radical changes before it is finished.

This attitude of attempting to cope actively with conflicts is what Fisher says he hopes to teach his students in Soc Sci 174, a course sporting a hefty 72-page reading list and syllabus. Most of those pages contain detailed explanations of what students are expected to learn about particular diplomatic and conflict-solving techniques, such as breaking conflicts into bite-sized pieces, and making it easier for the other guy to do what you want him to. Soc Sci 174 is supposed to help bridge the gap between the theory and practice of international conflict-solving by teaching students diplomatic skills, and then having them apply these skills to actual international problems.

Basically, Fisher's theory of conflict solving is the following:

(1)Select a problem--Choose a conflict to work on.

(2)Try to see the problem as those involved do--All conflicts involve at least two sides who cannot agree on what to do. Try to understand how each side views the situation and why.

(3)Select someone on one side who can help solve the problem--Find someone with influence in this situation whom you can advise on what needs to be done to resolve the conflict.

(4)Select actors on the other side--Find someone on the other side who can bring about changes in the situation.

(5)Estimate their choices, as they perceive them--If they are not doing what you think they should be doing, there must be a reason why. Draw up a balance sheet of consequences to them if they do not do what you think they ought to, and what will happen to them if they do agree to do what you want. This should tell you why they are not acting the way you think they should.

Yesable Propositions

(6)Invent some "yesable propositions"--Suggest some actions they might conceivably be expected to take that would at least help solve the conflict. These proposals cannot be in the form of "You should do something about your army," but should be specific enough so that merely saying "yes" to them paves the way for the action to be undertaken.

(7)Estimate their new choice--How do they see their options now in the wake of this new alternative you have offered them? Can they be expected to accept the advice, or can you convince them to agree?

(8) The Synthesis--Convince the person of influence on "our side" to convey this yesable proposition to the significant actors on "their side" in a simple, direct and convincing way, so that they may adopt this suggestion and help solve the conflict.

It sounds nice, but does it work?

Fisher himself admits that the chances of a single message to a government official producing a substantive policy change is small. But this does not deter him. "Some people say, 'But that idea will never work,'" he says. "I'm an optimist. If I have one chance in 100 of changing history, that's good odds."

That chance may not be as farfetched as some would imagine. As creator and moderator for a year of "The Advocate," a public television series that presents conflicting viewpoints on a different issue each show, Fisher led the late President Gamel Abdul Nasser of Egypt to admit in 1970 his willingness to accept in principle the existence of Israel. This admission sent U.S. diplomats scurrying to Cairo, and helped produce the first Sinai disengagement agreement--at least if a letter from then-Secretary of State William P. Rogers, thanking Fisher for his efforts, can be believed.

Fisher gives his students the same chance to change history, if only in a small way. Students in Soc Sci 174 must write a 15-page memorandum to someone in a position to do something constructive about an international conflict, telling that person what he or she can do immediately to help the situation. Well-written memorandums are actually sent off to their targets, with a cover letter from Fisher.

Many of Fisher's Harvard colleagues believe his approach to conflicts is a useful and innovative one. Ernest R. May, professor of History, who concentrates on foreign affairs, says Fisher is "very able, very stimulating, very provocative. He has a very practical approach." Thomas C. Schelling, Littauer Professor of Political Economy and an inventor of the highly-influential "game theory," says Fisher "has a lot of good ideas and a lot of bad ideas, but many people don't get any ideas. He's an optimist and he may be off in the clouds, but people who are not off in the clouds never try to come up with solutions."

Some students in Soc Sci 174 last year had complaints about Fisher and his course. A common criticism was that the course "lacked substance." Others said the lectures were repetitive, and the weekly full-class discussion sections were useless. Students complained the reading list contained unclear or highly theoretical works, and the weekly problems sets were ambiguous and not very useful.

Bruce Patton '77, who took the course last year and is now its head sectionman, says Fisher recognized these problems and has tried to correct them this time around. Patton and four other students spent much of the summer working with Fisher to revise and improve the course. The syllabus was expanded, the reading list changed, the problem sets clarified and the discussion sections discarded in favor of a second Fisher lecture each week. Patton says the weaknesses last year--the first time the course was offered--stemmed from organizational problems, not from inherent flaws in Fisher's negotiating theory.

Fisher agrees that the course material is sometimes redundant, but says this repetition is necessary. "If you're teaching someone how to do things instead of just talking about them, then there's a certain amount of drilling needed. I'm like a swimming coach who has to keep repeating instructions so they'll learn how to swim," he notes.

Fisher emphasizes that he is not teaching pure conflict-solving theory, but a theory of how to deal actively with international problems. "In most courses students come in, sit down, and say 'Do it to me, teach me,' like it was a massage parlor," he says. "Here they have to take an active role, and that requires a lot more concentration and effort."

Patton says Soc Sci 174 was "one of the last courses I took at Harvard, and finally someone is saying let's do something about it--take the theory the Government Department puts out, and apply it to the real world."

Fisher taught his conflict-solving theory to a group of international diplomats and government officials in Vienna last fall, and he has been a consultant to both the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. He now advises the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency.

Asking Questions

"Some people in the government recognize the validity of trying to see disputes as others see them," Fisher says. But he adds that on the whole the State Department operates differently. Bureaucrats tend to ask the wrong questions when a problem comes up, he says: What should I do to make us look good in the press, what has our traditional policy been, what should we do to them in return for their actions? Instead, Fisher believes they should ask why the other guys did what they did and what our side can do to convince them to change their policy.

"I'm just one voice in a thousand outside the government telling them what to do, and I'm without clout, at that, so it's hard to get listened to," Fisher says.

Still, his career has hardly been one of failure and frustration. After graduating from the Law School in 1946, he went off to Europe to help work on the Marshall Plan. Later he practiced law and argued cases before the Supreme Court, and became a professor at the Law School in 1958.

Since then Fisher has led a busy life, getting involved in numerous international conflicts, teaching, writing books, running "The Advocates" and serving on the boards of several international peace foundations. Somehow he hardly seems to fit the mold of the ivory tower intellectual who sits back and theorizes about the world without really living in it. Fisher is an idealist who copes.